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Originally Posted by DamianJ
No it isn't. Stupidity did and having old people in charge of the companies that didn't understand online killed them. And you can add music to that mix too.
Problem with people of your age is that you simply don't *get* it.
The record labels, movie studios and publishers had it made for ages. They made stuff, priced it how they wanted it, sold it on formats they wanted and The People had no choice. Of course they were happy.
Then people realised that they wanted one song out of 18 on a new album and didn't want to buy the CD. They wanted to buy the track. But the labels wouldn't let them. So the didn't buy. Then iTunes came along, understanding online, and offered them one track for 99 cents. Biggest success story in music.
People also didn't want to pay x for a DVD packed for of non-skippable adverts and crap extras. They just wanted to watch a movie when they wanted to watch it. Netflix was born. Biggest success in movies.
People didn't want to subscribe to magazines anymore. Out dated information presented in a manner they didn't want to read. Then the Kindle came out. Low and behold, another huge success story.
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Actually Damian is spot on here.
Paysites opened and had it their way for ages. They loaded sites with the content they could afford, which was usually cheap and crappy. They priced it the way they wanted, they set the length of a join and often made it recurring and hid the cancel button. They even ripped off customers.
But they had it made, so long as the number of surfers increased faster then the ratios worsened.
Even PPV was the same, tiny clip, scene whether you liked it or not was yours no change it for another one policy, priced it at what they decided, often loaded sites with cheap content. Still if traffic numbers increased to make up for the decline all was fine.
Then quality traffic to sites started to level. The increase in Internet users in our prime billing market, the US, was reaching saturation point. Even in prime online porn buying countries like the UK the growth of Internet users was reaching a peak.
And then the real bomb shell hit. Tubes. And suddenly like with music the customer had a real viable option. The music industry as you point out responded. The online porn industry with all it's clever whiz kid guys who understood online marketing. Decided to put up more porn Tubes.
That has to be the most pathetic response to a threat ever.
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I know you don't udnerstand how any of that happened Paul, but people smarter than you saw an old dinasaur of a market and disrupted it.
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What did I get wrong in my appraisal?
This dinosaur saw the opportunity of selling content already bought and paid for, with a profit, selling it online. And in 2000 we started up
www.paulmarkham.com. Which very quickly exceeded all expectations. We had planned to make $300 a set. Didn't bother with video at first as we only had the old
www.astral-blue.com content.
Then when people were clamoring for a different price structure and license we opened
www.bargainbasementcontent.com put all the less well selling content in there and gave it a new life. Doubled out income on a set or video.
Sales were immediately well over $300 a set, then added video which again was well over $300 a scene. And the rest is history. Profit margin from the stores was 90%, as the content was paid for by sales to magazines. Even the video was free.
Never did open a paysite. We saw clearly the work involved looking after affiliates and we felt a site based on non English speaking girls would not be as good as one with. Look at
www.astral-blue.com for what I feel is good video. Ignore the resolution, it was shot many years ago.
So it would mean going back to the UK, losing the magazine market and that was too risky. Also it would of meant shooting exclusive which would of meant losing the content stores market. Do the maths. 2000 magazine set, 3200 in the content store. Big big gamble. Meeting some of the people at shows, it was clear the big success guys were a very very small crowd.
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Nothing to do with free. It's to do with offering people content they want in a format they want at a price they want. It's not even fucking hard.
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Which online porn has failed to do in spectacular form.
Glad you and I agree on something.
Of the offline magazines some did come to the Internet. PRO, Score, Sullivan, Hustler, Playboy, Swank, Crescent did but being as they were run by crooks decided it was a place to rip people off. Did a lousy job at it though. Bookpress can be added to that list.
I had a sit down with Galaxy, they own Fiesta and Knave, well did last time I looked. And we discussed going online. Their problem was the bosses were print people not really magazine people and they vetoed our plans.
Must be more magazines, but can't think of any at the moment.
The DVD industry was between a rock and a hard place. Top retailers were telling them that if they went online in a big way, the shops would stop selling their DVDs. I guess they were making enough not to go online in a big way. Though some did and were successful.
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PS not seen you post over at B&B for a while, JT scared you off?
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Words on a board don't scare me, even loud mouth webmasters who don't have the bottle to confront me. Don't scare me. His size did surprise me, for some reason I imagined him weighing less than a dumper truck. Made me drop my glass of wine.
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Originally Posted by DVTimes
bump for page 6
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This must be your longest thread ever.
Actually the original question is a good one and the only reason people aren't coming up with an answer is obvious. They know the stats would be embarrassing. We all have a rough idea of how many free surfers it takes to get a buying one.