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NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.

nytimes.com

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Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.

#11

Post by bediger »

smokinn wrote: post #6
pierrefar wrote: post #3

>>"There’s a lot of technical work that we need to do over the next year to get this right," said Martin A. Nisenholtz. Well, duh. For one, is this cookie-based tracking? I already know how to fix that. Is it sign in tracking? I predict a surge in account sign-ups. Is it IP-based tracking? Say bye to all your AOL users and those behind proxies. Will they force users to install a browser plugin or and ActiveX control…

Are you somehow implying that a pay-wall can't be built? Porn sites seem to have figured it out quite a while ago so I don't see how NYTimes would be any different. Of course they aren't going to be able to stop people copy/pasting articles to a friend but that generally isn't a problem. Even if their pay-wall is only 99% effective and a small amount of smart techies manage to get around it for free it really isn't t…

Wait, wait! Are you trying to tell us that NYTimes' content is as valuable as porn?

I beg to differ, Sirrah!

Also, if you, ah, investigate online porn, you'll find that the on-line porn sites seem to have a gentleman's agreement to not get all huffy if the occasional, incomplete picture set leaks to a free site.

Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.

#12

Post by [deleted] »

pierrefar wrote: post #3

>>"There’s a lot of technical work that we need to do over the next year to get this right," said Martin A. Nisenholtz. Well, duh. For one, is this cookie-based tracking? I already know how to fix that. Is it sign in tracking? I predict a surge in account sign-ups. Is it IP-based tracking? Say bye to all your AOL users and those behind proxies. Will they force users to install a browser plugin or and ActiveX control…

[deleted]

Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.

#13

Post by ramchip »

pierrefar wrote: post #8
smokinn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you somehow implying that a pay-wall can't be built? Porn sites seem to have figured it out quite a while ago so I don't see how NYTimes would be any different. Of course they aren't going to be able to stop people copy/pasting articles to a friend but that generally isn't a problem. Even if their pay-wall is only 99% effective and a small amount of smart techies manage to get around it for free it really isn't t…

I'm not saying anything a paywall: if it is "pay for everything", then you're right, it can be built very effectively. What they're saying is that they want to give free capped usage for users, and I'm thinking that whatever mechanism they think of can probably be circumvented easily.

Most people would rather be honest and pay a few dollars than mess with cookies/proxies/multiple accounts, especially if they don't know what a cookie is in the first place.

If someone values his time sufficiently low to make several email accounts to read the NYT without paying... he probably can't/won't pay, whatever is done.

Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.

#15

Post by jsm386 »

"But executives of The New York Times Company said they could not yet answer fundamental questions about the plan, like how much it would cost or what the limit would be on free reading. They stressed that the amount of free access could change with time, in response to economic conditions and reader demand."

Given the widely accepted disaster that was TimesSelect, this doesn't seem to be off to a promising start. How do you make such a monumental decision about your business, announce it publically, and say, yeah, we'll figure out how this will work soon, get back to us in a few months.

And it's not just business strategy. As pierrefar notes in another thread, they haven't figured out how they're going to achieve this anyway...

Will they deindex from Google? Wi

Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.

#16

Post by smokinn »

bediger wrote: post #11
smokinn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you somehow implying that a pay-wall can't be built? Porn sites seem to have figured it out quite a while ago so I don't see how NYTimes would be any different. Of course they aren't going to be able to stop people copy/pasting articles to a friend but that generally isn't a problem. Even if their pay-wall is only 99% effective and a small amount of smart techies manage to get around it for free it really isn't t…

Wait, wait! Are you trying to tell us that NYTimes' content is as valuable as porn ? I beg to differ, Sirrah! Also, if you, ah, investigate online porn, you'll find that the on-line porn sites seem to have a gentleman's agreement to not get all huffy if the occasional, incomplete picture set leaks to a free site.

It's not a "gentleman's agreement", it's promotional material.

The porn sites themselves build the picture sets and if you have an affiliate account with them you see the available material (along with all the relevant html code that you can customize to match your colour scheme or whatnot and that already has your referral codes in place) and pick what you want to use on your own site.

It's basic affiliate marketing.

Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.

#17

Post by jonknee »

pierrefar wrote: post #3

>>"There’s a lot of technical work that we need to do over the next year to get this right," said Martin A. Nisenholtz. Well, duh. For one, is this cookie-based tracking? I already know how to fix that. Is it sign in tracking? I predict a surge in account sign-ups. Is it IP-based tracking? Say bye to all your AOL users and those behind proxies. Will they force users to install a browser plugin or and ActiveX control…

Do it with sign ins and require you to validate the account with a phone number (a la Craigslist). That has been incredibly effective at CL.

Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.

#18

Post by pierrefar »

ramchip wrote: post #13
pierrefar wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying anything a paywall: if it is "pay for everything", then you're right, it can be built very effectively. What they're saying is that they want to give free capped usage for users, and I'm thinking that whatever mechanism they think of can probably be circumvented easily.

Most people would rather be honest and pay a few dollars than mess with cookies/proxies/multiple accounts, especially if they don't know what a cookie is in the first place. If someone values his time sufficiently low to make several email accounts to read the NYT without paying... he probably can't/won't pay, whatever is done.

That's a very fair point. My only counter to it is that us geeks will spread the word that using Chrome in incognito mode is quite effective.

Ctrl-Shift-N is quite fast, and Google is pushing Chrome very hard, and us geeks are called on for tech support quite often.

I think your honesty thought will win out most of the time, but not always. People like a free lunch and sticking it to the man, especially if they have the tools to do it very easily. We'll see.

Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.

#19

Post by gr366 »

I don't suppose this means that subscribers will get a version without banner ads. In the same way that newspapers have historically sold their print version for less than it cost to publish and made their money off print ads and classifieds, I imagine we'll get much the same experience but be paying for it. NYT doesn't want to trade ad revenue for subscriber revenue. They want to augment it.

BUUUUUT, since the internet is a dynamic medium, maybe they could offer a tiered pricing scheme (like every other for-pay web app these days) that includes a no ads option. It should be easy enough: just display the print version of the article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/business/media/21times.htm...

Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.

#20

Post by mark_l_watson »

The free service right now (having a 'mini newspaper' emailed to you every morning) is nice, but to be honest, I would value this at about $1/month, but I might pay up to $1.50/month to support journalism. I suspect that they will want to charge more than this.
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