US: Is the TimesSelect model paying off?
TimesSelect had initially offered, a few months after launch, a half-price subscription for academics, which had only attracted about 7,000 subscribers.
TimesSelect has a total of 639,000 subscribers, about two thirds of which receive it in complement to their home delivery subscriptions (about a third are online-only subscribers). Last December, TimesSelect had 609,000 subscribers.
This means that about 217,000 online-only subscribers at the end of February were bringing the Times a potential $10.8 million in subscription revenue.
Therefore it seems that the controversial TimesSelect pay-wall is starting to bear its fruits. (Although an NYU student argues that “the opening of TimesSelect to anyone with a .edu e-mail address is itself a tacit admission of the program’s failure to spur people to pay for content.”)
As for the upcoming TimesReader, Paidcontent.org warns that TimesSelect relative success “doesn’t mean the more expensive Times Reader, which becomes a pay edition at the end of the month, will come close to these numbers any time soon.”
Critics argue that people won’t be willing to pay $165 a year for content that would be free online otherwise.
Perhaps the TimesReader will prove skeptics wrong again, and set the way for an effective online newspaper business model?
Source: paidcontent.org
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If TimesSelect is bearing fruit, that fruit must be small and bitter. After 18 months, the premiere newspaper in the English language has converted only 217,000 of its more than 13,000,000 registered online users into paying customers. That 1.7 percent conversion rate is less than the 2 to 3 percent conversion rates typical for unsolicited postal mail ('junk mail') or 'cold call' telemarketing during the same period. And what does TimesSelect's conversion 1.7 percent conversion rate indicate for daily newspapers with less compelling content than that of The New York Times?