I don't think that going after the end user is a good idea. We already have enough PR problems in this industry without alienating our end users.

We need to monetize the traffic to tube/torrent/file share sites and use them as advertising and recruiting tools.

We need to make piracy less profitable than cooperating with the content producers.

We need to create better sites for ourselves and provide a quality experience for our customers.

We need to kill the .XXX gTLD and maintain net neutrality.

We need to support our trade association: The Free Speech Coalition.

Just my opinion....:2 cents:

its really not that hard for them to do it. It just takes the right plan, a little time and the willingness to make some changes. But first they have to recognize there is a problem.

what all siteowners should do is to lower there prices for the memberships.
Another thing we could try is to make it impossible to download sets/videos from your membersites. Would it not be enough to view the content the month you pay for it ???
Stop give away free porn...find another way to get traffic.
I just shoot content..so I am not so involved how you run your business...but something has to be done if ppl want to stay in this business.

Totally right. They even SPELL OUT how the music and film industry 'fought' piracy. They lowered their far too high prices, made delivery really simple and imcreased quality. Why spend ages getting a shit 128 kbps mp3 when for 9 cents you could get a DRM free lossless version in around 15 seconds?

This isn't even a hard fight to win.

Don't sue your fucking prospective customers, give them quality product at a price they are prepared to pay. Boo hoo, it isn't 30 bucks a month any more. Just like it's not 20 bucks for a CD, or 25 bucks for a DVD. We all WANT to charge 30 bucks a month for a product that is 95% SHIT. When was the last time you saw what you would call 'good' porn?

It's not hard. Make something good. Price it low. Make it easy to get.

The piracy conference would have been more productive if 10 big studios agreed to launch an itunes-like store for porn. The fact the story is about them claiming to be able to stop piracy is laughable.

When the cost of distribution is this close to zero it is just a matter of time before the price gravitates to "free".

If you make something exceedingly good they'll just want to pirate it more and you'll be out on the higher budget it cost you to make it with nothing to show for it

who owns www.pornkings.com now?

IMO We have a winner.

This will never happen. Somebody out there will always make porn even if it doesn't make a profit and certainly amateur porn will always be new. This theory may work if most people in porn actually followed through with something lol, we can't even keep free porn off the net and you expect some plan where suddenly all producers throw up their hands and go "nope, no more". :1orglaugh

Regular porn sites are not what people want to join. Do it right and I would promote it, most would get it wrong.

I like the angle and I might have some traffic for you. Get me on ICQ sometime so I have your number and when I can sit down and think I will shoot the shit with you. I have some ideas to monetize in this climate but nothing I could or care to do on my own.

This man speaks the truth..

you are wrong on the suing the downloader being a bad thing. i know many many people who quit downloading shit when people started getting sued, including me. the smart people who care that their lives will get fucked up will get back into line. those are the people with the money to buy memberships. they traditionally understand a company needs to make money to survive and produce more products. the losers with no money will never pay for anything anyhow. let them download some other idiots shit that doesn't care enough to protect their products.

Nah, in every community of normal people that I participate in it is blatantly obvious that they don't give a shit about you. They don't think that you having a shitty business model is their problem so they download away. You can get money out of them but not by making it harder and more expensive for them to get the content they want. The only people suing are has beens that are so far out of touch with reality that lawsuits are the only chance they have at future income.

I agree with this and have a question for you...

I had a chance to be shown the admin for a group of sites with the highest levels of interaction. These are truly social sites. My conversions and rebills have been better with these than any site I have promoted going back to 2003. It has honesty been impressive which is why I was interested in what they were doing. Now the owner of these sites tells me that despite this, his greatest challenge is getting people to actually promote it .. or anything in the current market. Why would people continue to promote the "old" when there are "new media" sites in our space to promote? Or are people just not promoting anything anymore?

And apologies to the thread starter if this is off topic :Oh crap

you are incorrect on all accounts.

