
The New York Times reaches 1M digital only subscribers - zonotope
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/05/business/the-new-york-times-reaches-a-milestone-thanks-to-our-readers.html
======
ghshephard
A bit of advice for anybody who wants to subscribe to the NYT (I'm a very
happy subscriber) but might not be in the position to pay the full
subscription rate - Wait for a discount offering, subscribe for the
introductory period, then, when your subscription switches over to the regular
rate, call and cancel, just let them know you can't afford the full price, and
they'll give you a 50% discount.

~~~
bpick
Just be ready for them to hike your rate without any type of alert after the
initial period expires. This applies even to gifted subscriptions like the one
I was given for Christmas. The customer service was...unsympathetic.

~~~
dougabug
I don't have the time to jump through hoops to maintain promotional pricing
for a NYT subscription. Maybe a sufficient long term discount would be
attractive, or unbundling content. The NY Times just doesn't offer enough
value to warrant the asking price for my tastes.

------
rconti
I cannot begin to explain how terrible their pricing model has been.

My #1 gripe, which caused me to utterly refuse to pay for their subscriptions
at any cost, was the fact that they double-charge you for web content. It goes
like this, verified prices today:

* Web + smartphone = $3.75

* Web + tablet = $5

* "All Digital Access" (web+smartphone+tablet) = $3.75 + $5 = $8.75

That's right. Not only do they not provide an incentive (a per-unit discount)
for buying multiple products, they actually charge you _more money_ for buying
all of their stuff. Obviously, it makes little sense to the average consumer
to have to pay >$0 in order to add a smartphone to their web+tablet
subscription, but the insistence that you pay again for the FULL web +
smartphone cost just to add a smaller screen is asinine.

Second gripe has been they devalue their content so much by these stupid 99
cent teaser rates, which automatically tell me I don't want to do business
with them.

Third gripe is that they are so dependent on dead-tree revenue that it's often
cheaper to buy a print subscription and get free "free" internet content. I
don't want to provide a nonstop stream of paper to the recycling bin just to
get cheaper digital access.

In the past few months, they experimented with their pricing model, and I
ended up as a subscriber because they got rid of their double-charging system,
and provided a fair, low, consistent rate.

Unfortunately, upon posting a screenshot on Facebook, I found out that nobody
was able to replicate my success -- they seemed to be arbitrarily handing out
different pricing models as a test when different people clicked on the same
link. Many others were able to verify the non-double-charging pricing model,
but nobody got as low a rate as I could manage.

Turns out they're back to their same old tricks -- I validated the above
pricing today with a fresh browser.

I apologize for how vague I am about the exact "new" model I ended up with a
couple of months ago, but I can't track down the screenshots of the different
schemes I was offered.

Also, my apologies about the poor formatting. HN's help is not particularly
helpful as it is grammatically vague about how to get newlines without a new
paragraph.

~~~
chuckcode
And at least a couple months ago you couldn't cancel subscription online. I
had to call them to cancel and go through multiple rounds of "yes I really
want to cancel"...

------
cm2012
If they make an average of $15 per month from digital only subscribers, then
that's $180,000,000 a year in revenues. Total subscription revenue for the
NYTimes is around $800,000,000, so it's around 20% of total subscription
revenue. Total advertising revenue was $700,000,000 ish, not sure how much of
that is Digital but I imagine around 10%. So probably 12.5% of NYTimes revenue
is from digital only - that's tough.

~~~
kbenson
But if you split digital and physical subscriptions and look at profit
compared to revenue, I imagine those digital subscriptions look pretty good. I
imagine not having to print and deliver a physical product on a specific
deadline makes a world of difference.

~~~
lkrubner
That conclusion is not justified. Advertisers continue to pay a lot more for
print. Nobody is willing to spend much for online advertising. So profits can
still be higher for the print version. Indeed, that is the whole problem that
the newspaper/magazine industry is facing.

~~~
kbenson
What conclusion? That digital subscriptions look good because they have lower
overhead? I don't imagine they come all that close to supporting the company
yet, but I _do_ imagine their profit to expenditure ratio is pretty good.

