Everyone has an opinion on the Times paywall this week, as the carefully massaged stats were publicised on paying customers.  While the headline figure was 100,000, in reality this included many one-off purchases, so the number of long-term subscribers is probably under 40,000.  That’s about 0.5% conversion according to some clever analysis by Ashley Friedlein. Media owners seem to line-up on one side or the other of the free-vs-paid tug of war.  Murdoch, the FT, Construction News are all on the paid end of the rope, while The Guardian, Brand Republic and Sift’s Business Zone are firmly in the free camp, heels well dug in. I spoke at Media Pro this week, on the day the Times paywall figures were published, and there were plenty of questions about what they really meant.  By the way, my slides are here if you want to take a look.  My take on all this is that the really clever model is the one that balances free content with paid premium services, and links the two with strong incentives to register.  This works best in more specialist markets; here’s the step-by-step plan: (more…)