People who are still in business, unlike you, "worry" about their business becausee they are attentive to what's going on, the ebbs and flows. You've said you always looked at your bottom line yearly, the internet..... never mind .

Paul had skills (some) as a photographer of pornographic images. Paul failed miserably in trying to sell his content via a paysite. Living in the Czech Republic I'm sure the tiny amount he makes from reselling his ancient content seems like a good living. He's not on the front lines so he can sit back and pontificate (if that's in fact what he's doing).

But selling on the internet is a whole different thing, and focusing on yearly profits alone will get you out of business quick. The most I will extend is a month in terms of monitoring sales.

April it's pretty good for me ( just on biz, not personal life :S )

Exactly! Well said :thumbsup I like & respect Paul but I didn't feel like explaining the basics of the internet marketing ratrace.

If you think having a job and being required to work set hours/schedule etc would be easier than running your own business, you aren't running your business right.

I work when I wanna work, grow when I wanna grow and no one tells me what to do. That's EASY to me.

As far as the week goes for business - my week before that week was lower and after that week was lower (by like 15k). For me it was a stellar week.

Compared to the two previous years I was 12k and 10k lower in volume on that particular week than this year.

So for me, this theory does not hold true.

Paul Markham is a member of the elite

Well actually for you it DOES hold true, no? I used that week as an example but the entire month of April is usually the worst month of the year. So if I understood you correctly (and my apologies if I did not) you said the week before and the week after were bad, and both those 'bad' weeks came in April? So then the "theory" holds true. :)

And for me it's not a "theory" as I have eight years of data to prove April is the shittiest month of the year overall. Not comparing this April to last April etc. Just comparing April to other months in the same calendar year.

PS: And you're 100% right about running your own business as opposed to having a j-o-b.

I don't usually look at weeks but I think the other two weeks were more the norm and that week blew up for some reason.

Maybe people needed the comfort of hearing an actual person's voice during such a stressful time as tax season. Wanking it to porn can seem so....impersonal at times. LOL

Glad you had a great week!! :)

And I'm sorry you had the worst month! Let's hope it stays true for the rest of the year and they all get better after this one =)

Yah everything will be fine. It usually picks up in May. In fact, it's already getting better the closer we get to the end of the month. :)

"Anyone else hating April and waiting for May?" Why hate it if you know it's going to be a bad year?

My post was directed to everyone about the value of traffic over content. for instance, packaging shit in a larger bag doesn't make it sell better than packaging a quality product. The problem for most is recognising and affording a quality product.

Because I ran my business successfully, I'm able to afford a comfortable retirement. :thumbsup

My skills are in recognising that trying to be a webmaster running a paysite paid less than selling to magazines, then selling the content to webmasters at a price they can afford. That shooting exclusive was a fast way to lose money. So able to enjoy a comfortable retirement.

Your lack of skills means you can't afford to buy good content for your paysites.

Selling is selling and it always has ebbs and flows depending on the seasons. More so when selling products people don't need. Monitoring sales against the same period in previous years tell's one whether they're on target for the entire year.

Today online selling is maturing and as you point out traffic is no longer as important as the content that inspires people to click a link, look at a site/product and that in terms inspires people to get out a credit card. More so when a product requires a monthly membership fee. Or when that product is sold by 100s of other sites, just by changing the colour, texture, etc of a product doesn't make it unique. A green lawn mower mows as fast as a blue one, neither are unique. They both do the same job. The skill is in marketing and selling one as better than the other.

I studied and taught marketing years before I came online. Online has allowed a lot of people kid themselves they have a clue what marketing and selling it's about. For most, it's about traffic, "If I had enough traffic I could sell shit". The problem is most could never get enough traffic to afford to buy anything but crap.

This isn't a private conversation. Try explaining it and we can all see how much you know.

People have moved from buying offline to buying online. What has changed about the actual product, the marketing and selling?

The goods being bought online are very much the same as bought offline, customers needs haven't changed, the products functions haven't changed. People buy houses to live in and porn to jerk off to online. The only changes are the webmastering aspect. Which replaced brick and mortar location priority. Only the very best at marketing and selling can afford the high costs of either. And with a low bar of entry, there's now an opportunity for the weak to survive longer. That is coming to an end with the aspect of buying traffic or creating advertising channels on sites like Youtube.

That only applies to the single self-employed person or those with a staff who have a management team. The rest running their own businesses, have to stick to a tight schedule.

A lot agreeing with you identified themselves as one man bands.

For the one man band crew. For the rest or us, we had to run to a strict schedule that fitter with the staff we employed. :1orglaugh

And a great management team I have. They make life great!

@Paul

"People have moved from buying offline to buying online. What has changed about the actual product, the marketing and selling?"

You are the LAST person I would ask ...

As usual Paul you prove you know nothing about me or my business. I have eleven full-time employees. I couldn't make six figures a year doing this shit with the amount of stuff I have going on (more than just paysites) by myself.

But I know it makes you feel better about your own lack of online success to assume I am a one man band. So please, carry on.

