The Daily Mail on-line offering (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/) has become the most popular newspaper site in the UK with some pretty impressive figures. Launching as recently as 2007, it now boasts 17.8 million monthly users with 1.8 million visiting 10 times a month or more. It's also the world's second largest English language newspaper web site (after The New York Times).
Their free-to air strategy is at odds with the attempts of The Times Online who are aiming at the paid-for niche markets - albeit at vastly reduced introductory prices.
However their digital revenues are said to be very small and may never be large enough to fund the Mail newsroom however they are growing and there are suggestions that this is NOT at the expense of the traditional print version. Their print version figures are at the most steady at 2.1 million despite the fact that over half the 1.2 million daily UK users do not buy the paper.
This might well be because as the editorial policy is slap-bang in the middle. This allows them to spread out both ways and still engage their core readers.
However, it's not all roses. Traditional print providers of news who have gone on-line are not the first port of call for people wanting news content. 6.5% of web visitors are looking for new content with under 1% of UK internet traffic going to British newspapers. The BBC, Yahoo and MSN are way in the lead of the Mail site.
My thoughts are that the subscription money is in delivering this content in a more mobile way (phones and e-readers) whilst maintaining the basic on-line visitors to keep advertisers happy.
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