There's more people than ever online. So porn "consumption" is naturally gonna rise. Problem is they don't have to pay to "consume" it anymore. It's become a free lunch buffet.

fuck this thread is more depressing than anything else

imo: low entry barrier + copy/paste biz practices + failure to innovate & experiment are the cause.

if it were simply free porn & tubes i don't think i would have gone from weekend warrior to full timer in under 2 years.

:2 cents:

"Try new things" and "innovate" don't have to mean "find a whole new traffic source" or "write some new software that automates everything". Trying new things can mean consolidating functions so certain efforts can be streamlined thereby cutting costs. For example, say a skilled marketer is having problems maintaining production along with day to day business management and cannot afford the staff necessary to meet deadlines much less sales goals. That person might consider outsourcing the content management at a fraction of the time and expense of managing in house staff.

Innovation can mean look at new ways to convert the traffic you already have or learn a new skill set for building traffic - if tgp worked yesterday and blog works today but facebook is looking good for tomorrow then where is your effort best going to be spent adopting a new skill set to deal with that potential revenue source.

Great example. I have another.

As a Grateful Dead fan I not only made hundreds of FREE bootlegs but I traded with friends for years. However many shows I can get for free I still choose to make purchases of specific shows. Why? Quality is one reason. I like the packaging and extras and/or I like the convenience of being able to get it on demand right at the show.

The point is content is still king but all the emporors with no clothes better stop flattering themselves that they know everything and start really paying attention to the masses if they want the masses to start paying them cash for content.

Great thread Sean.

For many years there has been a group of people in this industry that landed in the right place at the right time. There is no doubt the business has evolved into a real business.

For me the writing on the wall was similar to certain categories of software. There was a time when people paid for calendar software, now it's free so nobody buys the paid calendar software. This put companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars out of business.

I think the free line has been moved too far in this industry. I think the survivors will be companies like yours that offer unique and premium content, live content, or interactivity of some nature.

Thank You and Most Excellent! Exactly what I was looking for - concrete examples. The fact that they match my own inner instincts is a bonus. LOL

I spend roughly 2-4 hours every day, depending in the tasks, doing my 'bread 'n butter' work. I'm sure many of you also do, and I'm sure many have figured out (or are starting to) a way to automate these tasks. MY 'solution', as best as I can calculate it, is if I hire someone in the Phillipines or India (tho India is getting more pricey) they could do the work for me and cost maybe $200 a week to do so. This would free app. 15-20 a week of my time! Worth it? I'm thinking yes...

Until now ALL my sites, everything, have been 'clean', meaning without aff links, or upsells, or cross-sells, or anything inside the mem areas but content, etc. But now I'm considering doing something with all my exit traffic (50,000+ uniques network-wide), partnerships, etc. But how to do it tastefully, as in not to piss of surfers/members and add to the 'bombardment'?

PS Dead fan: ICQ me sometime and I'll share with you the day i interviewed Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir backstage in the Long Island Colliseum back in '91, just me & Bob & Jerry & my giant-titted girlfriend, who Jerry kept staring at through his (literally) rose-colored shades, until one of his 'assistants' came in, mid-way, and handed jerry a big, fat....ICQ me, not for public consumption. LOL

Few things... one that sounds like an awesome story which I would love to hear but I don't use icq anymore... if you don't mind stooping to im then mine is hgtimlake at hotmail. Next, I think I know a great site that wouldn't piss off your surfers if you offered it on those exits... ;-) And I know a way to tastefully please your surfers but also have the advantage of a legal, still is, and always will be visa friendly upsell using our content consoles with a affprog link.

For us, foriegn outsourcing has had mixed results. We determine it on a case by case basis and have found them to be sort of inconsistent - especially since you have little to no control over their employees coming and going, sometimes leaving you to an inferior programmer, etc.

lol, somehow after Mountain Girl I always knew Garcia was a boob lover...

Far L Kicks Ass! That's all i have to say :thumbsup

I fucking hate ICQ but a lot of ppl use it so....

Business to discuss to best to talk via email at first - although a Hotmail IM one-off sounds dirty enough for me to try. :) Maybe after I get through the weekend.....

themisterpeabody at gmail and we'll take it from there. LOVE HomeGrownVideo so totally open to your ideas.

And yes, outsourcing always worries me but the alternative - finding a paid intern, maybe - is also problematic. Finding semi-skilled labor willing to do boring, repetitive work for a low salary is getting harder to find every day. :D

lamo, so the only problem we face is porn is boring, if you believe that then fatfoo's bot is smarter than you.


my response was to your comment that " another round of blame but no solutions". You can't talk about solutions without talking about the problems as well. I believe there has been a lot of people talking about solutions here. If people choose to act on them, that's up to them.


