It's been a little over two months now since Rupert Murdoch and his News International team decided to bring down a paywall around The Times. By now, many were hoping for a clear picture on just how said paywall had been received by the paper's core readership, and indeed whether it was proving to be the right strategy for the publication. However, with a lack of any official figures from The Times, it's hard to determine exactly the impact that the paywall has had since launch.

Chatting to a few people in the know at The Times, we ascertained ahead of launch that the management team was fully prepared for a massive drop in traffic once the paywall had been put in place. In fact, it was said that expectations internally were looking at a 97 per cent drop in its online audience. If the paper had managed to retain that core 3 per cent and turn them into regular paying subscribers, the champagne would have been popping in Pennington Street. Initial reports however have suggested that the results haven't been quite as promising as hoped, with just 15,000 people paying for access according to media commentator Dan Sabbagh. Little else has appeared since that first analysis, but I think we can take the silence from Wapping and the fact that the £1 for 30 days access trials are still going as a fairly indicative statement of how it's going.

Just last week I read a really interesting take on perhaps why this was the case over at The Wall Blog (well worth putting in your RSS if it's not already there). Author Gordon MacMillan made some very interesting points about how The Times is using the content on its homepage to draw readers into the site, and encourage them to part with their cash for content. In Gordon's own words, "My issue is shouldn't it be promoting its exclusive content much more and restructure its homepage accordingly? Its model at present remains news centric, which appears a redundant strategy."

He's got a point. Why would readers part with money to access a story when by in large they can see exactly the same coverage across hundreds of other online channels for free? It would seem that The Times needs to be doing more to push exclusive or niche content from the start of a reader's journey to the thetimes.co.uk homepage. Granted, the summer has been a relatively quiet one and it perhaps hasn't had the opportunities to produce some really compelling exclusive content; with the exception of the serialisation of the not at all evil over - Lord Mandelson's memoirs two weeks after the launch of the paywall, which in my opinion it could perhaps have made more of online. However, unless content stands out from the crowd, online consumers will always take the quickest and easiest option.

There's still some way to go before we can expect to see News International play its full hand. The News of the World is set to launch its own paywall in October, with The Sun (crucially Britain's most read national newspaper) set to follow suit soon after. Either way, it's still anyone's game in my opinion, and whilst I don't agree with The Times putting all its content behind the paywall (I personally feel it should lead with limited free content related around general news) I am, between us, secretly rooting for its success. Kind of. And I'd imagine there's a whole bunch of editors and publishers across the country that are still secretly hoping the same.

Dave