Article: The Porn Business Isn’t Anything Like You Think It Is
 

Had this article come up in my alerts. Posted without comment


https://medium.com/@gajuracatalin/th...s-e0a3a6dd9a02

The article was written by someone who doesn't know anything about porn.

That was my first thought exactly! :1orglaugh

I was JUST going to post that :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

The article mentions nothing about the porn con artist that scams a lot of people out of their money....

Or how the con artist then takes that money and proceeds to snort it all up his nose therefore rendering him broke and necessitating that he comes back to try and scam some more people out of their money

My point in sharing this was that our industry can probably do a bit better on outreach, because out of 30 or more Medium articles about the porn industry I have read since Christmas, none of them were written from within the industry.

What would you tell them if you were going to reach out?

Good question, I'll take that one on notice.

Generally though, perhaps a look at how professional porn production, billing, ad networks and affiliates operate. How the shift in business models has occurred over 25 or so years.

me too:helpme

Sounds like someone I've done business with in the past.. Only he liked to shoot it up rather than snort. I'd bet he's still hanging out under another name.

The funny thing that I've noticed in the business is that the girls tend to go shopping until their broke. (nb. I said "tend") On the other hand the men tend to waste their money on the drugs.

However you get burned enough and start to recognize the signs of who is likely to steal from you. Just the same I've had a few still manage to slip under my guard but it's been mostly small sums.

The last asshole that ripped me pretty damn good was Jim the fiend. What I leaned from that experience was to pay just as much attention to what's going on and being said over the Internet as to what's being gossiped about on a set.

25 years ago no one bothered about how billing, ad networks and affiliates operated. It was different world. Porn production was everything because a good product ensured a loyal audience. Producers, publishers and distributors knew this and the industry reacted accordingly. Newbie porn people had to produce a product that would sell month after month because last months hit the spot.

Since the beginning of online porn this thinking has increasingly taken a back seat by many. Everyone was increasingly ruled by getting a one time hit from surfers. With less concern about keeping them.

The exceptions to this were the sites who concentrated on producing a product better than the rest. However with the number of sites competing for traffic it resulted in smaller loyal audiences and production budgets. For every offline title had 100 titles, online had 1,000s. This is without affiliate sites.

Today one company dominates the porn and affiliates are slowly being forced out. The number who rely on porn to make a living has been reduced to a fraction of past years. Leaving porn production, billing and ad networks. Well even those are squeezed, production is a fraction of the past, ad networks are owned by a few and billing is less of a problem if it goes through a few companies.

Today giving away porn to generate ad clicks dominates and it's going to grow. Few buy porn for a 20 minute jerk off once or twice a week when so much is available for free. Even once or twice a day, why pay when it's available for free? Tomorrow that will grow. So will the free tubes ever run out of new material? Well that depends on many things. Will ad clicks ever fund the production of enough porn to satisfy hungry viewers expecting 10-20 new scenes a day? :1orglaugh

Today we recommend sites like manyvids, clips4sale, Pornhub Premium, xHamster Premium etc. For newbies to make money. Whether that money will cover production costs is very debatable.

When I was a boy I used to walk 100 miles in the snow to school, in bare feet, carrying bricks in my backpack.

Give it a rest Paul, we've heard your holier than thou lectures about the way things used to be. Problem is you are confined to a narrow window in time and online porn has existed longer than you previously produced offline porn.

You asked the question and I gave you the answer. 25 years ago, so that would be 1994 the online porn industry hardly existed. But the porn industry was alive and kicking. Unlike today.

Here's someone who agrees with me.

The porn industry is well and truly alive.

look THIS is the reality 25 years ago

https://ourworldindata.org/wp-conten...rld-region.png

now ask yourself WHY this happend.

research costs for internet access in 1997
research costs for a computer in 1997

in the very start there was only a few people dealing with a very rich elite in a business where AMATEURS have been the only competitors.

the increase of the worldwide access to internet brought not only poorer people but also MORE competitors that wanted to have something from this cake what went smaller per person with every decrease of the costs.

why can´t you not follow this really SIMPLE logic ?

