I subscribe. At first to support the site. Felt bad just taking. Then I got hooked on the 10 day forecast, even if it isn't terribly accurate, and the summer smoke maps. So I just keep it up. Looks like they are going to further limit free content to encourage subscription. It will be interesting to see if that helps or drives people away.
I don't know how it will work out for them, but I think any model where you don't have any or very limited free content makes it hard to generate
new customers, unless you are already a well known commodity, such as the NYTimes or the WSJ. With their recent switch to a paywall, they will probably get a lot of people subscribing that were not previous subscribers. Others will just move on and stop going to their site. From that point on, I feel like growing their subscriber base will be hard without any compelling reason to attract new and uninitiated visitors to the site.
But it's not my business to manage, nor am I any kind of business model guru, much less online businesses. I do hope they know what they are doing and it works out well for them. I always like reading their forecasts. I have never been a subscriber, but have been considering it since they went full paywall. I will probably buy in at some point this year.
