E-commerce is selling goods directly from your site, as against subscriptions or advertising. At the Times this primarily means the New York Times Store and Times Journeys, a travel service.
The New York Times Store began in 1998. It offers an array of “unique and historic gifts,” including high-end collectibles such as photographs, prints, historic artifacts, and historical-themed gifts. It also draws on the New York Times’ extensive archives, offering reprints of old editions of the paper. Merchandise ranges in price from $15 to $5,000, with average commissions of 8% to affiliates. The store was revamped in January 2015 in order to optimize across all digital platforms and allow subscribers to use their login information from the site to make purchases.
Times Journeys provides the services of a travel agent to New York Times readers with an intellectual bent and a focus on current events. All Times Journeys trips are led by journalists with reporting experience in the area of interest, providing a unique approach to the country being explored. The service began in 2012 primarily with cruises and has since expanded to offer land-based tours across 30 countries. Tours are operated by Abercrombie & Kent, Academic Travel Abroad, Inc., Mountain Travel Sobek, and Insight Cruises.
Examples
- Times Talks, created in 1998, are Times-sponsored conversations between New York Times journalists and “21st-century talents and thinkers”. Talks are held both in New York City and around the United States, and have also been held in Canada and Spain. While people wishing to attend the talks themselves must buy tickets on the Times Talks website, Talks are recorded, and highlights are later made available to the public on the Times Talks videos page.
- Times Film Club is a membership-based club operating in New York and Los Angeles devoted to movie-watching. Members receive preview screenings of new films, tickets to red-carpet premieres, and discounts on both New York Times Store purchases and TimesTalks tickets. The Film Club was launched in January of 2011 as part of a push to create more revenue for the Times, coincident with the launch of the online paywall.
- Times Wine Club, which began in August of 2009, is a membership-based club which ships its members six bottles of wine selected by Times-hired wine professionals and sommeliers every 1-3 months. It offers two-tier level memberships, with the first tier costing $90 and the second $180., Times Wine Club is run independently of The Times’ food and wine sections, and is operated by the Global Wine Company.
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