nice reading, good thread

Start thinking guys and stop guessing. Anyone who was around any form of home entertainment in those days will know why there was no explosion in porn when the VCR came into being. It was a slow build up.

Seriously you guys need to use logic a lot more.

When VCR, Beta and VHS hits the domestic market. They were FUCKING expensive, very few films and definitely few porn ones.

The porn consumers into movies were geared up to 8 mm, or Super 8. The movie industry was geared up to producing movies on film. The retail was geared up to it. Switching was an expensive thing and the market was small because the sale of VCRs in the beginning was slow. They had to wait for the wife to want to see movies at home on tape.

Yes it did build and eventually it took off and was so good VHS won over Beta because of the films available on VHS. But it was slow and porn consumers did not all rush out and buy a VCR in a few years.

With rental it was much faster. Everyone by then had a VCR and one day a porn movie was $30 or a lot more to buy or $3 to $5 to rent. The take up was phenomenal.

Now go tell us I'm wrong and a million people went and bought a very expensive VCR so they could watch porn movies shot for the 8 mm film market in a matter of months. LOL

If we are to beat Tubes and Torrents we need to think with logic, throw off the thoughts that have held us back and think out of the box. It could be something simple like having mega sites that charge by the Gig downloaded, charge for the number of times visited, stores like content stores that sell packages of good content at low prices.

What will not work is dreaming Tubes will disappear and the 30 day recurring model is going to work like it use to. With or without Tubes and Torrents.

As for the Internet by the time we got broadband into most homes of people who would or could spend we were spending a fortune giving them free porn. And we are seeing clearly how fragile it all is.

Thanks. Nice to see what people think.

internet killed the video star
tubes killed Paul Markham business
now he's trying to invent a time machine and bring us back to 1980

Paul, you're a backwards idiot.
Stop thinking so hard how to bring back VHS and think of how to be the first in line for the next money making revolution.

If some guy fuck Lindsey Lohan and record all action and publish, it'd be a great explosion also... We must cellebs..

Eastern european girls started to take their clothes off...

http://www.cinemaerotique.com/chamel...e13/Anna07.JPG

http://www.cinemaerotique.com/chamel...ung/Ag0010.jpg

So far the most of the "Next money making revolutions" we've had here have been a way to lose money for most.

Ponder this. IPTV is the future of all media combined; internet, television, satellite & cable :)

If you want to look at the future then try to think how we will all be communicating with each other as well as how we will access literally thousands of IPTV channels/websites of content to satisfy our every desire from the comfort of our homes using our wireless IPTV keyboard remotes.

Think Wayne's World on a global scale. Entertainment for every conceivable niche that can be generated by anyone with the proper technology for very little cost.

What I think this means is that internet website owners need to start thinking in terms of becoming an active and engaging form of media vs. a passive provider of photos and video content. Income for the most part will no longer be generated via a monthly membership model but will be gained through a combination of advertising revenue and upsell products whether they be live shows, novelties, pills or personalized items. You must grab the users attention immediately if you want to have a chance to monetize them in any way.

Websites utilizing multiple forms of social media are leading the way towards the IPTV platform by featuring the latest interactive forms of social networking, blogs, forums, user generated content, ratings and live performances to larger audiences that are willing to pay for this type of entertainment. Finally you will have that strip club quality entertainment you always wanted right in your own living rooms. And yes 3D, holograms and virtual reality are also a part of the future but that will come after the next major shift in interactive media and entertainment.

Now the race becomes to see who will be able to combine this new IPTV technology into high traffic channels/site with all the needs and desires of an insatiable consumer... albeit one that will still be a tough sale.

Is this the type forward thinking that I think you are looking for Paul?
_

You're spot on here. a passive provider of photos and video content. It only worked for a short time. And is not working as well now.

Don't see advertising and up selling making the porn industry a lot of money. The pool of people we can advertise are small and probably if the advertising has to support the good delivery of a quality product it will be too much. Works for a few with Tubes, but that revolutionary idea has lost money for the porn business.

Up selling is a problem, because it's usually at a price most don't want to pay. Otherwise they would not pre click them.

