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• #New york times wirecutter productreview paywall free

My guess, based on reading interviews with various Wirecutter staffers over the years, is that the site has a base of extremely loyal readers, and its analytics team has spotted an opportunity to sell subscriptions to those readers without cutting into affiliate sales. My bet also is that Wirecutter misses out on a significant amount of affiliate revenue simply because there’s often a months-long gap between when someone first researches a product on Wirecutter and when they actually buy it in those cases, Wirecutter doesn’t receive any credit for the purchase it helped drive. Because Amazon often features the lowest price and the best deliverability options, Wirecutter is ethics bound to showcase it regardless of the affiliate payout. While some publishers could simply swap out links to a different retailer with higher affiliate commissions, Wirecutter’s revenue team told me back in 2018 that they choose retailer links based on convenience to the reader, regardless of whether that retailer even offers up affiliate revenue.

Wirecutter is especially vulnerable to Amazon’s whims because of how it approaches affiliate links. Earlier this year, Amazon announced that it had reduced affiliate fees it paid out to publishers, and while The New York Times received a carved-out exception to the cut, its executives are aware of how much power Amazon wields in online retail, especially as more and more consumers are starting their product searches directly on Amazon’s site, bypassing the rest of the web completely. Second, I think this strategy is possibly aimed at reducing Wirecutter’s reliance on Amazon.

#New york times wirecutter productreview paywall free

It could even optimize the meter so it doesn’t count toward users visiting via Google searches, thereby ensuring that the site remains free for the vast majority who use it.

The Times’s paywall, after all, is metered, and my guess is that most casual Wirecutter readers don’t visit more than once a month - its main utility, remember, only kicks in when you’re looking to make a large purchase. I don’t have any special insights into the company’s strategy here, but I can think of a few reasons that such an approach would make sense.įirst, there’s a way to design the subscription product so it doesn’t suppress traffic to the site. So why would it seek to decrease the number of readers who are exposed to its affiliate links, especially given that, per Axios, the Times has seen a “surge in affiliate revenue thanks to people looking for new things for their homes during COVID, like office and cleaning supplies”? The company has been so singularly focused on that business model that it doesn’t even allow advertising on the Wirecutter site, lest it be perceived that advertisers can influence the reviews. Indeed, installing a paywall would seemingly undermine Wirecutter’s core business model: embedding affiliate links within their reviews and taking a cut of whatever sales are made when readers click on those links.

“Doesn't that defeat the point? Do they want to recreate Consumer Reports?” “The idea of putting it behind a paywall just seems bizarre,” tweeted Industry Dive’s Sean Griffey. The announcement left many scratching their heads. Axios reported the curious news that Wirecutter, the product review site operated by The New York Times, is hiring for a position focused on paid subscriptions - an indication that Wirecutter might end up behind The New York Times’s paywall, either as part of its main subscription bundle or as a standalone product (similar to its Crosswords and Recipes verticals).