i'm learning that the word *conspiracy* is just the 21st century's version of *trust/monoply*

we need a consiracy buster like roosevelt

A special trust or business trust is a business entity formed with intent to monopolize business, to restrain trade, or to fix prices.[1]

http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/mmh/1912...rustbuster.jpg

"

it is used because you can't talk about "class" in america ... to do so is marxist or communist.

argh.... light bulbs!

Fuck Light Bulbs... To expensive!

I just use candles...

Love those new curly-cue bulbs. Lots of light for very little wattage. :thumbsup

Markham as with many here, are content people. The unfortunate truth about today's adult site is that is content is not the king as it was. It takes much more to convert your audience and to keep it.

Unfortunately, when one only sees what they see through the lens of a camera, they tend to miss the truck about to run them over.

I have no opinion of Markham one way or the other, I've never met him and I don't judge people by their board entries however, to be successful today, you need a lot more than just content as I had stated in my article for AVN last summer. ( http://business.avn.com/articles/tec...ry-406234.html ).

I do know Peabody and he is a personal friend so given that, I thought I'd throw in my two cents. :):2 cents:

Okay, so the future of Paul Markham is light bulbs. Got it, thanks.


Hey man! How's Arizona? Hope the fires didn't get you (obviously they didn't). GREAT article for AVN, everyone should read it (especially Paul Markham).

To wit:


Taco Bell thinks outside the bun, does that count?

Fuck it - FIDDY Paul Markhams. :D

Fitty predictions for Paul :Graucho

DAMN YOU JFK!!! I call it the "Paul Markham Effect" - the hoodoo voodoo JFK puts on peeps to always get to the actual FIDDY.

MY "fiddy" is only "fiddy" in number only, grrr.....

paul markham v2.0 he shall pervail!

Paul Markham has no future.

This was stupid. I want a refund.

No one ever returned porn and asked for a refund back in the magazine days. back then, people would come to the store, buy the magazine, take it home, masturbate by pretending they were the guy getting the blowjob from the girl, or if the scene was shot properly (in the Paul Markham style, of course) then perhaps he would fantasize he was the person shooting the scene....

Anyway, the person would masturbate, that's my point here. Back when people bought real porn people really masturbated, not like today...

But I digress. So when that person was finished masturbating to the superior product that was magazine porn, they would not go back to the store and ask for a refund and, if they did, would be beaten mercilessly by a giant asian "security man".

Another reason online porn is failing: refunds. Right Paul?

Are these out of the box thinkers the people driving traffic or the people supplying the product? If it's the driving traffic people, how much relies on free content. If it's the product people, examples please.

On driving traffic I agree we have been very innovative, on product don't see it so much.

The organisation bit was the block.

Agreed. I've always been into producing the best product to fit my market that I was capable of. For a long time it made us a lot of money. We sold it to the publishers who appreciated the value of a good product for it's retention and conversion abilities and paid a good price for it.

The online porn guys never appreciated the value of the product, until very recently. So it became a traffic game. They were converting poorly, retaining poorly and the competition between sites, because putting one up was relatively easy, was immense. Then traffic was king and the affiliates was the President. Affiliates needs were always more free content, more tools to get free content online and more money.

Custom content was saturated on TGP sites. Very few sites could afford good content, so the prices paid meant shooters who couldn't command a good price didn't work for custom. This effected conversions and retention. The solution was more traffic. To get more traffic people gave away more free porn. Escalation was inevitable.

Agree 100%. And just throwing traffic at it isn't enough. What does it take?

No they didn't ask for a refund, they just never bought that product again. And sales went down and down. The chances of getting it onto new retailers shelves became less and less and the product/brand suffered.

Today look at it like affiliates, try a program, if it doesn't perform they move on. surfers try a site, if the like the tour they might buy, if they like the members area they stay, if it's nothing special they do neither.

Is the main solution to drive more traffic to the site or convert more of the traffic you have?