Take away the advertising on torrent/file sharing sites and lets see how they run their sites.

Those players that support them are in our industry. Blacklist them are we might have a chance.

I'm sorry, I guess my sample size of 2 million is too small.

I have no idea why these companies / owners will not make changes. It is dumbfounding to see how many of them continue on with their picture and video sites like it is business as usual instead of making changes to add more interaction for their members.

I guess a lot of affiliate don't realize the value either? Who ever it is you are talking about does he promote his program well to affiliates? If I were him I would harp on how he is different from everyone else and show how well his conversion and retention rates are.

OK, it seems to me that as a practical matter, we are all stuck with free porn being out there and it's not going to go away any time soon. Like sand fleas in the desert, you can keep them off but you can't get rid of them.

Ordinary people who would never think of shoplifting, robbing a bank or driving off unpaid from the gas station are perfectly willing to download free porn, stolen or not. A screwy glitch in mentality, morality and ethics but there it is and that's a fact, Jack!

So................................................ ...............

There are millions of sites, hundreds of thousands of webmasters, thousands of torrents and even if you had a thousand guys and gals working 24/7/365, you'd never get them all taken down.............................................. .................

So................................................ ................

How to live, survive and profit in this theft-ridden market is the only question.

Why do we not turn our thoughts, marketing skills and efforts to finding the answer to that question instead of whining, bitching and complaining about something that we absolutely cannot control?

Thanks to piracy and "digital freedom", potential customers now regard us producers as nearly enemies for wanting money for shit they believe should be free.

That's sick.

It's sick, it sucks, they are assholes, fuck them, fucking pussies, pieces of shit, dickweeds, they live in their moms basement and have no friends etc.

Doesn't change the fact that we need to work around it. Complaining definitely doesn't help, ask Steve!

You are right on!

2 years ago I stepped away from day to day paysite operations and planned out a total change in our business with my expectations that subscription based sites are ending soon.

I past this article and the comments to Shap and we have discussed this a lot. I feel that studios and people involved in this little conference missed out on a lot of people and suggestions.

The iTunes of porn won't happen yet Damian sorry, why? People are still to greedy. I have had 4 emails recently from programs changing their revshare percent. I am waiting for PPS programs to start being cancelled.

it wouldnt make a difference. Did itunes stop music piracy? did redbox stop it? nope 99 cents didnt. People use the its too expensive as an excuse. You made it 50 cents they would say its fucking porn why buy ?they are all rich already.

And to all of you interactivity prophets who think interactivity will save us, have you ever tried to read support e-mails at a real porn pay site? Because if you did you'd know that 99% of members care about PORN, not some interactivity they do not need and do not care about. PORN, meaning pre-made photos and videos, not live shows etc. They want more of this girl or more of that girl, to do this or to do that - that's what real members are asking for.

Sure having some interactivity would never hurt, but it's not going to change much either. If your entire member area is ripped and available for free to download from pornbb or empornium, having a fancy-wancy interactive website is not going to bring your lost sales back.

PORN is the main attraction for surfers, not live cams not interaction whatever. Sure some of them love live cams, but not the whole lot. If you think that is not so try making an free site with lots of intercation and zero free porn, and a site with lots of free porn and zero interaction, and then see what happens, which one of the two surfers will start flocking to. No need to waste your time though because we all know the answer.

Fighting piracy is the only way to bring our lost sales back, everything else is a waste of time and resources.

what a fucking joke - porn consumers as well as music consumers NEVER EVER and NOT NOW either had a problem with the price of music and porn sites. No more than any of us complain about the price of anything. I bought vinyl, cassettes and CD's I liked from 8.99 to 16.99 and didn't sit there feeling like the music industry screwed me over. Sometimes I'd buy a CD and yeah, two songs were good and the rest shitty - I blamed the band not the record company

The pricing issue is a NON ISSUE - it's an EXCUSE, A JUSTIFICATION, A LIE that thieves and brokeass losers use to take what isn't theirs.

