Losing customers to make a profit? Not a model I'd want to follow

The debate rages on over the Times Online putting up their 'pay wall.' Being so strongly against the move I often entice people to come back with lines like 'they don't care how many consumers they lose, at the end of the day it's about the profit they make.' That's fine, and I can absolutely see that in the short term getting some people to pay for what used to be a free service will increase figures on a graph. But all they're doing is putting a plaster over a deep wound.

The model they are using is completely wrong, stuck in the past and not sustainable. I'm putting my neck on the line when I say this but I remain so confident of this that I'm prepared to be paraded around with a dunce hat on should I be proven wrong. Paid Content give this evaluation of how many users they're likely to lose, which I feel doesn't even touch the surface of the real impact.

No one can tell me losing 95% of your audience can possibly be a good thing long term and just think about the implications that has on advertising revenue. 'Oh, yeah guys, we've lost the majority of our consumers but you didn't want your advert to reach the masses anyway did you?' And, what exactly are the Times offering that is any different from the other newspapers? If they had a catch, a bonus that set them apart from other FREE news providers then maybe, but if, as Paidcontent suggest, 31% of online newspaper traffic is direct, how many will start going directly somewhere else where they can find content that doesn't cost a sum of money.

If you're in a newsagents and one national paper is free and one is £1 which one would you honestly pick up? Why do the more expensive Sunday newspapers feel the need to fill their weekend editions with endless free DVDs, supplements and prizes? Because they feel they need to offer more to charge more. Are the Times doing that? No.

I've said it once and I'll say it again. The model is massively flawed and lacks any creativity. It's a desperate reaction you can almost compare to that of a street vendor charging for the privilege of looking at his stuff, just because his stuff hasn't sold too well recently. In case you haven't guessed, I really, really hope this 'experiment' fails.