There is still money in porn. Just a tiny fraction of what there used to be.

For you maybe. If you were a good dating / cams affiliate you would know that statement is completely false.

There is less money in PAYSITES now that before (although not as much of a dip as people think) and Im sure less in shooting content. BUT, the companies that make really good, HQ content for their sites are still doing big joins. And Id guess the top 5% (quality wise) of content producers are still working regularly, but thats a guess, its not my end of the industry.

Dont kid yourself, companies like BangBros, MetArt, Skeet etc that produce really high quality shit are making sales. They aren't shooting all that content and loosing $$. Maybe not quite as many sales as before, but big numbers none the less.

The part of the industry thats dying are the mediocre pay sites filled with old, plain, bulk purchase content. And that made up a BIG % of the total sites out there. You can set up a pay site, affiliate program and fill it with Junk for a few thousand dollars. As you know, to do it with HQ, custom content is not a cheap proposition. And the affiliates that are dying are the same. Mediocre, one trick ponies who's methods worked well when it was easy and their method worked. The true, creative marketers are still doing as well as ever. Im talking about the ones who mix up their methods and the offers they promote. They see a dip, they test and play with new traffic sources and offers to fill the void.

I know MORE than a few affiliates from the "old days" who were taught or fell into promoting porn with just one method, but that method stopped working and now they whine. A lot. Its weird....this is the only industry where SOOOO many people act like that. What if Apple had continued to make JUST the Apple 2e, never coming out with new options they needed to stay current and on top? "Man, its bullshit, IBM and these other guys keep making all these new, smaller laptops and things and the sales of our 2e are 10% of what they used to be"

We'd laugh and say they were out of touch. That they didn't know what they are doing. That they should mix it up and try something new. Food for thought.

Good post :2 cents:

I agree with much of your post except this analogy. Had IBM come out with comparable or slightly less comparable laptops and started giving them away.... or even better, a company controlled by the mafia came in and stole Apple's product and gave it away to people for free, then the industries would be similar.

But I agree whole-heartedly that there is tons of money in porn for creative people today. A better analogy is fishing. When the industry was new, anyone with a fishing pole could make bank. As the competition heated up, the people chumming were doing better, so everyone started chumming. Even though the pond is larger, the fish just arent as hungry as they were 10 years ago with so much chum in the water. A good fisherman can still catch fish with the right bait, but being a good fisherman requires patience and skill. That's why there are tons more bad fisherman than good.

you could sum this up a lot quicker with:

The part of the industry that is dying is the inexperienced surfer who is willing to buy any old shit you throw at them!

No, you could say that the actual PORN industry section of the adult industry is dying because the product is given away for free.

Dating and cams are a different part of adult.

But in my opinion it is PORN that is the real golden goose that has been killed.

Yeah, people in dating and cams and the scumbags at Traffic Junky/Pornhub are making great money selling anything BUT porn.

But it's a dog-eat-dog world. All you can do is take the cards that are dealt and use your abilities to navigate the waters.

This implied claim of there being more money in the industry now due to dating and cams versus in the past when recorded porn was king has in fact been made before. I don't believe it was decisively settled however there are prominent industry figures on the record stating that they believe the overall industry has in fact shrunk. It would be really interesting to do a in-depth analysis though.

As you probably know there was a major leak at a dating company recently. Well some figures are being released in the media and some of these include revenue numbers from various tubes. I've seen some of these figures and frankly it isn't as much as I would have thought. In some cases I did more revenue per week selling AVS sites circa-1999 than some of these tubes did in selling the company's dating product product in one week during 2015. The tubes in fact sent more free members in one month to the company's dating site than I used to get clicks to my site during a whole year back in 1999.

So how could I have made more still with just some shitty AVS site while sitting in a college dorm drinking beer? Well I don't know how far back you go in adult but it really is true that back in 1999 you could have a 1:100 ratio, a 10% ctr, and make $100+ per average sale. This wasn't just a few master marketers doing this but pretty much everyone at the time. To understand, take these numbers and use them for your own traffic right now. Estimate your earnings under those numbers. Now compare to what you are actually making. Do this and you should see that it is unlikely that what you are saying is true...

