Turns Out Porn isn't Recession-Proof...
 

Interesting article...

http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/...out-por-1.html

" We've identified the reasons we think sales are down. First and foremost, there's a glut of product. The laws of supply and demand have been turned upside down. We're on par to put out 15,000 new releases this year, which is just insane. Secondly, there's a battle with pirated or free material on the internet -- much like the music industry, adult [movie] producers are trying to figure out how to stem free or pirated content."

DVD sales is soooo old skool.... Online porn biz is doing great!!!

porn was recession proof when it wasnt given away with both hands.

i only use one hand

i meant wasnt i edited it :)

my statement stands. ;-)

I don't think there are less overall sales. Maybe there are, maybe not. But the sales are spread out over more and more people. There are now a ton of mom and pop type people and people that do this as a hobby or second job so it makes sense that the big companies would feel the pinch.

However, all the free stuff out there doesn't help, that much is for sure.

I don't believe any of the liars in those articles. No one tells the truth to anyone in press. Its all a giant circle jerk. Sales are not down 10%, motherfuckers are going out of business! Doors are closing. They act like the goddamn Iraqi Information Minister. Some studios will weather the storm, other ones will not. The failure of many of the large studios to do something productive on the web years ago is fucking them in the ass right now. With a very few exceptions, video companies going to web have totally fucked it up. Now it's too late. DVD is dying a slow death and they don't have a web presence. Shit, I'd wager that half of them don't even have their shit encoded for the web in the right formats or traffic to a domain they own. Of course DVD will never die, unless a new format replaces it, but it is surely being kicked in the balls right now. People are upside down on mortgages, gas and food prices are crippling the middle class that once had a few hundred dollars between paychecks. Nothing is recession proof. How do I start charging people for air?

Yeah, the porn biz is not dying at all. The DVD part of it IS. The majority of people buy their porn online. Who wants to hunt down an adult store to buy their shit when you can do it at home with a few clicks. I would be willing to bet that the majority of money made off of Studio releases these days is the money that sites like Deluxe Pass and Porn Access make by licensing the entire studios content and making paysites out of it. And even that is declining as surfers look for more and more exclusive interactive experiences.
<driveby-spam>And oh...did I mention that SOLO SLUT CASH is the KING of exclusive interactive solo girl websites? :)
If you're not sending traffic to us you're leaving money on the table. </driveby-spam>

I can agree with some of this. The mainstream adult companies that haven't come online are probably fucked. They have always been afraid of change, afraid of online - always blamed piracy for problems. When the truth is, they didn't adapt and now they are lost.

Major porn companies have gone out of business, for one reason or another, every year for the last 11 years. Many just went belly up. The last 4 years opened more affiliate programs then the previous 7, most programs being sold and/or going poof, are less than 4 years old.

You are seeing a shift, a shift of power, traffic and sales in this industry. 2257 each round of it killed a great deal of Webmasters off that didn't want to deal with that shit. Major programs xsales and exit trades are dieing out, this kills the floating sales/traffic our industry had - which made it's real size fake. As programs get purchased, even more of this float is lost to the rest of us. The biggest round of this happened with AFF purchased almost every major programs exit. I know personally I lost about 50+ sales a day from just AFF doing that.

Piracy, not an issue - never will be to a solid product. Just like people know you can get movies/music online for free, and yet people will always pay for it. Like the largest opening weekend in history for batman - bad eco, piracy? humm.....

That was bascially my EXACT thought when I read the article yesterday... Nearly everyone wired spoke to is on the DVD side and YES they are suffering due to thier own lack of foresight about the web and thinking they can continue with business as usual when the web is going to take over. Who will want to go to a store to pick up "Creampie Trannys #24" and have to deal with another human questioning you when you can just watch it at home and not let anyone know.

Hah. You honestly believe that?

Watching Batman in the movie theater beats watching it in crappy quality on a small screen, for most people.

