

Times of London website visits fall by two-thirds - Ardit20
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5a2bb6d6-910c-11df-b297-00144feab49a.html

======
motters
Well I can confirm that their decision to erect a paywall directly led to me
no longer visiting their site.

It will be interesting to see whether the paywall works for them, but these
things were tried and failed in the past so I expect the result to be the
same.

My feeling on this is that there are better ways to monetize journalism. One
way to do this would be to have a two tier system were readers can read the
news as usual, but if you want to get access to the source materials and
editorial decisions used to assemble the stories, or to be able to see the
journalists at work (for example validating source material), you might pay a
subscription. That way people who wanted a deeper understanding could pay to
get that.

~~~
axod
"if you want to get access to the source materials and editorial decisions
used to assemble the stories, or to be able to see the journalists at work
(for example validating source material), you might pay a subscription. That
way people who wanted a deeper understanding could pay to get that."

That seems like a niche inside a niche inside a miniscule market... surely

~~~
motters
Well, I'm sure there are plenty of newsophiles out there, otherwise there
would be no market for 24 hour news TV channels.

~~~
axod
Completely different market (IMHO).

People watch 24 hour news not because they're newsophiles, but because there's
some big story breaking, or they want the news _now_ , not at the next regular
bulletin. I'd bet money that the number of people who watch 24 hour news, who
would pay for the services you suggest, is very small indeed.

------
sjtgraham
Presumably this means that the remaining online readership is now composed
only of paying customers? Not exactly disastrous.

~~~
lionhearted
Depends - they probably give free online access with paper deliveries. The
question is how many unpaid signups converted into paid? If that number is
lower than the decrease in advertising revenue due to lower traffic, then it
turned out poorly.

~~~
handelaar
They're not giving away free online access with deliveries, no.

------
Tycho
Can't read the article without registering but just wanted go say the recent
deal between Yahoo! And Guardian/Telegraph/Mail looked like a win for all
involved. I bet The Times would have liked in on that.

(Yahoo! UK added tabs for those newspapers' headlines onto their front page
alongside their usual Yahoo News/ Reuters coverage. Clicking takes you to the
papers own sites)

~~~
sambeau
Google for it and then you can

------
ars
Google link:
[http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Times%27+website+visits+fa...](http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Times%27+website+visits+fall+by+two-
thirds%22&tbs=nws:1)

~~~
seldo
Thus defeating the FT's own pay wall...

------
intranation
As a UK resident I think the Times missed a trick in their pricing model.
Rampant speculation follows: I expect a decent chunk of their visitors are
people who receive links via some other Internet medium (social networks,
blogs etc.) and who click through to read it. These people are now instantly
turned off. If The Times had a decent micropayments model in place (say £1 for
10 articles) this might be a lot more attractive. Unfortunately I don't think
Murdoch cares about casual readers.

~~~
seldo
"A decent micropayments model" is quite the line-item requirement. Nobody's
built one yet, and we've been trying for 15 years.

~~~
mkramlich
Apple and Amazon have gotten closer than anybody else in the mass online
market though. Tons of people routinely buy 99 cent items through them. Yes it
needs to go farther to say 1 cent transactions or less for it to be true
micropayments. I think these 2 players plus Google and PayPal are probably
best positioned to eventually deliver a true general-purpose micropayments
service.

------
lwhi
I think the sad thing about this story, is the likely deal that Rupert Murdoch
will have made with the current UK conservative-led government.

The UK Tories don't like big-government, and they believe that free-enterprise
should be encouraged at the expense of public services.

The BBC is, quite rightly, a public service - and is unique in its ability to
remain relatively impartial and free from commercial pressures. It's
successful and provides news coverage that rivals much of the other paid-for
news available in the UK.

Last year, Mr Murdoch was making large noises about how the BBC's success
makes it more difficult for him to profit from his UK news and media wings. In
the run up to the election, his suite of media publications supported the
Conservative campaign strongly. Now we have a conservative win - we have an
announcement that the BBC is going to be cut back severely, possibly with a
reduction to it's main source of income (the license fee).

Maybe I'm being a bit cynical - but I'm pretty certain this isn't a
coincidence. While the BBC is providing a good source of news, and programming
- paywall experiments like this are far more likely to fail.

However, if the BBC is crippled (as it potentially will be), I think the
option of paying for news will seem more and more attractive.

~~~
rwmj
Or we'll read news from US sites.

