jayeff

I'm well aware of that: hence my first paragraph.

I agreed with you.

I didn't so much as mention the word "exclusive", because in this context it isn't relevant.

Your post attempted to rationalise what by and large this industry has been doing, making it all seem like the consequence of serious thought, based on solid business principles. It is not.

This is an immature industry. When online porn first appeared in a big way, roughly 10 years ago, the only content available was crap. It didn't matter, because demand was many times greater than supply and all our potential customers were first-time buyers. Which not only meant surfers had no choice except bad porn or no porn, but if webmasters weren't happy making only a small fortune, they could earn more by jerking surfers around all day long. They would still come back for more.

You can count on your fingers the number of sponsors who chose to break away from the crowd during the first 5 years and offer their customers a better experience. They are the only ones who actually made decisions, everyone else simply went along with the flow.

And here we are today, facing the reality that the last 5 years haven't been so easy and the next 5 are going to be a lot harder. Big surprise, online porn is growing up, just like every other industry before it.

You appear to think I am arguing from some kind of ethical perspective. I am not. My only considerations are competition and the inevitable way in which it forces an industry to mature. Start a site or a sponsor program today based on the 90's model that most of the biggest sponsors still use and you had better have very deep pockets to stand any chance of buying your way into the market.

Why go that route anyway? I have run service and retail businesses for almost 40 years, and it sticks out a mile that the easiest way to compete with established sponsors is by offering surfers more of what they want. Of course not everyone makes that decision and plenty of those who do, don't get the formula right. But that is the direction many new sites have been taking for the last few years and let's not pretend it has had no impact. The poorest sites are better today than most were 10 years ago and surfers don't get nearly as tough a ride from any as they used to get more or less routinely.

And the more real alternatives surfers are offered, the harder it will become to sell old-style sites with the cross-sells, up-sells and failure to deliver on what was promised. During the next 5 years, watch the sponsors who push this type of site dropping their prices and paying even more to affiliates: it is already starting to happen. If I were going to be around, I would be willing to make a bet that 10 years from now, there will not be a single old-school sponsor left at the top of this business, except for those who are bought out or learn to adapt to the changing circumstances.