alarm:clock

Media - Monday, September 17, 2007

Finally The SEO Logic Dawns On NYT. Archives To Go Free

Two years back, we had this to say about the paid archives system called Times Select put in place by the New York Times "There's already been much commentary on this announcement; mostly negative. We're firmly in the camp that this will NOT work - but we understand why the NYT is trying." Today the Times backtracked saying it would tear down the Times Select paid wall.

The Times' announcement trumpeted the financial success of Times Select. Indeed for any content startup $10M in annual revenues would be a success. But when you add up what it costs for the New York Times to create all that content, it's clear that the bar was set too low. We would love to know what the bounce rate is on the Times' site, or the percentage of visitors who get pulled in to a story and then leave after one page after they hit a paid wall. Given how many times we have done that we suspect it is obscenely high

There were two forces that led the Times to come to its senses. The company has hired enough people who came on board and who can describe the sleeping SEO giant that the Times sits on. Perhaps someone even created a financial model showing that the Times can and should make a lot more money from online ad sponsorship than it could from online subscription sales.

The other force is that the voices who spoke with fear about cannibalization - the print circulation departments at US newspapers - are so depressing nobody wants to be around them. Senior management at the Times would surely rather spend time hanging out with the cheery folks at About.com than print circ and so the forces of anti-cannibalization lost their strength.

Read - PaidContent
Read - New York Times Self Coverage