My prediction about the pay site business

[EscortBiz]

First off I own many pay sites and promote many others, I deal with a huge amount of quality traffic and between my own network of sites and the tons of sites I market its easy for me to spot trends etc.

In the past few weeks ive seen more posts about ?Recent signup drops? and more topics related to that than ive seen in a long time, expecting sponsors to chime in and say yes ?We have seen a drop? is silly simply because what program would want to admit to that.

Instead the replies from sponsors are usually ?We have been doing above average this past month? and from affiliates its usually ?sales are down big time you can thank the torrent and tube sites for this?.

When you see a drop in sales in any business the best thing to do is a) ask yourself what EXACTLY has changed and b) figure out how to work around that, get more creative etc.

So what has really changed? Well yes we know tube sites and torrent sites are everywhere but how about hard drive size? Not too long ago a computer that had a 20gig hard drive was great now any standard PC comes with a 200gig HD +, that means that consumers no longer have to delete anything off their drive and they can simply stock pile massive amounts of porn on their PC, and they sure as hell do ask any computer repair shop owner, imagine if a virus hits the net that wipes people wmv and mpg files off their HD clearing their porn stash, I think billing servers will crash that day.

What we also fail to realize is that there was a huge rapid change from most people using dialup to most people now having high speed connections, not to long ago we where all encoding videos for 56k modem members. And there is no doubt that faster connections = surfers being able to download your members area 100x quicker and it will have a effect on signups and rebills big time.

So the huge increase of consumers with high speed internet + huge hard drives is most likely more responsible for a sales drop then the tube and torrent site issue combined.

As much as I hate finding my stuff on free sites the fact is the tube sites that feature short promo clips and torrent site that only have parts of a movie with a watermark of a site on it send tons of signups daily, and those who run sites simply need guys like removeyourcontent.com etc to scan the web for full movie files and remove as much stolen stuff as possible, yes most tube sites will remove your movies with a simple letter to them.

As far as torrent / piracy sites go, I predict (and yes its hard to imagine this happening) that within 18-24 months extreme laws will be passed to stop this, well your thinking who the heck cares about people stealing porn, well laws wont be passed because of this industry but rather because the music industry and movie industry are hurting to a point where we will see major studios and record labels go bankrupt pretty soon thanks to those sites most studios already announced serious production cut backs for 2009.

Many in this business are convinced that as long as you have a 2257 link on your site you can simply screw the surfer with hidden and complex cross-sells etc. the prisons are full of those people who seriously and honestly didn?t notice that their billing practice will land them a nice long prison sentence, the sad part is that the average affiliate has no clue whats going on but should the govt. decide to turn this into a RICO case whereas the affiliates where part of a conspiracy to defraud millions of consumers we will see truckloads of people sent off to prison (yes even if obama wins).

Everyday crews of people get together to come up with a scheme similar to what others have already done and they convince each other that the only reason the others got caught is because of this or that and how their plan is better in some cases they convince each other that the way they are doing it is 100% legit and sure enough it does not take long before they get caught as well, although this applies to a select few in this business im hoping this wakes certain people up.

In the coming months more pay sites will realize that securing their content will be a must, may it be DRM or another method.

Allowing right click save as was good when hard drives where small and internet connections where slow and torrent and file sharing wasn?t as common as sliced bread.

Tons of pay sites will be gone within the next 12 months, by gone I don?t mean their page wont load, they simply will stop updating as many have already done.

In addition more and more people are losing their credit cards here is a article that was written today about the seriousness of the upcoming credit card crisis, more alternative payments are def. needed.

http://finance.yahoo.com/loans/artic...s-Credit-Cards

Its better to face reality now and make changes accordingly, people will continue to spend billions on porn a year its just a matter of keeping up with times and being ok with making drastic changes on how you do business.

Post your thoughts.

[dropped9]

Wow im going to have to read that a second time...

Maybe an alternattive form of porn is needed. For instance, live cam shows. Or live shows in general.

[Zuzana Designs]

Very good post .. It is good to hear it from the mouth of a sponsor that runs paysites what they think is going on .. I think that this industry will always be changeing.. so you have to adapt to these changes .. don't adapt and fall behind and lose money ..

[Antonio]

bigger hard drives and faster connection speeds cause the drop in sales????

I think it's the global warming

[sweetcuties]

I read your post really quick and will read it a second time when I get back... nice tho

[EscortBiz]

Originally Posted by Antonio

bigger hard drives and faster connection speeds cause the drop in sales????

I think it's the global warming

Seriously whats so hard to understand? If someone has 5000 porn files on their HD they are not as quick to join a site as if they would have nothing or way less?

If you have a DVD collection at home of 2000 movies you are not going to rent movies or buy them as often?

[NinjaSteve]

Towards the end of your post, yeah people might be losing their credit cards, but all banks issue Visa or MC debit cards which work the same. If a person has a credit card, most likely they'll have one of these too. It doesn't mean sales will be the same, but it might mean the customer thinks a little more before pulling out the plastic.

[Joe BrainCash]

Good post! Some interesting thoughts. I think there's more to the global issue than what's stated but you couldn't write a complete book on here.

At least, it should be a good base to start a discussion.

Your predictions for torrents I'm afraid, is unlikely to happen so fast and knowing most of the biggest pirates live in countries where laws would save them to a long stay in jail... But at least you brought some deep business thoughts to GFY, so kudos to you!

[mona]

Just like every industry on the face of the planet, adult online is changing with the times. Those that don't want to change will perish, whereas those entrepreneurial spirits that identify opportunities and monetize on them will succeed.

