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IMO. The policy of loading sites with cheap content, what ever the niche, and spending a fortune on free content has led us to where we are today.
Besides bad billing practices, there were other bad practices. Hiding the CANCEL button, locking people into a 30 day recurring membership in a site full of low level porn and then loading the Internet with increasing more free content led to buyers getting harder to convince. The impulse to buy was replaced by the impulse of "Is my CC safe to use?" or "Is this a site with a great tour and little else?" and "Why do I need to buy a months membership when I only want 30 minutes?"
The "Amateur sells" is also wrong. Tell that to Sapphic, Allscan, Twistys, OTCash, FTV, all great sites with great content. And there's more. The reason most went down the amateur line was they simply couldn't afford to pay a good shooter to produce, thought they could shoot it themselves or thought "If I throw enough traffic at it I can sell anything."
The last attitude led to so many sites with the same kind of content it's pointless to protect it. If they do there are 20 other sites who don't with the same content. Different sofa and girl. ;)
Bang Bus did spend money on shooting. They were not scrimping. Some of those who copied them were though.
Many of the old school did come to the Internet, some made it and some didn't. Hustler, Score, PRO, DD Francesco, Gold and Sullivan, Eva and I, Viv Thomas, Swank, Bookpress (Seventeen) and I'm sure there's more. Some employed the Internet Gurus.
We didn't open a paysite, until 2005, because as stated I know little about Internet marketing and I never met anyone who I trusted or had figures to show we would make money. Most of the time it was "Give me all your content and I will do it all for you and give you half the profits." When I did this the returns were crap.
Giving up shooting magazines and selling the same content on the stores to concentrate on a paysite was never an option. Too much of a gamble. Hindsight I'm glad we didn't.
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