Digital subscriptions of The Times and The Sunday Times increased by 10%

The number of digital subscribers of online British newspapers The Times and The Sunday Times has increased 10 percent the last three months.  At this moment, The Times has 110,000 digital subscribers and The Sunday Times 105,600. Almost half of all sales of the newspapers are derived from digital subscribers. Unlike the digital versions, the physical sales of the paper editions of both newspapers however decreased.

The Times and The Sunday Times are both part of News International, owned by the controversial Rupert Murdoch. In 2010, News International decided to no longer give away certain magazines for free online, but to introduce an online pay model. The business model (also known as ‘paywall’) is based on the concept of readers willing to read and pay for all the articles, instead of reading only the title or the first paragraph of the articles for free.

We see more and more newspapers are struggling to generate enough revenues from online ads and therefore choose the business model of the paywall. Many newspapers acknowledge that free online news is simply not sustainable, even with the sale of advertisements. Moreover, as news articles represent added value, it is surely worth paying for and through a paywall copyrights are respected. Now, it is nice to see the paywall seems to work out well, despite the initial critical responses to this business model when it was first launched.  I think it's positive that people are willing to pay for copyright protected content.

Reference: Emerce