Lower pricing isn't the solution to anything- ask the programs who tried selling porn memberships for 9.95 - Lensman and PlatinumBucks- how that worked out for them.

There is ONE problem that is destroying the paysite industry and that's PIRACY. And the law which was supposed to protect copyright owners is so fucked up that it does the complete opposite - it makes stealing content profitable and bulletproof liability wise.

Piracy needs to be fought. I'm surprised people actually think it is produced by thousands for free!
A person might make a utube video for free. To entertain themselves or try to impress their friends. Most have little thought or resources going into their production and their poor quality reflects that.
How many utube videos are done where they make hundreds of them and have tens of thousands of dollars into their production with no chance of revenue?
Costs nothing to try to sing on your cell phone camera and post it.
I need models to travel and work for free, so I can produce for free like some people think it is done. Any designers want to work for free? I need one.
Free promotion please, I could use that also. Free hosting and bandwith porfavor.
I'm still surprised the pirate sites and tubes can simply ignore 2257 along with the copyright stuff. I think that might be the angle to get some of the big server and tube sites offline. That would eliminate 90% of the problem, which would be probably enough to restore some balance.

and what Nautilus said- BANG FUCKING ON. This INTERACTIVITY bullshit is so overrated it's hysterical how out of touch some of you are. 90% of porn surfers couldn't give a shit about interacting with anybody - not a naked amateur, not a pornstar or a fellow porn surfer. they want to view/download porn and spank it.

I know solo girl sites - I had a VERY successful solo girl site WITHOUT ANY INTERACTIVITY WHATSOEVER - that site REBILLS better than 99% of solo girl sites with interactivity. Any teen solo girl site owner who wants to post their rebills up against mine and is willing to put 1K up let's do it.

NaughtyAmerica sunk a fortune into LIVE INTERACTIVE programming - guess fucking what - IT'S GONE. Because it's meaningless to the bottom line. I have a new solo girl site and the model is doing her Halloween webcam show as I type this. I regret making her go on webcam - IT'S USELESS ..... yes, USELESS ...... she has 600 active members, there *might* be 50 members watching. I saw the same thing on Ashley Brookes.

Met-Art which probably is the most successful paysite on the planet in terms of membership count felt they needed this INTERACTIVITY and had their own LIVE CAM shows - guess fucking what - GONE! They now just upsell their members to a Streamate white label.

Interactivity on a paysite means next to nothing.

If the whole meat of your site is interactivity- virtual world community,dating, a cam site - different story,different business.

You keep using this argument and it's getting stupid. iTunes didn't stop piracy, nothing will. What it did is allow people that are not paying $15 a fucking CD to download shit for $0.99 and made it fairly easy. This has resulted in billions of dollars in sales, a large chunk of which they never would have gotten by not having cheap access points.

You can get mad and reminisce but the paysites people are slinging are not worth the fucking price being charged. Not to me and not to 99.9% of surfers.

Adapt or die, we can't even get off the POS fucking ICQ.

Smartest thing I've read so far. Yeah I understand your making some profit from these tube sites, and yes I realize I haven't been in this industry as long as some of you, and even as a late comer I came in with the same build idea as many have done before. However with my fresh perspective I quickly realized that the current system was not working, how could it work when everything you was being provided for free. Not only is everything you sell being provided for free, but everything you sell is being provided for free by the people who advertise for you! The FHG's are not what I'm talking about here, but you can do a search and find thousands of sites that say on the side, "Join XXX pay site now only 30 bucks and see this whole set" in a banner, when it's right beside the whole set for free! Oh look at that, I guess I'm going to go with the free! Sure your getting sales now, but what about when they have everything.

The internet isn't about you and the cloud anymore, its about you and the millions of other people on the cloud, and a simple comments box on the bottom of each scene isn't exactly going to cut it. For that matter, I haven't even been in a chat room since 2003.

