“The fallout from this paywall experiment has just begun,” Mike Schuster reports for Minyanville.
“Analysts upon analysts have voiced their grim forecast for how this will end and neither option looks very promising — either with the paywall folding or the paper itself,” Schuster reports. “Countless news organizations have experimented with a paywall — including the New York Times in 2007 — and there’s yet to be a success story. Even subscription costs far outweigh those of various memberships to Google, MobileMe, Dropbox, SiriusXM, Amazon, Netflix, and the Wall Street Journal.”
Schuster reports, “Hitwise analyzed the traffic to the New York Times website before and after the paywall went up on March 28. Already, it’s taken a hit. Aside from a spike on Saturday — which Hitwise suspects was due to the potential government shutdown — there has been a decrease in overall visits between 5% and 15%, or roughly six million visitors per month. Page views also saw a significant decline, falling between 11% and 30%.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “James W.” for the heads up.]