No matter how solid your product is, if people can get something equally solid from torrent sites, most of them won't be buying. Especially if the reason for its being equally solid is that it's exactly the same thing in the same quality.

Which is why a large part of the future in this industry is in things like live content, interaction with members, extreme convenience, etc.

The level of piracy is connected with many factors - the purchasing power, law enforcement, history, culture.

The estimated level of copyright piracy in households in Eastern Europe - 95 pct.
95 pct. of all the movies, software, music - I personally can't think of anyone around who would ever pay for it.

Of course the official figures will not be that bad but then again, who is creating the official figures.

Just a little remark.

I can already download better music, cheaper and for free. Movies can be found with just as good as quality too. You can find every movie released this year, online, streaming, for free and paid, at a great quality level. Multi-Millions of people know this and still buy every day.


Nothing to not believe, I only stated facts. People that like free things (pirated or given to them) like to pay for stuff too. Piracy does not stop sales and in many cases it increases sales, and that is a provable fact.

Amazing to think the largest pirated software in the world is Photoshop, just about every Adobe product has been pirated to death & windows too.

Just think, the largest graphics program in the world was damn near fully built on piracy.

People still pay... they always will.

Well even in the worst scenario there will still be businesses and government that are obliged to use legal software, that's enough to make a decent living for a company with a massive worldwide marketshare.

Photoshop - who really needs it - graphics, those who use the software commercially.

I can't see that applied to porn though.

I can't see we will be able to talk the trade unions of every big company to guarantee its employee a paid monthly access to a porn site of his choice.

In a worst case scenario, the entire world would stop buying porn. But we both know that will never happen, no mater how much free porn or pirated porn is on the market.

We will always have people that buy porn, we will always have people that will ONLY buy porn, that will ONLY buy DVD's or Memberships, or spend $2k a week on live cams - all of it. No amount of piracy will stop that.

Photoshop is not driven by design firms, far far from it. Rather Internet Designers and Digital Photo Editors. I have a hard time finding someone that didn't pirate Photoshop at some point.

Piracy, real piracy, is when someone takes your product and resells it under a different name/brand, or whatever, for a direct profit. This hurts everyone, including our Industry.

Online piracy, tubes, torrents, a guys private collection - suck it up people, that's branding.

With the threat of being sued by the RIAA, the effort of finding a quality download, etc.

And still, the music industry is hurting.

Just as good quality? Certainly not as good as the movie theatre, and if it's dvd or bluray quality, it requires extremely large downloads, which can take days for people with average connections. Not to mention the fact that people fear the MPAA nearly as much as they fear the RIAA.

Add to that the fact that a minor bit of technical knowledge is required to get that download from their computer to their plasma, and it's easy to see why movies aren't as vulnerable as porn.

Piracy does not stop sales, but it can lower them. The people who don't know how to download through torrents won't stop buying, the people who don't know decent porn tube sites won't stop buying, etc.

A number of the ones who just want porn and know how to get it for free, however, will stop buying.

So a guy selling entire siterips hurts the industry, but a guy giving them away for free does not? Are you kidding me?

whos the pornstar in the pic

sexy

A sales decline due to recession has an impact but pales in comparison with the overall decline due to free porn.

We have collectively fucked up this industry with the current "free porn" business model.

Yes, there is alot of money being made in internet porn but that money reflects a fraction of the money thrown away by giving it away.

Its like running a coffee shop.

Coffee is being given away in order to get consumers to come into the coffee shop.

Over the years through competition more and more coffee is being given away in higher quality. While there is still money being made selling coffee most of these motherfuckers in the coffee shop are just here for the free coffee. :1orglaugh

Yes, someone selling site rips under a different name/brand (as I stated) would not benefit you at all. Someone uploading or giving away your content, has your brand/logo/name on it.

Read about, Branding 101

Such as if someone buys spots on a site that attracts people on copyrighted video?

Well seems like half of the world with a broadband is already more enthusiastic about the branding than about the brands itself.