Sex sells and the Internet isn't going anywhere, so it's a little apocalyptic to say that "porn is dead" (imho).

It's obvious that surfers have access to "free porn" and that there is a credit crunch...Work around it!

Instead of selling only paysite memberships, broaden the product gamut.

There was a post the other day about Clips4Sale.com (take home point being that "surfers are more than willing to shell out 20 bucks, or more, for one downloadable video"). So, a lot of companies are beginning to integrate VOD platforms into their paysite models. One of Klixxx October feature articles is about just that (Let me know if you want to receive that edition!)! Even though surfers may spend more per month on VOD, their psychological makeup facilitates the purchase of 5 minutes, 10 times per month, as opposed to buying the monthly membership, since they will consume the 5 minutes immediately. With a monthly membership, it may translate as "less valuable" since every minute they're not on it feels like "wasted money".

Excerpt: "Operating a hybrid Monthly/VOD paysite extends far beyond the limits of a single site tour. As contest is packed individually for VOD offerings it also becomes easier to sort and package it for specific niches or to offer it on clips-for-sale sites that aggregate scenes from many sites and owners into a single one stop shop for consumers. From a marketing perspective, VOD is a great tool not only for upsells, but for cross sells, exit traffic, exits on join forms, and even as a loyalty product for membership cancellations. The possibilities and approaches to utilize this powerful tool to the benefit of your bottom line are literally endless."

Cam sites are great too since it also appeals to "surfer psychology"...The rebills are great and you can't duplicate the content!

[Jens Van Assterdam]

Great read, hard drives and connections might be a factor but not the main reason.

Torrents.. they have been here for quite some time now..

Tubes.. who do you think uploads the content for the so called "illegal tubes" ? Its the sponsor himself in 99% of the case.. and why does he upload it? Uhhh ohhh ok!

The current paysite model is just an outdated practice of internet commerce and does not meet the customers demand anywhere at all anymore.

Every other industry is trying to adept to the current internet trends, but the majority of adult is not.

Take a look at the big fat TGP networks, that exist for ages and take a look at what most of them are doing. Adopting.. developing... actually working.

Throwing another site called mycockisroundandbrownandbiginyoursmalldaughter.com is just not enough (anymore).

[Peter Romero]

Encode only in High Definition and full scenes.

Too long and hard to download so it increases rebills and discourages filesharing.

I'm rebilling like crazy and thinking about going to DRM.

Thanks for the advice.

[georgiaasphalt]

You make some valid arguments, but let me play devil's advocate. Don't you think with storage being so inexpensive people would be inclined to want even more porn now that they don't have to worry about filling up their hard drive? Now people can go out and buy 300GB portable for $150 and dump all their porn on that.

This same theory would apply to cheaper access to broadband connections. Faster=get more. This, to me, would impact smaller sites more than larger sites. As you said, people can rip through a site in hours. Not so good for a small site. Their only recourse is to produce MORE content to build up their content as fast as possible. Problem is, it takes money to do that. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

On the flip side, it's now easier too gather up free porn. With dial-up people may have decided to join a site simply because it was easier and faster to get their porn rather than dealing with pop-up windows, blind links, viruses, etc.

It's interesting you don't mention anything about the poor economy. For over a year now things have gotten worse and worse and there's no sure sign things will turn around in the near future. I do believe porn is somewhat insulated from the economy, but I believe the economy has finally caught up.

You talk about protecting your content better. It's a logical argument, but at the same time for every protection scheme, a crack is going to come along. Remember when webmasters used DRM and how resistant member's were to accepting it? Having DRM is a strike against you. Even disabling right click, or now using a variation of the flash simple viewer pisses members off (this is actually an annoyance, not any kind of serious prevention method). People will simply go elsewhere rather than deal with it. It sux, but that's what happens.

And in order for DRM or any other kind of security goes, it needs to be easy to implement, acceptable to the users, and most importantly be adopted by the majority of webmasters. Unfortunately....fat chance of that perfect storm happening.

By no means am I disagreeing that webmasters need to adapt and overcome these challenges to stay profitable. Things are changing and if you don't change with them you're gonna get left behind.

Let me throw a radical idea out there. Yeah, if enough people don't get on board it won't be a viable solution and it's certainly nothing new. But to me, the subscription model is flawed. What other business models allows people to have unlimited access to content for $25/mo? Can you imagine if restaurants and bars did this? Pay $25 for all you can drink/eat? As a consumer I'd say "hell yeah!", but as a business owner I'd say "hell no!". What about a grocery store? An electronics store? A clothing store? Movie theaters?

Instead of offering an all you can buffet 24/7, why not make people pay as they go? Make people pay for individual galleries/videos or a combination? Perhaps have nominal monthly fee which gives you limited access and to get any more you have to pay more. To help people stay around, have a reward program where each month they get access to more.

YIKES! HERESY!!!!

I know. surfers will scream bloody murder. The few sites that actually do this, Mystique Magazine, for example, deal with this. Read a review of Mystique and virtually all of them bitch about how expensive it can get.

But look at what's going on with the music industry. Their subscription model only allows for streaming music. If you want to take it with you you gotta pay for it. If you delete it. Too bad. You gotta buy it again.

When the music industry finally (and reluctantly) embraced an online delivery method the public whined and complained since they were spoiled by Napster. Now, a few years later all that bitching has largely subsided. The general public has come to terms with it. What helped make it work, is that all the major labels were on board.

