The New York Times Sees Traffic Spike

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 by Janet Meiners

The New York Times Sees Traffic Spike

The NYTimes.com is seeing 64% more traffic to their site ever since they stopped charging to access the site this past September. The site was converted to free access when they took away what they called TimesSelect. According to comScore, that move gave them an extra 7.5 million readers worldwide. This was as measured from the end of August through the end of October (November numbers are not out yet). Monthly pageviews went up 52 percent also - to 181 million.

TimesSelect was $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month and free to print subscribers, teachers, and students. The Times is making its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, and public domain years from 1851 to 1922. Other years will be mixed with some content free and some paid.

The main reason behind they changed models is that search engines were bringing a new demographic to the site. In the past more people went directly to the site, and they were often regular readers who are loyal to the paper. People coming to the site via search engines were turned off by having to subscribe. Most likely they are looking at a specific article and want to pick and choose rather than read the entire paper. Sort of like how we want to buy our songs one at a time rather than buying the whole CD.

Right now subscribers generate about $10 million a year in revenue. After running the numbers the Times saw more growth potential in online advertising revenue than in collection for subscriptions.

The Times’s site gets about 13 million unique visitors each month, more than other newspapers. For example, the Wall Street Journal has about 3.6 million uniques a month, and they are considering a similar model.

TechCrunch, a completely online news site, got 8 million monthly pageviews worldwide in October, more than News.com. It’s a bit difficult to compare sites when some give unique visitors, others subscribers, and still others report pageviews.

Save & Share

Similar Stories in: Display | Forward: Email This Post

8 comments on “The New York Times Sees Traffic Spike”

US Real Estate Says:

December 11th, 2007 at 4:27 pm

Looks like the Times is getting with the times. I think they will be much better off with online ad revenue. With the extra traffic to the site they will still sell more subs.
Steven Bradley Says:

December 12th, 2007 at 12:12 am

Makes sense that when you offer content for free you get more people visiting that content. I’d like to see WSJ go the free route too.

The question of course will be whether the Times is right that ad revenue will surpass subscriber revenue, but with as many visitors as they have you’d think the advertising would win out.
Jaan Kanellis Says:

December 13th, 2007 at 12:10 am

When did the Times hire Captain Obvious to help them with SEO?
Tom "I make easy money online" Walsh Says:

August 23rd, 2008 at 4:52 pm

TimesSelect was $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, I can’t believe people paid this. Free stuff = traffic.

Tom “I make easy money online” Walsh’s last blog post..By: Pascal H
Dear Newspapers: Locking Up Archives Shrinks Your Business - BuzzYA! Says:

October 14th, 2008 at 1:08 am

[...] archives online for free, and make money off the ads. Since removing the barriers, the NY Times has seen its traffic spike significantly, and its archives have become a significant portion of the overall site’s traffic. [...]
Tech Verdict » Blog Archive » Dear Newspapers: Locking Up Archives Shrinks Your Business Says:

October 14th, 2008 at 1:11 am

[...] archives online for free, and make money off the ads. Since removing the barriers, the NY Times has seen its traffic spike significantly, and its archives have become a significant portion of the overall site’s traffic. [...]
TPile » Blog Archive » Dear Newspapers: Locking Up Archives Shrinks Your Business Says:

October 14th, 2008 at 1:21 am

[...] archives online for free, and make money off the ads. Since removing the barriers, the NY Times has seen its traffic spike significantly, and its archives have become a significant portion of the overall site’s [...]
Tech Scoop - Hot Technology Gossip » Dear Newspapers: Locking Up Archives Shrinks Your Business Says:

October 14th, 2008 at 3:45 am

[...] archives online for free, and make money off the ads. Since removing the barriers, the NY Times has seen its traffic spike significantly, and its archives have become a significant portion of the overall site’s traffic. [...]

Marketing Pilgrim