You may have heard that the New York Times may, in the near future, remove its paywall to some select content.  While I can’t comment on the “select content” myself (since I am not of the approximately 220,000 paying $7.95/mo), there seems to be a great hubaloo around how great this will be.

I love free stuff too, and I also subscribe to the belief that in most cases Free is Good for Business.  On the other hand, getting over 200 000 to pay $8/ month is a pretty sweet deal (that’s about $1.6M for the mathematically disinclined).  Also, take the Post’s numbers about the NYTimes’ paying subscribers “falling” with a grain of salt; apparently, the numbers have actually *risen* in the month of June as compared to earlier in the year, as Reuters reports.

Bottom line?  All theories about free vs. fee need to be put aside in favour of the examination of the actual numbers if the paywall *does* come down.  After all, when it really boils down to it, the real question that needs to be answered is “can the NYTimes.com get enough paying advertisers and contextual advertising, for the section that had the paywall, to make up for $1.6M in lost revenue every month?”.

Sure there may be incidental intangible benefits that are hard to measure by opening up the paywall, such as increased exposure, which may lead to increased traffic, and the ability to leverage these well known writers as brands in and of themselves.  But when it comes to hard numbers, only a post-hoc analysis can really determine if removing the paywall was the right thing to do, keeping in mind one phrase: “1.6M per month.”