Fiddy tube threads.

Agreed.

As am I. You always have to try and stay ahead of the curve.

Keep in mind however. I am not condoneing tubes that steal content. Nor even tubes with more than 30 second clips. As my tubes, past and present, only use 30 second clips.

I am also not justifying torrents, time shifting, clouds, or any of that other nonsense.

I am talking specifically to tubes and their application. Which is what this thread is about. That technology in application to the consumer's use, preference, and point of view. Why it is becoming the delivery method of choice by more surfers, and potential customers.

I am not addressing, nor excusing, all of the other surrounding, and deeper issues that muddy the waters in this discussion. Tubes are the scape goat to a lot of other issues in this industry. The tube site, or script, is little more than a preferred delivery method of 2008, 2009 by the masses.

You have to learn to monetize that.

:2 cents:

In that case, I can't see what the big "adaption" is. It is not different than an organized website with hosted movie galleries, other than you host the clips yourself and users can rate/comment.

So what is the goal? As a salesman? To sell - or to bring lots of customers without money into your shop? As I said, it is better to give less - but better. There are affiliate websites with quality and targeted marketing, making the same money as TGPs with 10 times more content and traffic. If the salesman is worried about rip offs, he should make sure the customers are not ripped off (promote the better paysites) - not give out everything for free.

I do not know if you can see the logic in my argument, but lets put it this way: In the past, and now, many webmasters are more focused on their PR and traffic, rather than making sales. If everyone is doing this, "adapting" and let the mass make up for their lack of marketing skills, now what is the point if everyone get the same PR? :upsidedow Tubes will not dissappear, but in the end (if everyone "adapt"), everyone will end up with same market share, but created a total market who are not willing to pay as much as before :upsidedow

As shown in some of your posts this is exactly what I am getting at. The complex various different issues of a 'tube site' threads.

Tube sites run as pay site.
Tube sites with stolen content run for traffic.
Tube sites run with licensed, legal content for traffic.
Tube sites run as social networks.
Tube sites with 30-60 second previews.
Tube sites with 5-20 minute scenes.

This does not even get into the RapidShare, MegaPorn, the forums, and all the horse shit gideongallery gets into.

Back to the O.P. and topic.

I am simply addressing the tube site technology, and the motivations for a surfer/consumer/members to pick the new delivery method over the circle jerks, the 50 scene pay sites that update once a week/month, the pre-checked cross sales, and hassle of trying to get refunds, or cancel memberships, as well as many many other things that has went on in the past decade of adult online.

It is a no brainer why old customers (not the freeloaders, which is another discussion in themselves) prefer the 'tube' as their preferred porn site.

:2 cents:

Yes. And that is why the affiliate should guide the surfers to the best sites.
Giving out everything for free, on every single free website, is not the solution to that problem. That is only adapting to the piracy arguments/culture.

Agreed.

It sounds like you are writing from the affiliate perspective, and I am writing more from the content producer, webmaster, perspective.

Forgive me as I do not know your main area of expertise.

Let not over complicate things..

Tubes are giving away the same product we're trying to sell.

Therefor destroying the base of surfers who would of been buyers.


Can money be made off of tubes? Yes, but more money can be made without them.

Not all tubes are the same.

So let's not under complicate it either.

There are 2 x 2 different perspectives: Quality versus quantity. Traffic and content.
If everyone adapt to a specific technology, you will not change this matrix, but if you change the input (creating freeloaders), the outcome is worth less for all strategies.
So I do not think the "adaption" = oversaturating & more freeloaders, is the solution. Tubes can be used as the marketing tool, but it is much better if the sponsors limited the amount of affiliates. That way affiliates will also be forced to limit the amount of sponsors. Otherwise the same circle as the older TGPs, will repeat itself. But with even less value. In fact, some of my best sponsors are the ones who limit the amount of affiliates and restrict the amount, but with free choice of marketing content. And when I know they update often and see rebills, then I know the surfers are not ripped off.

Again, you are talking from an affiliate perspective. So you must be mainly an affiliate.

I had a free tube in 2008 and ran it to demo some things, and track some stuff. Tweaking different things, and getting feedback from the members. I learned a lot from it, and the members, and sold it off earlier this year.

No clip was more than 45 seconds, and most were 30 seconds.

I now have a membership site that is running on a tube platform. That site is doing really well, and a lot of members from the traditional pay sites have rolled over to the new one. I have talked to them, and based on their feed back, have switched up some things.

On the pay site tube, I still give a 30 second preview of the content before you have to fuck the hell off, or join. So this is hardly giving away anything free, and is on par with the MPG's or TGP's offering clips of the past business models.

However, the FLV allows people to not have to deal with downloads, or codec issues of the past. Nor the waiting for a download.

Tubes can be used as an upsell, and good marketing tool.

As I said before. Not all tubes are the same, evil, giving away the farm, only for traffic, only for freeloaders, and so forth. Broad stroking this issue is exactly why there is so much crying in the beer on the boards IMO.

:2 cents:

Ok, I thought you were talking about the offered marketing tools for affiliates - not a tour site.

:winkwink:

Nope. I was not talking about the program-affiliate relationship.

12,000 alexa rank would rocket to 750 in about 2 months.

For years we followed many gurus who knew nothing about the customer. We went the route of opening sites we had convinced the affiliate the consumer wanted.

