3. Definition “A pay wall restricts access to certain contents of a website only to paid subscribers.” “The subscription business model is a business model where a customer must pay a subscription price to have access to the product/service.”
4. Users of pay walls Financial times - since 2002 Money week - since 2005 The Economist – Since 2009 ( to certain article only ) In 2009, Google introduces first click free.
The New York Times had a subscription program, TimesSelect, which charged $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for online access to the newspaper's archives. In 2007 paid subscriptions were earning $10 million, but if every reader who reached the pay wall had entered the site, ad revenue would have been higher.[citation needed] 2010}} In 2007 The New York Times dropped the pay wall to its post 1980 archive. Pre 1980 articles in a pdf format are still behind the pay wall, but an abstract of most articles is available for free