NYTimes Pricing – The Big Picture

Long Zheng, of IStartedSomething.com, posted NYTimes Times Reader goes paid – boooooo.  In that post and comments I learned a bit more about the NYTimes pricing model.

Folks are focusing on the $15/mo

NY Times Tiered Pricing

(mostly determined via Long’s post…so please comment if I got it wrong…)

• Times Delivery @ home & access to all of the below, I believe – $18/month
• Times Reader (includes Times Select content & crosswords) – $15/month
• Times Select membership – $7.95/month or $49.95/year w/ free 14 day trial (now you can get more content on the web site)
• NYTimes.com web site content – free

Seems like they are positioning it as:

1. a great feature for delivery subscribers.
2. an environmental friendly option for news hounds.

Pricing Analysis/Questions

• They should be positioning the pricing all together…the whole story makes the increase from a free Beta version to $15 a month more reasonable.
• Perhaps, they should offer an $7.95 a month option for Times Select or Times Reader.  If you get both, it is $15 instead of $16.
• Perhaps, they should offer a single days paper through the Times Reader – perhaps for $1.
• I think this is a reasonable pricing experiment for the Times.  Will it change over time?  Is it making the $18 people happier…or attracting more of them.  What will it do to the bottom line?
• Will they have a 14-day trial for the Reader as well…I think they should…gotta hook people…

I’m interested to find out.  I’d love to have rich software help their bottom line and their customer experience.

What am I going to do?

My profile:

• I have never been a subscriber.
• I love an occasional Sunday or daily Times. 
• I read it more often when I am traveling for business or vacation.
• I don’t find the web site experience to be compelling enough to read regularly…I will only go there when somebody points out an interesting article.
• I find the Times Reader experience to be very nice and read the paper several times a week now that I have it.

My answer:

• for $7.95 w/o select content…I would do it
  • likely not for $15.
• for $1 a day, I would buy several a month.

What are you going to do?

What is your profile?  What does the addition of the Times Reader to the pricing model change about how much you will pay the Times each year?

Don’t give an answer without giving more background, like I did above…that is what is interesting.

Random Admission

[yes, i am not very prose-y…i like bulleted lists.]

Updates

One person’s comments: http://media.www.nyunews.com/media/storage/paper869/news/2007/03/20/Opinion/Make-The.Times.Reader.Free-2781994.shtml