http://www.techdirt.com/Last week, we wrote about Michael Wolff's report that the new paywall for Rupert Murdoch's The Times (online site) in London wasn't doing so well. However, we wondered if we'd ever see actual numbers. While some publications have been analyzing the traffic drop, noting that it was "only" 2/3 of pre-registration traffic, as opposed to the 10% that some predicted, an anonymous reader has passed along a report from the site BeeHiveCity that claims to have the data saying that 15,000 people signed up for the paywall and another 12,500 paid for the iPad app. As the report notes, "this figure is considered disappointing."
A further analysis of the data by the same site digs a bit deeper. It notes that the two newspapers (The Times and The Sunday Times) both lost a bunch of paper subscriptions in the last month as well. That could mean that the paywall folks are simply replacing the paper version. But, still, we're talking about pretty small numbers. As the report notes, it doesn't look like the online paywall subscribers even come close to replacing the paper circulation decline in terms of revenue -- and (most importantly), the paper subscription declines seem like an ongoing deal. The number of new subscribers to the paywalled digital edition almost certainly won't increase at the same rate. The first week is when the largest single segment was likely to subscribe. If that number only increases by a trickle (or... if it actually starts to decrease, once the cheaper "trial period" is up), the paywall may go down as a complete disaster.
Oh, what a disappointment for him.
...... It would be interesting to know the figures for all the other newspaper news sites that don't charge. What's the betting that they have improved?