We could of had 100 non exclusive good content producers selling content at a price that would of allowed sites to buy every day. More content, more varied content, girls, style, scenarios and better members areas. But we decided to go the cheap exclusive area, 10% of the content, smaller members area, often cheap less quality content, webmasters thinking they can shoot porn and manage models ad much worse members areas.

As for showing the customer what they are buying that's easy. If we can do it anyone can do it. It's easy, but most sites would of lost sales if they had done that.

As still sponsors open sites with 50 exclusive scenes and have not realised the customer is rejecting that model.

I am thinking from the consumers perspective.

I'm all for clips4sale and we get good sales from there. It fits the users needs totally. I wish there were 10 more sites with the same format doing the same type of figures. What I would like to know is why isn't there 10 other sites like it?

A year ago Eva, I and our programmer were sitting down thinking of turning the content stores into a model built for the consumer. He could choose the scenes he wanted, drop them into a basket and view the on the site or download them. And not at the price of most PPV sites, scenes for a dollar or less. The only problem would of been traffic. Would we get enough traffic to make the site work?

Once an industry looks to satisfying it's own needs before the customers needs it risks customers leaving it.

Thinking that if it works on Youtube it will work in porn is flawed. HD needs good lighting, good looking models, good make up and because of the screen ratio it's essential to have shooters who know what they are doing. Otherwise you end up with a great view of the room. It suits the Playboy to Twistys end of the market. For Amateur, teens, Gonzo, MILF, mature and more it's not required and can bring down the quality of the porn.

But is goes further than that and this is the real problem. A bad porn scene shot with HD is still a bad porn scene, HD does not make it a good scene. HD is the cherryon the topof the cake for some, its not the cake.

Final proof. If HD was truly important to the porn consumer DVD sales would not be in free fall. A DVD can deliver 4.5 Gigs, you can put 2 discs in box and the level of quality is far better than what most sites offer and any Tube. But DVD sales are in free fall.

HD is like exclusive content, another benefit to sell to affiliates to drive more traffic to sites the customer is increasingly turning away.

But you are right about paysites delivering something Tubes can't. We need to supply live shows, with and without chat. Involving the members into the scenes and selling live 1-1 at a very affordable price. We have to do this on mass, not a few sites, so the customers know they are getting more than a membership to a site with 50 to 500 videos.

Live chat companies losing business need to think on a different level and supply this to the paysite business on mass. The customer needs to be thinking he can get live shows in any of the paysites he joins. It's not something we should keep as "exclusive" it's something that should be standard in paysites.

Bring those on Tubes who will spend money back to paysites and the Tubes lose their funding. Tubes are not paid for by people who want everything for free.

Significance of the live shows if greatly overestimated - most customers are not into this thing that much and just want videos.

With live shows, surfers are tied to a particular time of event which doesn't fly well with most of them. And if you make recorded copies of live events available in your member area for time-shifting, they can be stolen and posted at tubes/torrents/rapidshare/boards etc just like any other video. And if you don't, they still can be screen recorded and stolen.

Shifting to live shows is just a desperate attempt to fight piracy, by giving up your rights to produce and distribute legal content and earn your profit off it, and shifting to the only kind of stuff that can't be stolen. And yet it can be stolen too, so the ones thinking that live shows is the answer (aka the infamous "adaptation") need to disillusion themselves - shifting to live shows is not the answer, at least not to the industry as a whole. It may work for some, but for the rest it will not.

The only real answer to our current problems is fighting piracy, because you cannot really "adapt" to a situation where everyone can steal your work and post it free or even sell it without paying you anything.

With the ongoing piracy "adaptation" can only mean giving up most of your profits to the tubes and the likes crowd, while working harder and harder yourself for less and less profit.

:thumbsup

Greed.

Clips4Sale was the first. The offered a fair 60/40 split on revenue.

The others that have come after it offer 25-40% to the store owner. Then bring in all that affiliate, extra percentage math bullshit in the dangling carrot for 75% or whatever.

Basically selling the dream of the affiliate program to lazy webmaster and in turn drive traffic to their main site in hopes the long term advantage will be more people coming to the main site, and in exchange you get some crumbs if they buy from others. This is no different then the traffic leaks some claim with C4S.

When you look at the clip stores, a lot of them are mom and pops or smaller production houses. Most are not going to settle for 40% and some math riddle with the promise of riches. Especially when you can make more money on C4S then the others combined, and get more traffic (if you know how to work the system).

There are probably close to 10 other outfits out there now. However, unless you have limited content in your pipeline. The odds of you working all 10 clip store sites is a long shot at best.

For me, I shoot, and release, so much content in a month that I am willing to try and few of them here and there to test their traffic and sales. But, just like any other business. When one is paying you crumbs, and the other thousands. You are going to stop wasting your upload time and move on to something else.

For those who have licensed limited content, or do not shoot as much. Yes. Working all 10 clip store sites may be advantageous to "not leaving money on the table". For me, even with two internet connections, I am not going to upload to 10 sites. I will demo them, find which do best, and focus on those. Same as most of the others.

:2 cents:

the only, single, problem with the tubes is, those that are illegal and give away other! peoples work. Thats it.

If they produced their own and gave it away, no one would complain, they would just be trying a new approach. Lot of yada yada in these threads, but at the end of the day, its just simple theft and nothing ground breaking, new, innovative or adaptive at all.