Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Markham
for those who were in it, there was great money and for a few a fortune that makes the big boys today look like minnows.
The reason was the lack of marketing required to get people to look at porn. 
And the ease of putting up a site that offered people porn.
Even when legal a magazine owner had to get the magazine compiled, printed and delivered. That meant small niches like spanking were very expensive to get out to the public, they relied on word of mouth, a couple of shops and mail order.
The UK had 5 magazine publishers of any note. Between them, they sold 2 million magazines a month at $8 a piece. Imagine $16,000,000 in membership sales coming out of the UK every month. 
Now use that math and project it around the world. Now add videos. Then divide it among the retail players. This is what made real porn barons. |
That's a huge amount of profits! Mega millions!
When my partner family had the video shops, most movies were in the region of £30 to £70 depending on the title, terminator, the £70 to purchase a copy, each shop would have 3 or 4 copies & rent out nightly for £1.50 a night.
The under the counter, hardcore porn, £10 to £20 to buy and rent out for 3.50 a night, also, you only need a few copies of each & pass them around the shops as they didn't go out of new like new mainstream titles, like they do now. Massive amounts of of profits.
We're lucky with little payout, me modelling, he editing & filming. We'd have appreciated the business back then like you did! We only got together in 98, strangely, when Model Centro started, now with my MC site, coincidence?