Paywalls and Revenues

Pew's fact sheet suggests that in 2014 The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal had a similar number of users who paid for access to the websites (more than 700,000). The Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times also had a similar number of such users (around 60,000).  However, I am interested in examining the relationship between the type of paywall – metered or hard – and the growth in digital subscribes. The New York Times, for example, uses a metered paywall that allows online visitors to view a limited number of stories for free before requiring a subscription. In the first quarter of 2015 the outlet added around 33,000 net digital subscribers. Circulation revenue from digital-only subscription was 46.1 million – an increase of 14.4% from the first quarter of 2014. While this revenue accounts for about 20% of the total circulation revenue, it allows The New York Times to earn more revenue from paid circulation than from advertising. The newspaper has tried to improve in engaging users to the point where they are willing to pay – for example, by analyzing the last pages that users visited before signing up for a subscription. I have not seen similar data about The Wall Street Journal and other newspapers that use a hard paywall, but I am curious to see whether and how the number of their digital subscribers has grown, and look at their revenue from digital only subscriptions.