As reported earlier this summer, the New York Times will stop charging for access to columnists and will allow free searches of a large proportion of its archival material.
The Times said the project had met expectations, drawing 227,000 paying subscribers — out of 787,000 over all — and generating about $10 million a year in revenue.
“But our projections for growth on that paid subscriber base were low, compared to the growth of online advertising,” said Vivian L. Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of the site, NYTimes.com.
What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYtimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.
“What wasn’t anticipated was the explosion in how much of our traffic would be generated by Google, by Yahoo and some others,” Ms. Schiller said.
The Times’s site has about 13 million unique visitors each month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, far more than any other newspaper site. Ms. Schiller would not say how much increased Web traffic the paper expects by eliminating the charges, or how much additional ad revenue the move was expected to generate.
Those who have paid in advance for access to TimesSelect will be reimbursed on a prorated basis.
Some questions and notes:
- How long does the Wall Street Journal keep charging for access?
- Et tu, globeandmail.com?
- The Washington Post is ahead of the Times in one sense: The URLs for its stories have never been pay-walled. If you can find it on Google, you can access it through Google.
- What will be the cumulative impact of decisions like this on lucrative online database companies?
- What happens to the business model during an advertising downturn?
- Can local newspapers more easily pay-wall content than national ones?
- Will this NYT move be like so many other business decisions, in that it's good until it turns out to be bad?
- Does journalistic content have intrinsic value?
Update
Consultant Mark Potts thinks TimesSelect was a good idea that walled off the wrong content. Scott Karp heartily endorses the NYT's decision.