7 ms·

Times of London website visits fall by two-thirds

27 points by Ardit20 16y ago

sambeau 16y ago
I'm surprised it's not more. Actually, if they are all paying - that's a really good result.
- sambeau 16y ago
  I've now read the article. If you google for 5a2bb6d6-910c-11df-b297-00144feab49a it lets you see it :)
  - Ardit20 16y ago
    or just google the title which is: Times' website visits fall by two-thirds
- sambeau 16y ago
  Physical Times circulation ~600,000 per day @ £1 Online Times circulation ~1,200,000 per day @ £1/30* (*although we don't know how many of those actually paid £1 for 30 days viewing) It would be fascinating to know the actual figures.
  - mattmanser 16y ago
    You've got the price wrong, it's £1 for a month introductory offer then £2 per week from then on.
    - sambeau 16y ago
      £1/30 is £1 for 30 days - the current price. We've yet to see what happens when the full price arrives.
Tycho 16y ago
Can't read the article without registering but just wanted go say the recent deal between Yahoo! And Guardian/Telegraph/Mail looked like a win for all involved. I bet The Times would have liked in on that. (Yahoo! UK added tabs for those newspapers' headlines onto their front page alongside their usual Yahoo News/ Reuters coverage. Clicking takes you to the papers own sites)
- sambeau 16y ago
  Google for it and then you can
motters 16y ago
Well I can confirm that their decision to erect a paywall directly led to me no longer visiting their site. It will be interesting to see whether the paywall works for them, but these things were tried and failed in the past so I expect the result to be the same. My feeling on this is that there are better ways to monetize journalism. One way to do this would be to have a two tier system were readers can read the news as usual, but if you want to get access to the source materials and editorial decisions used to assemble the stories, or to be able to see the journalists at work (for example validating source material), you might pay a subscription. That way people who wanted a deeper understanding could pay to get that.
- axod 16y ago
  "if you want to get access to the source materials and editorial decisions used to assemble the stories, or to be able to see the journalists at work (for example validating source material), you might pay a subscription. That way people who wanted a deeper understanding could pay to get that." That seems like a niche inside a niche inside a miniscule market... surely
  - motters 16y ago
    Well, I'm sure there are plenty of newsophiles out there, otherwise there would be no market for 24 hour news TV channels.
    - axod 16y ago
      Completely different market (IMHO). People watch 24 hour news not because they're newsophiles, but because there's some big story breaking, or they want the news now, not at the next regular bulletin. I'd bet money that the number of people who watch 24 hour news, who would pay for the services you suggest, is very small indeed.
- marknutter 16y ago
  Maybe we just need less publications.
sjtgraham 16y ago
Presumably this means that the remaining online readership is now composed only of paying customers? Not exactly disastrous.
- lionhearted 16y ago
  Depends - they probably give free online access with paper deliveries. The question is how many unpaid signups converted into paid? If that number is lower than the decrease in advertising revenue due to lower traffic, then it turned out poorly.
  - handelaar 16y ago
    They're not giving away free online access with deliveries, no.
- handelaar 16y ago
  Au contraire. This is just with the reg-wall getting in your face on arrival for the first month of transition. The paywall only went up in the past week or two. And yes, they're still counting all the referer traffic that arrives, gets dumped into the paywall and then leaves, as "traffic". That won't last long.
mooism2 16y ago
> The data include users who may simply arrive on the homepage and then leave without paying, but Mr Goad said average visit time had stayed relatively consistent, suggesting most visitors had paid to view a story. It might be that the people who are paying to read are people who spend longer reading the site.
shortformblog 16y ago
Rupert Murdoch and Cablevision have now proven this model doesn't really work and is contrary to the rules of the Web. Anyone else wanna try? (Disclosure: I actually subscribed to Newsday's paywall mode for a little while, basically to make fun of it: http://shortformblog.com/tag/customer-36 http://shortformblog.com/tag/customer-36 )
- mattmanser 16y ago
  Rules of the web, right. One media buyer said The Times had doubled its online advertising rates since the paywall went up Also remember that subscriptions to the site are virtually pure profit, less hosting costs. Unlike actually selling the physical paper which covered distribution. Add those two together and suddenly you're looking at them making more money than they did before the paywall. So the exact opposite of your rule. Still, jury's still out in my opinion, lets see if they can actually sell those spots and if the uniques stabilize as they still look like they're trending down. We've also got no figures of actual subscribers. I'm sure if it works Murdoch will gleefully be broadcasting it to the world. For the moment, the experiment hasn't run its course and can't yet be called.
  - shortformblog 16y ago
