What happened to mainstream is whats happening to adult online... WATCH this video!
 

We used to charge $49.95 for monthly membership....
Then $39.95.....
Then $29.95.....
Then $19.95.....
Then $9.95......
Guess what price is next....

Thats why membership based sites must offer more content, better quality and better delivery technology.....

watch this video : http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free

business principles dont change.

There's sites charging $9.95/month?
WG

brazzersnetwork has $9.95/month specials a few days a week i think?

yes lots.... how about video box for one....

Free is looking behind us

Videobox charges 9.99 for basic membership which only allows the member to download the movies at the lowest quality encoding - very good marketing - i am sure they get the majority of their 9.99 members to upgrade

Still 9.95 for about the same quality that most membership site have out there and they are charging $19.95 or even $29.95...about the same quality....

With so many options for the surfer not to pay, giving him what he wants, at a price he will pay and a length of membership he needs is the only way forward.

You have to think long term if you want to be long term.

very nice article and video... my last bump of the day for a nice thread :)

thanks ! :thumbsup it is an important article and video for everyone to watch....

spacash has a dozen or so 9 dollar porn sites

You are all worked up over a 6 month old video?

I just finished his book "The Long Tail" actually, and while he has alot of great points about the digital economy as a whole, not all of those things he talks about are transferable to the adult market.

For instance, product placement for generating revenue. Or a model where everything is free and supported by advertising (google for instance)

I don't see that working in the adult market in the near future because who is going to pay for advertising in adult space except for people selling the same content you're giving away for free? (yes cams, toys and dating are the exception....but I don't think they're going to bring in enough revenue to support content production 100%)
I know someone is going to come throw tube sites in my face here....but we are talking about legal content distribution here, where the content is given away for free by the creator/owner. Not a model where content is stolen from the owner to be given away to someone else.

While the market is definitely changing, I don't think adult and mainstream are going to follow the same paths.

Didnt they try the everything is free, ads will pay for all model in mainstream already and it pretty much failed?

T/MGP's and tube sites don't fall into these categories?

Some late night spam. I wrote an article a bit back on free marketing and adult.

Freemium Marketing: ?Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc, then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base.?

In short, Freemium is when you give away something for free, normally the main product. Then offer some type of up sell or expanded product at a premium price. Free + Premium, simple as that.

A direct and probably crazy method of this would be to open a Paysite Members Area to the world, no access restrictions, totally free for all visitors. The visitor can then be up sold on other site features, like broadband movies, extra plugins content, whatever extra features that can be sold at a premium price.

Another example of a type of Freemium Marketing would be myfreepaysite.com. This is a monstrous free subscription site, which really doesn?t contain a free front end but the backend subscription is totally free. Free members are given a great deal of real free content but with this includes a massive amount of up sell content and advertisements to just about every major adult product in the business.

Some mainstream companies that following a stronger Freemium Model would include di.fm (love it), Skype, Yahoo Music (great service), Flickr LiveJournal, Trillian, Linux (use it), and way more than I?m going to list.

This is pretty much how the entire Free Porn traffic base works. From Piracy, Members, and Webmaster Promo Content, all aspects of our Industry have flooded the Internet with millions of free pictures and free movies. This has created a massive base of free porn seeking surfers, that every day seek out freebies and get up sold to the promoted site or related products at a rather steep premium price.

The Adult Industry is a global Freemium Market.

Yep, that business model brought about the dot com collapse (or what very much part of the problem) back in the late 90's early 2000's) many sites just gave away everything then found out they couldn't get enough advertising to support the cost of running the site.

That said, the model still works, but I agree with Snake Doctor that it isn't really transferable to adult because we don't have an endless pool of potential advertisers. The primary source of income from porn is selling more porn.

Worked up? 6 month old video....my frien , thats still today!

I guess some of us are really upto the minute.....excuuuse me winkwink:

Very nice brotha....please spam more often :thumbsup:winkwink::1orglaugh. ...we need more great info like this...food for thought!!!

good stuff!

interesting watch

Journalism attracts mediocre individuals that could not find employment elsewhere.

Hahah yeah, that's why Google is doing so bad.
;)

nice read indeed!

:2 cents:

That video is kind of misleading because every business he mentioned has a part that people pay to use..

It's not misleading - it's exactly what the point is about. You offer something for free, anything to bring in the traffic, then upsell them anyway you wish.

Will do and thanks!

:thumbsup

This 'business model' is never going to translate to REAL business. Especially where it takes fresh content... music, movies, porn, to make money.

Why people keep posting this drivel is asinine. You really need to go take a marketing class, or even business or economics 101. If you think you can make money doing 'free' and turn a profit then you are a complete idiot.

It takes money to make money.

