Even if newspapers migrate every print reader to paying online, they will still face big losses, according to one analyst.

Annual income per paywall subscriber on TheTimes.co.uk and WSJ.com is just a quarter that from subscribers to UK quality dailies’ print editions, Enders Analysis’ Benedict Evans observes in a new note.

Switching off the presses, after a hypothetical future print-to-digital tipping point, might save newspapers 25 percent of their total costs—but this is not enough to make up the gap from the smaller online income, Evans says.

Even adding iPad income to web paywall revenue would only total half the income newspapers are currently making from print.

This is essentially the quandary of trading physical dollars for digital dimes. Publishers like Rupert Murdoch may be starting to conceive of a time, at least in theory, when paid tablet and web editions become popular enough to consider switching off print…

The problem with that, these numbers would suggest—even if all digital readers pay, publishers may need to double annual income per online customer to get there (ie. hike TheTimes.co.uk from £2 to £4 a week, and the iPad edition from £9.99 a month to £19.99).

How’s this for a corollary?—If that sounds bad, imagine the situation for publishers whose websites are not starting charging.

But at least those refuseniks can hold on to existing advertising, which an increasing number of them are considering to be sub-scale all the same…

One ad buyer from media agency MEC tells Independent.co.uk that advertisers have responded negatively to TheTimes.co.uk’s paywall: “We are just not advertising on it. If there’s no traffic on there, there’s no point in advertising on there. Online, we have far more options than just newspaper websites – it’s not a huge loss to anyone really. If we are considering using some newspaper websites, The Times is just not in consideration.”

Newspapers have faced a similar problem before, Evans says - to counter print circulation decline, publishers have added 20 percent more pages in the last decade, allowing the quality dailies to drive up cover prices by 112 percent in real terms.

“But inflating the paper will no longer work: deflation is now the agenda,” Enders’ Evans says, noting recent newsroom downsizing. “What would a great newspaper with 200 journalists look like? Delane ran The Times as ‘The Thunderer’ with 16 pages – a deeply unfair comparison, but perhaps a relevant one.”

Separate recent estimates by myself and by University of Central Lancashire journalism researcher Francois Nel had both found TheTimes.co.uk’s paid strategy could significantly reduce Times Newspapers’ losses, but not entirely.

{/exp:get_graph} {/exp:tweet_quote}