That sounds good, but I don't think that's entirely true. I think Met, X-Art, Brazzers still make big sales still, yes.

I think there are also big sites with great original content that are doing bad, and I think that's because of the amount of free content out there. I don't agree that there is a shortage of quality content, I think there's actually more exclusive, good quality content on the web than ever, catering to all fetishes. It's a bit more spread out now, and more of it is amateur production, and direct clip sales. Take a look at Clips4Sale, there are many microniches thriving there. Ok, maybe there were more big budget original sites popping up in the Bang Bus era, but there are still many nice paysites with original and very high quality content.

People whining about how good and original 80s and 90s porn were... come on. They were not, they were cheesy. I threw out my old DVDs. :P Niche and microniche websites today and the last 10 years have done better than ever to squeeze everything out of an idea, niche, fantasy, or fetish. But originality is often not enough to be truly successful.

There are still sites filled with junk old scenes making big time sales I think. Because they have very appealing free tours making them look a lot better than they really are, multiple pre-checked cross sales setup with other similar sites, traffic networks to pump them, big PPS for affiliates because they do lots of upsells and cross-sells, and a huge affiliate base promoting them - often with unconventional methods that you praise, possibly mailers/chatters too.

Also keep in mind that no matter how great a "quality" of a porn scene you produce...it just means that it gets pirated and given away for free even faster.

Claudia Marie just shot for Score. They put her scene out on Saturday. And someone had already tweeted out the link to a pirate site to see the whole thing for free within the first hour of it being released.

THAT is what has caused sales to tank. Why pay for the exact same porn that you can get for free?
That's why we're very interactive in Claudia Marie's site...the members P.M. her from the members area, she does free live cams for them, etc.
But for most companies that hire girls to shoot scenes...the actual PORN is the bread and butter...they don't have access to the models every day to be able to be that interactive with their members.

And it's being stolen so fast that we can't even keep up with it. :(

As long as stealing content is legal on the internet...it will continue this way.

No, no - I meant if you are HIGH then you THINK you are getting more Joins. :D

Yup, exactly.

You are lucky that you work with Claudia-Marie. Her interactivity makes her unique and allows you to continue to keep Members interested. But not everyone has a CM.

Pre-recorded sex scenes - the only thing I consider content and PORN - is dying and when 99.9% of production stops guess what will happen? The big tubes will start shooting their own stuff to feed their beast (as you pointed out is already happening) and the big cam companies will ALSO shoot for tubes (to keep the customers coming in).

But customers are smart and getting smarter every day. Let's remember, most guys ONLY want to wank it, cum and get back to the business of the day. Only a tiny percentage wants to sit there and actually TALK to a live girl. Yuck, who want's that? I got six mins to jerk off and get back to the office. LOL So I'm hoping average porn surfers are starting to get this whole 'bait-and-switch' thing when it comes to tubes and cams. :)

Of course you are right, ratios on straight up banner clicks, tube videos plays etc are worse. Nobody would ever deny that, but thats not what I said. If ratios are worse, you just need more traffic (or different traffic). I know it sounds silly to say that, but its what those who are doing well have done. And don't kid yourself, getting ratios like that and better are still available and there are webmaster doing hundreds of joins a day with numbers like that. From tube banner clicks, lol, of course not, but via social networking, email and other sources.

Lots of people are twisting my argument. So I'll be clear.....

ratios ARE worse
Free porn is everywhere and pay site sales are down

but....

Sales on other products are up and making up the difference, and there are plenty of whales out there doing ridiculous numbers of sales. From different sources than in 99 (LOTS of social media etc) and there are far, far fewer affiliates able to compete. I didn't say it hasn't gotten harder, what I said was the cream rise to the top and while its not a cakewalk like it used to be, creative affiliates have done whatever needed to be done to keep their sales the same or rising. New methods, new verticals etc

I feel for producers, its a bitch for sure.