I realize there's always going to be people who will never be happy and if not handled correctly could increase the amount of illegal sharing. But as time goes on, that will level off or actually decrease as it gets harder and harder. No matter what, illegal sharing is going to happen.

Now that I've opened that can of worms, let the debate begin! I'm sure a major argument would be that there's no way the majority of major players in the porn industry would embrace this...like someone said in a thread about forming a union..it's like herding cats ( - love that).

I'm not suggesting this happens all at once, but over time. Phase it in. Keep the subscription model, but make the higher quality content only available for an extra fee. Say photos over 1024 and HD videos would be extra.

Over time as more and more new users come online they would never know the difference. That is until they talk to an old timer who says "man, I remember the days when I could get all the porn I wanted for a low monthly price". Than that newbie would say "I bet you walked to school in the snow uphill both ways, pooped in a shack, and sent smoke signals to your friends".

Anyway..I know it's out there (call me crazy) and doesn't even begin to address tube sites and all the free porn already out there....but...it's food for thought.

[thehornydawg]

I agree the monthly subscription model is flawed. Why pay $30 a month, when you can join a site for 3 days, download all of it's content and jack off to it for months.

I believe that the future will lean towards pay per view and live shows -live interaction never goes out of style, it's what made the internet in the first place...!

[sortie]

Originally Posted by EscortBiz

Seriously whats so hard to understand? If someone has 5000 porn files on their HD they are not as quick to join a site as if they would have nothing or way less?

If you have a DVD collection at home of 2000 movies you are not going to rent movies or buy them as often?

You are 100% correct on the dial-up hard drive issue.

I was unable to get high speed connection for years(stupid city rules) and when I finally got on
high speed I discovered the "new way" that people surf.

My immediate thought was "No wonder rebills are down".

With dial-up, the rebill date would come before the surfer could even download
half of the members area.

It affected tgp conversions also because the surfer spent less time in the gallery
looking at the banners.

[iheartbucks]

I think these arguments, a nice read and I agree with lots of the points made in the original post as well as the counter arguments. It will definitely be interesting to see how this industry changes, lots of the changes have been going on in the past year or so.

[Phoenix]

we should strive as much as possible not to let anyone download anything.

it doesnt make sense....however it is happening..cant put the genie back in the bottle

i like the idea of a virus that deletes all of people porn on their hd's
that is a really good idea

someone run with that

[Paul Markham]

There is one solution and only one solution to the present drop in sales, and yes I have the balls and honesty to say we've had a drop in joins. The majority of sponsors telling you they are doing the same of better are mostly lying. And you will find out when you sign up and send traffic. Content production and sales have slumped. They are spending money on sending traffic.

So back to the solution. It's one that we already knows works but we mistook the reason. Bangbus did a great job, it was unique for the time on the Internet or maybe had no competition. It was expensive to shoot and needed setting up which most companies at the time could not afford or could not be bothered to do. And it sold. The problem was people said it was selling because it was exclusive and proceeded to produce or promote exclusive content that was the same as every other exclusive site in the niche.

This is one example of a few sites and there is the problem, there are too few sites that stand out and are worth switching from a Tube site to a paysite for.

So the solution is simple. Sponsors need to sit down and think of the members and then surfers and then affiliates. They need to concentrate on why a guy who buys porn should buy from then and not think about getting 1,000 so one signs up. Don't flame me on the numbers you know what I mean.

They need to think about why a member should stay being a member on their site. And giving them another video of another blond doing exactly the same as the other 100 blonds on the sites are doing is not reason enough. It gets boring after a while. Unless the scene is very good, different and the blond giving her all. Girls used to walk off a set exhausted, now they walk off and rush into the next scene.

They need to create a site that concentrates on a theme that's not ordinary, dull and boring AND on 10,000 other sites. This takes talent, skills and porn knowledge. It is a bit harder than buying a HD camera. Which is a pointless solution when everyone does it. It's the content of the scene that keeps the guy hard, not the clarity of it.

As for the download issue, put Throttlebox on your server.

As for the size of hard drives, 1,000 scenes that are all the same, all boring and all not worth watching are not going to remain on the server for long.

For many members the monthly subscription is wrong. But we don't have it for the affiliates so we can pay them what they need. Who said $5 porn was a stupid idea, the members or the affiliates?

Bottom line is sponsors and affiliates are no longer in control of sign ups. The surfers who will buy porn are. And unless you change that you're pissing into the wind.

Now tell me traffic is king and you can sell any crap porn with traffic.

[BV]

Originally Posted by EscortBiz

First off I own many pay sites and promote many others, I deal with a huge amount of quality traffic and between my own network of sites and the tons of sites I market its easy for me to spot trends etc.

In the past few weeks ive seen more posts about ?Recent signup drops? and more topics related to that than ive seen in a long time, expecting sponsors to chime in and say yes ?We have seen a drop? is silly simply because what program would want to admit to that.

Instead the replies from sponsors are usually ?We have been doing above average this past month? and from affiliates its usually ?sales are down big time you can thank the torrent and tube sites for this?.

When you see a drop in sales in any business the best thing to do is a) ask yourself what EXACTLY has changed and b) figure out how to work around that, get more creative etc.

So what has really changed? Well yes we know tube sites and torrent sites are everywhere but how about hard drive size? Not too long ago a computer that had a 20gig hard drive was great now any standard PC comes with a 200gig HD +, that means that consumers no longer have to delete anything off their drive and they can simply stock pile massive amounts of porn on their PC, and they sure as hell do ask any computer repair shop owner, imagine if a virus hits the net that wipes people wmv and mpg files off their HD clearing their porn stash, I think billing servers will crash that day.