As someone else said, I am not talking about free, as in stealing other people's content, reselling it, and calling that a business model. I am talking about legally, and financially running a fucking business.

our biz model is at $19.99 for full access and we deliver great content, great quality and the best delivery of technology. Thanks Raffi, we get great content from u guys.

The idea of fresh content, is the upsell. We give away our fresh content in sections. So we give away free content, on free sites, to get them to upsell to fresh content that wasn't given out.

The idea of free marketing to upsell something has proven itself to work time and time again. It just don't work on every product, just like every porn site doesn't work just because it's free.

Not exactly.

They tried the "give stuff away for free to build up traffic numbers and we'll figure out how to make money off of it later" model.
They also tried that when overhead was very expensive. Overhead like storage, bandwidth, and processing.

Now the price bandwidth, storage, and processing are dropping like a stone....so it allows different kinds of business models to work.

For instance a free email service that charges for value added features like more storage or something like that.
A free blog hosting service that charges a nominal fee to have the ads removed.

The future in mainstream seems to be having a free version and a paid version of your service, whatever your service or product is. (This is at least according to the editor of Wired magazine, Chris Anderson)

Unfortunately I don't see this having a big future in adult because once the end user blows his load, his demand for our product drops to zero, at least for that day, or that few hours, or whatever.

Giving away samples of our product to entice surfers to buy the full version has been a staple of our business for a long time....but if we give too much away then the end user has no need for the full version and we don't make any money.
Since there isn't an advertising model that can support our overhead (which for us, is more than bandwidth, storage, and processing....we have to pay the talent, the shooters, etc) I don't see us following in mainstream's footsteps on this particular issue.

Interesting follow up toots.
:2 cents:

Cheaper sites have never sold any better for me than higher priced sites.

So I don't know if it matters that much.

I am gonna go and call that video false information.

the problem with everything free and advertising paying is that in adult, the buck will have stop at some point or people wont be able to afford to advertise

Are you assuming it failed because of the handful of moron dot com companies that went bust? There really wasn't that many companies that went bust in the 'dot com crash', it was blown far out of proportion by the media ... and the day traders!

The free content/paid advertising model is working all over the internet - in adult AND mainstream.

It's easy to make the mistake of thinking "I don't know how to make that business model work therefore its going to fail for anyone who tries it" ... or "That business model messes with mine therefore it is bad business" ... but if someone wants to put a tgp online, pay for the content and bandwidth, build relationships with sponsors to buy ad space, move into a mainstream model as they ruined the adult one and then sell out - good luck to them!

This thread is funny "What happened in mainstream is happening to adult online". Adult has already had a few crashes a long time before mainstream did ... its not just happening in adult now, it happened a long time ago and this is just another phase of the same evolution ... or a new phase. Whichever. Its not the first time and it won't be the last!

"the problem with everything free and advertising paying is that in adult, the buck will have stop at some point or people wont be able to afford to advertise"

Just like that stupid google business model where people will end up having to pay more than a dollar for a single click? Oh wait ... that's now and google are making a fortune off every ma & pa site who don't realize that a click isn't worth a dollar or more!!!! If you remember what the Internet was like before Google & YouTube existed, you'd keep your mind open and be ready for change ... none of us know what's coming next.

"Unfortunately I don't see this having a big future in adult because once the end user blows his load, his demand for our product drops to zero, at least for that day, or that few hours, or whatever."

Since when has the surfer been the customer of the adult industry?! The entire adult industry business model is based on webmasters (affiliates) being the customer ... its only been the last year or 2 when affiliate programs have started cutting out the mostly unnecessary middle man and looking at the surfer as their customer. But is it really the case yet that the surfer is the customer of the adult business?

youtube has 100 million views and cant make a profit all free, divx's site all free amazing free content closed couldnt make money. porn made lots and lots of money in video sales and the only thing you had to make your choice was either the box cover or the occasional trailer you saw on another movie you bought or rented.

Yes good observation but the fact that we have been delivering adult video contenr for over 15 years ( 150 in our internet years :-) online has made it more available, variety and free already....so yes business principles are there but the WAY to do business has changed......and more self made producers i almost forgot to mention...

great video. Thanks!

This is one of the problems. Thousands of people have content, OK so a lot of them don't have a lot. So let's say 100 people have legal content and lots of it. So why aren't they sticking up legal tube sites and living off the advertising?

Because we built a business where most of us need to spend $15 to get a guy to spend $30. Figures to illustrate a point. A few have traffic and found it did work and they are making it tough for the rest of us. Few of the sites without traffic are finding all they have to do is put up free porn to get traffic.

Maybe soon Tubes will be doing traffic trading to get traffic.

There are many reasons this is not working and most of the examples given are like comparing chalk and cheese. Because a sales method works selling chalk does not mean it will work selling cheese.

raffi, great video, i passed it around the office

:winkwink: sounds good!

Most to the point post in the entire thread.