The paid subscription model for online publications shows itself positively.

I remember a year and a half or two ago, when Rupert Murdoch proclaimed the beginning of the era of paid subscription to the free content so far, the Internet community gave an extremely negative response to such an initiative. Most of the users (especially domestic), mockingly reacted to this method of making money, believing that the Murdoch empire will collapse as soon as the transition to paid content. However, this did not happen - the same The Wall Street Journal now has about 400 thousand subscribers, being one of the most successful online publications with a paid subscription. In May of this year, such publications as The Times and Sunday Times began to work on a paid basis. Once again, the Internet community predicted a quick death by "greedy media." But now, several months have passed, and these publications have presented statistics on subscribers.

As it turned out, hundreds of thousands of users agree with the idea of ​​receiving electronic content on their media, and pay for information without much regret. So, 105 thousand users paid for the right to receive an electronic version of the newspaper for their “reading rooms”. In addition, interested in such an idea and subscribers to the paper version of the publication - this is another hundred thousand people. It turns out that now 205 thousand people are paying for the right to read their favorite publications online. Of course, this is several times less (ten times) than the previous number of subscribers, but still so many customers allow newspapers to operate normally without fear of bankruptcy.
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Previously, the profits from their own sites were indicated by the given media as accruals for advertisements placed, which, as we know, is not a particularly stable way to generate profits. Today there is advertising - and tomorrow it is not, it was very well manifested during the crisis.

Now, according to the management of these media, about half of the subscribers pay for monthly access to the content, and another half pay for one-time access to the online version of their favorite publication. Recently, there has been a positive increase in the number of subscribers, which is also a good indicator of the viability of this method of making a profit. By the way, the same The Times, for the first time in two centuries of its existence, began to spread in a different way than just a paper newspaper. This is already an indicator of the readers' attitude to the type of media - many are switching to electronic content, which is associated with the convenience of obtaining information in this form.

Now the subscription to the websites of The Times and The Sunday Times is 1 pound per day. This is not so much, especially since there are no restrictions on the number of visits. You can visit the site, you can read the electronic version of The Sunday Times.

The management of News International, which owns the above editions, reports that the Sun and News of the World publications will soon be switching to a new type of subscription.

Via guardian