What we also fail to realize is that there was a huge rapid change from most people using dialup to most people now having high speed connections, not to long ago we where all encoding videos for 56k modem members. And there is no doubt that faster connections = surfers being able to download your members area 100x quicker and it will have a effect on signups and rebills big time.

So the huge increase of consumers with high speed internet + huge hard drives is most likely more responsible for a sales drop then the tube and torrent site issue combined.

As much as I hate finding my stuff on free sites the fact is the tube sites that feature short promo clips and torrent site that only have parts of a movie with a watermark of a site on it send tons of signups daily, and those who run sites simply need guys like removeyourcontent.com etc to scan the web for full movie files and remove as much stolen stuff as possible, yes most tube sites will remove your movies with a simple letter to them.

As far as torrent / piracy sites go, I predict (and yes its hard to imagine this happening) that within 18-24 months extreme laws will be passed to stop this, well your thinking who the heck cares about people stealing porn, well laws wont be passed because of this industry but rather because the music industry and movie industry are hurting to a point where we will see major studios and record labels go bankrupt pretty soon thanks to those sites most studios already announced serious production cut backs for 2009.

Many in this business are convinced that as long as you have a 2257 link on your site you can simply screw the surfer with hidden and complex cross-sells etc. the prisons are full of those people who seriously and honestly didn?t notice that their billing practice will land them a nice long prison sentence, the sad part is that the average affiliate has no clue whats going on but should the govt. decide to turn this into a RICO case whereas the affiliates where part of a conspiracy to defraud millions of consumers we will see truckloads of people sent off to prison (yes even if obama wins).

Everyday crews of people get together to come up with a scheme similar to what others have already done and they convince each other that the only reason the others got caught is because of this or that and how their plan is better in some cases they convince each other that the way they are doing it is 100% legit and sure enough it does not take long before they get caught as well, although this applies to a select few in this business im hoping this wakes certain people up.

In the coming months more pay sites will realize that securing their content will be a must, may it be DRM or another method.

Allowing right click save as was good when hard drives where small and internet connections where slow and torrent and file sharing wasn?t as common as sliced bread.

Tons of pay sites will be gone within the next 12 months, by gone I don?t mean their page wont load, they simply will stop updating as many have already done.

In addition more and more people are losing their credit cards here is a article that was written today about the seriousness of the upcoming credit card crisis, more alternative payments are def. needed.

http://finance.yahoo.com/loans/artic...s-Credit-Cards

Its better to face reality now and make changes accordingly, people will continue to spend billions on porn a year its just a matter of keeping up with times and being ok with making drastic changes on how you do business.

Post your thoughts.

I don't have time to fully comment right now, I will later this evening.
I will tell you now though that you are way off base on some of your conjectures.

[Antonio]

Originally Posted by EscortBiz

Seriously whats so hard to understand? If someone has 5000 porn files on their HD they are not as quick to join a site as if they would have nothing or way less?

If you have a DVD collection at home of 2000 movies you are not going to rent movies or buy them as often?

I'm not saying you're worng but bigger hard drives and faster coonections are far from being the main culprits. It's more or less like this:

Reaons for fucked up sales:

1. Bad economy = less disposable income
2. Easier access to free porn (tubes)
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
77. Bigger hard drives and faster connections


Why is the bad economy No1???


Well, this is what they teach at the universities:

You have two gas stations - one selling at $2.40 per galon and 1 or 2 cars filling at most, and the other one selling at $2.10 per galon with 20 cars waiting in line. At gas station No2 you'll almost never see docotrs, lawyers, and other highly paid professionals.

Why is that? Well, they make enough money and value their time, instead of saving say 10 bucks per tank they'd rahter spend tiome with the family, watch tv, play golf etc

It was the same before the economy downfall with the Americans - at least some of them woul'd rather spend say $40 bucks on a porn site membership instead of spending time on (just an example) searching for torrents, getting some bad downloads, then searching again, going to forums and so on... Well, with less money in their pockets the Amerricans will have to start spending less (that's like the doctors getting far less money and now waiting in line for petrol to save a buck or two)

Which brings us to reason No2 - TUBES!

Tubes in fact don't do anything new - free porn has been out there for years, tubes simply make it MUCH EASIER to find it. Before tubes - you have to know what torrents are, go look for them, search, go trought some bda sites, some fo them with viruses and what not, woth tubes - you go to TubeSite.com, do a search, click and watch - that's it!


On the other hand I'm a bit optimistic - nothing scares people more than the unknown, and by the end of next month (or the end of this one) the stock exchanges should hit the bottom and things should start getting back to normal, things will never be the same, but that fear factor of the unknown should be gone, and people would say - "well, I'm fucked, but it could've been much worse", and start spening some money again, not as much as before, but right now they're scared shitless and aren't spending a dime!

My 2c

[AaronM]

Originally Posted by Paul Markham

......... Content production and sales have slumped. They are spending money on sending traffic.

........Now tell me traffic is king and you can sell any crap porn with traffic.

hmmmmmm.

[EscortBiz]

Originally Posted by georgiaasphalt

You talk about protecting your content better. It's a logical argument, but at the same time for every protection scheme, a crack is going to come along. Remember when webmasters used DRM and how resistant member's were to accepting it? Having DRM is a strike against you. Even disabling right click, or now using a variation of the flash simple viewer pisses members off (this is actually an annoyance, not any kind of serious prevention method). People will simply go elsewhere rather than deal with it. It sux, but that's what happens.

