kane

I would argue that the internet still is a license to print money as far as porn goes. Sure sales are not what they once were, but I still feel that there are a lot of sales out there, they are just spread out more than ever before. The internet has created several millionaires from porn. Lensman and Mike Strauss both come to mind. Building up a big program or building up a large network of sites to get to where you are making a lot of money is more difficult now than it was back in 1999. Back in 1999 I made some nice money keyword bombing altavista. You could churn out crappy sites with 5 small pics and a handful of ads then stuff them with keywords and submit them to altavista. 24-48 hours later you were listed and getting traffic. Some sites ranked really high, others didn't. If you made 40 of them a day overall it was nice. Then things changed. Altavista changed and that strategy was no longer a viable one. I'm sure I'm not the only one who lost a lot of sales because of that. There were lost sales and it had nothing to do with free porn, it had everything to do with technology changing.

I think there are more affiliates today than ever before. Some programs lose affiliates, others gain them. If I am sending traffic to program A and then I give program B a try and Program B makes me more money I move my traffic to Program B. Program A just lost an affiliate, but Program B gained one. If you are saying that the industry as a whole is losing affiliates, I would love to know how you know this.

Here is the main difference for me and why the internet is more responsible for growth than the movie rental. When someone walks into a porn store and looks around then leaves without buying anything or spending any money, the store gains nothing. They don't really lose anything, but they gain nothing.

When a visitor comes to your site and looks around then leaves without buying you could still gain from them. If you have a site that has a lot of traffic you can sell ad space on that site. If you have a site that trades traffic you can trade that visitor for another. If you are a paysite you get the option of pop-up on exit that you can keep for yourself or you can sell to other companies. In the brick and mortar world once they get in the car and drive away, they are gone. In the internet even if they left and spent nothing, you can still monetize them.

Sure, the guy that is just going to go to a tube site, look at 5 minutes of a movie so he can jerk off and leave might be a lost customer. He might have been a guy who would would have at least paid a few dollars for a run in a jack shack if there was no internet. But still, that tube site can trade traffic so maybe this guy brings in a fresh visitor that will buy something or maybe he just pumps up the traffic totals so the owner can sell more ad spots or sell the site entirely. He can still be monetized, just not in a traditional way.

All the said, without the traditional sale all the other stuff is useless. If people stop buying membership then site owners stop making money and they stop buying add spots or exit pop-ups or gallery placements or raw traffic from brokers. The challenge, as you say is to find a way to bring them back. There are programs out there that are doing very well and they aren't resorting to shady tactics to do so. Me? I'm not going to waste my time fighting over would be freeloaders or people that I have to figure out how to creatively monetize. I will leave that up to others who know that game better than I ever will. I'll seek out people looking for something specific and give it to them and they will happily pay for it.