So if "we" have the answers, then what do you think they are. How do we make porn unboring so everything can be fixed ??? you want to bitch at the people who are talking about problems and trying to come up with solutions. What do you think the solutions are. why don't you contribute instead of just bitching??? or are you just mad because you don't have the answers yourself and you waiting for someone to tell you what they are so you can follow their lead?

Heh heh - meow! Ka-ching!!
will76 make fatfoo bot his bitch make plsure his king. :D

first, calm down and have a drink. panic wont help you at all. next, come up with a way to get your surfers back hourly. unless you do, your site(s) is BORING.

ok that's 2. you'll have to pay me for 4 more :winkwink:

:banana ya

if u were smarter this convo would be a lot easier for me. :321GFY

no genius, i want to bitch at the people who are talking about problems. period.

#1 if u want to be a dick dont reply to my posts. its not constructive.

#2 we all know the fucking "problems"

#3 there is a solution - or at least a way forward - but im sure not going to discuss it with an asshole.

unnecessary dickishness. we've all seen your sites. you have no reason to be cocky.

Since simple minds like to number things, both so they won't forget their 'brilliant' points and to make themselves seem smarter, I will number my responses for you to comprehend:

1. Saying 'do something to make your surfers come back hourly" is retarded, vague, the exact kind of dumb-ass statement that brought this wrath down on you in the first place and utterly insane. How many porn surfers visit the same site every fucking hour? You're whack.

2. If you think the look of a website indicates its' success then you are twice the moron I assumed you are.

3. Will76 has offered far more insightful comments than you have, contributed to this discussion, and has proven himself through his words to "get it". You, however, are a putz.

Shap numbers most of his posts. dont be an asshole.

#2 the rest of your post is just stupidity.

PLAIN MOTHER FUCKING RIGHT :mad:

No doubt!

During the late 1990's Playboy started seeing a decline in sales. Was the porn industry dying then? Obviously not. Certain companies saw this as an opportunity and made a killing I think we are simply seeing another shift in the paradigm ( I can't believe I got to use that word).

All print media has been forever changed by the internet. It will be very difficult for newspaper and magazine publishers to ever recover subscription revenue.

Most people do not care to pay for news online nowadays either, because like porn, it is also free on so many sites.

I think mainstream can make up some of the losses by generating mainstream advertising revenue however, which is not as easy in adult.

Artists have been hit hard by the internet as well, thanks to music piracy. They can still make bank on live performances though... also unlike porn.

Im newer to the industry, and Ive noticed this as well. Coming from running a mainstream business (developing eLearning systems for the government on contracts) to the adult web business, my husband and I brought along our past experience of adaptability, hard work, and long-term goals. But as we networked, come to find out, many people in (web) adult had no real concept of professional business practices, trend analysis, ect...

Unfortunately for newer businesses like ours that have a more modern and fluid business model, the gatekeepers of many high traffic sources still function a bit in the past. I need 50,000 people a day exposed to my work and brand, not 2000. Thats our major barrier. But, the answer is simply 'give it time'. The market always evolves and fixes itself, its just a long process sometimes.

Lets make a new advertising model that replaces TGP. I think that goal is a good start to "upgrading" our marketplace.

His points are our exact strategy... David shoots all the content, and spends hours on each set in the digital darkroom, making sure the quality is as high as he can get it. And we delete emails from folks trying to sell us their content.

Are you sure about that? How do you know what their actual business practices are?

For instance, when most folks in this business see me...it's at a webmaster show and I'm having drinks and acting the fool. They have zero idea of what my day to day business is like.

Also, as far as "trend analysis" or A-B testing and other such things...some of us have been doing this online for a looooonnnnngggg time. I have promoted so many programs over so many years and have seen what works and what doesn't work with porn.

I have enough experience to know what I'm doing without doing further testing. I have basically "tested" for 14 years. 99.9 % of the time I know what is going to work and what won't work as far as marketing.

Not saying that doing analysis of stats and testing things isn't important or good business practice. But you get to a point where you master something and you can cut right through all of that and implement stuff quickly and make it happen.

I guess I'm just saying...don't underestimate the people in this business based on posts by some of the folks on here who like to stroke their own egos by claiming that THEY are the ones with all the business acumen.

I can tell you from first hand experience that there are a LOT of smart people who can run circles around most people in this business. No, they aren't successful just because they are "lucky" or some such thing.