And in order for DRM or any other kind of security goes, it needs to be easy to implement, acceptable to the users, and most importantly be adopted by the majority of webmasters. Unfortunately....fat chance of that perfect storm happening.

Let me throw a radical idea out there. Yeah, if enough people don't get on board it won't be a viable solution and it's certainly nothing new. But to me, the subscription model is flawed. What other business models allows people to have unlimited access to content for $25/mo? Can you imagine if restaurants and bars did this? Pay $25 for all you can drink/eat? As a consumer I'd say "hell yeah!", but as a business owner I'd say "hell no!". What about a grocery store? An electronics store? A clothing store? Movie theaters?

Very good points thruout your post, as far as DRM or content protection goes, well there is always a hack always a site that will show you how to rip it and a site that will feature stolen u/p's.

But you still lock your door at night even thou I can show you a way how I can get in? And walmart still keeps their stores open even thou I can show you how I can steal from them?

Its about making it harder for most to rob you thats what its about.

I agree 100% the subscription model is fucked and we fucked it up, back when I started a members area only had say 20 movies and some filler plugin or just a plugin so that model was ok but now that its all this exclusive stuff its RIDICULOUS.

As far as members bitching, well you show me a product or service that dont have some people bitching about it and ill show you a company that simply has few or no customers.

Before tubes, high speed, torrent, large drives etc things where different but now its time to change with time, and those who wont time will change them and they will kicked out.

[BV]

Originally Posted by Antonio

I'm not saying you're worng but bigger hard drives and faster coonections are far from being the main culprits. It's more or less like this:

Reaons for fucked up sales:

1. Bad economy = less disposable income
2. Easier access to free porn (tubes)
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
77. Bigger hard drives and faster connections


Why is the bad economy No1???


Well, this is what they teach at the universities:

You have two gas stations - one selling at $2.40 per galon and 1 or 2 cars filling at most, and the other one selling at $2.10 per galon with 20 cars waiting in line. At gas station No2 you'll almost never see docotrs, lawyers, and other highly paid professionals.

Why is that? Well, they make enough money and value their time, instead of saving say 10 bucks per tank they'd rahter spend tiome with the family, watch tv, play golf etc

It was the same before the economy downfall with the Americans - at least some of them woul'd rather spend say $40 bucks on a porn site membership instead of spending time on (just an example) searching for torrents, getting some bad downloads, then searching again, going to forums and so on... Well, with less money in their pockets the Amerricans will have to start spending less (that's like the doctors getting far less money and now waiting in line for petrol to save a buck or two)

Which brings us to reason No2 - TUBES!

Tubes in fact don't do anything new - free porn has been out there for years, tubes simply make it MUCH EASIER to find it. Before tubes - you have to know what torrents are, go look for them, search, go trought some bda sites, some fo them with viruses and what not, woth tubes - you go to TubeSite.com, do a search, click and watch - that's it!


On the other hand I'm a bit optimistic - nothing scares people more than the unknown, and by the end of next month (or the end of this one) the stock exchanges should hit the bottom and things should start getting back to normal, things will never be the same, but that fear factor of the unknown should be gone, and people would say - "well, I'm fucked, but it could've been much worse", and start spening some money again, not as much as before, but right now they're scared shitless and aren't spending a dime!

My 2c

this is more along the lines of what i wanted to say,
see ya'll later. gotta go

[tony286]

Originally Posted by Antonio

I'm not saying you're wrong but bigger hard drives and faster connections are far from being the main culprits. It's more or less like this:

Reasons for fucked up sales:

1. Bad economy = less disposable income
2. Easier access to free porn (tubes)
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
77. Bigger hard drives and faster connections


Why is the bad economy No1???


Well, this is what they teach at the universities:

You have two gas stations - one selling at $2.40 per gallon and 1 or 2 cars filling at most, and the other one selling at $2.10 per gallon with 20 cars waiting in line. At gas station No2 you'll almost never see doctors, lawyers, and other highly paid professionals.

Why is that? Well, they make enough money and value their time, instead of saving say 10 bucks per tank they'd rather spend time with the family, watch tv, play golf etc

It was the same before the economy downfall with the Americans - at least some of them would rather spend say $40 bucks on a porn site membership instead of spending time on (just an example) searching for torrents, getting some bad downloads, then searching again, going to forums and so on... Well, with less money in their pockets the Americans will have to start spending less (that's like the doctors getting far less money and now waiting in line for petrol to save a buck or two)

Which brings us to reason No2 - TUBES!

Tubes in fact don't do anything new - free porn has been out there for years, tubes simply make it MUCH EASIER to find it. Before tubes - you have to know what torrents are, go look for them, search, go trought some bda sites, some fo them with viruses and what not, woth tubes - you go to TubeSite.com, do a search, click and watch - that's it!


On the other hand I'm a bit optimistic - nothing scares people more than the unknown, and by the end of next month (or the end of this one) the stock exchanges should hit the bottom and things should start getting back to normal, things will never be the same, but that fear factor of the unknown should be gone, and people would say - "well, I'm fucked, but it could've been much worse", and start spening some money again, not as much as before, but right now they're scared shitless and aren't spending a dime!

My 2c

A very good post. I also think precheck cross sales banging the few customers who want to buy, pushes them to tubes or sites like clips for sale. I think eventually we are all going to have embed our content but if we dont all do it. Then its going to be a serious loss for those who do.
I also think the economy is bad and there are too many options out for someone who doesnt want to pay.
I have also found people who buy clips aren't the same people who buy memberships.The whole idea of making it very cheap to me is silly when you have people paying $18.99 for one clip all day long.