I call it shrinking the market potential.

Yes you are right when you say the likes of abode and windows have been pirated to the teeth but these products are not the same as porn. Porn is a "throw away product" so to speak you use it to jack off off to then forget about it until the next time. So the surfer will just go to the next free video to see something different. With abode and microsoft they had the abilty to sell to companys who pre-install abode and windows on new computers which is a huge market, plus if it wasent hurting them why do they go to so much trouble to try and stop piracy. They also have the advantage of bringing out new and better versions every couple of years. On the other hand I am seeing how the online game industry is adapting to piracy to. They dont care if people copy their games infact they even encourage it but what they now do is sell "addons" for as little as $1.00, So the more people who play the "free version/copied version" of the game the more chance they have of selling those $1.00 addons to people. So while the adult industry is crying and whinging the mainstream are actually doing something about it. :2 cents:

quote:

Jessica Tams of the Casual Games Association explains: "They create a product which you give away for free.

"So it doesn't matter if they steal it, they actually want people to steal it, because that way more people play.

"Then what they do is they sell little add-ons to the characters, or to the game, so that the consumers have to pay money, so even if they pirate the game, they still have to pay. And then they pay as much as they want."

And of course the easier the game is to play, the easier it is to port to mobile devices, which can be a real money spinner too.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ne/7514247.stm

Music industry is larger than ever and growing. Don't read the RIAA trash, it's total bullshit.



It takes hours to download a movie on a normal cox home pipe. And most movies are streaming now, flash based. Even dialup can watch some.

People do not know who the MPAA and RIAA are, and if they did - they don't care.

You plugin an svideo cable from your computer to your tv, (most tvs take usb now too) This is less complex than my dvd player and/or vcr. As for online technology, streaming is pretty stupid proof.





People that will only pirate, will never buy anyway. But they will talk - branding comes in for that.

Others, will buy - and do buy.

It doesn't "SLOW" your sales down, that is fucking totally impossible. The logic behind that doesn't even statically make since. You people think piracy, means every person in the world now has it. Please, think people.. Exposure is exposure.

Coke buys ads and never sells a fucking can. You do the math.

We do this as an industry, this is how the entire adult industry works. We give away stuff for free, to try and upsell them later. It could be a membership, or a micro bill for a single movie, or free cc auths to get people to upgrade (like dating, cams, vod), or it could be from our exit to another sponsor/product.

Porn is toss away - but Joe just saw it the first time today, and tomorrow 1000's other new/fresh people will see it - and will never find a pirated copy. Then 1000's of others will find pirated copies, and some will end up buying or producing more traffic/flow back in our industry maybe making them buy from someone else.

As far as porn goes I have to respectfully disagree. Some guy is tight on money wants to get off and isnt tech savy. Before his only choice would of been to bite the bullet and pay. Now he can go to a tube and beat off to full scenes all day long. It might not be exactly what he wants but its closer enough to get off and its free. Also people forget its educating a whole generation coming up that paying for porn is stupid.
There are forums full of people who write I found tubes and will never pay for porn again or say you still pay for porn????. Also if they like something they dont go buy it they go on forums asking who has more of the shit they like.

A person has never been forced to bite the bullet and pay for porn, ever. Piracy is far from new, same with free porn.

If the guy can't afford to buy porn, why not let him watch your stuff for free? If he can't afford to join, you don't make shit anyway. At least now, he knows your url, your brand, your girl. Maye when he gets some cash, he will remember it and come buy. Or tell a friend how good it was, or send it to another guy - that might buy.

Piracy is not a one way door.

Before the net you didnt many options, either get off to your old stuff, use your imagination or buy new stuff.
Piracy isnt new but its much easier. My grandmother can click on a tube. Once he has had the taste of easy free he isnt going back to buy sorry.I assume you don't actually produce content because you wouldnt be talking about the why not give to him for free. The content just doesn't fall out of the sky it costs money to produce. You also seem to not mention the owner of the tube is making ad dollars off of work that is not his. You find that acceptable? Im sorry but it does hurt our industry.

