The New York Times Paywall
1. The paywall is so called “soft paywall” which means 20 free articles are accessible (reduced to 10 in April, 2012). But the reality is that there are 25 free articles per day through search engine and unlimited links on some social media. From the perspective of increasing or retaining traffic from light readers or say subscribers, the business model is a success. But from the perspective of the revenue, it is a disaster because the revenue is declining and the advertisement income didn’t compensate the loss of revenue. Many people believe that the revenue will not continue in the future.
2. I can’t say which paywall model is more successful than the other two. For 2005 model, the revenue is guaranteed because a monthly/ yearly payment is set up but the growth is dramatically decreased and the competitiveness with the online advertising is very low which means the pressure for growth from the board of directors is very high. For 2007 model, it is even worse because only pre-1980 articles were behind the pay wall but the people who need these articles are very few, which means the traffic grew dramatically but the revenue dropped seriously simultaneously. For 2011 model, it is a combination of the two previous one to keep a balance for some extent, but the unstable treatment towards the customers will at last let the customers down and leave the newspaper. So there is no good or bad within the 3 models, all of them are a kind of trade off. The New York Times model stands in the middle of the Financial Time model and the Wall Street Journal model. I also don’t think there is a better or worse one, every model has pros and cons. Just like I said, it is always a trade off.
3. Because the newspaper has a fixed structure and combination of information everyday. All the people who read it only need some of the news or information on it. But everyone pay the same price because all the information are provided no matter you need or not. Actually, people only want to read the exact information you want and willing to pay fairly for that