[Stephen]

This is a great thread.

I've been on about the RICO threat for years but many have their heads in the sand on it.

As for sales, "look at our chart, we're way, way UP!!!" is straining credibility to say the least; and there's no one reason why, but an evolving combination of the factors outlined above.

[mynameisjim]

There are alway mixed messages I see in threads like this I have to point out.

People say the economy is in a downturn and people are spending less, yet at the same time people say cams are going to do great. Nobody here actually uses or buys the product they sell, I know that. But you do realize cams cost as much $240/hour, right? That puts it at one of the most expensive forms of entertainment I can think of. Heck, for two hours of cam site viewing you can get a pretty damn good hooker for an hour.

I'm not saying cams will do bad, but what I'm saying is you can't say the economy is hurting paysite sales but not hurting cam sales too.

As for the paysite model not adapting, I think some more PPV options would be very smart. But read the comments on tube sites. People see a girl they like or scene they like and they beg, literally beg for people to post more or post where they can get more. People would be very happy to pay for what they want but they won't because they know if they just wait, it will show up for free.

[Barefootsies]

Definitely a good read.
Thanks for sharing hoss.

[jalami]

Originally Posted by NinjaSteve

Towards the end of your post, yeah people might be losing their credit cards, but all banks issue Visa or MC debit cards which work the same. If a person has a credit card, most likely they'll have one of these too. It doesn't mean sales will be the same, but it might mean the customer thinks a little more before pulling out the plastic.

Just as a heads up -- this is not the case in Canada. Debit cards are not Visa or MC. Canadians without access to credit have no Visa or MC plastic in their wallets, only an Interac debit card that can be used at ATMs or point of sale purchase in Canada.

[FlexxAeon]

We can't point the finger at one thing or a few things as "the problem". Pretty much every thing you can think of as a possible cause has some validity. But what it truly boils down to is that (in general) the online adult industry has not evolved at all. We have been quite sheepish. Following short sighted trends and burning them out all to be damned, while the rest of the internet moves forward.

It's time for "Porn 2.0", so to speak. That capability lies in the internet. Instead of trying to "fix" the current model, how about someone comes up with some new ways to really push the limits of what is possible thanks to the web.

That porn MMO... Red Light Center. Fucking brilliant. Things like that, that seem crazy and you're not sure if it's even gonna work. That's business. I'm sure we all have wild ideas like that (myself included) - it's time to employ them. I said in a blog comment a short time ago, something like "...is it better to spend money investing in the future, or grasping for the past?"

I've already taken some time to speculate on where the future of the skin biz is. And I've started setting up myself accordingly. But I am just a lowly traffic pusher. I need to push that traffic to companies that are pioneering.

[EscortBiz]

lets see in the late 90's memberships where between 25 and 30 bucks a member would get access to some shitty plugins that almost all paysites used and thats about it

fast forward 10 years and membership prices are the same 25-30 bucks and members get stuff thats always freshly shot and always updated and content that pushes everyones limit.

Things will have to change!

[EscortBiz]

can anyone chime in about high speed internet in other countries? is it the standard there or when they start developing they go the modem route first?

[Lykos]

Very good post indeed,and it sounds very logical.
So what do u suggest? That paysites should put off downloading of content?
Just to be streaming or something?

[Peter Romero]

Originally Posted by EscortBiz

lets see in the late 90's memberships where between 25 and 30 bucks a member would get access to some shitty plugins that almost all paysites used and thats about it

fast forward 10 years and membership prices are the same 25-30 bucks and members get stuff thats always freshly shot and always updated and content that pushes everyones limit.

Things will have to change!

The only thing constant is CHANGE

Every day people will throw out: thier old porn...

And look to spank it: to some new stuff.

The important thing is that you hire me to shoot it, and go to www.TushyCash.com to promote it.

Shameless self plug to reflect an honest state of the industry self glorifying spam.

[stevo]

I'm not sure if i fall for the hard drive theory...

Before i got into the industry I had hundreds of gigs of stored porn. Once porn is viewed, it is rarely viewed again. It's like a repeat on television. People save porn because they like to collect and occasionally look at repeat content. But the majority of porn surfers will always be looking for new material and expanding their collections. I have 5 trillion porn movies on my computer. I never want to review that shit, for it's boring after the first time. After 10 years in the porn industry, even the first view is starting to get boring!

[Pleasurepays]

Originally Posted by EscortBiz

If you have a DVD collection at home of 2000 movies you are not going to rent movies or buy them as often?

of course. how did it get to become a collection of 2000 movies to begin with?? why didn't it stop at 5 movies?

because you always want the best/newest stuff... and newer/better stuff is always being produced and people are very willing to keep paying for it.

[digifan]

Good read.

[NaughtyRob]

One reason that I opened www.naughtyzips.com with the new system is that many surfers do not want to buy a monthly membership but will happily buy individual scenes.

[Peter Romero]

Originally Posted by Pleasurepays

of course. how did it get to become a collection of 2000 movies to begin with?? why didn't it stop at 5 movies?

because you always want the best/newest stuff... and newer/better stuff is always being produced and people are very willing to keep paying for it.

Exactly. And new talent too. Can't just recycle the same people all the time.

[Jack Sparrow]

excellent excellent post!

+1o itraders and 50 rep and stuff..

seriously: good read!

[Fetish Videos]

It's the economy..

