New York Times pay wall is a success after a year

capitalnewyork reporting:
...But it's only the beginning, and there are signs that making this model continue to work at an increasing scale will take significant effort and resources.
Already, the rate of subscriptions has slowed since the initial burst that accompanied the metered-model launch last March. The Times Company, meanwhile, saw its profits slide by 12.2 percent to $58.9 million dollars in the fourth quarter of 2011, and the company has yet to name a new chief executive to plot the paper's future following the abrupt retirement of longtime C.E.O. Janet Robinson in December of last year.
"I think over time it's got a long way to go," said Edward J. Atorino, an analyst with the Benchmark Company who has covered the media industry for 30 years. "If they could get to half of their print subscriptions"—around 1.2 million on weekdays, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations—"in the relatively near future, I think that would be very good, and eventually they've gotta get to a million people. If they could get this thing to a million at some point, then they own the industry."
One person close to the metered model told Capital that 600,000 to 700,000 subs was a realistic goal for now: "I think that's achievable and that would be great."
But even with its existing confirmed subscriber total of 390,000 (probably over 400,000 at this point), the metered model is bringing in a healthy chunk of revenue that didn't exist before, albeit not an astronomical amount in the grand scheme of things.
Ken Doctor, an analyst with Outsell, estimates that the metered model is presently generating $86 million a year; in other words, 12 percent of the Times' yearly circulation revenue and $100 million less than the company's annual digital advertising revenue. A March 8 investors note from Barclays Capital predicted a potential annual revenue bump of $100 million over the next two years, according to a report in Crain's New York Business.
"So, overall, the Times digital circulation seems to be an increasingly important part of the next-gen publishing model, but not an earth-shaking one," Doctor wrote in a recent blog post.
Scaling the paid model, Doctor said in an interview with Capital, will require further investment in marketing, social media and new technologies in order to grow the subscriber base well beyond the core pool of mostly U.S.-based readers that signed on during year one...
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2012/03/5509293/year-times-digital-subscription-program-analysts-and-insiders-see-surp?page=all