I’m an avid player of Zynga’s Mafia Wars, having reached level 400 and spent about $100 over the last 12 months. While about half of that money has been used to extend my playing time (e.g. buying more energy) the other half has been used to purchase unique items that either improve my status or character’s abilities. While there has been a lot of talk recently about the NY Times’ moving to a freemium model in 2011, most, if not all of it, has been focused on the metered consumption side of the model, or in my Zynga example, generating payments from those who want to extend playing (i.e. reading) time. This is only part of the freemium model however, and I think that there is additional payment revenue for the NYT should it choose to offer unique digital products that improve its readers status or knowledge.

I’m certainly not the most creative person, but some examples of these types of things could be special events/chats with leading columnists like Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman. How awesome would it be to have exclusive access to an online chat with Friedman during Obama’s speach on global warming in Copenhagen? Or one with Maureen Dowd as she reacts to the Brown/Coakley results? These limited time only products have proven quite a lucrative business for the social gaming companies and greatly increase ARPU and number of paying users. After all, some users who may never hit the consumption threshold are still willing to pay for unique items/events. It’s also important to note that with a number of different microtransaction products now potentially available at the NYT, it could implement an offer wall too. This would be yet another revenue stream generated by ‘going freemium’ and allow it to make money from those who don’t want to pay to access additional content or items/events, but who are more than willing to sign up for a marketer’s relevant offer in order to get behind the pay wall.

In addition to an offer wall and charging for extending reading time and limited-time-only digital events, the NYT might benefit by creating a rewards system to foster a more social environment on its site. For example, why not give points or badges to those that pay for events or consume/share a lot of content or make valuable comments? This is exactly the type of system that the social games companies have embraced and it has greatly enhanced the virality and community of their products. I will admit that this type of system will not work for everyone and needs to be implemented very carefully so that not to “cheapen” the quality of the brand. The basic idea however is that if you have loyal readers who help improve your brand, they should be given some type of status for their efforts.

In closing, I believe that the NYT has a high quality product with the best shot of any news company at benefiting from all of the innovation that has occurred is freemium/microtransaction market over the last couple of years. They obviously need to tread carefully and adopt what others are doing to make it unique to the NYT brand and content. That said, if they sat down with Mark Pincus for a few hours, I bet they would discover a whole new business model.