But while its pirated and there are tons of people watching it for free, the best sites still do a lot of sales. Far more than I would have expected all things considered. I don't know the exact numbers, but the overall number of people online is WAY, WAY up from 99-2000. Yes, lots watch for free, but many still pay. Id assume its the older guys, less tech savvy guys paying more now since any kid coming up knows where / how to access free porn, but Im sure you could share if the demographic of purchasers has changed much?? Id be really curious

I'm mostly ignoring anything about whether it is harder for affiliates/others and am instead focusing solely on whether the total revenue in adult (porn+dating+cams mainly) is higher in 2015 versus 2000.

I'll just make some points to make it a quicker read rather than a wall of text.

- There are more people online. Definitely, but a good portion of that traffic is almost garbage. So it doesn't end up being a 1000% increase or anything near what you need to offset the negatives. I remember arguing over this with Fabian of Manwin circa 2011 and actually going into country of origin figures from official internet traffic sources over the last couple decades.

- A dating company which had their data leaked also had some reports leaked which detailed affiliate earnings. The reports showed that their top earners (mostly tubes) appeared to make less than about $3,000 per week. In fact beyond the top 10 it was pretty much all under $1,000 a week. A few hundred a week put you in the top 100 for sure.

Granted there are bigger companies in the dating game as is there also cams but I think this still shows something. The money being made today from these traffic sources isn't near what some assume they are. The weaker ability to monetize traffic (as compared to before) significantly harms earnings industry wide. Basically you have something like 10x more traffic doing $2 cpm now versus 1x the traffic doing $30-$50+ cpm in 1999. This results in a relative net loss. Of course individual results vary but we're talking overall only.

:thumbsup

And all these hundreds of joins a day are legit joins, right? Completely 100% REAL joins, right?

Right.

Usually I don't agree with your skepticism but I concur when it comes to cams and dating. I don't believe the numbers being touted are real, legit numbers but rather where the criminal element has migrated to now that it's harder to bang cards and pre-checked cross sells with paysites. It's not smarts and talent and better marketing, that's bullshit. At the heart of it all is deception.

Sure you can make more money now with additional revenue streams but natural business diversification is NOT the same as a growing (or healthy) Industry.

Porn Nerd,

The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.?
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

;)

A whale sends a join.

It's a "legitimate" join.

Whether however , it is cross sold or upsold or whatever common place , and , truly legitimate , form of aggressive marketing is used by the paysite to maximise the dollars on the original affiliate join...to the affiliate it was just a "legitimate" join.

Believe some whales can and do send hundreds of joins a day everyday. Believe :)

Some spend more than you can possibly imagine every month on media buys , etc.

Mate , there are many people on this board who truly believe.

They believe because they have either done it or seen it (handled the affiliate account, media buys, admined/owned the paysite.

You make well thought out intelligent posts.......occasionally... ;-))

Don't ruin the validity of those points to the lurkers , who are believers, through being a non-believer. ;)

Believe....and one day , you too might be able to fly...

;-)))

JA$ON - do I know you? some very good posts, interesting read.

So say. There's more money in cams than there ever was. Dating isn't strictly porn it's social. Many have moved over to it, so not losing.

When I said less money in porn. I meant the entire industry.

Porn was once recorded, printed and live via a phone. The money in retail was huge.

Then it went online. Paysites were the biggest portion of most people's income. By far.

Now we have free porn with 100s of millions a day sucking up free porn. So are the paysites left and Cams able to replace the income paysites provided? For the majority left that's a big no. For the 1,000s who left the industry it's a bigger no.

Dating is slightly different to porn. Porn is for people to jerk off to. Dating is for meeting people to have a relationship with. you might as well call "Blind Date" a porn program. Have porn affiliates mover to sending traffic or having white label dating sites?

Yes. It's still a different industry, try putting a picture of two people fucking on a dating site and see how long it lasts.

The price of traffic is a good indicator to the money being made today.

Stay positive, just be in a sector that is also positive.

I think collecting and selling user data will be the next big thing, just like mainstream is already doing... :winkwink:

I want to believe! I want to fly!! LOL

No man I know you are 100% correct. I'm not really talking about whale affiliates here. But I DO know the 'whales' exist (you be one of them). :)

I guess I am looking at things from the single man's perspective. If I were a larger company pumping thousands monthly into media buys I would have a different feeling.

