THE SUN newspaper took a momentous step yesterday by joining its Murdoch stablemates, the Times and the Sunday Times, and putting its online content behind a paywall.
Subscribers will have to pay £2 per week for access to Sun+, the website version of Britain's biggest selling paper.
But, while the stats have shown for years that the Sun has been a success off the news stands, it has begun its online revolution from a rather low base.
Recent figures put the pre-paywall Sun website readers on 1.8million unique browsers per day. This compares poorly to the market leader, the still-free Mail Online of the Daily Mail, which attracts an average of 8.1million visitors.
Meanwhile, the Guardian - with 4.8millions daily users - comes next, ahead of the Daily Telegraph, with 2.7million.
As direct tabloid rivals, though, it will be the increase in the Daily Mirror's online traffic which would have been of most concern to the Sun.
Even before the paywall was erected, the Mirror had made a march on the Sun - and, yesterday, it cleverly used the front page of its website to declare "the best things in life are free".
So what does the Sun have to offer to tempt subscribers?
Easily the biggest booty which has been publicised is the newspaper's £30m+ investment in Premier League highlights.
It is an apparently a good enough move that media commentator Steve Hewlett "can see [it] working" - but I remain a lot more sceptical.
For a start, the BBC's Match of the Day will show exactly the same goals a little later but on a free-to-air basis.
And, for anyone out on the town on a Saturday night or too hungover to watch the Sunday morning repeat, MotD will even be on iPlayer for the first time in this coming season.
As for the Sun's other potential unique selling points... Want breaking news? Then, look no further than the BBC or Sky websites.
Desiring a right-wing rant against immigrants or welfare 'scroungers'? Try the Mail Online, if you must. There, you will also find enough vacuous celeb gossip to preclude the need for the Sun.
Finally, charging for Page 3 tits - on the internet of all places - just sounds totally ludicrous.
Of course, the Sun - and its new editor David Dinsmore - could prove me wrong - and, indeed, the whole journalism industry remains optimistic that some sort of paywall scheme could work.
Already, though, some of the Sun's biggest-name retail advertisers, such as Tesco, Currys and Marks & Spencers, are holding fire on running activity on the Sun+ - at least until it can prove that it has sustained evidence that it is reaching its ambitious subscriber targets.
The Sun has responded by launching an ad campaign of its own, but the £10m spent there just adds to the spiralling costs which will need to be recouped by getting readers on board.
Estimates suggest the Sun will need to attract more than 250,000 subscribers to cover the loss of online advertising and make back its outlay on the digital Premier League football.
It will do well to get anywhere near that. The website of Rupert Murdoch's other daily News UK title, the Times, went behind a paywall in July 2010 and is ailing badly, reaching fewer readers now than the Independent and the London Evening Standard.
The crux of the matter seems to be that, unlike those of other major newspapers, the News UK websites do not give away any content for free.
By contrast, in March, the Telegraph began employing a metered paywall which allows a limit of 20 free articles before those wanting more are invited to take out a free trial subscription, and then a paid one, from a cost of £2 a week.
This allows casual consumers of the Telegraph, like myself, to pass by the website every now and then, with more ardent readers having to subscribe.
So far, the tactic has been pretty successful with no discernible downturn in traffic, and perhaps a metered paywall is the way forward for newspapers looking to make money from its online content.
All the while, the Sun - and the Times - are having to rely entirely on the loyalty and goodwill of their readers. Good luck to them with that.
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