> Nobody is willing to spend much for online advertising.

nytimes.com is actually in a good position to institute change in this are. I
imagine if they rolled their own ad solution that was both not obtrusive and
did not source the ads from third party servers (thus being much harder to
block), they could possible leverage their name and the fact the ads weren't
being blocked to charge a premium for ad-space.

------
bickfordb
As a subscriber it's pretty irritating that ads aren't turned off,
particularly the take over the page modal/interstitial ones.

~~~
RexRollman
Wait, you pay and still have to look at ads?

~~~
matthewowen
Y'know, that's also the case in the print edition.

~~~
lghh
The ads are in the paper and not hosted on some third party paper that's doing
God knows what to my paper, and that's a big difference.

~~~
e12e
Well, I think it's a bit naive to say that a reliance on ad revenue doesn't
impact the editorial line at all... but I take it you mean the print edition
doesn't come with a spy camera that watches you while you read, or mix contact
poison/spores in the ink, so that you get sick from reading.

There are absolutely many issues that are unique to digital advertising.

~~~
lghh
Yep, exactly. I am not opposed to advertising that is clearly marked as such
and is hosted form the server that I intended to connect to as long as it's
not doing anything shady with my computer.

------
sjs382
I had a terrible experience with a NYT digital-only subscription, and I'll
likely never subscribe again.

I had a subscription for a while that I hadn't been using. I only used their
site when linked to it from another (like HN). I tried to cancel online, but
there's no way to—you need to cancel over the phone. So, I did, sitting on
hold for close to a half hour. Bad experience, but I wish it had ended there.

Fast-forward two months, and I started getting emails that my subscription was
past-due. Then I come to realize that they had continued to bill me every 2
weeks, but the payments had just started failing because my card expired.

I emailed CS, mentioning that I had cancelled my subscription and I was being
billed by mistake, and to make sure my account got cancelled this time. They
"couldn't do anything about it" because my account was in their "grace
period", and that I would continue to get the past due emails until the grace
period ended.

I ended up filing chargebacks for each charge after I had originally
cancelled. To my knowledge, they never replied to or contested the chargebacks
(does the customer usually get this info, if they do? it's the first and only
chargeback I'd ever filed).

~~~
vitd
My experience is that the credit card company will contact you if the merchant
contests your side of the story or if they are going to give you your money
back. I've been on both sides of a chargeback. Though, it may depend on the
specific bank.

1) When a customer lied and tried to charge back a ~$250 software purchase
where we had emailed each other a few times about it, I simply forwarded the
emails to the card issuer and the case was dropped. My company got the money.

2) When I found someone locally had stolen my card number and booked a hotel
and tickets to Disneyland, I told my card issuer that I had no idea what those
charges were. The hotel and ticket seller wrote back contesting it, so my card
issuer contacted me and I signed an affidavit saying that, "No, really, I
wasn't at Disneyland 50 miles away and also buying gas by my house at the same
time". I eventually got a letter saying the charges had been reversed.

~~~
knorby
I was pretty amazed at what the card issuers have to put up in chargeback
contests. I had to file an affidavit after someone charged my card with the
wrong name and wrong zip code; the retailer accepted the charges anyway,
perhaps because they were in on the fraud. What an amazingly out of date
system.

------
phillipamann
I pay for the website and phone subscription. I'm probably going to get a
tablet soon and it's annoying to me that I have to pay additionally for a
tablet subscription. I have not seen this model anywhere else. Is it wrong
that I think there should only be one digital subscription that covers
everything? Is there something about he NYT tablet app that I am not aware of
compared to the phone app?

~~~
Chirael
This reminds me of movies and "release windows" (releasing the same movie at
different times in different countries & formats in an attempt to maximize
profits).

It sounds, from this, like the NYT is still stuck in 20th century thinking and
just doesn't understand how modern people use technology and information. Or
maybe it does, but it is just too calcified in its current business model to
understand how to get from point A (old business model) to point B
(new/convenient/modern business model).

Same thing with cable TV and "cord cutters" (and "cord nevers") vs. Netflix
that "just works" on various devices and seamlessly remembers where you were
in a movie/episode if you switch devices.

------
Thiz
How much is the monthly subscription? I'd gladly pay up to $10 if they provide
extra features like stock tickers, sports scores, extras, alerts, and a nice
mobile app.