    Rules of the Web: SEO and eyeballs. Not ad rates. Ad rates have nothing to do with the rules of the Web. If it makes them money, fine, but they're gonna lose influence no matter what way they go about it. Michael Wolff of Newser had an informant quote an powerful entertainment publicist who said he wouldn't have his clients talk to The Times anymore because nobody was going to see what they said. http://www.newser.com/off-the-grid/post/502/whats-really-going-on-behind-murdochs-paywall.html http://www.newser.com/off-the-grid/post/502/whats-really-goi... "Why would I get any of my clients to talk to the Times or the Sunday Times if they are behind a paywall? Who can see it? I can't even share a link and they aren't on search. It’s as though their writers don't exist anymore." Doesn't matter how much money Rupert's making if his journalists are getting scooped. It has a much worse long-term effect for him. The only way this model is going to work is if the holy grail of SEO and the social Web get combined with the paywall model. The New York Times gets this, and they're going to try to mix the two. As for this, you can't even click on an article without running into that screen. That, to me, is a total failure to understand the "Rules of the Web." Try again.
fix3r 16y ago
Article about a paywall behind a paywall? Stack overflow...
ars 16y ago
Google link: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Times%27+website+visits+fall+by+two-thirds%22&tbs=nws:1 http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Times%27+website+visits+fa...
- seldo 16y ago
  Thus defeating the FT's own pay wall...
intranation 16y ago
As a UK resident I think the Times missed a trick in their pricing model. Rampant speculation follows: I expect a decent chunk of their visitors are people who receive links via some other Internet medium (social networks, blogs etc.) and who click through to read it. These people are now instantly turned off. If The Times had a decent micropayments model in place (say £1 for 10 articles) this might be a lot more attractive. Unfortunately I don't think Murdoch cares about casual readers.
- seldo 16y ago
  "A decent micropayments model" is quite the line-item requirement. Nobody's built one yet, and we've been trying for 15 years.
  - mkramlich 16y ago
    Apple and Amazon have gotten closer than anybody else in the mass online market though. Tons of people routinely buy 99 cent items through them. Yes it needs to go farther to say 1 cent transactions or less for it to be true micropayments. I think these 2 players plus Google and PayPal are probably best positioned to eventually deliver a true general-purpose micropayments service.
cletus 16y ago
How ironic is it that an article about the abject failure of a paywall is hidden behind a registrationwall, which has proven to be almost as much of a barrier?
- timthorn 16y ago
  More of a barrier; I'm an FT subscriber, and having tried to click through on the original link am not able to read this story (my "free page count" has been reached - I assume by other HN readers - but as a premium subscriber I should have no such limit). All other pages work fine. I guess that's a few quid I won't be spending from next month onwards...
- lwhi 16y ago
  Completely agree - the irony is almost absurd.
- ahi 16y ago
  they're idiots. I have a one year academic account that gets me everything. I think I got it for free about 6 years ago.
lwhi 16y ago
I think the sad thing about this story, is the likely deal that Rupert Murdoch will have made with the current UK conservative-led government. The UK Tories don't like big-government, and they believe that free-enterprise should be encouraged at the expense of public services. The BBC is, quite rightly, a public service - and is unique in its ability to remain relatively impartial and free from commercial pressures. It's successful and provides news coverage that rivals much of the other paid-for news available in the UK. Last year, Mr Murdoch was making large noises about how the BBC's success makes it more difficult for him to profit from his UK news and media wings. In the run up to the election, his suite of media publications supported the Conservative campaign strongly. Now we have a conservative win - we have an announcement that the BBC is going to be cut back severely, possibly with a reduction to it's main source of income (the license fee). Maybe I'm being a bit cynical - but I'm pretty certain this isn't a coincidence. While the BBC is providing a good source of news, and programming - paywall experiments like this are far more likely to fail. However, if the BBC is crippled (as it potentially will be), I think the option of paying for news will seem more and more attractive.
- rwmj 16y ago
  Or we'll read news from US sites. Or (sadly) we'll just read less news and more HN.
  - lwhi 16y ago
    I think we'll always read news - but the places we go to for news will continue to change. Maybe the danger is, that the sources we can choose from won't be subject to the kind of journalistic scrutiny we've all been able to grow used to.
- cletus 16y ago
  > The BBC is, quite rightly, a public service - and is unique in its ability to remain relatively impartial and free from commercial pressures. This is the idea but in practice doesn't pan out. The government has to approve changes in the UK TV license fees so you find the BBC makes attempts to mollify the sitting government to get its funding increased. > Now we have a conservative win Not exactly. The Conservatives have a minority in the House of Commons in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. I wouldn't exactly say the Lib Dems are partial to any such leanings you may attribute to the Conservatives regarding the media. > Maybe I'm being a bit cynical To be fair, I think you're being both cynical and a little biased. Just look at your language of "at the expense of public services". That's not exactly accurate. The Conservative philosophy is traditionally one of smaller government and lower taxes so many such services are paid for in a more "user pays" kind of system. > However, if the BBC is crippled (as it potentially will be) Anything may "potentially" happen. Nothing has happened here other than conservative publications have supported a conservative Prime Minister. Nothing new there. I would also say that Murdoch's profits in the UK largely come from BSkyB and tabloids such as the Sun rather than the Times.

