Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Markham
However it was the affiliate demanding more and more free porn that forced them to.
Both are to blame. But the way the whole thing was set up showed the thinking of the online porn community and still today it has changed little.
Robbie says the Internet brought porn to millions, not realising porn was already available to millions who had to buy it. If they lived in a State or country where some porn was illegal, they bought what was legal or made a trip to where they could buy it. I remember the time when hardcore porn was illegal in the UK and people drove or took a train to Soho London and bought porn. Or brought it back when the visited Europe.
Ultimately they read magazines with pictures of girls in or bought 18 rated movies. They didn't NOT buy porn in any way.
The belief that traffic was hard to get was funny. Getting men to look at porn is dead easy, getting them to buy porn was pretty easy as well. Not all that looked, but a lot. Enough to make a huge profit.
Traffic and selling was easy if you had the product and buying it was the only option.
So they removed that option and free porn become an option. Why buy a membership to a porn site when A TGP site had tons of porn to get you off for free?
Suddenly the problem became not enough traffic. Which was illogical as online traffic was increasing by the day in countries we could sell to. The problem was, if 1% of surfers bought a membership. It soon became became 0.5%, then 0.25% and today probably less than 0.01% and going down.
The problem never was, never will be traffic. It's surfers rejection of what's being offered for sale.
The trouble is blaming traffic gives a picture of a solution that can be achieved. Blaming the actual product, delivers a much harder solution. One that few could fix. But that was the real problem.
1000s, looked at samples of our work for free and for what ever reason they said no to buying. Some couldn't, some wouldn't. Many could and would, but didn't see the value in buying.
Add cross sales, ripping cards and other things to the scenario and you have a recipe for disaster.
|
I think what Robbie might have meant is that the internet brought porn to millions in a safe way. There are a lot of places in this country and around the world where porn is very much looked down upon (as you say even illegal). The internet allowed millions to access it without risking their jobs and reputations. And he was right. Sure, porn sales were out there before the internet and they made plenty of money, but nothing like it was once the internet hit. Even today with all the free stuff out there I bet there is much more money being brought in by the porn industry than in the past.
When it comes to affiliates, paysite owners could have very easily told them no. Some of them did, but most didn't. Think of the affiliate as the person who is in a grocery story giving out a free sample of a new product. They give you a bite in hopes that you will buy it that day or some day in the future. If those people worked on commission they would get as many bites into as many hands as they could. If they then went to the company who made the product and said, "Instead of a bite, I want to give away a full serving" most companies would fire them just for thinking that. They aren't going to give that much away. This industry doesn't have that foresight. We only see traffic numbers. If giving away more means getting more traffic we do it damn the long term consequences. But this is nothing new and nothing that hasn't been talked about in a million different threads.
But I do agree that both paysite owners and affiliates are to blame, you just seem to have been on a crusade recently blaming affiliates for the downfall of porn while you yourself are guilty of playing along with Nero while Rome burns. Paul Markham Cash seems to offer more than 575 different FHG's. That is a lot of free content for affiliates. You also sell a ton of content very cheap making it very easy for any webmaster to get into the business and plaster your content all over the web.
If it were so easy to get traffic and sales without affiliates why even open up an affiliate program? Why sell your content to other people? Wouldn't you make more if you kept it all to yourself and made it exclusive to your site and only released tiny amounts as little free samples? Make them come to you to get your stuff.
You constantly are calling for a reduction in free porn and a return to quality as the answer to our problems. I say you should lead by example. Close your content store and shut down your affiliate program. Make all of your content exclusive to your site only. Develop traffic yourself and develop a relationship with your customers as you have said needs to be done then report back and let us know how it went. Now is your time to be a pioneer. Lead us to the promised land.