Biz: Rupert Murdoch’s paywall test doing (slightly) better than expected
- 105k number of subscribers the Times of London has for its paywall-enforced Web sites
- 100k number of print subscribers who also get online subscriptions as part of the deal
- 42% the decline in the paper’s online traffic, which is much less than the 90 percent estimated source
- » So is it a success? Depends on your definition of success. While the paper certainly is doing better than other strict paywall models (looking at you Newsday, which we did a whole tongue-in-cheek series on a while back), it isn’t exactly killing it. What the 105,000 number doesn’t tell you is that only half of those subscribers are regular readers – which, for a paper of its size, is kinda low. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when the New York Times goes paywall starting next year.