If it were so easy back "in the day" to make all that money...then why was it only a handful of us who were successful while THOUSANDS of webmasters failed miserably? Just like now. :)

Actually Robbie when I've talked to you and your lovely wife, Claudia Marie, at shows you seem like you're having a good time, but you're promoting your site and networking in a coherent and (appropriately) informal way.

In that case I will increase my alcohol consumption. :1orglaugh

sounds about right.

I disagree.
On the internet, one of the main advantages was being there first.
The guys who registered valuable domains 15 years ago are now all either sitting on millions or made millions. That does have not much to do with being an entrepreneur.

They would all disagree strongly, a lot of them have taken up blogging and writing long formal self-congratulatory treatises about their entrepreneurial abilities.

The reality is if they had to start over again today with equal means they wouldn't be able to make a penny.

Don't forget that 99.99% of ALL business is that way. It's the guy who was smart enough to see the future and got there FIRST that makes the money. Hell, it just happened again a couple of years ago when Brazzers got Pornhub to explode. I never saw it coming. Wish I had.

And you can apply that "if they had to start over again today with equal means they wouldn't be able to make a penny" to any successful person in most businesses.

Think about it. If Sam Walton were alive today and tried to start from scratch to build something SIMILAR to WalMart...he wouldn't be able to do it. Why? Because WalMart already exists and he wouldn't be bringing anything innovative like that to the table.

Don't discount people's intelligence and business savvy just because it looks easy to you from the outside looking in. Even guys who did nothing more than buy a bunch of domain names 15 years ago...they had the foresight that you and I did NOT have to do so.

And in any industry or business in the world...that's called being smart. If all the people on GFY who constantly try to pump themselves up as being great "businessmen" had half the instincts of a really successful businessman...then they too would have made all the right moves at the right times. They would have done it back then...and they would be doing it right now. Just my observation. The most successful guys in the world do work hard, but a LOT of what they do is pure gut instincts and aggressiveness. Shit you can't learn or teach or analyze.

We ALL have access to the same data that a guy like Warren Buffet has if we want it. But yet, he knows what to do to make money. Some people are just like that. Some people are Donald Trump, and others...no matter how many books they read or statistics they analyze or A -> B testings they do...never are.

Well, I wouldn't consider the elderly old man down the street that bought early lakefront property to be a real estate expert or entrepreneur - he got lucky, plain and simple. Money unfortunately makes people like that lazy and willfully ignorant and he is the last person I would take real estate advice from in 2010.

Luckily he doesn't write pompous essays about entrepreneurship, industry expertise and how he saw it all coming in his crystal ball like certain old domainers do.

It's a case by case situation. I was talking about big time success. Having said that though...how do you really know how sharp and on the ball that elderly guy was back when he bought that property?

Nobody said anything about people having to be up to the minute business monsters right now. My soliloquy was about the business sense of a person to have the foresight and smarts to do things at the right moment.

Sure, if you pull something great and sell it off and make millions and retire...then you would have to get a lot of the rust off to jump back in the game. But guys like Trump and Buffet who stay in the game and work all the time now are still smart as hell and can kick ass. Elderly old guy who is retired? Maybe not so much. :)

If you are smart enough to make millions, you will never sell off and retire. You will find ways to making more millions, whatever job it may be, or business. Most people work to live, but I think most Millionaires live to work. It's fun and it's challenging.

I personally wouldn't know how to retire.

I don't think that applies to me but I will let you know if I still feel the same way when I get to the point that I could retire if I wanted to. The way I see it now, I work 80 hours a week as a means to an end. To make money. When i've made enough and invested it wisely and can live off the passive proceeds I plan on "retiring". Doesn't mean I am going to move to a remote island where no one will ever see or hear from me again. But my ass wont be working no more 80 hour weeks. I will still have investments, may still play around or over see a couple active projects, but my "work" life will be cut by 80%. I want to enjoy life. While working, making money, and taking on challenges is fun... I would rather be spending more time with my family, taking vacations, fishing and playing golf, traveling to sporting events, and even laying on the beach all day vs continuing to work my ass off.

The people who say they could retire but don't want to either:
- are full of shit.
- really can't retire and maintain their current life style.
- are money hungry and money gives them more happiness then any of the stuff i mentioned above.
- Or just don't know how to enjoy life and relax.



I kind of think of it as going to the casino and gambling. When I get up $500 I color up and put the chip in my pocket. They wont get that back. If you go up and then continue playing because it is fun, don't know when to walk away and wind up losing it all back, then you might be the type to never be able to retire. When I reach the financial success point where I can retire, maintain my lifestyle, live off of safe passive investments, and have some money to play with I'm cashing in my chips. I wont continue to gamble what I've made nor waste my time trying to make more and more and more.