In this regards, and in my limited opinion webcam sites are rocking out there. The reason being is the interactivity. You can talk with the models, they talk to you, you can ask them to do things, they get happy when you tip them! That's the key right there isn't it... go ahead, make php happy when they buy a membership. Make your html smile and thank them with a sexy grin. You can't but those models can. This is the interactivity that the adult industry needs now. It's not a set it up and leave occupation anymore.

I am sad that I didn't get to see the hayday of the adult industry online, but I honestly see a new, more structured one coming, one where the profits may be even bigger than in the past, but constant, with people always coming back for more. Many sites will be lost in this, hell I'm not unrealistic, I may be back on the consumer side, but it will happen, and I hope sites are willing to adapt.

Good luck everyone, we're all going to need it!

I think everyone just needs to learn to promote my products and not worry about free porn :P

true about ICQ :1orglaugh

Sir,

With all due respect you are wrong. Of course those piece of shit $9.95 per month porn sites failed. They aren't worth two cents a month. The price difference between $10 and $30 is not enough to change ratios very much. In the big scheme of things it is exactly the same price point.

Now, when I say we need lower price points you take this to mean some $5 or $10 per month memberships. I do not suggest ANYTHING that is a new version of the old, worn out bullshit. Lowering monthly membership fees is not going to help anything, it will just reduce your income.

This industry needs an overhaul. There are much better ways to get money out of a surfer. I am well aware of what they are willing to spend since they regularly throw $5 per minute to watch a damn cam show. What less and less of them are willing to do is sign up to any site with recurring billing because there are 100 or even 1000 sets of content inside. The model sucks, it is dying and you and everyone else here knows it.

You can hang on to the old school videos and pic sites, fight piracy all day long and whatever else you dream up as a play on the same old shit but win or lose the fight sales will never be the same. That doesn't mean one company won't make the same money but they won't do it on one site that is exactly like the last site that was exactly like the site before that.

Bookmark this comment, check it in a year or two. Check it again in 5. It is the absolute truth and we will be seeing huge changes in the near future. Not everyone is going to keep on plugging away with Steve Lightspeed while the industry passes them by.

If I had $100,000 floating around I would pay you to test one idea I've been sitting on. You have the right girls to pull it off in epic fashion but it is something you would never be on board with until you saw it working. It is a complete 180 from the standard business model and will most likely be done first by some girl chilling in her bedroom. She will be famous.

+1

Couldn't agree more.

I don't think the subscription model is going anywhere. However sites that only consist of pictures and videos using the subscription model are in a lot of trouble. At the same time those type of sites could make changes and hang in there and even thrive.

by your comments in this thread, with all due respect have no idea what interaction is. And yes I have run my own websites before and dealt with customers. Interaction doesn't just consist of "live cams" there is soo much more to it. How would you know if it works or not, you basing all of this off of receiving emails from members "looking for porn". How do you know if you added the right kind and amount of interaction to your site if the members would eat it up or not. You don't know, you never tried. You are just making assumptions and missing it.

If you really believe " Fighting piracy is the only way to bring our lost sales back " then you might as well unplug your server now and walk away. Fightng them is a waste of time, you are delusional if you think you going to win or stop it or hell even slow it down. Making changes and adapting to it is the only chance you have. The only thing you can accomplish by fighting them is what steve is doing and that is nickle and diming the ones you can, that you catch watching you stolen content. that is it.

I disagree its not stupid. This whole argument if it wasnt so expensive and suckful it wouldnt stolen is not based in reality. They just dont want to pay lets not kid ourselves. Because if it was such dog shit why take it at all? They dont want to pay period. Also porn isnt music.

It may be rough for awhile, but the industry has an invincible ally on it's side - Market Forces. Hot chicks are hot chicks and hot chicks will always find a way to get paid. If the industry does indeed end up bottoming it out, the quality of talent will decrease to a point where people will have no choice but to start paying for the highly protected content of top talent and then the economic cycle will repeat.