Online porn is still alive and kicking Paul it's evolved and you didn't evolve with it. This is common in all industries, some people just don't keep up and fall to the side.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

paul, if you talk about the offline pron industry i just can tell you that i give shit on people that oversleep their time.

THEY would have been the ones that would have been able to go into this market.

they have been the ones that even created charities to get rid of us - all in front hustler (and i am pretty sure that larry flint did not know about that)

they have been the ones that laughed about us.

there are still a few of them around and they have learned how to deal with us but they also know that this fire they have started will burn a long long time. there are even a few who understood it from the start and worked with us - and they are still in business and doing well.

horse breeders lost their jobs through cars.
cinemas have been eliminated to the number what is still able to exist by TV
even companies like kodak with a hundred year old history is bancrupt because of digital photography and smartphone

...AND WHAT ????

how many of their revenue is amazon doing with books today ????
1% or 2% ??? i really don´t know it but it can´t be a lot.

and WHY such a guy who tried to sell books online is today, when nearly nobody is interessted to buy books is the richest man on the planet?

i tell you why:

because he have a brain that he is using !!!!

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh LOL!

Maybe this wasn't mentioned in the article, because this wasn't what the article was about? Geeezuz Christ are you a bitter man.


Spot on.

Or, maybe these are the kinds of people you tended to hire and choose to work with.


That, and the fact that he is confined to not just a narrow window in time, but a narrow window in general.

I read threads like this and I'm reminded of the scene from Braveheart where Mel Gibson's character says to all the nobles - (paraphrased)..."You're so concerned with squabbling over Longshank's table scraps...that you can't stand together."

There was never any unity in the adult industry...never a collective assembled to stand up against those who helped put the smaller players out of business. We were fractured, without adequate financial resources or game plan to counteract the big money players. Middlemen and opportunists who fucked us over, card processors that fucked us over with exorbitant fees and unsubstantiated chargebacks.

In our attempt to stay afloat many of us created affiliate programs...all the while seeing affiliates flood the net with so much free promotional content that former subscribers no longer wanted to pay for it. Big players also contributed to the flood of free content, and users on image/video sharing forums redistributed free content.

Basically - we imploded.

At the height of our best years (2000-2003), I was working 60-80hrs a week producing original content, doing photoshoots, building props, scheduling models, photo-editing, uploading monthly updates...and the countless hours of promotion, marketing and advertising. Exchanging guest galleries, banner links...anything to expand our brand.

Twelve years of that...all the while watching revenue dwindle year-by-year...no matter what we tried. We went through 4 webhosting services and several payment processors...each time having to start from scratch to re-establish recur billing and repeat customer loyalty.

Would things have gone different if we'd formed some sort of industry collective?

So am I, just not the man I was 10 or even 25 years ago.

Can you prove that selling ad space on porn sites now, beats the days we sold memberships to porn sites? Or is that too simple a logic for you?

Evolve implies something gets better.

As for evolving, I went from selling sets of photographs mail order in 1977 to selling memberships on paysites until 2008 and sill selling content today. On the way I sold videos mail order, magazine sets, DVDs, content producer and selling porn to websites. Tell me how that's not evolving?

i don´t know what kind of program you run but I am pretty sure you are one of the thousand that still don´t know what a postback is.

I spoke so many times to the good old program owners even tried to help them a bit with the new generation of affiliates but i did not even find ONE what is able to deliver the most basic thing of modern affiliate marketing - in fact 90% did not even know what it is and what it is used for.

there are hundreds of thousand of affiliates out there just waiting for stuff they can promote. many of them would love to work on revshare and set their own money on risk.
but when a branch don´t even understand how affiliate marketing is technically working in the past 12 years, when words like performance marketing an campaign optimizing are chinese for them I really don´t wonder that this people, wo are used to work this way don´t touch it.

and i really don´t know what is so hard on that or this cost intensive to realize such really simple things.

really, this "old industry" is called old because they ARE old.

Socially I'm on the Internet perhaps once a week. However, you appear to be on here 24/7 and you spew the same slag over and over again while claiming to have so much more going on in your life. I can't imagine that this forum is in any way helping you hustle your webcam software. But if it does then I'm certain your earnings can't justify the time you waste here bitching about Trump and sharing your dreams of an electric driverless Starship utopian future.

