Originally Posted by Barefootsies (Post 19091914)

This is one of the BEST investments you can make, and agree 200%!!

[...]

Find out what can be automated, and do it.

:thumbsup

Originally Posted by Relentless (Post 19089941)

Very good advice...

Making your 1st site is a lot of work, making a 2nd site is less work, making your 198th site is almost zero work if you build tools to automate many of the mundane tasks. Where most people get fouled up is they automate things they shouldn't (like site text) or forget to automate things they should (like proper meta page data). :2 cents:

Originally Posted by TisMe (Post 19089838)

Congrats on your success. I've run pay sites since 97 and always made money.

As you grow, automate what you can so that you can multiply the sites without the workload growing at the same rate.

Automate updates, promoting, etc.

Automation is your friend.

Originally Posted by MrPotatoBread (Post 19095521)

Have you had any issues running everything on wp as a paysite? Congrats on your success!!! :thumbsup

Originally Posted by MisterPeabody (Post 19095650)

Your story is similar to my own, and look what happened to me (my own network, growing sites, expanding, etc) so I agree with you - there IS money in porn...

The issue for many when they say 'there is no money in porn" is their definition of "money". Example: $100,000 per year is not "money" to people who say that. No, $10,000,000 is "money".

But "real people" know full well that 100k a year is "money" for most people in this world....

Anyway great good luck and continued success! If I can ever be of assistance just reach out. :)

Originally Posted by Bill8 (Post 19096340)

it's a nice story. The sites are sweet. it's a nice piece of work, that does remind us all of the period between 1998 and 2003.

but, it's a very specialized business model, with a lot of specific conditions (country of origin, content accquisition, costs profile, traffic costs, etc) that are not easily met.
[...]
if you folks think it is a copiable business model, then go ahead, copy it. there are clearly a few interesting ideas there that could be used. I'd say it's not very copiable.
[...]

Originally Posted by KlenTelaris (Post 19095225)

Nice,i still remember zuzinka intro here on gfy,one of funniest intro threads,it was like teencat before teencat :D

Originally Posted by MaDalton (Post 19095246)

yeah, i remembered that when i discovered that site was part of the program

Originally Posted by MaDalton (Post 19095413)

i can say that i am healing nicely - even reading my laptop screen is now close to 100% fine

Originally Posted by Bill8 (Post 19097028)

no man, what I meant was, the deep structure, the economic foundations, of your business model are not copiable by most webmasters.

The idea, the site designs, etc ARE all copiable, but we dont live in countries with supercheap content possibilities, cheap labor, cheap development and scripting costs, so on and so forth.

Especially the cheap original content is not easily copied. Any one of us here could buy eastern european content from the providers that are commonly available - but, that content is already well known, used by hundreds maybe thousands, and has a look and feel which is also well known to the surfers and the buyers.

Most of us are not likely to be able to safely move our business to a country where we can make that real-amateur-feel content as cheaply as you imply you can do.

Thats what we cant copy.

Their are a few ideas you have totally worth stealing - copying. The wordpress based paysites, with that amature look-and-feel. And, what you said about shooting content that isn't like the shitty canned scripts that we have all seen over and over again from teh bigger companies. (The tired "gonzo" crap that looks staged as fuck, with totally lame dickish male actors who don't know how to fuck - the girls who just look tiired and playing along for that extra few hundred bucks - no passion, no sex appeal, barely worth watching.) Trying to shoot more genuinely amateur stuff - thats worth copying.

Still, ultimately you are making a "boutique" product. It's not an answer to the "paysite problem", to the declining value of content, to declining conversions in general.

Originally Posted by alf6300 (Post 19089651)

A couple of years ago I started meddling in adult.
I have done several online startups in the past 10 years, but none of them adult - I wanted to try out. In part for biz curiosity and in part for fun.

We setup a first paysite. It was not meant to be more than a side activity or a hobby for me.

The site turned out to be profitable from day 1.

The initial capital investment was 0 (zero) dollars.
(well, ok, I concede we paid the domain registration and a couple of bucks for the initial ignominiously cheap hosting)

The rest was setup by myself in my spare time. I threw together the site in php; I shot the content; the model was friend and business partner.

I had ran profitable businesses before: however, even in the first few months, this business had the best ratio of capital investments (none), effort (some weekends of fun), and profit return (not a goldmine yet, but sufficient to provide a decent living for a couple of people had it been my personal main job).

I guess we got lucky in several dimensions, and we did some things right the first time around. In my business experience, it almost never happens that you get things right the first time around.

So, a little more than one year ago, I decided to focus on this with much more time dedication and a business-rather-than-hobby mindset.

I put a (actually very little) capital in it, ditched or delegated other activities I had ongoing, and decided that this would be my next startup to make grow.