Or (sadly) we'll just read less news and more HN.

~~~
lwhi
I think we'll always read news - but the places we go to for news will
continue to change.

Maybe the danger is, that the sources we can choose from won't be subject to
the kind of journalistic scrutiny we've all been able to grow used to.

------
cletus
How ironic is it that an article about the abject failure of a paywall is
hidden behind a registrationwall, which has proven to be almost as much of a
barrier?

~~~
timthorn
More of a barrier; I'm an FT subscriber, and having tried to click through on
the original link am not able to read this story (my "free page count" has
been reached - I assume by other HN readers - but as a premium subscriber I
should have no such limit). All other pages work fine.

I guess that's a few quid I won't be spending from next month onwards...

------
sambeau
I'm surprised it's not more.

Actually, if they are all paying - that's a really good result.

~~~
sambeau
I've now read the article. If you google for
5a2bb6d6-910c-11df-b297-00144feab49a it lets you see it :)

~~~
Ardit20
or just google the title which is:

Times' website visits fall by two-thirds

------
mooism2
> The data include users who may simply arrive on the homepage and then leave
> without paying, but Mr Goad said average visit time had stayed relatively
> consistent, suggesting most visitors had paid to view a story.

It might be that the people who are paying to read are people who spend longer
reading the site.

------
fix3r
Article about a paywall behind a paywall? Stack overflow...

------
shortformblog
Rupert Murdoch and Cablevision have now proven this model doesn't really work
and is contrary to the rules of the Web. Anyone else wanna try?

(Disclosure: I actually subscribed to Newsday's paywall mode for a little
while, basically to make fun of it: <http://shortformblog.com/tag/customer-36>
)

~~~
mattmanser
Rules of the web, right.

 _One media buyer said The Times had doubled its online advertising rates
since the paywall went up_

Also remember that subscriptions to the site are virtually pure profit, less
hosting costs. Unlike actually selling the physical paper which covered
distribution.

Add those two together and suddenly you're looking at them making more money
than they did before the paywall.

So the exact opposite of your rule.

Still, jury's still out in my opinion, lets see if they can actually sell
those spots and if the uniques stabilize as they still look like they're
trending down. We've also got no figures of actual subscribers.

I'm sure if it works Murdoch will gleefully be broadcasting it to the world.
For the moment, the experiment hasn't run its course and can't yet be called.

~~~
shortformblog
Rules of the Web: SEO and eyeballs. Not ad rates. Ad rates have nothing to do
with the rules of the Web. If it makes them money, fine, but they're gonna
lose influence no matter what way they go about it.

Michael Wolff of Newser had an informant quote an powerful entertainment
publicist who said he wouldn't have his clients talk to The Times anymore
because nobody was going to see what they said.

[http://www.newser.com/off-the-grid/post/502/whats-really-
goi...](http://www.newser.com/off-the-grid/post/502/whats-really-going-on-
behind-murdochs-paywall.html)

"Why would I get any of my clients to talk to the Times or the Sunday Times if
they are behind a paywall? Who can see it? I can't even share a link and they
aren't on search. It’s as though their writers don't exist anymore."

Doesn't matter how much money Rupert's making if his journalists are getting
scooped. It has a much worse long-term effect for him.

The only way this model is going to work is if the holy grail of SEO and the
social Web get combined with the paywall model. The New York Times gets this,
and they're going to try to mix the two.

As for this, you can't even click on an article without running into that
screen. That, to me, is a total failure to understand the "Rules of the Web."

Try again.

~~~
hga
Exactly; to quote blogress Ann Althouse about the proposed NYT paywall
([http://althouse.blogspot.com/2010/01/were-going-to-have-
to-p...](http://althouse.blogspot.com/2010/01/were-going-to-have-to-pay-to-
read-nyt.html)):

" _For me, reading on line is tied to blogging. I'm not going to spend my time
reading sites that I can't blog, and I'm not going to blog and link to sites
that you can't read without paying...._ "

~~~
lwhi
I agree .. treating online media in exactly the same way as its traditional
counterpart is really short-sighted.

For instance - I buy a newspaper when I need to get from A to B and need
something to read. I'll choose one paper over all others, simply because I'm
_forced_ to make a choice.

When I'm at a computer, I want to be able to compare coverage between
publications .. I won't go to one source and take one reporters account as
gospel. I'll consider what the traditional media has to say, and also what
bloggers and commenters have to say as well.

I no longer need to invest in one publication only. Everything can - and is -
linked. Placing an artificial break in that chain seems ridiculous.