Maybe 50 sites, or more, linking together and charging the viewer on BW used offering him a wide range of products including live chat, dating, videos, live shows, etc might work. We've all seen what massive traffic Tubes get giving it away, but the return on the traffic is a low ratio. Maybe turning those sites into IPTV and not charging too much would work.

Charge the customer for what he consumes, when he consumes it and at a price relating to the product cost to deliver it to him might work.

No more ideas?

The video market went from a market that would spend $30 to a market that would spend $3. AND MADE MORE MONEY.

What can we learn from this?

Anyone who thinks we carry on as we are is welcome to not post. LOL

blah blah blah

For me the biggest thing to come along was the Pam Anderson video. Once that was on a paysite it converted fast and better then anything else on the net ever has.

The reason for video rentals doing so well was not the price, but where you could get them. No longer did you have to goto some freaky sex store, you could get it at your normal video store (behind a curtain) but way better then parking at a sex shop.

Anyone who thinks we carry on as we are is welcome to not post. But they will.

Got anything constructive to say?

I may be wrong but not as wrong as some of the "Industry Gurus" we followed blindly for years.

Closing Tubes and Torrents would be a wonderful thing. But in the real world it will not happen and those who put it forward as a solution are bereft of ideas and just giving us blah blah blah to boost their post count. Because in the real world while they see that as the only solution the truth is the traffic on those sites increases and ours decreases.

Those who think the solution is we all move over to giving it away and live off advertising Dating and Cam sites are equally bereft of ideas. What happens when the advertising does not cover the BW bill?

The solution lies with us, which is a shame really. :(

We already know offering the porn at $3 won't produce more sales over $30.

For us to be like rental, we would have to charge $3 per movie, per use. It would take 10 uses per person on average, each month, to make the same money. That will never happen.

I thought this post was about an explosion in porn, not a solution to "some" peoples problems.

If you want to make more money/traffic/sales, it's "very" easy.. Stop marketing in the same places online as every other adult site in the world. It's that simple.

I bet you are doing the same thing online and offline that you were 3, 6, 8 years ago.. 99% of us are, so it's not a bash - but that is what the real problem is.

Not the cost of memberships, not tubes or piracy, it's marketing.. period.

So we keep marketing a product at $30 while everything goes down?

Yes moving from a $30 to a, for instance, $3 might initially lead to less. But if it's combined with us giving more than just a means to DL video or sets it could lead to a % of the buyers who in truth fund the Tubes we close them down. We need to price closer to the buyers needs and not to ours.

Not knocking you as I agree we need to step out of the "video/sets download" box and into something else. I'm doing live shows and it's working, got to do some design work and then tell the affiliates, I also increased the size of the site and considering the price angle (2 months for $30). Maybe a 24/7 online girl to chat with customers might be a good move.

I'm trying things not just dreaming Tubes and Torrents will close of their own accord.

Got any suggestions other than "marketing"?

While everything goes down? What is going down? What makes you think you aren't priced closer to the buyers needs?

Retention from I have seen, across lots of people, is perfectly fine. And sales aren't down for everyone, Jan 09 was a bad ass month for many.

You can do download per clip/scene, easily.. several of those sites do that now, some have traffic, some require you to market it. You can get into VOD, to cover PPM and DL to own too, this means you have DVD's too, another market.

You wouldn't 'stop' doing recurring at $30 and start doing one of these. You diversify into all that you can handle, like doing live stuff as you said.

Marketing wise, from the methods you diversify on - each provide marketing potential, to other online areas, like building a fan base around a grouping of social sites that can follow your work, your site updates, your customer support, ect.

Our Industry has and still does hit a lot of other markets, some spam and some work well in them. Form you tube and other mainstream tubes with millions of eyes, to old myspace spamming that did produce sales, digg at one time for creating authority back.. The list goes on and on.

Staying inside the adult traffic bubble will kill you... it's dieing due to the loss of Webmasters we once had creating a godly global attraction. The 'mass majority' of people do not seek porn, but that doesn't mean they can't be sold porn.

Has anyone ever tried to make an adult Netflix type of company?

Yes, or various versions of it at least.. No, I can't think of the names, only one that comes close that I can think of is dvd for a buck.

Well the general tone is that we are losing sales. You may not but the general tone I get is that we are. I also feel generally we do meet the buyers needs on price, but that's not the situation. We need to meet the non buters needs on price and leave the free loaders to the Tubes.

