Times Paywall In Questionable 'Success' 214
takowl writes "It's been a few months since The Times newspaper in the UK (part of the Murdoch stable) hid its online stories behind a paywall. The media watched eagerly to see if people would pay for news online. Now The Times has uncovered its first results: some 105,000 have coughed up online, and another 100,000 print subscribers have access. Naturally, the paper is keen to promote this as a success: some people are willing to pay. The BBC's technology correspondent, on the other hand, reckons: 'it's safe to assume that Times Newspapers has yet to achieve the same revenues from its paywall experiment that were available when its website was free.' Will online subscribers help the Times survive? Will other papers follow its lead?"
Re:BBC vs Murdoch (Score:5, Informative)
There are 105,000 paying subscribers. The rest are print subscribers who get free access to the website. Half of the paying subscribers use the iPad App at £10 per month less Apple's commission. From what I can see they are making about £10m per year in subscription revenue less billing costs compared to £22m in advertising revenue previously.
Re:Missing data (Score:3, Informative)
22 million people used to read it before.
Re:Missing data (Score:3, Informative)
Again, Times != NYT. Is this really that hard, or is /. collectively just that dumb?