Economics of dominant tube sites
 

Can anyone explain to me the economics of a dominant tube site being able to offer full videos of various other studios - that have their own pay sites - to members?

Pornhub I know owns a lot of the studios and porn sites that it offers, but lets take the example of a top VR porn tube like VRPorn.com. It apparently offers all the videos of just about every top virtual reality pay site (and I know that it obviously doesn't own those other sites), for a price the same or not much higher than those pay site's own membership rates. It has a 'fair use policy', but members can still download 30+ videos a day, which seems would be enough for most.

So firstly, why would any VR porn fan join up for an individual pay site rather than VRPorn.com? I assume because they don't know that they could get the same videos plus thousands more at VRPorn.com, but then it's amazing the pay sites get as many sales as they do, because VRPorn is at the top of Google for nearly every VR porn keyword going (and similar sites are at 2 and 3).

But even more difficult for me to understand, is what the deal is with VRPorn.com and those other sites? How can it be profitable for both parties? My first guess was that if a visitor signs up to VRPorn.com after watching a Site X trailer, then VRPorn gives 50% or whatever of the revenue to Site X. But what if the viewer watched a trailer from Site Y before that? Does Site Y get credited? And even if either of those methods is how it operates, all the other dozens of sites are surely losing out because they wont get future joins from members of VRPorn who can watch all their videos already. So I presume that VRPorn must be paying a hefty sum to all the studios to feature their videos, but as VRporn's subscription rates are only a little higher than the standard price (if at all) then how can they make a profit along with the other sites?

It's not as if many visitors are going to watch a trailer of site X on VRPorn, and then go off to site X and join there, when they can join VRPorn for much the same price and watch full videos from dozens of other sites too.

Obviously I'm missing something, because all parties clearly profit from it, just scratching my head as to what it is. And again, I'm just using VRPorn.com as an example (great site!).

It's usually a CPM basis with some math for amount of premium members and amount of video views your content gets. This is public knowledge AFAIK.

You sound like someone who'd just join VRPorn and get everything from there. There's nothing wrong with that. You're the part of the market they were hoping to capture in that case. There are still plenty who don't mind joining VRPorn and VRPaySite1.com and VRPaySite2.com. They are an entirely different market segment, and VRPorn is making money from both - just like PH Premium is.

Some thoughts

- Some studios may give their full videos to these tubes in order to get their name out there (and make a little money at the same time). These studios won't give out ALL of their content, and definitely not their newest scenes. People who really like them may still join the paysite for the real deal.

- Some other studios don't care about exclusivity, they will provide their content to lots of partners, and look at it as having more streams of income.

- Some probably never wanted to bother with operating paysites. Making money through premium tubes might be a nice option for someone who's good at recording porn, but has no interest in business and marketing.

- There are paysites - especially in VR - that failed and gave up. They still want to make some of their money back, so they have their existing libraries up at these premium tubes.

- And also, you shouldn't assume that all of the studios have a good business strategy. Many fail or don't make good money because they make crappy or short-sighted business decisions.

Well said :thumbsup

Good points, but it seems to me (I haven't joined VRPorn.com or been given an affiliate membership, so I'm looking as a visitor), that WankzVR, Badoink, Virtual Taboo etc etc, have all their videos there, released at the same time there as on their own sites.

I guess VRporn.com are paying a good sum to the likes of Badoink and that their profit margin is slim, but then if they are number 1 and become synonymous with VR porn (they certainly have the right name too) in the way PornHub has with regular porn, then they will make enough.

Btw, I believe that the guy who owns VRPorn bought the domain for a pittance only a few years ago. He used to be a regular in a domain forum that I visited a lot back then.