zlacker

Micropayments are the way to go. But as the intermediate solution, I would be in favor of (non-expiring) credit-based microtransactions. E.g. you buy $20 of NYT credit. After that, it is $.25 for a single article <3y old, $1 for any number of today's articles, $3 for any number of articles from the past 7 days, $10 for full access for the following 30 days.

I'm not very fond of the tiered plans as you describe them. They are like the child of the unholy union between fast-food and gym marketing tricks: Would you like us to oversize your subscription from 15 to 40 articles for only $3? Wouldn't it be a huge inconvenience to pay us every month? Why don't you set up a recurring fee instead? But of course you will be reading 40 articles per month for the foreseeable future!

It's all gain for the sellers. But from the customer's perspective, one still has to give their credit card number, and may still end up paying for content they won't use.

>>m000+(OP)
I'm not very fond of the tiered plans as you describe them. They are like the child of the unholy union between fast-food and gym marketing tricks: Would you like us to oversize your subscription from 15 to 40 articles for only $3? Wouldn't it be a huge inconvenience to pay us every month? Why don't you set up a recurring fee instead? But of course you will be reading 40 articles per month for the foreseeable future!

That's a fair point. And I definitely favor a real micropayments option in the long-run. But I could settle for a tiered plan in some cases as an interim step, especially if the only other option is the "unlimited plan" which just doesn't (in most cases) make sense for my usage patterns.