The best thing about cams vs. paysites is that with paysites you have a fixed price for the customer then must try and upsell them or email them offers to extract more revenue from them. With cams you can find that one obsessed whale customer who might spend $20,000. So if I were fishing for those type of whales I would indeed need a bigger net. :)

Adult dating is really just another way to package recorded content. There are a lot more similarities between dating and paysites than most people think...

I've never worried about what "category" my business was in. Over the last 12 years I've just tried to make the most money off my content, my traffic, or my investment capital. I'd redirect my paysites to a penis pill offer if that resulted in the highest epc for me, there is really no emotional attachment to my content.

I took out the word big. Seemed inappropriate. :winkwink:

Selling porn > Selling clicks > Selling data.

http://media.propertycasualty360.com...op-600x338.jpg

brought a tear to my eye ... ;)

There is one thing that still holds true in 2015 that I learned in 2000 when I started in this industry:
Don't give up.

Every 2 years it seems I get a new idea on how to squeeze more out from my adult portfolio and it works so good I forget about the idea of selling it all and moving forward. It's been like that for the past 8 years. I kind of cannot get rid of all this money coming from adult industry.

Some things that worked 10 years ago still work just fine. Others don't, of course. If I didn't adapt I would have little to show, that's for sure.

But still it's funny how when you are playing in your little pond and hear stories how this and that doesn't work anymore while you know it still works just fine it makes you realize how you always have to read between the lines, take everything with a grain of salt, use common sense, read selectively, etc to get any useful info out of what is posted on the forums. It's funny how many people spread the wrong info and how many others believe them.

:2 cents::thumbsup:thumbsup

But whales are no longer wasting their time with paysites. I think that Nick will tell you that.
They send their traffic where the money is for them. And now that piracy is in full effect and entire members areas are ripped for free...the money isn't there for them to send to paysites.

The true "whales" that Nick refers to are pushing other things in adult: dating, cams, pills, etc.

And the ones that work with Nick are doing it all with mailing. He's the king.

So I'm afraid that guys like you and I are never going to have our wings to fly in that area. We will remain caterpillars crawling on the ground and never even get to have a cocoon, much less emerge as butterflies! lol

Bullshit, I conquer all :1orglaugh

FANTASTIC!! Excellent post and TRUE words of wisdom. :) I agree 100% and this is my basic philosophy too. Never stop, keep going.....:thumbsup


This made me sad. LOL I like butterflies.....:D

But I hear ya man. I know what Nick is doing (and doing it KILLER good) so I agree I will never reach his level of success. But that's okay with me. I have different life goals now at my advanced age. LOL Mostly I just want to get through the day now with as little bullshit as possible. Haha!!

Maybe instead of a butterfly I can be a firefly. They're pretty cool, too. :)

Robbie , Porn Nerd

LOL

King? I am merely a Baron , there are Viscounts and Earls and Dukes and Princes before you ever get near being King. ;)

And re "" I have different life goals now at my advanced age""

Me too , my goal is to sleep through the night without having to get up for a piss ;-))

Fireflies are pretty cool.

Replies in red :)

OK can we call you Baron Pornmeister? Or even better, the "Duke Of Porn"? What rhymes with 'Viscount'? Discount? LOL Either way you are Royalty, that's the point. :)

Damn, 'nerd porn' is taken! Ah well.....LOL

I hear ya man, the Internet has EXPLODED since the nineties. Of course, there are things like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and a zillion other mega-popular sites eating up that bandwidth. Pre-all those sites porn was IT in terms of a magnet to get peole to log onto the Internet. Now? Porn is probably WAY down the list of why people "use" the Internet. I read somewhere that 75% of average people think Facebook IS "the Internet".

But I get your point(s). There are many, many more fish to catch today then there ever was pre-2000. :)

There are many valid thoughts in this very thread. Great to see some refreshment on gfy.

A good debate never hurt anyone :thumbsup

I feel like you hit on one of the biggest challenges here. Facebook has become a public utility, something everyone must have access to. But it is still run like just a business and their aggressive and capricious censorship, name rules, and the belief that they sell data has a very chilling effect on free speech. Things which damage free speech tend to also impact adult badly.