Everyone is different for sure, If you are working 80 Hours a week, to you, working 20 hours a week would feel like retirement.

You need to cut some of those hours down bud. That's a lot of hours. :2 cents:

Mistake
I Am Happy to Work for a Company WHO KNOWS where they come from .. and are seeing always a Step ahead... There is not a single day where I am not feeling at School Learning something ... Why cause they know why they are here ... and Where they want to be, What it will take to get there...

One thing still ..

When I arrived here I did not know a damn thing ...
People with knowledge and patience show me .. 5 years now and Still here...
Thanks to Gamma Joel, Charles, Karl... Roald ( FreeOnes ) and Michael ( Yep Twistys got good peeps also ;) lolll

Not so. The problem with that is those are all prepaid spots. And even those spots are probably being "monetized" for the traffic instead of actually selling a product. :thumbsup:thumbsup

FUCKING RIGHT

I agree that it's a confluence of events, but I think it also has to do with how the economy might be disproportionately effecting the paying target demographic.

Dave I know exactly what you mean. If you would have asked me when I started what I'd do when I got to the point I am today. I would have answered retire and never look back. But it doesn't work that way. Your personal goals change. Your lifestyle changes. Your long term goals change. Your network of contacts changes. When I started in this biz all I wanted to do was make $120,000 a year. That was my goal. I thought if I could do that I'm Set. I blew that out and along the way everything changed and continues to change. Even a few years ago I would have said I'd retire if I got to where I am now. But now that I'm here it's opened up a number of doors and I'm seeing what making more means to me. So to continue making what I'm making plus keeping myself current, up to date and well informed is important right now.

All that to say my once long ago thoughts of retirement no longer apply. They will never happen. In fact the retirement most of us grew up thinking about doesn't exist anymore. I always envisioned retiring early and having all the time in the world to spend with my family and do whatever I want. But now that I have a 2 year old little boy I think to myself 'do i want him to see Dad at home everyday doing whatever daddy wants?' Or do I want him to see that WORKING your ASS off pays off HUGE. WORK HARD PLAY HARDER! :winkwink:

I am not much of a board person anymore, Hustler and my own projects keep me busy as is; but here are a few observations that come to mind for me, based on your post, Shap. Hopefully it doesn't lend itself to digression of your original thoughts and points.


1) Everything you said, without question, contributes to a variety of failures and breakdowns.


2) A complete and utter lack of realistic expectations and patience.

Shap, I don?t want to undermine the amount of business proposals you have heard, I am sure you have heard more than your fair share. But I can?t tell you the amount of business opportunities that I have been pitched that inherently reveal how short-sighted people in this industry are is without scope. The dynamic of the plan is usually something that was conceived in a car ride home from a Chinese dive restaurant between two former webmasters and a Chinese chicken chef. It?s usually pitched from the fervent randomness that it was conceived with, which is sort of like listening to a monkey chirp on two eight balls of blow. There is nothing written down at the time of the call, but rest assured, details are coming. And when they come, it?s all different. Why? Because when something is written, it?s like a Heidi Montag without any makeup on, all the shit that is messed up comes shining through. Now the new idea is basically a copy of everyone else?s products that they copied from someone that copied?..Why? Because if you can think up an idea at a Chinese shithole restaurant in Van Nuys, it was likely not an idea that hasn?t been thought of before.

Now comes the timeline and Action Items, because without the mirage of these two functions, the plan is still short of a total waste. The timeline is typically around 30 days, and involved in this timeline is a 15 day risk of total and complete change of focus. If the product doesn?t actually work within two weeks, you can pretty much rest assured that it will fall into a half-designed-half-programmed-kinda-functioning-business-cards-were-made-too-fucking-early graveyard.

You might be thinking, but what about the marketing plan? Well, that was started already with the ?something huge is coming? post on GFY and the icq logs with Eric covering how much a banner and skin would cost if this ChineseShitholeCash actually got off the ground.

The point in this is that companies and individuals are short-sighted and grasping at straws so often, they fail to realize that if they would have taken some time and attempted to create a true working product, with a unique marketing plan, and some focus, they?d fair way better.

Let me tell you a true story, when I started my ?mainstream? portfolio (that?s in quotes for a reason to be addressed momentarily), I told my partners that if we did this, no one asked about profits for one solid year. The only questions I ever wanted to hear needed to revolve around how we could make our sites more surfer friendly, how we could more succinctly and efficiently divulge information to our readers, and how, in a general sense, we could engage our communities and keep them happy. Over that year, we grew slowly, but every couple of months, we?d look at where we were and we?d semi-celebrate the achievement. There was no profits involved, only monthly losses that got greater with each passing month.