27 points by Ardit20 16y ago

sambeau 16y ago

I'm surprised it's not more. Actually, if they are all paying - that's a really good result.

sambeau 16y ago
I've now read the article. If you google for 5a2bb6d6-910c-11df-b297-00144feab49a it lets you see it :)
- Ardit20 16y ago
  or just google the title which is: Times' website visits fall by two-thirds
sambeau 16y ago
Physical Times circulation ~600,000 per day @ £1 Online Times circulation ~1,200,000 per day @ £1/30* (*although we don't know how many of those actually paid £1 for 30 days viewing) It would be fascinating to know the actual figures.
- mattmanser 16y ago
  You've got the price wrong, it's £1 for a month introductory offer then £2 per week from then on.
  - sambeau 16y ago
    £1/30 is £1 for 30 days - the current price. We've yet to see what happens when the full price arrives.

Tycho 16y ago

Can't read the article without registering but just wanted go say the recent deal between Yahoo! And Guardian/Telegraph/Mail looked like a win for all involved. I bet The Times would have liked in on that. (Yahoo! UK added tabs for those newspapers' headlines onto their front page alongside their usual Yahoo News/ Reuters coverage. Clicking takes you to the papers own sites)

sambeau 16y ago
Google for it and then you can

motters 16y ago

Well I can confirm that their decision to erect a paywall directly led to me no longer visiting their site. It will be interesting to see whether the paywall works for them, but these things were tried and failed in the past so I expect the result to be the same. My feeling on this is that there are better ways to monetize journalism. One way to do this would be to have a two tier system were readers can read the news as usual, but if you want to get access to the source materials and editorial decisions used to assemble the stories, or to be able to see the journalists at work (for example validating source material), you might pay a subscription. That way people who wanted a deeper understanding could pay to get that.