What would affiliates like. More affiliates driving traffic to the site or more of their traffic converted? Silly question, so think about this. How does a site get more traffic easiest.

It takes much more to convert your audience and to keep it.

The situation around here seems to be something like this:

Most of the webmasters here simply cannot get past the traditional methods of relying on search engine results to gain visitors to their sites and are still hung up in the Google Dance, which dance changes its tunes and steps almost weekly. The Panda thing literally killed thousands of websites, movoing them from high PR to like page 647 so that all those meta tags, keywords and all that Google fol-de-rol proved to have gotten the webmasters noplace.

Driving traffic through any of the various means of automation; double-opt-in emailing and auto-poster porograms are regarded by those same webmasters as "spamming" and they feel themselves above them. Of course every mainstream company on the planet engages in at least opt-in mailing; each and every time you register a product, sign up for anything free or agree to receive a newsletter, you have signed up to receive *commercial* emails from not only the company with which you signed up but their friends and buddies as well.

And you know what?

It works for them even though many people forget they sign up, didn't read the privacy policy or TOS and then howl about being "spammed" which of course they were not within the definition of the CAN-SPAM Acat of 2003.

Is it better to dirve traffic or try to improve the so-called *quality* of visitors in order to get more signups?

To me the asnwer seems to be obvious!

IMing is a number game. I'd rather have a larger number of views, which will generate a larger number of signups than sitting around trying to convert more of the much smaller amount of traffic already coming in.

More views = more signups = more $.

There is also the fact that most people who sign up for trials don't cancel for a couple of months, so you've got some guarranteed residuals based on the fact that cancellation requires cancelling witin the TOS which normally requires compliance with the TOS, so you've often got another month built in.

I do so love recurring billing!

Far as forum auto-posters go, I'm fine with them and use them. Forum mods don't want open posting they can require manual approval and when they do so, they find out how many real signups they are getting for their silly-assed forums and blogs anyway and ignore the fact that the more posts they get, regardless of the source or linking involved, the posts and signups actually help them with their precious Google Dance.

Short version, it boils down to this:

Are you a starving scavenger waiting for something to die or are you a predator, headed out to kill something to keep from starving?

Are you this?:

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p...tv/Vulture.jpg

Or this?:

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f4..._Gray_Wolf.jpg

Well, which are you, punks?

Actually that's not such a bad way to look at it. Except I think it's not 100% right in the comparison.

Most webmasters and sponsors rely on the marketing technique of a sandwich board man.

http://www.webitpr.com/writeitfiles/...ive%20Away.jpg

Except it was also more like this.

http://www.ssa.gov/history/pics/acoffee.jpg

They were handing out free bowls of soup to those who needed it. hoping a small % would buy.

The big difference was the cost. It costs little to put out a cheap advert on a high street with loads of passers by. Not a massive billboard on Time Square of course. It costs little to give free soup away to those who needed it. Online porn paid far far too much for it's "marketing".

The cartel example is good. The cartel was on the affiliates side. Give us 50% minimum, all the content we need, every tool we ask for and every possible support possible. If those at the beginning had kicked off with 10% and none to little support, the profits would of been immense. If anyone tried to get in on the act and go the route we did go with marketing. The profit margins would of been able to be adjusted so fast and customers would soon learn that a $30 site offered no more than a $20 site.

a few affiliates would of survived, those who couldn't survive unless spoon fed and attached by an umbilical cord to the sponsors, would never of got off the ground. Is it even conceivable that dating and cams would of priced themselves to suit the route I suggest and Tubes would never of ever got off the ground?

The only reason a porn Tube site can exist is the massive payments it gets to make a sale.

Or is that too far out of the box thinking?

I think you are right on!

Look at it this way............................................... ......................

...niche-oriented double-opt-in list of 100K addys and you wirte up a nice offer and push the button, by the sheer numbers you are virtually guarranteed a 1 1/2% click-through rate or 1500 dignups. The number will actually be higher but we'll go with the minimum.

If you have mailed for a $25 payout per signup at the 1 1/2% rate, you just made $37,500.00.

