There is light and shade in a successful paid content business model. It's not as simple as turning on the paywall and counting the cash – the New York Times' hybrid model is constantly evolving, based on science and market evidence. With 640,000 digital subscriptions, it's doing something right.
As Paul Smurl, VP of paid products at NYTimes.com, told the Digital Innovators' Summit in Berlin on Tuesday, the learning process was on-going and a whole range of innovations and attitude shifts had increased revenue for the "grey lady"…
When NYTimes.com first launched its metered model its pop-up call-to-action banner advert that forced its way on too everyone's screen was, ironically, a huge barrier to new sign-ups.
"People thought it was an ad and and and wanted to skip it," says Smurl. "They valued us and wanted to support us but they wanted us to get out of the way. Editorial voice works better."
To get to 640,000 digital subscribers – in addition, 80 percent of print subscribers have activated an online sub, some 900,000 people – the Times borrowed from the Financial Times marketing playbook and started targeted registered users depending on the likelihood they will pay.
"Here we took a page from the FT – we have 30 million registered users who we profile depending on their propensity to pay."
At the same time the site improved its billing technology – "boring, but incredibly effective" – and experimented with Black Friday-style event sales with big discounts available for a 24 hour window.
Commercial paywall partnerships
One method to bring more people into the paywall for free while still making money is the Most Engaged User Programme. In 2011 the Times started offering free access worth $150 a year to up to 200,000 highly engaged readers in partnership with car company Lincoln.
The users get free content access, Lincoln gets to market to those users and heap of positive engagement (AdAge has more on how it works).
More lower-end products
A fairly frequent critique of the NYT and other paywalls news orgs is that there's very little for the non-premium customer – $150 a year is out of the reach of many would-be readers. It sounds like the Times is listeing:
"We want new paid products especially at the entry level, sub-$10, there's a huge market for that," says Smurl.
At the same time, he hopes the Times can expand much more overseas, as well as shure up more device-based subscriptions – just as music player Spotify comes pre-installed with some smartphones.
Attack of the snail
That's all good progress and healthy innovation. But it's also worth mentioning the winding route the Times took to get here.
Smurl admits the organisation took years making its mind up on whether to go paid online. The conclusion was "there is no reason to look for marginal growth when you are not selling out all your (ad) inventory."
But not before some epic market research involving 150 different product bundles and iterations, which were put before a parade of user test groups.