Exactly. :thumbsup

Paul seems to get a lot of flak, but like him or not, what he wrote here is really sound advice--especially the second paragraph. Some of what we do at ZENRA I think is rather similar to The Porn Nerd (licensing out older content, but packaging it in a new way), but what we do to make it 'unique' is the way we show it (professional subtitling, detailed reviews, good and many screenshots, etc.).

There's always going to be ebbs and flows in traffic and in sales. Sometimes you'll have great traffic days and even weeks that don't correspond to good sales. You'll have periods where your analytics are all solid, but for some reason "the fish ain't biting' and sales don't come in.

Regardless of the time of the year, people are going to get horny and eventually they'll bite. Just keep working hard and don't fret too much at your sales spreadsheets.

I've been camming for 7 years now and running my own sites for 3. I find April is usually (not always but usually) the lowest income month of the year. Usually not by much, but it's a discernible and predictable dip.

this year had one, really super low week in April. Beyond that a little lower than normal but not significantly and bounced back nicely after the 16th


agreed. it's impossible to track the outcomes of experiments and the value of multiple sources of income in terms of time cost vs earnings and adjust strategically based on yearly sales.

I agree with you that the freedom and ability to shape work to fit our lives makes success much easier.

it's stressful as fuck in terms of the responsibility and that can be really hard but I still wouldn't change it for anything. I can honestly say I love my work, because of everything you mentioned, and because of what I mentioned too. a positive element of responsibility is the pleasure that comes from doing shit right

cheers to that Ms G. wicked to see you back around here :)

Agreed! We need more girl power here at GFY to keep us boys, you know, semi-reasonable. :)

(Or is it girrrrl power?)

give us some proof.

Then tell people where I'm wrong. In detail and not just broad strokes.

We all know nothing about your business, other than you buy or do a revshare deal with old content from failed sites and put them into large packages of old content from failed sites.

So provides some proof other than what we know.

Most online people like to believe they have invented something new when in fact the only new element is the webmastering. Marketing is highlighting a product or services benefits in a way that appeals to the customer. The problem comes when 10,000s use subtitling, detailed reviews, good and many screenshots, etc. To show their different content. In the end it's a person doing something sexy to the customer. Offline they got away with this approach because the customer rarely saw the video before buying, except in booths he paid to use. Today sample videos make all those elements obsolete. The sample video has to do the marketing. And there what most people do is take a clip from the scene, which is similar enough to all the other scenes to lose most of its marketing and individuality. In the end, it's just another porn scene isin the sae genre.

Making something unique means giving it a feature that appeals to customers which other products don't have.

Have you heard of A B testing?



If you work alone. The rest of us have teams to manage, in fact that becomes our prime roll and for that we have to fit a time schedule of normal working hours.

Good to see Paul is still alive and kicking!!!

indeed I have. I'm assuming that most who use this technique don't wait a year before examining the outcomes of that testing.

I don't see why someone would want to purposely limit the amount of useful information they acquire. Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly stats are all valuable sources of information. why would you not want to look at that data? not to stress over, but to learn from.

...I think I just answered my own question there

I work with hundreds of people. the last thing I am is free from commitments to others and lots of my business (esp the bank stuff) has to be done at certain times. Point is I'm the one deciding whether those commitments are worth it. Whether the work I'm doing makes sense for me and for my bank account. I'm still making my own choices on my own terms

The vast majority of work though? as long as it gets done it doesn't matter whether it's 2pm or 2am. the peeps I work with are all over the world

business hours on the internet, a fascinating concept. what time zone would that be exactly? :upsidedow

Paul every time you open your mouth 1980 walks out. Past performance is not an accurate indicator of future performance.

I love how Paul constantly screams "Proof! Proof!! PROOF!!!" LOL It's hilarious.

Paul, the "proof" is all around you. You just need eyes (and a brain) to see it and figure it out for yourself. The fact that you cannot deduce certain things is "proof" to me you are clueless. But that's ok, I don't need to "prove" a damn thing to you. :)

BUT if you had eyes and a brain you would do some simple math and....oh nevermind. LOL

Once again you offer no evidence of why online marketing, apart from webmastering, is different. Because to do so you have to show that consumers needs change when they click on a link. A man phoned a live girl in the 1980s for the same reason he looks at a webcam girl today.

You are stuck.

Once again you offer no evidence of why online marketing, apart from webmastering, is different. Because to do so you have to show that consumers needs change when they click on a link. A man a video in the 1980s for the same reason he looks at an online video today.

There is no difference in getting him to choose yours. Whether it's bigger ads online/offline, more traffic by webmastering or bricks and mortar location. Because the man still wants to jerk off to porn.

That applies to porn, clothing, washing machines, etc.

I provide explanations, you provide nothing..... oh nevermind. You have nothing to offer.

That's a great line there. Indeed very true.

Last week got a little better but this week sucks again. :(

Oh how I hate April! LOL

Uncharacteristically sparse I must say