WebProNews

One has to wonder what kind of traffic and ad revenue the New York Times gave up while its Times Select subscription model was in place. Visitorship to the Grey Lady jumped impressively in October 2007. Metrics from Nielsen Online cited in Editor & Publisher cited over 17.5 million visitors to NYTimes.com for the month. In September, the Times drew 14.6 million visitors.

Times Select operated as a subscription service from September 2005 to September 2007, when the publisher reopened that walled content to readers. They had plenty of motivation to do so, as Hitwise analyst Bill Tancer observed in August 2007:

The top website visited after www.nytimes.com last month was select.nytimes.com, receiving 8% of the site’s traffic. However, the share of traffic that the NY Times sends to NY Times Select has been decreasing over the past year – down by 16% year-on-year in July. With NY Times Select receiving more than two thirds (67%) of its US traffic from NYTimes.com, the decline had an impact with US visits to NY Select down 22% in the past year.

A Beet.tv interview with the Times' Vivian Schiller, senior VP and GM for NYTimes.com, cited the end of Times Select, as well as multimedia features, blogging, and search optimization as fueling the rise in visitors.

The Wall Street Journal could enjoy a similar boost, and appear to be headed in that direction. The Journal's partnership with Digg opens up walled-off stories each time someone submits them to Digg, a practice that essentially bypasses the subscription option for WSJ.com anyway.

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