Yes the adult industry does a similar thing but where it goes all wrong is they try and sell a membership for say $30.00 a month. Why would a surfer pay $30.00 when you can get it for free. I would love to know just how popular the $1.00 trials are with surfers, and I dont understand why the adult biz does not allow surfers full access to thier content for a couple of bucks for a couple of days without trying to sell them the $30.00 monthly membership. If a surfer only wants to look at porn for a wank then why not let him pay for just a day or so then if he wants more he can pay another couple of bucks for another couple of days, that way they are not roped into paying $30.00 per month. They basically pay when they want to pay and are not forced into paying what you want them to pay.

Someone got rich from canned air for keyboards and computer guts!

they dont have to be roped in for 30 dollars,they have clips.com, clips4sale, aebn, hot movies. They dont have to pay by the month but once they get the taste of free why pay at all. Also production isnt free.

I don't think I can take another one of "TheDoc"'s ridiculous fucking comparisons between mainstream movies, porn, and the average porn user / buy.

Yapoo, Aebn, hotmovies - are all free - are all on drm - and all convert better than paysites, are larger than paysites, and are way more expensive than paysites.

They break every rule our Industry says we can't do. People will pay for porn, just get it in front of them and ignore the piracy. Go for the other mulit-millions that will never see your pirated content. You just have to start looking outside our industry.

I think it is hard to make any such statements due to the fact that there are multiple factors that need to be considered and there's not really any way to isolate them. I think porn is a bit more recession proof than the article claims. You have to factor in that even if the economy stayed the same the "content glut" and the "tube sites" are decreased sales for the individual company. Plus I'm sure there are many more factors we are not considering.

WTF, fake nick twat... if you don't like what I write read another topic, put me on ignore, or just go fuck yourself - all are fine with me.

If the above sites that you mention are doing well then maybe more paysites that are struggling should adopt to what they are doing.

I know production is not free but at the rate the adult biz is going there wont be much production left. Maybe the whole adult biz has been way over priced for a long time and surfers are not prepared to pay the prices that we want them to pay. Could it be that an overpriced and oversaturated product will eventualy lose its value and the prices just have to drop both in production and the end user product.

lots of people are hurting right now :(

Pay per minute is very expensive to setup, most programs have never made enough income to setup ppm servers, let alone afford to convert to drm and host it all too.

With that, a very very high percentage of ppm model sites have failed, at a very expensive cost.

Paysites/programs "seem" to be failing because a huge rush of them opening in the last 4 years, and the majority of people running them sucked them dry or didn't know wtf they were doing anyway.

I myself have purchased 2 programs and 3 standalone sites, in the last 4 years. Then turned around and sold it all myself. Everything I ever picked up was dieing, way before tubes came around.

Several, really lots.. of paysites and several programs are still kicking it, growing like mad, changing and moving forward.

They understand the adult webmaster bubble got smaller, not the traffic bubble.

Nail on the head.

You have been in the adult biz a lot longer than what I have so you know a lot more of what goes on and what is going wrong with paysites but what I said above is just how I see things in the adult biz. I wasent actually on about the pay per view model I was kinda getting at paysites selling memberships but like two day memberships for a couple of bucks instead of the 30 day memberships. I also still think that the more a paysite can be interactive the better it will do.

Not a fake nick. Just baffled by your ridiculous comparisons right from the first one between paying for

WATCHING A MOVIE ON A BIG SCREEN IN A THEATRE AS SOON AS IT'S RELEASED, AS A SOCIAL OUTING WITH FRIENDS vs. getting a torrent that someone recorded with a fucking handycam

to

Paying for porn vs. getting it for free off a torrent with the same quality.