axod 16y ago
"if you want to get access to the source materials and editorial decisions used to assemble the stories, or to be able to see the journalists at work (for example validating source material), you might pay a subscription. That way people who wanted a deeper understanding could pay to get that." That seems like a niche inside a niche inside a miniscule market... surely
- motters 16y ago
  Well, I'm sure there are plenty of newsophiles out there, otherwise there would be no market for 24 hour news TV channels.
  - axod 16y ago
    Completely different market (IMHO). People watch 24 hour news not because they're newsophiles, but because there's some big story breaking, or they want the news now, not at the next regular bulletin. I'd bet money that the number of people who watch 24 hour news, who would pay for the services you suggest, is very small indeed.
marknutter 16y ago
Maybe we just need less publications.

sjtgraham 16y ago

Presumably this means that the remaining online readership is now composed only of paying customers? Not exactly disastrous.

lionhearted 16y ago
Depends - they probably give free online access with paper deliveries. The question is how many unpaid signups converted into paid? If that number is lower than the decrease in advertising revenue due to lower traffic, then it turned out poorly.
- handelaar 16y ago
  They're not giving away free online access with deliveries, no.
handelaar 16y ago
Au contraire. This is just with the reg-wall getting in your face on arrival for the first month of transition. The paywall only went up in the past week or two. And yes, they're still counting all the referer traffic that arrives, gets dumped into the paywall and then leaves, as "traffic". That won't last long.

mooism2 16y ago

> The data include users who may simply arrive on the homepage and then leave without paying, but Mr Goad said average visit time had stayed relatively consistent, suggesting most visitors had paid to view a story. It might be that the people who are paying to read are people who spend longer reading the site.

shortformblog 16y ago

Rupert Murdoch and Cablevision have now proven this model doesn't really work and is contrary to the rules of the Web. Anyone else wanna try? (Disclosure: I actually subscribed to Newsday's paywall mode for a little while, basically to make fun of it: http://shortformblog.com/tag/customer-36 http://shortformblog.com/tag/customer-36 )

mattmanser 16y ago
Rules of the web, right. One media buyer said The Times had doubled its online advertising rates since the paywall went up Also remember that subscriptions to the site are virtually pure profit, less hosting costs. Unlike actually selling the physical paper which covered distribution. Add those two together and suddenly you're looking at them making more money than they did before the paywall. So the exact opposite of your rule. Still, jury's still out in my opinion, lets see if they can actually sell those spots and if the uniques stabilize as they still look like they're trending down. We've also got no figures of actual subscribers. I'm sure if it works Murdoch will gleefully be broadcasting it to the world. For the moment, the experiment hasn't run its course and can't yet be called.
- shortformblog 16y ago
  Rules of the Web: SEO and eyeballs. Not ad rates. Ad rates have nothing to do with the rules of the Web. If it makes them money, fine, but they're gonna lose influence no matter what way they go about it. Michael Wolff of Newser had an informant quote an powerful entertainment publicist who said he wouldn't have his clients talk to The Times anymore because nobody was going to see what they said. http://www.newser.com/off-the-grid/post/502/whats-really-going-on-behind-murdochs-paywall.html http://www.newser.com/off-the-grid/post/502/whats-really-goi... "Why would I get any of my clients to talk to the Times or the Sunday Times if they are behind a paywall? Who can see it? I can't even share a link and they aren't on search. It’s as though their writers don't exist anymore." Doesn't matter how much money Rupert's making if his journalists are getting scooped. It has a much worse long-term effect for him. The only way this model is going to work is if the holy grail of SEO and the social Web get combined with the paywall model. The New York Times gets this, and they're going to try to mix the two. As for this, you can't even click on an article without running into that screen. That, to me, is a total failure to understand the "Rules of the Web." Try again.

fix3r 16y ago

Article about a paywall behind a paywall? Stack overflow...

ars 16y ago

Google link: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Times%27+website+visits+fall+by+two-thirds%22&tbs=nws:1 http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Times%27+website+visits+fa...