Retention is down for the industry as a whole.

Including different options on the same site is an excellent idea.

Something we could do with me basing the site on me. Also models could do it and send content to sites they are on, models or someone posting in their nick name.

We loss the Webmasters due to their being too many feeding from the same trough. We did not lose them because they made too much money.

I was thinking of turning the content stores which are B2B into a B2C version. The surfer can come in and buy what he wants when he wants and how he wants. He can fill a basket with say $3 minimum or maybe have $10 in credit and spends it at his own pace. He gets instant access.

It would also include a live chat option at a better price than what most are. Maybe even a live show which is looking like it's increasingly popular.

Prices to view a scene would be as low as 30 cents and nothing over $1. We need to think more flexibly about how and what we sell. It's clear now that the guys who we were afraid would get off to a gallery with too much hardcore content and not sign up are gone. The guys who only want porn once a week are gone and maybe even those who want to watch porn twice a week are gone.

Is this why we have lost a lot of buyers? Our sales packages are too geared to our needs and not the customers needs?

What I will be doing in the next week is throwing open the site and make the tour so the surfer can see the whole site and doubling the length of membership for the same prices, ie 60 days for $29.95.

We have a repeat buy, short life and one off product. Once viewed most porn scenes are not viewed again, look at your mainstream DVD collection for proof. We need to sell to the same person time and time again. Yet we have tried to hit the consumer once and get as much as possible in the beginning to pay out to the affiliates.

Plus we are not sure he will come back. Does he not come back because he does not like porn or he does not like our package? Think about it, to pay out $50 to an affiliate, you either have to squeeze him once at the door or keep him buying from you. In todays market what do webmasters here think it is in general?

I know some sites do retain, but I said in general.

The events of the last 6 months have put it on hold. But I still think it's a great idea.

Fucking Deep Throat, all guys wanted to get wife that suck deep :)

Price has zero to do with any of this..

No, that is incorrect... Just because your retention total members are down, does not mean your retention is lower. It means you got less up front sales, which will naturally create less rebills.

Even my worst sites, every client, and even trial to converts, are the highest I have ever seen them, across the board. It was just last year that ccbill reset the 99 rebill limit, that's 8 1/2 years retention.

Again, lower rebill #'s does not mean a decrease in retention, it means leas sales over a period of time.

Several paysites running around that let you buy memberships, buy the single dvd or download, and do a half VoD - PPM model.. They convert no better.

Selling more things, or the same thing more ways, does not always mean more sales. It does mean you will move sales around. Exactly like adding a new processor doesn't boost sales, it simply moves them.



We lost them exactly when the first 2257 laws came out. That is the exact mark downfall that you can see across the board in our Industry. We should sue the Gov as an Industry, for the billions they cost us. Once the 10's of 1000's of Webmasters left our Industry due to fear, we started to die. Now that the ability to penetrate globally 'is gone', we are doomed to be left only with piracy traffic and die hard fans, if things stay the same.

I still have to think it is the internet. Sure, a lot of people online don't buy. That is a given, but many do buy. Before the internet if you wanted porn you had to either buy it (could be expensive) or rent it. Either way you had to go to a porn store and risk being seen by friends, co-workers, neighbors or whoever. The last thing people wanted was to be seen by your kids teacher leaving a porn store with a copy of "Triple Anal Gangbang" in hand.

The internet made all of that anonymous. It allowed people to join a site and check out all the porn they wanted and be anonymous in doing so. Millions from around the globe now had access to porn where they may not have had access before. Before getting porn could mean having to drive a long way (depending on where you lived) and now it was just a few clicks away.

I actually don't think overall online porn sales have dropped that much. I think they are now just spread out more than ever. Back in the earlier days there were a lot less companies and those companies controlled much of the traffic and many of the sales. Now there are tons of small webmasters and programs all over the globe and the sales are now spread out across them all. For example in 1999 you might have had 100 webmasters that were all sending 50 joins a month spread out among a couple of different programs. Now those 5000 joins are still being sent, they are just spread out over more programs and instead of 100 webmasters there are 400 webmasters sending them. So overall sales in the industry haven't dropped that much, they are just diluted among more programs and more webmasters. With tube sites the sales are starting to now switch to cams and dating because that is all those types of sites can sell.