Yep.

$37,500.00.

And you only pushed a button!

It's like fighting a war with drones. You sit in your bunker at home and blow up the bad guys by remote control!

Oh and by the way, to the Noobs out there, anyone who offers to sell you an "opt-in" list is trying to cheat you. No mailer will even let anyone SEE his/her opt-in lists, so don't beleive the shit the eamil list scammers will tellyou. Any such list being sold isold and out of date, made up, harvested, full of honey pots and spam traps or simply mailed to death.

Don't fall for it.

Whatever ...

There is no love in this thread.

thread is filled with lame ...

Sally Rand and Paul Markham discussing traffic, sales, numbers, $.....this thread delivers. LOL

It's hilarious. They should invite them to do a panel at the september shows.

Interesting video. It shows the problems with things like panned obsolescence and consumerism (the waste, the credit bubble etc) but fails to identify the real problems and instead results in a mix of pro central planning communist and environmentalist propaganda.

Keynesians claim that consumption drives the economy and that there is such as thing as underconsumption (a theory that is closely related to the Marxist idea of overproduction). The Keynesian wants to stimulate and encourage consumption by whatever means possible to 'keep the economy going'.

This theory has already been totally destroyed by the pro free market Austrian school yet the video keeps blaming the problem of consumerism (and the resulting waste) on the free market. It even goes as far as recommending a central planned Soviet style economy as an alternative.

There's 3 types of planned obsolescence:
- design: A company that sells widgets, might design this years new widgets to look totally different from last years widgets. The result is that some people will want to buy a new widget for no other reason than that they don't want to be seen using an obviously old widget.
There is nothing wrong with this. No one is being forced to buy a new widget and dump his old still functioning widget.

- planned technical failure: The cartels and the planned failures of for example printers are only possible because of government intervention in the economy. The manufacturers of printers are only able to use those counting chips in their printers because they are able to use the power of the state (through patent laws etc) to shutdown people who produce software to reset those chips.

- perceived planned obsolescence: Some product failures that are being attributed to planned obsolescence by the consumer are actually results of government regulations.
example: dishwashers:
http://blog.mises.org/15594/blaming-...ts-once-again/
http://blog.mises.org/16643/my-year-long-hell-is-over/
http://mises.org/daily/5267/Why-Everything-Is-Dirtier

Interesting theory. So you're saying that Paul Markham has planned obsolence for himself? Very interesting...

How do you get niche-oriented double-opt-in list of 100K addys? Find that, the rest is easy.

It's like the days I was shooting for mags.

Few could do it and the money was great. Anyone can drive traffic, nearly anyone can put up a site. It's all about how well they can do it.

And before trolls bounce in, anyone can point a camera at a girl and shoot her naked. Shooting porn that is really good is either very hard or there's a lot of shooters who lost money.

LOL I'd love to be in a room with Markham and Rand. I think. :)

Got a ring to it. markhamrand.com

Paul, generally I agree with you except there is still some stuff that sells at a decent ratio. Not much but some. Agreed you cant just throw a ton of hits at a mediocre tour or product anymore.

Sally, You spend too much time on Obama. You got some talent but you have long spent too much time getting everyone to hate you. :) Who cares if you wear a lil lace once in a while. Who doesnt. LOL j/k Maybe all we midwesterners are crazy. :)

MP, How's it going :) Bit frustrating lately with me. Couple late checks getting squared around. Selling some domains tho. Praying for NO chargebacks this period with AFF. :)

KNOCK ON WOOD! Knocking on my old 1885 table. :)

Doing that adult webmastering thing in all its glory. Got reps on ICQ, dudes on the email.

Getting my money for nothing and my chicks for free. LOL

Rock on GFY. :upsidedow

You were right MP in one of your posts.. Chargebacks..

Never would I dare in my wildest dreams in 1979 to bring a pervy mag (too pervy even to mention on an adult wm board hehe) back to "The Adult Bookstore" to get a refund. :) That shit was like dope in 79. You put your head down and got the hell out of there.