:uhoh

Or your statement about piracy not being new... are you fucking kidding me? Piracy used to be the UNDERGROUND of the internet, unknown to most, difficult to find and use for the average computer user. I remember this kid that used to sell pirated software on CDs in highschool and the clowns that he would sell stuff to wouldn't even be able to figure out how to unrar the archives and burn an ISO :1orglaugh . Now - New age piracy (torrent/tube sites) rank about 10x higher and get 10-100x more traffic than most mainstream/legit sites, and are readily findable on google - and any clown that has had a computer for a couple of years doesn't have any problem configuring his pirated material.

People that pirate would never buy anyway???? Another ridiculous fucking statement... I'd say there are 3 most likely scenarios of a porn surfer - 1. has pirated, and will always pirate (never buy) - 2. used to buy, but figured out how to satisfy his needs without buying - 3. doesn't know how to get pirated stuff, or just prefers to buy.

We are in a time where the second scenario is a LOT larger than when your statement would have held some ground in the 90s.

and casinos are going bankrupt.. the world is coming to an end

True that.

There is a diff with casinos people only spend what they want to spend unless they are addicted to gambling. :winkwink:

Still a fake nick..

Yeah, it's different.. It's a movie, it's clean, it's sound is good. But people that will pirate, will still pirate it. And related to this topic - the movie is worth the $40 to the theater, and $20 for the dvd. The porno DVD being $40 too, is why they are hurting, even why most movies are hurting, both are over priced.

Piracy, isn't hurting either and that was the point.

Piracy is still as underground today as it was 10 years ago. 10 years ago I got a newsgroup account with my dial up account that exposed me to piracy. From here I moved into IRC, never using it before but quickly figured it out. Then password sites, which also almost killed our industry (haha)..

So we are both pirates, welcome to the group. Do you still buy software, movies, music? I have never purchased porn so I can't relate on that end.

I didn't say people never buy anyway, read again. Oh and don't forget about people that will continue to buy porn, even after they found piracy. Or people that think piracy is illegal and won't do it, just like some won't download music because they are scared of the mpaa. Minor few, but enough.

Well apart form it's shittier and less artists get promotion than ever I need to do a bit of research

So if I will try to find any logic at all:

Here we are in 2008, say I'll take a million of guys with a broadband that are straight, gay, bi, weird but not asexual and they just NEED porn, cause, as we know ourselves sex and its visuals is kind of in demand by every healthy male. I don't care if they hack in Korea, Australia, States or Belarus.

You have all those great tools all the great sites with asses bigger than your screen, billing that will charge your credit card before you even pull it out, you can bill more people than ever worldwide, geo filter traffic, trade it all around the place with other marketers, all this shit and all this perks to get the most out of the business.

Instead of trying to take advantage of that you just put up 25 000 full length scenes that are ripped off and playable by any broadband pc, burn tons of bandwith and send one half of the guys over there to get every 50 000 visitor not only to do his free "branding" and send all his mates links for free porn but also to pay for something?

Where is the logic behind this?

As far as I definitely agree greed is a big motor in this and there will be always a lot of screwing going on once it will be allowed and tolerated, I can't see the ingenious logic of "branding" behind it, I can't see any logic at all, just greed.

Logic is... It will happen either way, we can't stop it, we can't even slow it down, we can't sue to stop it, it's here and it will always be here. So now what?

Since we are talking about our business being hurt by piracy, otherwise what's the point of talking about it? Anyway, our industry has and does WAY more things to kill it, than piracy ever will.

We hit parties, shows, events, and promote programs that have fucked this industry over every way possible. I can't even list all the ways, it's so extreme.

Piracy, pfft. That's my logic.

Well I have to agree that, after all, without being financed by certain sponsor programs itself all those illegal tube sites wouldn't even exist anymore.

I just meant to adress that I really don't see any value in branding the product by a free giveaway to a mass audience and get one sale out of 100 000 satisfied views instead of just teasing them with it and get 1 sale per 1000 views.

I don't care if millions are beating off to it and like it, we're in it for money.