The VCR and movie rentals revolutionized the porn industry. The internet helped it really realize its potential and brought it to every corner of the globe, giving access to millions who would not have otherwise had access. Yes, there are a lot of freeloaders that don't really exist as much in the the brick and mortar world, but I would offer this thought: The last time I was in a porn store was probably around 1998-1999. The store that was closest to my house had a lot of movies for rent (or purchase), magazines and toys. They also had a bunch of booths where you could spend a buck or two and jerk off to a movie. In the 20 minutes or so I was in there I saw about 5 different guys come in, get 1-2 dollars worth of tokens and go into the booth. They were in and out in a few minutes and never even stopped to look at the movies or items for sale. To me those guys are kind of like freeloading surfers. They don't spend much, but they count as customers to the store and help the bottom line of the store. If I run a TGP and I get 100,000 freeloaders a day I may not sell them a membership, just like the porn store didn't sell the guys in the jack booths a video or toy, but I can use them to make money. I can sell advertising based on the number of visitors my site gets. I can also sell the traffic in general to a broker. I can trade the traffic with other sites and I can redirect them to other offers/sites which could net me a return. So maybe I don't sell them membership or a tangible good, but I can use them to make money. In that case you can argue that any visitor to a site is worth something. Even if they don't spend anything on my site they can help with the bottom line.

Yes it does.

If you make statements with nothing to back it up I can as well.

This thread is not about what you or I do, it's about what the porn industry does.


So we all keep doing the same. Great.


The number of webmasters working on the Internet does not make any difference to the number of buyers, in fact less people giving out less free content could mean more sales. Affiliates do not create traffic, they direct existing. Yes they create it to a site, but unless they go out and force people to log on to the Adult Net they don't create it. They direct.

Very interesting post Kane.
Yes the Internet should of been a license to print money for porn and for all the reasons you point out. But porn revenues have fallen from all the indicators. Yes some sales have come over and we do spread them thinner, but it's never like the old days when porn was creating millionaires like the Flynt, Milton, Raymond, Sullivan, the guys who own Score, Vivid and many many more. Maybe the wealth is more spread. But if it were more spread we would not be losing affiliates as we are. The existing would be sending it to more sites, but the sales would still be high. Even if 2257 cut the number of affiliates in half, it has little effect on the number of surfers looking for porn.

And I think you mentioned another thing that boosted sales. The peep show screens, guys would come in pay a few dollars, jerk off and go. That market did spend $30 but now we have lost it to Tubes. Do we resign ourselves to losing all those buyers or find a product that will bring them back?

Because I doubt if many guys who want 15 minutes are signing up for 30 days now.

The guys in the booths did buy something. They could of paid more than those who bought the video. I do know those machines were very profitable. Today lots of those guys jerk off to a Tube site video.

OK you can sell the traffic. But the price of that traffic is based on how much it buys. Traffic does not equal profit, it's what the traffic buys that makes the money. Yes you can sell them to another TGP, dating, webcam or paysite, but then you're running out of options and unless Coca Cola start skinning GFY or The Hun or Youporn the profits from the traffic are going to be limited. We need to focus on selling more to the traffic we have.

Have we focused too much on pushing people around the Net and not enough on stopping them to buy something? A site with a conversion rate of 1-500 is missing out selling something to 499. Today is it easier to get 1 of that 499 to buy something or get another 499. And if you say get another 499 will it be the same quality and where will it come from?

I think it's often lower quality and it comes from another site who then steps up it's marketing to get it back. Short term solution.

I would argue that the internet still is a license to print money as far as porn goes. Sure sales are not what they once were, but I still feel that there are a lot of sales out there, they are just spread out more than ever before. The internet has created several millionaires from porn. Lensman and Mike Strauss both come to mind. Building up a big program or building up a large network of sites to get to where you are making a lot of money is more difficult now than it was back in 1999. Back in 1999 I made some nice money keyword bombing altavista. You could churn out crappy sites with 5 small pics and a handful of ads then stuff them with keywords and submit them to altavista. 24-48 hours later you were listed and getting traffic. Some sites ranked really high, others didn't. If you made 40 of them a day overall it was nice. Then things changed. Altavista changed and that strategy was no longer a viable one. I'm sure I'm not the only one who lost a lot of sales because of that. There were lost sales and it had nothing to do with free porn, it had everything to do with technology changing.

