New York Times takes traffic hit after paywall

According to Experian Hitwise, The New York Times suffered a 5-15% fall in total visits most days from March 29 to April 9 – the period immediately after it introduced its paywall - compared to February 22 to March 5.

The stats show that the Times can still turn it on, however. The exeception to the dips was Saturday April 9 (the day the budget/government shut-down story reached its climax), when vists were up 7%.

Total page impressions are down across the board.

People can't be bothered – even with simple workarounds
There are a number of easy ways to get around the Times' new 20 free stories per month limit - both unofficial (deleting the last part of a URL) and official (any story linked to from major social networks are free; Google referrals are capped at 20 per day).

You might expect the latter to have increased click-throughs to the Times from Facebook and Twitter but so far not, according to Hitwise. It seems people can't even be bothered with the most simple workaround.

Tough sell
The other alternative, of course, is to pay (usually it will cost $US15 – website only, $US20 –  website + mobile, or $US35 a month – web, mobile & iPad to subscribe to the Times; a launch special of US99 cents is in place covering the first four weeks; after charges it came out on my Visa at $NZ1.39).

But from this first dash of traffic stats - and I'm sure many will follow - it seems like The New York Times could follow a similar track to Murdoch's Times and Times on Sunday sites in the UK, whose traffic fell more than 30% in the months following the introduction of a payall in July 2010. Media commentators were split on whether subscription revenue from around 100,000 subscribers (around half one day or one article only), would offset the decline in advertising income that attends any dip in traffic.

For general news sites, my guess is that paid content will always be a tough sell.

Business sites, and others that offer information people can use in their work (and, yes, expense to their employer) have a better shot. Read this update for how NBR, the AFR, the Financial Times and others are faring (NBR's traffic has increased)

Still, many working journalists will be hoping the New York Times' paywall will work. Something has our salaries (online ads, with their grim yield, certainly aren't). And if a publisher's main source of revenue is reader subscriptions, reporters are incentivised to write harder news.