Lessons from ‘New York Times’ paywall journey

The New York Times last week announced it had achieved the significant milestone of 10 million paid subscribers three years ahead of schedule. In 2019, the company set an ambitious goal of 10 million subscribers by 2025.

This milestone presents an opportunity for the Times to explore new angles in the subscription business, such as bundling strategies to get unique subscribers. It is also an opportunity for the rest of us to learn from the success of the Times.

While it is irresponsible and unrealistic to draw parallels between local newspapers and the Times with its international market, I am convinced that there are three or four canons of a subscription business that African paywalls could glean from The Times.

First, is that African paywalls must not be afraid to fail. The first time the NYT launched a paywall, ‘The TimesSelect’ in 2005, it ran for three years until 2007. The NYT then realised that charging for online content was not the right strategy at the time. A study found that the paywall was restricting rather attracting more readers. When the first paywall came down in 2007, traffic to the NYT website increased nearly twofold.

The newspaper then went back to the drawing board to rethink their paid content strategy and relaunched in 2011. It has been more than 10 years of impressive results. The lesson here is that failure is part of the paywall journey. Some things will work, and others will downright fail, but failure should never be a reason to quit the African paywall.

Pushing boundaries

Another lesson is that African paywalls must not shy away from pushing boundaries. One of the biggest success factors for the NYT paywall lies in the newspaper’s experimentation with other content beyond its core news product.

They went big on alternative digital products such as NYT Cooking, Games (including my favourite – Spelling Bee and the Crossword), a product recommendation site (Wirecutter) and Audm, a digital platform that converts their text journalism into audio. African paywalls must understand what The Times understood.

 Their audiences are not just consumers of news, they are mothers looking for a simple banana bread recipe, they are young fathers seeking to purchase a good baby monitor, they are tired readers seeking to unwind with their engaging games. The lesson here is you must meet your audiences at their points of need.

Third, is that a paywall is a journey, not a destination. If we can learn anything from the Times, it is that in the paywall business, patience is a virtue. With all its legacy, resources, reputation for solid journalism and strong brand recognition, it took the Times 10 years to gain 10 million subscribers.

Paywalls might not pay off in the short run, as some may have been misled to believe, it is a struggle –  a long and painful slog – full of mistakes and do overs. I hate to sound like a motivational speaker, but a critical success factor for a great paywall is just some good old resilience.

The writer is the Director, Innovation Centre, at Aga Khan University; [email protected]