I think there are more affiliates today than ever before. Some programs lose affiliates, others gain them. If I am sending traffic to program A and then I give program B a try and Program B makes me more money I move my traffic to Program B. Program A just lost an affiliate, but Program B gained one. If you are saying that the industry as a whole is losing affiliates, I would love to know how you know this.

Here is the main difference for me and why the internet is more responsible for growth than the movie rental. When someone walks into a porn store and looks around then leaves without buying anything or spending any money, the store gains nothing. They don't really lose anything, but they gain nothing.

When a visitor comes to your site and looks around then leaves without buying you could still gain from them. If you have a site that has a lot of traffic you can sell ad space on that site. If you have a site that trades traffic you can trade that visitor for another. If you are a paysite you get the option of pop-up on exit that you can keep for yourself or you can sell to other companies. In the brick and mortar world once they get in the car and drive away, they are gone. In the internet even if they left and spent nothing, you can still monetize them.

Sure, the guy that is just going to go to a tube site, look at 5 minutes of a movie so he can jerk off and leave might be a lost customer. He might have been a guy who would would have at least paid a few dollars for a run in a jack shack if there was no internet. But still, that tube site can trade traffic so maybe this guy brings in a fresh visitor that will buy something or maybe he just pumps up the traffic totals so the owner can sell more ad spots or sell the site entirely. He can still be monetized, just not in a traditional way.

All the said, without the traditional sale all the other stuff is useless. If people stop buying membership then site owners stop making money and they stop buying add spots or exit pop-ups or gallery placements or raw traffic from brokers. The challenge, as you say is to find a way to bring them back. There are programs out there that are doing very well and they aren't resorting to shady tactics to do so. Me? I'm not going to waste my time fighting over would be freeloaders or people that I have to figure out how to creatively monetize. I will leave that up to others who know that game better than I ever will. I'll seek out people looking for something specific and give it to them and they will happily pay for it.

I have always said and continue to believe that the tube site is a business model that is born to fail. Mainstream even knows this . Youtube has done nothing but lose money for Google. Porn tube sites have a very difficult time selling memberships to porn site. So they sell dating and cams. I feel eventually those will stagnate and they will become less and less profitable. When those profits drop it will leave the tubes without any other real options as far as revenue streams and they will be forced to make some hard choices. They may have to change and start offering much smaller movies or they may have to close down entirely or start charging a fee. Eventually, I feel, they will shoot themselves in the foot.

The problem with the porn business is many people are rushing to see who can give the most stuff away for free and that road eventually led us to the tube site. How long can sites like that maintain themselves. When you teach your visitors not to buy, can you be surprised when they don't buy? I'm not worried too much about tube sites. I think they will eventually take care of themselves.

Less money but it's still a license to print money. LOL

Putting Lensman up against the guys I quoted said it all. Nothing against Joe but if he's worth $100 mill it would surprise me. Sullivan is or was worth $500 mill. Raymond even more and Flynt well as I said no comparison.

Sorry this does not make logical sense. There were lost sales and it had nothing to do with free porn, it had everything to do with technology changing. Changing technology moves sales from one to the next. So why say there were lost sales?


Prove it because all indications point to the opposite.


Any porn sore that sold only to 1 in 500 visitors would go out of business. No sense at all.

Yes my stores have this, my paysite does not. Are you saying it should?

Sorry but you are getting more ridiculous. A guy who paid a few dollars to jerk off in a booth can not be compared to a Tube surfer in terms of value.

Precisely what my thread is about. How do we turn more of the surfers who I can buy at $1 per 1,000 into buys worth $1 each?

You came back to making sense.

I have to go out now. Back later. LOL

You said millionaires, I gave you a few. Sure, guys like Flynt are worth more. Why? They were there first and were the creators and innovators of the industry. That is pretty normal for all industries. The people that create and develop the industry tend to make the most money. It doesn't mean that they are the only one's who make money. maybe you should have said, show me someone that has built over 100 million in wealth from the internet alone. If that is the criteria I can't think of anyone.

