Slashdot Mirror
NYTimes.com Reports 100k Subscribers
An anonymous reader writes "Despite Slashdot (and much of the internet) ridiculing the New York Time for its archaic and overpriced paywall, the newspaper has reported an excess of one hundred thousand subscribers so far. Even as loopholes are offered, the New York Times has some support which they will need as print revenues dwindle (falling a staggering 57.6 percent during the year's first quarter)." Whether 100 thousand is a high number or a low one I guess depends on the NYT's business plan. Have they lost advertising revenue, and if so, how much? Have they turned many readers to alternative news sources?
Does anyone know what the NYT print readership averages? At first glance 100,000 sounds like a lot, but for a world class newspaper, it seems like a pittance.
A year ago their daily circulation was 950,000, 1.4 million for Sundays. So, that would be around roughly 10% of their print circulation.(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/business/media/27audit.html) And from the NYT website as well, all print subscribers get free access to their web content. Whether or not that 100,000 includes people who are logging on through their print subscriptions, well, that's up in the air.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I paid 99 cents last month and just renewed this month for another 99 cents. They aren't charging full price.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
I've had a nytimes.com login pretty much since they started requiring registration to view stories -- late 90s some time? Right after the paywall was announced, I got an email thanking me for being a long-time account holder and offering me a free year's subscription. I took their offer, of course. How many of those 100,000 subscribers are actually paying?
Their average weekly print circulation is around 877,000. The 100K figure doesn't include free access with the print version or the iPhone/iPad applications. What's not entirely clear is if the 100K includes the Kindle and Nook ereaders. Because they all of a sudden switch to percentages, stating that ereader versions are up 4.5%. They were so clear everywhere else but all of a sudden get ambiguous.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Are these pure subscriptions, paying full price? Or are these subscriptions that come with something else or are heavily discounted?
According to the article (yeah, yeah, I know), the 100,000 figure "does not include print subscribers who receive digital access for free but does include readers who took advantage of a promotional offer."
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
In case anyone was wondering: Monday-Friday paper subscription, including full digital access, is $7.40/week, totalling $384.80/year. Full digital access alone is $34.99/month, or $419.88/year. Five paper copies a week, including delivery, apparently come to -$35.08/year, so it looks like they should be paying you at least $0.13 per copy to take them off the news stands.
There are introductory discounts running ($0.99 for the first four weeks of digital subscription, half price for the first 12 weeks of paper) but I've ignored them on the basis that they're short term. That said, taking advantage of them would actually increase the discrepancy a little, making print+digital an even better option.
Sure, you can pay less in total to get either the smartphone subscription or the tablet one, and you have to pay a decent amount more if you want the weekend papers too (although not so much if you only want the weekend ones), but that doesn't change the fact that if you want the all-access digital package, they're charging extra for the privilege of not having a hard copy sent out every day.
What exactly are you referring to, this one-off cost?
I may have been unclear, but the remainder of that paragraph: "In this case, it's the fact that smartphone+tablet costs more than just one or the other. Charge a small fee for the app if you must (although honestly I'd be surprised if the dev costs are more than negligible), but don't charge me extra every damn month for something you only needed to pay for once." was referring to the one-off cost of developing the iOS and Android applications to view the content. Obviously collecting the news every day is a recurring cost, and that's what users pay a recurring subscription for; what I object to is that once you've paid $'x' per month for access to the content, they then charge you $'x+y' per month for access to the content on a particular device. I understand paying continually for the content, I'll pay once for the app if I must, but what I object to is being charged continually, over and above the cost of the content, for the use of the mobile app on a given platform.