I run a few sites…run isn’t the right word as I’ve been a little hands off over the last year…but the one I’m most active with went entirely behind a paywall. Invite only, and if one of the people you invited acts up, your reputation may be affected negatively. Site dropped from 50k registered users to less than 1k. Some have looked at that metric and said it was a failure. I look at it as these users are now paying, I moved from a several hundred $$$ a month dedicated server to a cloud based system that expands as I need, no spammers, no advertising, and my users can step out behind their usernames and actually say who they are (the industry I work with really doesn’t need idiot fanboys signing up ruining every conversation just because they figure out someones nom de plume).

Personally, I am happy to pay for the content I want to read…I like the fact some sites are free, and some would be worth a subscription if they weren’t…and some wouldn’t. BB would be one of the sites I’d probably pay for…

I have to agree with the other readers that the overall effect of the paywall seems to be positive (money instead of zero). However, without access to the raw data to compute correlation, I’d have to guess that before the paywall readership was steady, while after the paywall readership is declining. That would seem to indicate that the money made by the paywall is declining.

What would be far more interesting is seeing what happens if all the major news outlets erect paywalls. Then we’ll see if people can live without corporate news or not.

While there is a visible decline it is a far cry from a “stupendous drop in readership”. Their traffic did NOT “plummeted” and traffic to their free competitors has NOT “skyrocketed”.

You even say:
On every metric, NBR is failing: pageviews, session duration, unique readers, and total time on site.

Yes, those are all down, but thats not a fail.

In some cases it could be, like if the downward spikes continues a lot further. But its not a fail (yet).

I’m not a advocate of pay-walls, but lets but our bias aside and be fair and honest about this. The original post does not draw this conclusion either (though suggests its too early to tell).

With any pay wall there will be a drop in traffic, pageviews, uniques, etc. The question is whether the new revenue stream a pay wall provides makes up for this or not.

… and I’m sorry to say that Cory’s writing style has been lapsing into the hysterical recently, especially if it relates to a business model that he doesn’t agree with.

If I presented this data and made such judgments I would be fired. The correct way to look at these is not a recent trend but current trend compared to last year’s trend. Site traffic is going down? Well, we’re also entering New Zealand’s summer months, traditionally a down time for the internet. I suspect you’d see similar traffic patterns in 2008 and 2007. The author doesn’t even explain how he’s calculated the index. And the reason he’s indexed is a mistake; because the other NZ sites are so large? Put them on a secondary axis and give me the actual data.

If I charged $1 a month for my site and in doing so lost 99% of my traffic, I would still make more money than just by ads. Admittedly I only place a single small ad area as a tip jar. If I tried to exploit ads I could still turn away 90% of my current traffic and be in the green. Well… light green anyway.

Please call us back when you know what are the cash flows pre and post pay wall.

To describe this as a failure without knowing the real numbers that matter is disingenuous to say the least.

“Johnston Press starts charging for online local news
One of the UK’s biggest newspaper firms is to charge for access to online content from six of its titles.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8385342.stm

When all this is over, there will still be only one main way to maintain newtorks of quality, trained journalists: paid subscriptions. It’s no surprise that organisations like Reuters, Bloomberg and Down Jones can keep the world’s last big reporter networks (2,000 journalists or more each) afloat. These organisations work almost exclusively behind firewalls, providing news to clients who pay for accurate, first hand information.

What will happen with entertainment and lifestyle news? I’m not sure. It doesn’t look good, though. Paid journalists and first-hand reporting are absolutely crucial to transparency and solid information, and without a subscription model, it’s hard to see how that will be possible.

The rest of the world is different however and realize you can get things nearly just as good for free (or at least cheaper). So if this stat were to be applied to something not business related, you would see far lower stats.

Take for example Murdoch’s sites. Most of them have nothing to do with business and the content is mirrored in a million other news locations and blogs. If they were to put up a pay wall (or delist their content from Google), people would just go elsewhere for the content.

Early on in web development at Amazon, we realized that the AVERAGE consumer will spend 30 seconds searching and then give up. Nowadays that is lower. Most people do not go beyond the top three pages in a search and if you do not show up on those top three pages, you can guarantee that you will be missing 80% of that search traffic.

However, it also makes the point that total time spent on the site dropped by 38%, and the trend may indicate that new users are going to be less likely to pay for what they can get elsewhere, so while this initial drop isn’t all that bad, if the trend continues, they may have very few readers in the future.

I’d like to know which part of my comment refuting Cory’s conclusions was in violation of the moderation policy.

As others have said already this looks like a successful launch of a pay site – the question is ho long will it last. We’ve seen huge increases in the amount of traffic coming to our site through search and search ONLY. Put it behind a pay wall and who will come?

If I were the manager, I would be quite satisfied: I had 100% of non-paying readers the 6st of April, I have 80% of those now being paying readers, which is probably way beyond the initial goal. What manager would expect the loss of such a radical change being inferior to 20/25 %?

The question is really is, for a manager: we see a downward tendancy; what is the “paywall part” of it, and how can we inverse the “non-paywall part” of it. This might as well be redactional insufficiency.

Your idea of politely critical doesn’t meet mine. And you complain a lot. I suggest that you read the Mod Policy more thoroughly.

If the bulk of your comments are whining, hostile, insulting or otherwise annoying, you may be banned.

A drop in visits is of course to be expected with introduction of paywall, so it is hardly surprising. Do they get more or less cashflow now? Those figures don’t tell, but the clearly biased presentation sure suggests you have an axe to grind with the “old press”.