Just put yourself in the position you were a couple years ago when most people were doing well. You left your recurring gym membership running even though you rarely go. When you went out to eat, you likely went to a nicer place and ordered better wine and food. People were buying gas hogging SUV's before fuel got so expensive. Look into your own daily life and you'll see most of you have cut back on spending, as has the rest of the world.

Tubes and torrents are only going to become more popular while people are scraping for cash. They will die down when people have money again and don't want to waste the time not getting exactly what they want from a niche specific paysite. The big megasites that don't cater to a specific niche will die, at least for affiliates.

I agree that some kind of content protection will become essential to any business expecting to stay afloat. It really is essential now, but the big producers are afraid of losing customers NOW instead of being fearful of losing them forever once the inevitable happens and that customer discovers the world of whole site rips. It's a very difficult catch 22, but like we see in the U.S. credit system, it's only going to get worse the longer it's ignored.

[Rorschach]

Originally Posted by stevo

I'm not sure if i fall for the hard drive theory...

Before i got into the industry I had hundreds of gigs of stored porn. Once porn is viewed, it is rarely viewed again. It's like a repeat on television. People save porn because they like to collect and occasionally look at repeat content. But the majority of porn surfers will always be looking for new material and expanding their collections. I have 5 trillion porn movies on my computer. I never want to review that shit, for it's boring after the first time. After 10 years in the porn industry, even the first view is starting to get boring!

I agree... Porn is like a drug and it has to be kept fresh to be effective. People will and always will fork out a marginal amount of money (eg. a trial or the cost of a PPV scene) to see the rest of a clip that they really, really like. But after they've jerked off to it a few times, it gets stashed on the HD, never to be looked at again.

It seems like the subscription billing model is the problem, not the surfeit of content itself. There's just no point in paying $30 a month for a shitty site where the surfer is only really interested in one or two scenes or models. If you can get enough free members at a VOD site you can make barrels of money, it's not that people aren't buying overall... It's that their purchasing habits have changed.

[mpahlca]

interesting have any of you compared classic free sites, aff and then social networking sites to see the variance in traffic patterns since July? might give you more of an idea than the old BS of the economy etc.

[Pleasurepays]

the simple fact is this.

people have been predicting the end since the day after it started. each new "threat" was "different this time because..."

it was gonna end because you could find anything in news groups
it was gonna end because people abused exit consoles
it was gonna end because people hijacked home pages
it was gonna end because people were spamming
it was gonna end because people were getting fucked with installs, dialers, viruses etc
it was gonna end because visa/mc were going to pull out
it was gonna end because google images offered endless amounts of free porn
it was gonna end because P2P made downloading everything possible
it was gonna end because torrents got popular

.... it can go on forever. in fact, that list of everything that was going to kill this biz since 1996 is so fucking long, it would crash this forum trying to create it

it was always gonna end.

yet, here we are.

the business changes and evolves. it won't "end" - people paying for content won't "end"

often times the same people complaining about how things are going and the direction things are going are the same people (not necessarily escortbiz) who are doing the same shit today as they were doing 5-10 years ago and are in constant shock that its working less and less for them. the guys that got killed in a google update as if ranking well for "free teen porn" was somehow supposed to be guaranteed for life... etc etc etc etc.

[Calico Jack]

There is a lot of logic in this post...very interesting read.

[sweetredhead]

long but a good read

[kmanrox]

many good points here.... and opinions are like assholes, everyone has one... i prefer to keep my projections to the future close to me, but like Paul and someone else touched on, innovation will set you free. Get outside the box folks.

[CyberHustler]

Bookmarked...

[FlexxAeon]

Originally Posted by Fetish Videos

It's the economy..

Just put yourself in the position you were a couple years ago when most people were doing well. You left your recurring gym membership running even though you rarely go. When you went out to eat, you likely went to a nicer place and ordered better wine and food. People were buying gas hogging SUV's before fuel got so expensive. Look into your own daily life and you'll see most of you have cut back on spending, as has the rest of the world.

Tubes and torrents are only going to become more popular while people are scraping for cash. They will die down when people have money again and don't want to waste the time not getting exactly what they want from a niche specific paysite. The big megasites that don't cater to a specific niche will die, at least for affiliates.

I agree that some kind of content protection will become essential to any business expecting to stay afloat. It really is essential now, but the big producers are afraid of losing customers NOW instead of being fearful of losing them forever once the inevitable happens and that customer discovers the world of whole site rips. It's a very difficult catch 22, but like we see in the U.S. credit system, it's only going to get worse the longer it's ignored.

two years ago when the economy was good, there were still complaints of conversions dropping.

this has been going on for years and there are multiple factors including the economy. perhaps the economy just poshed it to "critical mass" but it is far from being the cause.

lowing price points, abundance of freebies (by theft or not), biller scrubbing, the "hard drive" thing as mentioned by EscortBiz, competition w/ social networks... you could go on forever. and they ALL have been adding to the problem for a long time.

[AlienQ - BANNED FOR LIFE]

Paysites are 10 year old business model. Nuff said.

[notime]

Today I just read this:
http://finance.yahoo.com/loans/artic...s-Credit-Cards

But back to the subject;
So I guess it's a mix of several issues (but not limited to);
-download speeds
-business model (they only last a while and not forever)
-big (external) HDs at lowwww prices
-bad experiences in the past with other sites, dialers or fraud, you name it...
-google dependancy
-pricing
-credit availability (like creditcards, income, value of houses)
-quality of content & updates
-currency exchange rates worlwide
-bad economy (or should I say scary..)
-expectations of clients (and affiliates)
-fear of spending and uncertain future
-trust related issues with CC and personal data
-cross sells
-shame !!
-porn overkill
-looks all alike
-other things to do or worry about then porn
-too much free porn on tgps, mgps, tubes, p2p, torrents, tv channels, what ever is on your harddrive...
-secundary competion from other media like low dvd prices, IPTV, mobile, free TV, dvd copying/swapping/lending, etc.
-direct competition; 200 per sign up deals spoil the affiliates in an unrealistic way and therefore adjusting their expectations based on one-time events and not across the board
etc.