seldo 16y ago
Thus defeating the FT's own pay wall...

intranation 16y ago

As a UK resident I think the Times missed a trick in their pricing model. Rampant speculation follows: I expect a decent chunk of their visitors are people who receive links via some other Internet medium (social networks, blogs etc.) and who click through to read it. These people are now instantly turned off. If The Times had a decent micropayments model in place (say £1 for 10 articles) this might be a lot more attractive. Unfortunately I don't think Murdoch cares about casual readers.

seldo 16y ago
"A decent micropayments model" is quite the line-item requirement. Nobody's built one yet, and we've been trying for 15 years.
- mkramlich 16y ago
  Apple and Amazon have gotten closer than anybody else in the mass online market though. Tons of people routinely buy 99 cent items through them. Yes it needs to go farther to say 1 cent transactions or less for it to be true micropayments. I think these 2 players plus Google and PayPal are probably best positioned to eventually deliver a true general-purpose micropayments service.

cletus 16y ago

How ironic is it that an article about the abject failure of a paywall is hidden behind a registrationwall, which has proven to be almost as much of a barrier?

timthorn 16y ago
More of a barrier; I'm an FT subscriber, and having tried to click through on the original link am not able to read this story (my "free page count" has been reached - I assume by other HN readers - but as a premium subscriber I should have no such limit). All other pages work fine. I guess that's a few quid I won't be spending from next month onwards...
lwhi 16y ago
Completely agree - the irony is almost absurd.
ahi 16y ago
they're idiots. I have a one year academic account that gets me everything. I think I got it for free about 6 years ago.

lwhi 16y ago

I think the sad thing about this story, is the likely deal that Rupert Murdoch will have made with the current UK conservative-led government. The UK Tories don't like big-government, and they believe that free-enterprise should be encouraged at the expense of public services. The BBC is, quite rightly, a public service - and is unique in its ability to remain relatively impartial and free from commercial pressures. It's successful and provides news coverage that rivals much of the other paid-for news available in the UK. Last year, Mr Murdoch was making large noises about how the BBC's success makes it more difficult for him to profit from his UK news and media wings. In the run up to the election, his suite of media publications supported the Conservative campaign strongly. Now we have a conservative win - we have an announcement that the BBC is going to be cut back severely, possibly with a reduction to it's main source of income (the license fee). Maybe I'm being a bit cynical - but I'm pretty certain this isn't a coincidence. While the BBC is providing a good source of news, and programming - paywall experiments like this are far more likely to fail. However, if the BBC is crippled (as it potentially will be), I think the option of paying for news will seem more and more attractive.

rwmj 16y ago
Or we'll read news from US sites. Or (sadly) we'll just read less news and more HN.
- lwhi 16y ago
  I think we'll always read news - but the places we go to for news will continue to change. Maybe the danger is, that the sources we can choose from won't be subject to the kind of journalistic scrutiny we've all been able to grow used to.
cletus 16y ago
> The BBC is, quite rightly, a public service - and is unique in its ability to remain relatively impartial and free from commercial pressures. This is the idea but in practice doesn't pan out. The government has to approve changes in the UK TV license fees so you find the BBC makes attempts to mollify the sitting government to get its funding increased. > Now we have a conservative win Not exactly. The Conservatives have a minority in the House of Commons in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. I wouldn't exactly say the Lib Dems are partial to any such leanings you may attribute to the Conservatives regarding the media. > Maybe I'm being a bit cynical To be fair, I think you're being both cynical and a little biased. Just look at your language of "at the expense of public services". That's not exactly accurate. The Conservative philosophy is traditionally one of smaller government and lower taxes so many such services are paid for in a more "user pays" kind of system. > However, if the BBC is crippled (as it potentially will be) Anything may "potentially" happen. Nothing has happened here other than conservative publications have supported a conservative Prime Minister. Nothing new there. I would also say that Murdoch's profits in the UK largely come from BSkyB and tabloids such as the Sun rather than the Times.