Had one f'n guy charge back 4 months with aff, that fucken kills ya. But aff is still one of the best progs bottom line. They still convert plus they pay like NOW. One of the BEST payers in the game. :thumbsup



Anyhow back to Markham and Rand. I could read them for hours. :Oh crap :)

Most of us have adapted over the past 5 years to include other methods of traffic generation than google. However, due the fact that google provides the best converting porn traffic it is always highly sought after. Those of us who actually had unique content filled sites were favored in the update.

So your answer to not relying on the search engines for traffic is to use an opt in or double opt in? Believe it or not it does take traffic (and usually some freebie) to get someone to signup for an opt in list. I mean its not like you can just go to a forum like this
http://www.es5.com/blackhat-seo/emai...k-please-6552/
and just have someone scrape you up some emails right? ;)

BTW: I use double opt-in froms on most of my sites adult and mainstream. The signup rate and conversion with mainstream blows adult out of the water. You probably already know this though because of all the adult sites you run.


Once again, you can improve the quality of visitors, but you still need the traffic to do this.

Contradict yourself much?

OK, so you rationalize spamming (by my meaning not by CAN-SPAM meaning) forums and blogs by saying it will help them in the eyes of google?

Knowing this information lets me know that you have no morals or just really really poor judgement in marketing. I would never do business with your company just because of this post, let alone all the other ones circulating saying much harsher stuff.

This was always Damian's problem. Anyone can trip out his level of marketing advice. So his price has to be low and his earnings low.

Very few can work for big offline companies in their marketing divisions and that's why they live in their own 4 bedroom houses.

Sorry darling, couldn't let that one go by. :thumbsup

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

I got a rep on ICQ to ask about a check that was missing. He says no prob check it now. That was THREE HOURS AGO.

Does this mean bad news. :) For fucks sake. Such a pain in the ass. This biz has the intellect of an eight grader. WHY do we make a simple biz so fucking hard.

Oh yeah, cause some of you suck at business. :) Not all, but we DO have some lamers in our midst dont we.

Not intended to the rep on icq, just EVERYTHING is going haywire lately BUT I am making more money. Maybe this is how it ALWAYS FUCKING goes making more money. :)

If I dont get paid by every company from here on I do biz with there will be hell to pay. I take stats shots every fucking day. :) I let two fuckhead companies around here slide on not paying me (for now) cause I was being Mr nice guy. TWO companies in 14 years. Three counting Pushrod.



I get REAL impatient with shit.

Actually since FOS went belly up they dont convert for shit. LOL But they do recur still. :)

I cant tell no lies. :) Still a good prog tho. Better than most. Not heydays when we had FOS tho.

Really sucks when the porn industry finds a way to make a buck only to have it fall through.

There is VERY fucken little that converts now days at a good ratio.

I better start giving you all my poor man's recipies. You may need them. :)

Lots of beans, eggs, rump and pork roast. :) Actually not that bad. I feel great. LOL

Edited: To protect the innocent.



Just contacted me. Maybe I expect things too quick. :)

I ALWAYS ASSuME the worst. :) Bad character flaw.

ok.

............

haha! Hey VJo!!!!!!!!!! :)

Yeah man, ur making more money so SHUT THE FUCK UP. haha! I mean that in a kind, 'street' kinda way. :)
Me? I'm making the same money but paying more to make it, if that makes any sense. The benefit is a little more free time - see how I'm using it? hahahaha! Hey-OOOOO indeed!!! Where's my fucking Scotch....:D

Here's my bottom line for everyone (Paul Markham most of all):

more more more.

Nice post. :)

Carry on.

Yeah I am giving these domains away but they are selling. hehe One guy bought the whole shabang for 2 hundie. 18 domains for 2 hundie. 11 dollars a domain.

More... back in a half hour.. I got Paypal.. :)

Best move ever.. he gets good deal.. I am done selling domains and paying reg fees.