Did you know that most people that buy porn feel ashamed about it ? So there is little chance the will mail or call you to say what they DON'T like or want. They rather just pay then contact you to avoid their shame. (My office number is almost alike to another number of a dutch company that rebills for websites, so sometimes when people dial the wrong number the ask about rebill questions or site access and if I ask what they mean exactly..they just hang up, stotter or say; never mind.)

Come on, everybody knows it just takes 1 minute to 15 minutes to get off....so the important thing is what to offer BEFORE the 1 to 15 minutes start because the surfer is horny. After he comes...he doesnt give a shit about any website he just visited. The goal is achieved and he doesn't even remember the domainname he just came on.

But let's take the DVD business for example. They used to retail at 29,95 or 89,- in sexhops. Now most dvds are retailed at 1 buck to 5 up to 10 bucks for the newest ones.
One of the reasons internet was sucessfull was you could watch ALL dvds at ONE price (when dvds were 29 to 89 per dvd), but now you can own them and play them on your PC or TV at a few bucks per title and not have any recurring billing on them...and you can still SELL them to somebody else, trade them, etc.
(i am not saying this is THE problem, but just another possible reason)

When I turn on my TV now I have (next to 3 free porn channels 24/7) also the VOD option since a few weeks (like 80% of Dutch households have) and there is a HUGE amount of the best & newest (and amateur) porn movies to see at 1 to 5 bucks a pop; the best thing is...I can just watch it for 24 or 48 hours in best quality or even in HD and I get credit...meaning the 1 to 5 bucks get added to my monthly bill. No creditcard needed.. who do you trust more: your 50 year old cable provider or this new website you have never been on that asks you CC and personal info ??

There was something I read a few weeks back on the net posted on some big Ducth news site. It said that the porn searches & viewings dropped 23%. The reason was ( and it scared me a bit) that people spend more time on facebook kind of sites. People think that is more real then porn. They wanna meet real people, have real excitement, have realistic fantasies and real sex (hopefully).

Is there something like porn-overkill? I used to think that was not the case or even impossible for many years. I watched SO MANY movies since I was a young guy that it becomes harder and harder (nearly impossible) these days to find porn I actually like. I've seen too much I guess. You always compare what you see, to what you already know. That's your reference.

But I am still positive and I still make my living in this business. But it changes so fast all the time. Go with the flow I think it's best these days. But consumer must ALWAYS come first; exceed his expectations or fail. That I believe in! People are no longer stupid.

I am closing down my retail stores, reorganize & consolidate the dvd wholesale bizz with less stock, warehouses & staff & invest more money on internet related business.
Production company is stable but not growing anymore, the model agency we closed down, studio rental is no longer interesting but we decided not to close it, content sales is growing well and so is PPC advertsing per click with HQ traffic. PPM sites dropped a little but not much, VOD is stable and growing, payment systems are growing, free sites are growing, communities do well, domain sales is extra, cams are super and dating is too. Recurring sites I don't have so I would't know.

The last 2 weeks were the most surprising ones I ever encountered to be honest.

I feel like I just wrote a whole book
There is no absolute answer. But there are good questions.

[Paul Markham]

Originally Posted by EscortBiz

lets see in the late 90's memberships where between 25 and 30 bucks a member would get access to some shitty plugins that almost all paysites used and thats about it

fast forward 10 years and membership prices are the same 25-30 bucks and members get stuff thats always freshly shot and always updated and content that pushes everyones limit.

Things will have to change!

So after 10 years of Internet porn the customer now chooses to not pay for it or not look at it at all?

Well he's still looking at it we can see that by the stats.

He's choosing not to buy it. Because p2P and tubes are a better option than many paysites?

So who's to blame for that?

The economy is the last few months and the decline was before then. You guys are the best at kidding yourselves.

Pleasureplays is spot on.

of course. how did it get to become a collection of 2000 movies to begin with?? why didn't it stop at 5 movies?

because you always want the best/newest stuff... and newer/better stuff is always being produced and people are very willing to keep paying for it.

It gets to be a collection of 2000 movies because each one is different in some way. Now imagine it was 10 scenes performed by 500 different bad actors in 500 different locations. You have to keep giving the "the best/newest stuff" you can to a repeat buyer. Or he stops repeating. Who has ever stopped watching TV soaps or certain actors because they keep repeating the same storyline or character?

That's professionals on real budgets and still you stopped watching it. The porn consumer has stopped buying from a lot of you because Tube sites are better for him than your product. You need to make your product fit his needs better. And don't forget you have a bigger budget to play with. If you don't think it can be done close the door on the way out.

Spot on Rorschach.

It seems like the subscription billing model is the problem, not the surfeit of content itself. There's just no point in paying $30 a month for a shitty site where the surfer is only really interested in one or two scenes or models. If you can get enough free members at a VOD site you can make barrels of money, it's not that people aren't buying overall... It's that their purchasing habits have changed.

The problem is we still think he should pay $30 so we can give half of it to get him to the door.

The business is not dead, it will not go to free content to support advertising. It will be dead for some though.