Is it still okay if I refer to you as "Your Majesty"?

Sadly it is true though.

World Internet Users Statistics and 2015 World Population Stats

Overall internet traffic growth between 2000 and 2015 has been about 753%. However by far the majority of this growth has been in more low quality traffic areas:

Africa 6,958%
Asia 1,129%
Middle East 3,358%
Latin America / Caribbean 1,684%

In contrast the higher tier growth has been much less:

North America 187%
Europe 454%
Australia 252 %

So you're looking at tier 1 (+2 ?) growth between 2000 and 2015 to be something like 250% - 300%. However at the same time cpm (or say ratios for affiliates or EPC) has been cut by like 1000% for these traffic sources.

The math looks something like this.

Let's say you start out at 100 units.

100 (initial units) * 3.0 (percentage tier 1 + tier 2 traffic increase) * .1 (monetization drop - cpm) = 30

You now have 30 units or about a 70% drop overall. :(

My Name Is Earl Porno?

:cool-smil

Great Thread Jason.

I agree that there is just as much money to be made in the business as a whole. But much of it is controlled by a smaller group of people. Traditional "porn" producers and sites are hurting big time. The sites that are doing well are the larger established ones and some with shall we say "aggressive" marketing strategies.

Starting in 2008/ 2009 I was still running AVN Online and Internext- when the affiliate program implosion started happening. Silvercash was first, they pulled their two page spread in AVN Online and the rest of the companies fell like dominoes in the next 6-8 months until the magazine folded into AVN magazine as a section.

I moved into the traffic after that which was good for me as much of the economy shifted from affiliate programs to traffic companies and publishers.

Honestly I think of cams and dating as separate sectors of the larger "adult world", without them many in this business would be out of business including the tubes.

It really does no good to bitch and moan about how bad things have gotten - get off your ass and find a better way, a better traffic source a better business plan.

In 2006 I was freelancing for a popular PPS affiliate program who broke even on paysite joins, and their profit margin was selling their exits to AFF. So nine years ago a paysite company made their profits with dating...

This thread is gold. Like McSpike said... read between the lines. So much good info in this thread :thumbsup

We should meetup in Amsterdam. I have a feeling your experience (and wisdom) would be good for me and my company. Your comments here prove that to me. :)

I often think (some, not all) major paysites have the business model Fuzebox is referring to; break even on Joins and make the profit in some other way.

I wouldn't promote dating sites unless I was one step away from applying for welfare handouts. Just because there are naive fools online doesn't mean I am going to help rip them off by signing them up to a dating site that has no real women in it looking for men. Ashley Madison I imagined because of its mainstream exposure would have a fair number of real women - oops, Gizmodo reported there were essentially no women interacting with men on that site.

Common sense tells you that women don't NEED to join a "dating site".

Men do.

Women can walk into any bar, snap their fingers and get laid if they want to.
That fact did not change because the internet came into existence. Some basic laws still apply, and that will always be one of them.

Add me to skype or ICQ: 605769249

Would be happy to sit down with you in Amsterdam.

:thumbsup:thumbsup

Don't start.

Interesting you say that...

One of the most effective sales pitches you can make in dating right now is that women join dating sites because they DO need to, since they want to date men who have good careers and who don't want to waste their time sitting around being bar flies. Yes, men join dating sites to get laid, and women join dating sites to meet men who can get laid.

Bars are only for women who date men that aren't desirable to other women.

Try it and when you make money, remember that anyone seeking high quality text and marketing messages that actually sell should contact SEO Text Writing Service - Engine Food

Well there is a HUGE difference between "adult" dating sites like AFF etc and 'mainstream' dating sites like Match. Women DO join mainstream dating sites - tho in my experience most who do are a little bit 'off' in terms of social skills. LOL But still, they are real people. But when it comes to adult dating? The only reason I could see a woman joining a porn dating site would be anonymity and control over who they meet, etc. But the percentages must be very small.


Added you on ICQ, will chat soon. :)

What are the whales doing socially?

Most social networks don't allow adult anymore and the rest clamp down on any attempt from anyone to make money, hard.