Btw, what are the member's advantages compared to any regular web user?

~~~
aaronkrolik
Here's the link to buy a subscription:
[http://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp3004.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp3004.html)

Digital is $8.75 /week after a the first month for $.99

~~~
slyall
Just $3.75 per week for the basic level access.

However that was a little high for me since I don't read them religiously. I'd
probably go for $100/year but twice that is a bit too much.

Currently I have firefox set to open them in a private browsing tab.

------
leroy_masochist
FYI, you can get all of the NYT's content for free by browsing the site,
clicking on the link to any given article, and scanning the article title
(still visible through the paywall, and often different from the headline
listed on the main site). Enter a few of the headline's keywords into Google,
add "nyt", and search [0]. The article you're looking for will be at the top
of the Google results. When you click on it, you'll be able to read it in its
entirety, right there on the NYT site. Same goes for all of the multimedia
content, as far as I know, although I don't really delve into all the
offerings there.

The Times and the Journal have this backdoor. Interestingly, the Financial
Times does not; their paywall is still tripped if you come in through Google
(and you only get one free article per month). I would imagine that in making
their content free if it comes in from search traffic, the NYT/WSJ are
optimizing for highest total combination of ad revenue (pageview-driven) and
subscriber revenue. I would further surmise that their overall readership is
heavily weighted toward older people who are not super technology-savvy, which
is why they can still make money with such an easy-to-defeat paywall in place.

[0]: Example Google search string - "crew 33 ship sank caribbean nyt"

------
tefo-mohapi
From a different point of view, this is quite encouraging for the future of
news and digital publishing.

~~~
blumkvist
That's like... 15% of their revenue. I imagine lower % of their profits... for
the biggest publishing brand out there.

~~~
tefo-mohapi
15% and growing. From what I gather bigger than their print subscriptions
revenue too so if that's the case then definetly encouraging and one of few
"old" media slowly changing their business model succesfully.

------
aaronkrolik
A few weeks ago, in honor of 1M digital subs, the NYT published a list of
digital highlights.
[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/09/21/business/media...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/09/21/business/media/50-of-
our-best-stories-from-nytimes.html)

------
zappo2938
Since this is hacker news, an easy hack is to just open an incognito browser
and continue reading article because the paywall is cookie based. They are not
trying very hard to force people into subscriptions. They are only suggesting.

That said, if you like the content you should support them because they are
losing money.

------
rainhacker
No praise for the tech division. I feel sorry for NYT Technology departmemt.
They are quintessential for making this happen. I see outside of tech
companies, this kind of treatment for technology folks is common nowadays.

------
NN88
Then everyone else must be struggling.

------
linkydinkandyou
I pay for a NY Times digital subscription. Even though I don't always agree
with their editorial slant, it's better quality news in on place than you can
get for "free" around the web.

People hate paying so much these days that they'll deal with poor quality
information. We used to all pay for newspapers--why should they be "free" now
just because there's no paper?

~~~
bachmeier
Is there any evidence that you get better quality content from a NY Times
subscription than you get for free on the web? I personally don't view the NY
Times as a credible source.

~~~
aaronkrolik
Every nyt article goes through layers of editing, fact checking and copy
editing by people with years, often decades of experience. Nyt is one of the
few places that can afford to do this. Furthermore, if the nyt does get
something wrong, unlike most blogs, etc; there is a framework in place for
submitting and publishing corrections. NYT even pays someone (Margaret
Sullivan, the public editor) to advocate for readers. She writes about her
work here[0].

Per evidence. Here's evidence: half the 'content' you read on the web was
first reported by the nyt.

Recent examples: Hilary clinton emails, VW scandal, Nail salon exploitation,
etc, etc...

here are 50 more:

[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/09/21/business/media...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/09/21/business/media/50-of-
our-best-stories-from-nytimes.html)

(disclaimer: i work for the nyt but opinions are my own)

[0]
[http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/thepubliceditor/index....](http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/thepubliceditor/index.html)

~~~
handedness
If only a similar process existed to check the editorial bias that permeates
purportedly non-editorial content.

------
hockeybias
I find an instance of 'New Incognito Window' is a good way to view that site.

------
smoreilly
How is this impressive?