On that note,

I've been around a very long time and I've learned the great financial value in knowing as many of the players as possible and what they're capable of. Therefore I had my own reasons for posting about the con artists in this business.

To this effect, you should know I wouldn't have too many difficulties identifying you in a lineup whereas you probably have no clue who I am. After all, we're in the same city - The same backyard so to speak.

I understand better than you the market has changed, I changed with it. Your failure is to point out that companies like Amazon are booming because more buy products through them. That was kind of stupid wasn't it.

You're right horse breeders lost their jobs through cars. But who would buy a car if they were free and selling ad space on the vehicle?

We now give the product away and sell ad space. Can you prove ad space sales makes more money than offline porn did?

That narrow window of time is much longer than most people and covered all aspects of the porn industry.

I'm retired...no longer active in the biz.

First and foremost, I'm a photographer and graphics guy. Not a marketing and promotional guru. I took that up as a necessity since we were just a small ma'&pa company with low overhead. We all have our strengths and weaknesses - and very few I've encountered over the years have the entire package deal. We did the best we could at the time with what we had to work with.

This however, was only a component of my post above.

Yes...we ARE old. Trailblazers generally are.

true but LESS books what was the original business model

see that you can not follow me?
if that is the case much more cars would be sold because they can be financed by ads.

do you know HOW MANY professional car drivers wouldn´t be able to buy a car?
what about all the taxi drivers - don´t they do it?
what about formula 1 ?

in germany they have just founded a startup with many millions what is able to push local ads on trucks.
great idea !!! and it will help to lower distribution costs.



I can prove that because only the revenue of the 5 biggest porn networks does it.

go to have a look on this site

all what you see there are companies what are living from mediabuyers.

nearly all companies who have something to offer use them instead having an own affiliate programm. and on this site is just a small fraction of what is around.

all their affiliates need traffic because the do not own sites.
and whatever they want to sell with us and it is legal they can.
it is on their risk if it works or not or if they find the right strategy to make it work.

i assume that internet porn is around 10-20 times bigger as the traditional porn industry ever was. but that does not mean that we have to sell porn. we can give it for free because the value of the users is so high for so many people that I do not need to sell pornvideos to an audience that is so small that only the few people in the good old industry could live from them.

and as i said in another thread already - I am pretty shure that there is a nice number of mediabuyers that would still promote some porn member sites. but it is not the content what is wrong there. it is also not the price model - it is that NONE of them understand modern marketing and have even the most basic standard solutions for modern marketing. look even pornhub have a paid area and they do have a VERY HUGE number of paying customers there. so yes - some of them will still buy but affiliate of this modern generation will not be able to work with them because the affiliate technology is from 1997.

well ok - in that case it is not your fault but the fault of the content buyers.

here we have the same issue as with advertising. if people can not make money with their ads they are not able to pay much. so the goal here is to lead them to success.

the same happend with all those oldfashioned membership programs.
and i do not mean oldfashioned in content or exclusivity. they are oldfashioned when it comes up to find the people with skills in advertising and selling.

if a program is made only for those who want to see how big their paycheck is you will not get on such people who are ABLE to market this stuff still today.

so it is nothing else than oversleeping the time instead putting the nose in the air and smell what is going on out there.

I have this experience with a very old german programm what i tried to promote a few years ago. but it did not work because they did not have the technical solutions I need for that.

last march I tried it again because now they HAVE this options and it works nearly same as in the good old times.

and every mediabuyer that is sending traffic he bought for a lot of money on his own risk will work different as a webmaster who have not really lost money when a click does not convert.

if they would only understand this, their business model would still find customers.

Which is precisely what I'm saying. Less porn is sold today because of the vast numbers consuming it for free. see that you can not follow me?



Now you've stopped being sensible and resorted to being silly.

The proof that less porn is sold today is right before you. If porn or/and ad sales in 2018 were as high as 2006 there would be more porn producers. And all would be working with the budgets of 2006. The truth is the opposite. Porn production has dropped dramatically, the number of models has dropped dramatically, the prices paid have dropped dramatically both to models and producers.