There were lost sales to me and it had everything to do with technology changing. There wasn't a sudden flood of free porn. Altavista stopped letting me do what I had been doing for the previous year or so and I because of that it caused me to lose sales. I'm sure someone else got those sales, but it was a lost sale to me, not the industry as a whole.

I'm just guessing, but you are saying that the industry is losing affiliates, yet - like me - you show no proof.

Back when I started there were a few message boards and not a ton of sponsors. Now there are a ton of sponsors and dozens of message boards. TGP's used to have to beg to get submissions now they are flooded. The same can be said with link sites. To me that means there are more people in the game now than there was 10 years ago.


Correct, but you are comparing apples and oranges here and in a way you prove my point. If a brick and mortar store only sold to 1 in ever 500 people that came through the door they would be out of business . . . unless it was The Huns Porn Store and they have 700,000 people come through the door every day. If you only get 200-300 people in your store in a day you need to sell as many of them as you can. If you get half a million you can afford for many of them not to buy and if you have the opportunity you can maybe make some money off of those that don't buy from you.

Not in the term of actual dollars per person no. If a guy walks in and pays $4 to jerk off in a booth the store makes $4. When a guy goes to a tube site and watches a movie then leaves, even if it is through a trade or his just being their increases the traffic volume so the site can sell advertising he doesn't make anywhere near $4 for the site. But again, I go back to my previous argument. A brick and mortar store might see a few hundred people a day where a tube site can see hundreds of thousands. It would be great to sell every single one of them something, but that has never happened and never will happen. If you are walking into a porn store you normally have something in mind, rarely are you going in just browse and leave. If you do browse you may eventually see something you like and buy it. With the internet the same is true, the problem is that it all isn't in the same place. If you have site featuring a couple of different niches and someone comes to it, browses, but was looking for something different or doesn't see something they like, they continue to look. . . on someone else's site. In a brink and mortar store the person knows if this place doesn't have what they want, they may not find it or they are going to have to drive clear across town to another store. With the internet they can click a few things, hit the back button and move on. So it is hard to compare the two.


That is the question of the day. I think the nature of the internet is such that nobody will ever see a sale from every visitor. I have seen people with extremely target traffic that still convert at 1:40 - 1:50. That is a great ratio, but still 39-49 people that didn't buy.

To me part of it is that people feel like they pay for an internet connection so whatever is on there should be free. Of course that isn't how it works, we know this, but there are a lot of people who think that. Also the guy that used to spend a few dollars in a booth, might now be a thing of the past and we might just have to settle for being happy to get whatever we can in return for him and focus our attention on selling stuff to those that are still open to buying when they find the right thing.

When you read others posts that reply back to you, do you keep in mind what they were answering?

As I said, "Price has zero to do with any of this.." - Responding to your comment "We need to meet the non buters needs on price and leave the free loaders to the Tubes." - No, price has nothing to do with non-buyers. Every marketing book, sales book, and anyone that has studied market trends knows for 100% fact that the price has zero to do with any of this.

Can price be a factor, of course.. but it 100% isn't in our case.

The numbers i posted aren't mine or yours, they are the Industries. As I stated, across the Industry Retention is not down.

Simply, having a lower amount of rebills does not mean lower retention.

Yeah, "thats the real problem" - You are doing it the same as everyone else, that's why your sales are down.


What?

Ok, first we are talking like 10,000+ less Webmasters.

Second, people do not come online to look for porn, only a very very small percentage do. fact... they come online for various forms of Entertainment.

Is that the problem with this Industry? You guys think people come online to look at porn? Ha! Some serious ego you guys have going.


So you keep marketing to the same people, willing to buy and being exposed to tubes. I will market to the 95% larger group, that has no idea what tubes are...

psst.... that's what the webmasters once did to us, they allowed mass marketing of non-porn-surfers - and brought them into our Industry.

What? What? Read above.... It's now IMPOSSIBLE for you to reach a global market without them. It's that simple.




At the end of the day if the person can afford to be online, they an afford a membership. The problem is, you haven't sold them... but a bigger problem is, now you can't reach them since we don't have the Webmaster base to penetrate all the various markets.

It's not like you will ever market to them without the Webmasters, you market in adult, probably exclusively to that tiny 5% of the Internet.