Press Gazette Editor’s Blog: The paywall debate: At the Financial Times there is no debate, it works
Tuesday, 27 July 2010, 16:51
"Figures released by the Financial Times yesterday revealed that it now has 149,000 paying digital subscribers. That’s nearly double the UK paid-for sale of the print edition. … The beauty of the FT’s system is that it keeps reminding casual readers it is there by remaining part of the web ecosystem while forcing those who become devoted readers to cough up some money."
paidContent:UK: FT.com Takes Free Articles Away From Unregistered Users, Except Via Search
Saturday, 20 March 2010, 08:52
"[The Financial Times is] now ensuring that no free articles are on offer to non-registered users. … While it’s closing stories off to directly-visiting users, with First-Click-Free it’s leaving the door ajar to search visitors, however. … FT.com is set to trial day and week payments via PayPal."
Reuters: Lessons from FT.com
Sunday, 21 February 2010, 15:46
Felix Salmon on Rob Grimshaw's PaidContent presentation: "it turns out that there was at least one major financial company which was pushing all of its employees to use the Google loophole, rather than pay for a subscriptions. And when the FT asked them what they thought they were doing, the company just said well, you left the back door open, so we decided to use it. (Better that than to risk a lawsuit by sharing passwords.)"
paidContent:UK: Google Tightens FT.com’s Free-Article Loophole
Thursday, 18 February 2010, 22:43
"[FT.com is] planning a Q2 switch-on for the [Google First Click Free] modification, which will instead limit the number of paywalled articles searchers can read freely to five in any day."
Econsultancy: What a lot of rubbish everyone is talking about Google and paywalls
Thursday, 3 December 2009, 12:02
Malcolm Coles on the rubbish reporting on the First Click Free yesterday: "The biggest load of old rubbish ever has been written about the changes to Google's first click free program. Here's a round up of who understands what they are talking about (and might survive with a paywall) and who hasn't got a clue…"
Google Webmaster Central Blog: Changes in First Click Free
Wednesday, 2 December 2009, 09:28
"[We've] found that some [publishers] who might try [First Click Free] are worried about people abusing the spirit of First Click Free to access almost all of their content. As most users are generally happy to be able to access just a few pages from these premium content providers, we've decided to allow publishers to limit the number of accesses under the First Click Free policy to five free accesses per user each day."
Google News Blog: Google and paid content
Wednesday, 2 December 2009, 09:18
"Previously, each click from a user would be treated as free. Now, we've updated the program so that publishers can limit users to no more than five pages per day without registering or subscribing. If you're a Google user, this means that you may start to see a registration page after you've clicked through to more than five articles on the website of a publisher using First Click Free in a day."
The Long Tail: My Two Cents on Charging for Content
Saturday, 14 March 2009, 12:50
Chris Anderson: "what WSJ.com used to do was to offer a backdoor to free content for another class of consumer: the social media maven. Paying subscribers could make content free to others by clicking on an icon that created a URL for a free version of the story that they could use for blogging or to submit to sites such as Digg or Yahoo Buzz. … The deal was essentially this: these often influential word-of-mouth generators could trade reputational and attention credits for free content. … A very nice Freemium model, in other words."