Even if one company owned everything they would still need to produce a good product across all their niches, styles and genres.

But, this is where you're being silly, the cost of 2006 is too high for the return of 2018. Like the cost of giving away free cars to sell advertising. Tubes can only survive with free content.

Totally. What Rochard said.

Also, the writer seems pretty clueless on technology and finance and modern values. Other than those details, spot on.

I agree with you

You really don't get it, do you?

https://gfy.com/22394386-post12.html

give up - he really does not get that.

he simply ignores that amateurs alone are producing 100 times more new videos per day as the whole "old economy" did in a year.

and he thinks that porn biz MUST sell ONLY porn to be the porn biz.

regarding paul´s opinion the superbowl has nothing to do with american football because it is financed with advertising that does not sell footballs.

he also seems to think that all tubes outside are stealing content.
he can not imagine that the big tubes are buying monthly more licences for videos as he have produced in his lifetime. and sure they would not pay 50 dollars for a licence but if you buy 10- 20 THOUSAND videos every month you do not have to pay that.

but paul knows only this time in the web where he sold it at such prices - and people paid it because the old economy did not want to sell to us.

I spoke a few days ago with a very big content owner and producer in germany regarding licences of his older videos. but he does not sell them and you know why?
he UPLOADS THEM FOR FREE to the big tubes and found out that he can make MUCH more this way.

but these are things paul will never understand because he is nailed to a very short time frame when the net was born and did not find it´s direction.
this was the time when everybody could make money with porn. no matter if you could make a website with microsoft frontpage or hold a camera in the direction where the action was. and as long you did not hesitate to do that with naked pussies you was THE MAN, no matter how dumb you are.

So the professionals dropped out and amateurs take over their production. :upsidedow

How much do advertisers pay to the Football leagues for their advert?

Buying up old content at $50 will not generate new content.

More than $50 a scene?

You have proved my argument. Content being sold because the producers need the money, amateurs replacing professionals and people making more than $50 from keeping their content.

Paul, there's very expensive professional new content being made every single fucking day of the week.

Don't you listen to people?

are you really considering yourself a professional?

enough to make it a billion dollar biz

approximately 10.000 new scenes per day is not enough new ?

did you get on this number in your whole working life ?

internet porn producers have ALWAYS been amateurs.

if the argument is that someone who can live from it is a professional I can tell you then that there are MUCH more now that can live from it better as you ever did.

Professional content is being shot very day and no one disputes that. Just not as much. As for the price that's down to perspective. What do you consider to be expensive for content shot every single day?

Yes, what else would I be? Amateurs shoot amateur content and doit for fun and to earn pin money in my opinion.



No they don't. Advertisers pay money to the broadcasting companies, who pay the Football Leagues money to broadcast the games.

aA day?



Now you are being silly.

that means that every amateur who makes more than pin money is a professional?

well than there are around 100.000 NEW PROFESSIONAL porn producers around and you are proven wrong AGAIN.

whats the difference?

tubes buying content from agencies and producers (or even get it for free from them), broadcast ist and advertise around it...

so WHERE is the difference ?

go to all big amateur sites. I don´t know how many 100 of them are around and find out if there is one with less than 200-500 updates PER DAY !!!!

alone on mydirtyhobby there have been 5432 new videos in the last 7 days and this is just ONE site from many.



sure - and you are actually steven spielberg.
they just forgot to book you in hollywood

Most people will deny they watch porn, but in reality most do.

It was uphill, both ways. And always snowing. Even in the summer.

It was posted on another board, someone crawled Clips4Sale and this part fits right in here:

80,000 new clips per month on Clips4Sale alone.

There is no money in porn :winkwink:

No, porn is dead, it died when Paul Markham stopped taking photographs, everyone knows that :2 cents:

:1orglaugh

Absolutely. And we didn't have shoes :thumbsup

Most people don't watch porn. 50% of the world are women, probably 50% don't have a computer, so we're already down to 25%. Do you need me to continue?

80,000 = 2,666 a day = 111 an hour.

I know you read it on the internet. Try going to Clips4sale and see how many scenes got up loaded. Then think how many surfers are needed to make $50 a scene.