The Times has lost almost 90% of its online readership compared to February since making registration mandatory in June, calculations by the Guardian show. The huge drop matches the industry expectation before the Times instituted the paywall that traffic would fall off by 90%, which is the standard experience when a site moves to a paid-access model instead of free access.
The huge drop matches the industry expectation before the Times instituted the paywall that traffic would fall off by 90%, which is the standard experience when a site moves to a paid-access model instead of free access.
AFAIK, the profit center for Internet news is the same as the paper edition: ads. Subscription and newsstand sales only cover the costs printing and distribution of the paper edition.
For the last decade, or so, newspapers have been profitable, in some cases tremendously so. Now the ground has shifted and the income stream is coming back down to trend, or below. Thus the profits are shrinking and people, like Murdoch, who bought based on insane projected future revenue are taking it in the shorts.
Trying to sell internet subscriptions is trying to iterate the print model ... and it isn't going to work.
