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Salon.com Editor Looks Back At Paywalls
Techdirt pointed out an interesting retrospective by Scott Rosenberg, former managing editor of Salon.com, about their experiments with paywalls and how repercussions can last a lot longer than some might expect. "More important, by this point the public was, understandably, thoroughly confused about how to get to read Salon content. It took many years for our traffic to begin to grow again. Paywalls are psychological as much as navigational, and it's a lot easier to put them up than to take them down. Once web users get it in their head that your site is 'closed' to them, if you ever change your mind and want them to come back, it's extremely difficult to get that word out."
Read TFA. (I know, I know, slashdot). He isn't blaming users. He said that after the 9/11 attacks, no advertisers were paying because they didn't want their ads next to 9/11 stories. Salon, after rounds of layoffs before the attacks even happened, was hurting for cash. They used a paywall for some content, which brought in new cash in the short term. However, there wasn't much room for growth since nobody but the current subscribers could see the content to decide if they wanted to subscribe.
You cherry-picked the summary in your little tirade. They put up the 30 second ad "day pass" thing as a way to bring in new eyeballs, but it was so convoluted and poorly executed that users just quit coming to the site. He didn't blame the users, he blamed the paywall.
I'm 26 and didn't know what it was either. Just because you know about something doesn't mean everyone else does. From other comments it looks like they put up a paywall around 2001 or so, and I expect fewer people have paid attention to it after that point. Before that not nearly as many people were online. Is there a reverse "get of my lawn" meme to direct at crotchety old people?
Actually, ya gotta use both. They check the referrer, and put the real answers after the ads/fake answers if the referrer is Google.
If you bookmark a page and visit it later, the answers are gone.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/953 ;)
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
He never said the users were stupid, or even implied it. What he said was once they left, there was no way to let them know it was free again.
Free Martian Whores!
Many, many paywalls have huge holes in them. I read Salon.com for years without paying -- I just told them I was Googlebot. Works for tons of sites.
Your point about the price-politics of scientific journals is absolutely valid. However, you don't have to oblige, because as a matter of fact you can find any scientific publication somewhere on the web, or if it proves really hard to find, just contact the authors.
Here you go: http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/133132/files/CM-P00063992.pdf
The same is true with software. Years after Opera dropped the registration fee and ads and went 100% free-as-in-beer, there were still people who thought you had to pay for it or suffer through ads in your toolbar.