Armed with a back-of-the-envelop business plan, some friends willing to earn a buck in their spare time, and a lot of fun and dedication, we setup more sites. The guiding principle was more or less: what we have fun shooting, it might be fun for the surfer too, and they might buy it.

Everything that we touched turned out to be profitable.

We launched seven sites since then - I hear people complaining all the time about porn being dead, but this has been actually the easiest and most profitable business ride I've taken so far.

We are not anywhere yet in the ballpark of where I plan to be, but we've been growing every single month, >10% per month, with just a few motivated people and more money in the bank at the end of the month than at the beginning. Even more importantly, the growth is growing. And it's fun. I don't plan to publicly share figures, but we are at the point where we are discussing how to best reinvest the money earned. This, coming with no experience at all in the particular industry.

There is no money in porn? That's not our experience. I suspect there are a few other businesses out there that don't comment in the "porn is dead" threads just because they are too busy counting the money.

I am sharing this in part to contribute to the discussion, and in part because in order to truly expand I know we need to start seriously networking in the industry, so here we are.

Good luck to everybody.

Originally Posted by alf6300 (Post 19091824)

Good luck everybody, from rainy Prague!

Originally Posted by alf6300 (Post 19103621)

I haven't been around in this industry long enough to comment on what has changed.

However, on a general note, it's rather common for entire industries to go through times of consolidation, following an early period of blossoming.

My understanding is that online porn had been a goldrush. Goldrushes, typically, make early pioneers either very rich or very complacent, or both.

When the dust settles, only some survive (the very ruthless, or the very skilled, or the very lucky). That does not necessarily mean that goldmines went dry.

I had a coffee weeks ago with the owner of a greatly successful adult venture, one of the historical brands of online porn.
We exchanged some figures, as it happens. I was polite but probably quite blunt in showing my feelings.

He's a very decent many, and an awesome photographer. He has earned over the years a sort of cult following for his flagship website, together with a very faithful membership.

In short, he could run today an awesomely profitable balance sheet. He does not.

He told me about the workstyle he's used to. I wouldn't call him lazy, but he got the habit over the years to only work some days a week. They mostly shoot outdoors, often in exotic locations, but he rents a football-field sized studio that he seldom uses. Also his labour cost structure is way oversized compared to his needs and the dimension of his business. And they are still promoting through the same marketing channels that were rampant ten years ago.

I am not patronizing or blaming anybody, I guess I could easily have done the same mistakes had I been in his shoes throughout his business history. In fact, I have done some of those same mistakes in other industries myself, and hopefully learned a bit.

To answer your question about what we may be doing right, and perhaps others might not - in short: we did not have the time or luxury, so far, to grow complacent.
We check every dollar spent, and we permanently ask ourselves how we could do things faster, better, cheaper, more efficiently. We ask ourselves what are the opportunities we are not currently seizing, and what we could do about it. What direction the market is going, and what mistakes we have made or we could make. That's just business as usual when running a business, especially a young one. It might not be business as usual during a goldrush, and maybe some still have a goldrush mindset.

I know it sounds like a rather generic answer, but it's honest and it's stuff that I am thinking about every day.

I do have an opinion about your second point, i.e. where the "paysite model" will go in the next 5 years. I'll share it in some other post, I guess, since this one is already long :-)

thanks for the opportunity of a fruitful conversation.

Originally Posted by teomaxxx (Post 19104765)

Nazdar z Prahy taky. Would you be willing to go sometimes for a beer with me and my friend, two long time aff webmasters? Could be interesting to chat with you about your project and our own work...

Originally Posted by alf6300 (Post 19104838)

Nazdar zpatky do Prahy :-)
we are close to riegerovy sady, how about a beer there in the late afternoon today or tomorrow, if you guys are around?

Originally Posted by teomaxxx (Post 19105008)

Unfortunately, I am going away next week and today i have to spent some time with my GF :-), but I will hit you up on the ICQ after 13.8, ok?

Originally Posted by Brujah (Post 19104776)

One aspect to keep in mind is when they're grinding through affiliates at $40 per signup, and things like cross-sells, etc.. where the paysite model was mostly about maximum revenue per customer up front than it was ever about the actual sites + content. His sites differ in that respect, and he likely makes a whole lot less than they did even in the long term. Sites like his aren't as affected by rapid changes in finance.

Originally Posted by alf6300 (Post 19103621)

I do have an opinion about your second point, i.e. where the "paysite model" will go in the next 5 years. I'll share it in some other post, I guess, since this one is already long :-)

thanks for the opportunity of a fruitful conversation.

Originally Posted by alf6300 (Post 19089651)

There is no money in porn? That's not our experience. I suspect there are a few other businesses out there that don't comment in the "porn is dead" threads just because they are too busy counting the money.