"I doubt if even 10% of their traffic is dedicated Times readers, let alone dedicated Times readers prepared to shell out cash."
There are certainly going to be company purchases, so whether the MD buys it with his own CC and reclaims it as a business expense, or there's a company credit card at the company address and they purchase it (then allowing access to all staff - after all, most traffic from a firm may well show a single IP address - that of the router linking the firm's machines).
In the past it was common for small local radio stations to buy in several daily papers and either photocopy articles or snip the papers, to have trash stories for the presenters to fill time between music tracks. How many "topical issues" have you heard on local radio which is based on some newspaper article (usually attributed).
It seems quite easy for me to expect tens of thousands of people paying for the online copy (saving their firm plenty) as that makes it a simpler cut and paste job (probably - depends how much copy protection is applied).
Think how many are involved in finance, economics, etc, or simply businesses where they have someone checking the papers for good / bad PR, takeovers, what competitors are doing, etc. The Times probably still has that kind of readership, all routinely funded by employers.
If this is cheaper and more convenient for the customer, it has the added advantage of making sheets of paper obsolete, saving the publishers too: no deliveries, no transport delays, fewer union members or mechanical problems to stop a print run, no 'returns' of unsold copies...
I think that unless subscription numbers are far too low and advertising revenue does not (say) quadruple, the days of the printed Times paper may be numbered.
The statistics on subscribers will show that they are more affluent, or corporate, buyers and thus better targets for high end cars and other goods, so the 'quality' of the readership will allow a hike in advertising rates, and claims that only discerning businesses advertise with them.
In the past, wasn't the Guardian a very popular paper for job adverts.. how did the Times compare ? I suppose a cut in the numbers of high earning civil servants will perhaps boost purchase of the Times, while Government departments will be lost from the job adverts across the board.