The same rule has always applied from day 1. But few could see further than the end of the week. I pointed out the problems of chasing traffic with free content in another thread, for those that missed it here is how I see it.
99% give away 10 softcore pics, 1% decide to give away 15 softcore pics and get more traffic. Until the 99% follow them. No advantage for anyone.
99% give away 15 softcore pics, 1% decide to give away 15 hardcore pics and get more traffic. Until the 99% follow them. No advantage for anyone.
99% give away 15 hardcore pics, 1% decide to give away 4 hardcore video clips and get more traffic. Until the 99% follow them. No advantage for anyone.
And so it went on and on for years. Everyone try to leap frog the next guy. All while traffic over all was increasing it hid the worsening of ratios. The increase in traffic hid the obvious fact that something was wrong, the excuse was it was less quality traffic.
Then good traffic leveled off and ratios really suffered. Still people believed the solution was more traffic. And set about getting it. The flaw in the theory was the only way most people knew to get more traffic was to leap frog each other in a never ending race with no one winning. Often resulting in giving away more and more free and harder content.
Then Tubes hit the mix and the shit hit the fan.
Now we give away so much content for free, free content is a better bet to signing up and spending money.
But how do you get traffic if you don't give everything away? </sarcasm>
It's called selling a product worth buying.