We also had a marketing plan. Much of this plan included picking up the phone and calling people to pitch why we should be considered in their lineups for news. Some of it included creative traffic portals. Some of it included flying to places to get content that served us only for viral marketing.

Now, what type of responses did I get at shows?

?Does that shit actually make money??
?Why don?t you have a Sex Search ad on there??
?You should at least be feeding them installs.?
?That?s a fun hobby.?

Of course, how much does that change when business takes a dive? That?s the fantastic part, it doesn?t, which safely gives even more validity to what Shap said. Whenever anyone hears un-inflated profit margins alongside a natural business timeline, they are out. When I tell people a year, they are already refocused on the next idea they can come up with while on the way to an Springroll lunch special.

Let?s try this for a second. I am 34 years old. If I could have a long-term product yielding me nice living by age 40, would I take it? The answer is yes. With all the energy and time that so many people have spent going for the quick cash grab, you have to wonder how far along they?d be today if they?d worked on creating a quality product. Something I have preached from day one, if something feels too easy, if it happened to fast, it?s not likely to last. Nothing wrong with taking it, but everything wrong with building your life around it. Eventually they are hauling the boat away, that?s life.

3) An observed contrast between mainstream and adult. It?s all one web, when you disregard morality and delivery issues, you aren?t left with that much of a difference.

I constantly hear people creating this great divide between mainstream and adult. Unless you are talking in terms of delivery of content (regional, work places, age limits), you aren?t left with much of a difference. And really, the aforementioned differences don?t really account for much of the overall transpirations of your business ideals. The only real separations I see are self-applied. Mainstream focuses on longer term plans, as well as solid, creative and unique marketing plans. They don?t give up on an idea in two weeks.

The main differences are the people.

I recently sat in the Adtech opening seminar in San Francisco. They had the President of Marketing from Levi?s Straus give a speech. He broke down several Levi Straus marketing plans, along with marketing plans from various companies. The marketing breakdowns included television, print and of course, social media. With almost every marketing aspect covered, I could invariably not draw a line in the sand between its application in adult or mainstream. Included in these ideas were marketing plans by major companies that were budgeted at 0. Something to think about?


4) The business is over because everything is free now.

I recall the first time it ended, I think it was 2003? Not sure how many of you remember those old dinosaur AVS setups. When those went down, they went down faster than last year?s Versace. One noted example would be Cyberage.com. For those of you unfamiliar with this period of time, the closest thing to an iPhone was talking to your TV while listening to your iPod, Chlamydia still trumped HPV as the socialite bar scene ?must not get? VD, The Buccaneers were on the brink of winning a Superbowl, and Cyberage.com was an enormous brand in the adult industry. Of course, if you visit the site now, you will see that the market corrected itself and eliminated it all-together. Or is it? So wait, Dave survived the end of the world? And today's Buccanneers couldn?t beat a high school marching band in pads if they didn?t get a handicap on the line? Say it isn?t so?time sure is a funny thing.

Remember when Shap was annoying everyone with his trademark infringement, I think he sent me a C&D for BROmaster when I used the color canary yellow in my logo. I guess Shap once owned a canary yellow golf shirt and he thought it brought out his tan. Maybe he was foreseeing the turbulent times that are now? Protecting a brand yesterday looks a little savvy today. Or maybe it was just one aspect of a long-term plan? Or maybe Canadian summers cause Canadian people to go to despicable lengths in order to preserve the semblance of a tan? I?m torn, to be honest.

When you look at what is happening in billing, and in the tube genre, much of it can be attributed to a pretty basic level of market correction. I am not speaking to ethics, in terms of tubes, but no matter how you deem it, it still has its place in market correction.

The issue with today is that every foundation shakes from time-to-time. But sometimes, a foundation goes a long time without shaking at all. It looks like a prime place to build a house. Some people choose (know how) to build a house that can withstand shaking, while others choose (only know how) to build a faster house. When the foundation shakes, it?s obvious who is who.

That's my thoughts. I'm out, gotta go meet some guys in Van Nuys for lunch.

Shouldn't you be on vacation somewhere. :1orglaugh
Not sure how we ended up back in this thread, sorry.

I totally agree with what you are saying here, for a change 100%,. :1orglaugh

I think you are forgetting one. They are SUCCESS driven. I'll tell you right now I'm not money hungry. I'm way more SUCCESS driven than money hungry at this point. Success has rewards that money alone can't deliver. To be honest it's probably all about ego. Being successful comes with an ego boost that being money driven doesn't provide (once you've got it).