I think one day the porn industry will realize, "You know what, porn is free, wtf are we doing spending money on producing this shit." At that time, content producers and studios will gradually begin to disappear. I mean virtually go extinct. One day the porn industry won't even be a billion dollar a year industry (maybe not even half that.) And with all that being said, it won't even matter to surfers because there is already enough free porn on the internet to last them a lifetime.

"Originally Posted by stocktrader23"


You keep using this argument and it's getting stupid. iTunes didn't stop piracy, nothing will. What it did is allow people that are not paying $15 a fucking CD to download shit for $0.99 and made it fairly easy. This has resulted in billions of dollars in sales, a large chunk of which they never would have gotten by not having cheap access points.

You can get mad and reminisce but the paysites people are slinging are not worth the fucking price being charged. Not to me and not to 99.9% of surfers.

Adapt or die, we can't even get off the POS fucking ICQ."

No shit!

http://www.videosz.com/ - Alexa Traffic Rank 1,427

Most paysites are like a handful of these DVD's. Instead of paying for that I can get 8,000 and growing of them for the same $29.95 per month. I can watch it or download it without trouble. Looks like it's popular, wonder why that is?

pricing *wasn't* the issue in the past. People didn't mind paying for it before because they had no choice but to pay for it or they couldn't see it. It is simple supply and demand. The demand was high but the supply (free) was virtually non existent. Now the demand is still high but the supply (free) is 10x higher.

now that money is tighter for a lot of customers and your entire member's area is free blasted across the net... pricing is now an issue. It's the issue of why pay to join this site to see her videos when i can go to this tube site or torrent and see them for free. People have options now free or pay. Before they never had options. Their only options before was a couple 30 second soft core clips and a hand full of pictures for free or an entire member's area with 1000's of hour long hardcore videos for $30 a month. They had no choice but to pay to see the good stuff and lots of it.

You really can't compare music theft to porn theft. People can't steal concert tickets, they not stealing the dvd jacket and art work, the merchandise the band's name on it etc. Porn is a lot different. The member loses very little if any "experience" watching the video clip in your member's area or on a tube site. You buy a CD for $20 and you own it for life and can listen to it as many times as you want opposed to paying $30 to see 98% of the porn your site offers at one time and then paying $30 every month just to get 1% - 2% more in updates.

The laws wont change anytime for porn, maybe (maybe) for music but not for porn. The people who could change the laws don't care about porn and the people getting it for free certainly aren't going to be pushing for it.


maybe 10 - 15 - 20 years from now. How many people will be able to hang on that long as sales continue to drop each year ?

There is so much quality porn (videos) out there for free right now if someone started watching it 24/7 it would take them 50 years to watch it all if not longer.

Would that be the same members that are rapidly abandoning you? Also the same members with twenty to thirty percent retention?

I run a social femdom site with over 15k more or less active members. The site provides traditional amateur photo and video content in addition to modern interactive tools like member to member videochat and capture. Rest assured, when those tools for some reason fails all hell breaks loose for me.

Btw, I am no interactivity prophet but I do recognize demand when I see it. The only advice I can give is to not add social elements to what is not a social site. Figure it out.

http://clips4sale.com

alexa 3700
one clip from $3.95 to at least $20.99 for only one at a time.

Yep. I and most others would pay $3.95 for a single clip before we would pay $30 for a membership to 100 of those clips. Since you brought it up, micro payments are one area that would see a boom by lowering the price. For an extra 2 cents in bandwidth you could sell to more customers for less money and end up with more profit, IF it were done correctly.

Actually I just tried that, worked on it today as a matter of fact. Tons of bargain basement content and tools, good micropayment processor with wide and diverse coverage = bumped to the top of my pipeline :thumbsup

Good luck. A few other industries have led the way showing us that this can be done. I hope it works out brilliantly for you.

OK let us know what's your version of the interaction that works and makes a difference for the bottomline.