If the Times can’t sell it…

Last month, the New York  Times shut down their TimesSelect section, opening the firewall to most of their archives and making their columnists free range again. The times called it a noble experiment, but one that ultimately proved detrimental to their health – the money they raised selling premium subscriptions was vastly outweighed by the traffic they lost to their higher ad revenue sections.

With the Times throwing in the towel on paid content online, what does this mean for the rest of the web? Are there other ways to monotize the web that your non-profit should be thinking about? And should you consider a paid firewall section, despite even the Times’s decision to fold?

All this, and more, below the fold…

First, let’s be clear: TimesSelect wasn’t a complete bomb. They did rake in 227,000 paid subscribers and generate $10m in revenue during their last year of operation. The Times isn’t saying what kind of losses to advertising traffic they took, but one has to assume that it was significant, but not crippling, for it to take two years to open the gates again.

And even with the Times opening their doors, there remain p arts of the web that are pay to play. The Wall Street Journal’s news articles are subscription only (though the recent News Corp acquisition may change that (pdf). [insert your own Rupert Murdoch joke here]). Lexis Nexis costs hundreds to thousands of dollars per year for their value to researchers. And Consumer Reports’s full reviews are behind a paid firewall as well. Why can these institutions survive?

The first answer is that they’re all premium brands. The Journal is world-renowned for their business reporting [insert another Murdoch joke here]. Lexis Nexis is considered a vital resource for libraries and law firms. And Consumer Reports has built a solid reputation as a neutral broker who can be trusted to give honest assessments (much like a certain full service web consulting firm that works with non-profits). You pay for these services because they’re the best.

But what about other services that are equal in their field that are open to everyone? Wikipedia is as accurate is Encyclopedia Brittanica, as recent studies show, but they’re supported through donations. YouTube considered adding preroll ads, but after massive outcry, backed off. And many newspapers that required at least a signup for a login have dropped the requirement, particularly after sites like bugmenot made it easy to circumvent.

Advertising faces challenges online, and is less certain than paid subscriptions. Every day that your ad space lies open is one that you’re losing revenue, but price yourself too low and you’re leaving money on the table. Plus you have to find advertisers and figure out an easy way to deliver the ads themselves. You can sign up with a vendor who will automate this, but they’ll often take a healthy chunk of your profit (the exception here is Blogads, which works for a relatively small 30% cut).

Depending on ads for revenue is also becoming less certain in an era of adblockers. Personally, I resisted adblocking as long as I could, since I’m always interested in seeing clever ads to adapt, and because I think thatthe folks running a site I enjoy should get revenue from my visit.  But recent flash ad abuse has driven me to install the IEPro addon at home and work. Of course, we’re seeing the same thing in other media, in an era of XM and TiVo, but there aren’t a lot of little guys to look out for in the TV and Radio biz.

All in all, it’s a time when I’d argue that you should hesitate to put up a paid firewall, unless you’re absolutely sure that, without any word-of-mouth promotion, your content is so much better than that of all your competitors, you can justify forcing people to pay for it. There’s not a lot of non-profits that can say that, and most of our clients want to get their message out, not hide it behind a firewall. And of course, that was what ended up doing in Timeselect. As NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen notes, with TimesSelect, the Times was basically abdicating its place in the market of ideas:

If everyone is reading a columnist, that makes the columnist more of a must have. If “everyone” isn’t, less of a must. “Exclusive online access” attacks the perception of ubiquity that is part and parcel of a great columnist’s power. In his prime Walter Lippmann was called “the name that opened every door.” Nick Kristof’s brand of human rights journalism, which depends on the mobilization of outrage, is simply less potent if it can’t reach widely around the world, and pass by every door.

So ask yourself – what’s the purpose of your website? Is it to generate revenue or to spread your message? Fundraising or communications? And if it’s the former, is paid content really the best way to do it? After all, if the Times can’t sell their content, can you?