Program Owners: Taking Down Videos From Legal Tubes As a Marketing Strategy?
 

Here's my idea and I wanted to get Program Owners and Content Producers opinions on if they think this would be an effective marketing strategy. I know tube owners will not be thrilled with it BUT it could benefit them, too (in the short term and possibly long term).

What if we (the Program Owners) asked our Content Partners (the tube sites) to take DOWN 85% of our content (legally) uploaded older than, say, one month?

Right now, for example, I have 32 paysites (and counting) with about half of them being promoted via the tubes on a weekly basis. Each tube gets 2 videos per site so that's a LOT of content going out. I know the thinking is to "load up" as many promos as possible (the length of these promos has been debated) so that tube surfers/members can visit your profile, etc. People do searches within the tubes to find your videos, producing sales, I know...

But when I look at the views the majority of my videos get I see that those that land on the Homepage of whichever tube I check get the most; videos that only profile-visitors see often get less than 100 views! So obviously being on the Homepage is the Name of the Game here. But if only 10% (or less) of the videos being uploaded actually make it to the Homepage then what are all those (thousands, in my case) of videos doing for me? Not much as far as I can tell.

So what if, instead of thousands of videos the tube surfer was only able to search for and find one? Or three? If he goes to my profile, and sees THOUSANDS, or searches and finds HUNDREDS, then why would he ever click-through and join any of my websites? But if he only found a tiny amount then, I would think, he'd click right on through...

Now again, the tubes wouldn't want this - more work for them, less content, less time on site, etc - but let's remember something: the Goal of a tube site is to sell AD SPACE, banner spots, traffic, dating, cam girls....paysite memberships are 4th on the list (if that). So we - the Progam Owners and our tube site Content Partners - are at cross-purposes when it comes to sales.

The tubes would have to take down our content if we asked them to. Would this then make them NOT want to work with a Program? Perhaps but if more of us did this, purely as a marketing strategy, I feel the tubes would have little choice.

Besides, short-term sales would increase dramatically while long-term sales, at first, would diminish. But, I feel, over time, the gains in sales from a single video's upload - as opposed to dozens or hundreds of uploads - would far outweigh the sales that come from tube surfers finding your content via searches.

And let's not forget that this would make distinguishing between "legally uploaded" content vs. pirated content much easier.

I'd rather make more sales from a single video hitting the Homepage than making a few sales from uploading hundreds of videos. What do you think? Good idea?

these videos 'recycle' to the front page.. removing them would cost time and money

No they don't recycle, or only a handful do. My stats show 95% of the videos I upload NEVER reach the Homepage.

Okay, leave the ones up that DO make it the Homepage but take down those that never do and get tiny amounts of views. And taking them down is easier than putting them up.

It's very frustrating when program owners think like this and it's one of the reasons I generally don't put up new sponsor content anymore. The legal tubes with 30 second to two minute promo clips are not the problem. The problem is the pirates and the people you (not necessarily you but in general) are uploading 7-15 minute clips to (while giving your long time affiliates 45 second clips).

On the flip side with legal tubes, tgps, mgps, blogs or whatever we absolutely hate the high view count situation too. We want to make money just like you and if we are pushing your link and not making sales then that hurts us. It pisses me off to see that a sponsor has 5,000,000 views on my site but I've made less than five sales with them. But that isn't due to my putting up 100 30 second clips from your sites. Again, it's because the surfers can get full scenes from the pirates.

You have to realize that no one would bother to be an affiliate if all sponsors were like Alpha Sky from the Apple Twins. It wouldn't be worth it. Already it probably isn't worth it for most.

Well, first I'd say that any legitimate affiliate that wants "full promo scenes" (meaning, 5-8 mins in length) can have them. In fact, when I re-launch PeabodyCash there will be both 2 min clips (which work better on Blogs) and "full" clips. We have some of them up there now, in fact.

The pirated content is a differant thing, tho of course related. I, and many Program Owners, employ DMCA takedown services to combat piracy the best we can. For me, with so many sites, it's definitely a challenge. But what I'm talking about are videos I MYSELF (or, my company) upload directly to legitimate affiliates, in this case the large tube sites (XHamster, RedTube, etc).

(And if you're getting 5 mil views on ANY video then you should be monetizing those views the way the tubes do, thru dating, ads and cams. Some content will never generate big paysite sales via the tubes while others, like mine, do make sales.)

With a legal tube (ran by old school affiliates and not crooks) we put up your videos (usually under two minutes) for the sake of actually making sales with your program. We would in some cases have two clickable banners for your site next to the video with a total of four links going through the affiliate code to your site. We did everything in our power to make sales with you. The goal wasn't to sell traffic, sell cams, sell dating. It was to partner with you and make sales. We pushed you as hard as we possibly could. We would sometimes get great positions at the top of Google for great terms and we would send as much of this traffic as possible to you (again not you, but sponsors in general). It was a partnership and we both benefited.

Enter the pirate tubes. Enter the rise of the content partner programs and 7 to 15 minute clips. Now Google gives our old ranks to these pirates and the people you supply with 12 minute videos because google likes their time on site more due to the long videos. Now we get 1/10th the traffic and the traffic goes to these sites. They make sales at 5-10 times worse ctr+ratio metrics than we did. Now the surfer sees so much content on page one from pirates and the CPPs that they don't buy paysite memberships. So now the traffic we still do get doesn't make sales anymore and it's "Adapt or die" and we have to consider things as we go check out the affiliate section of the sponsor which mentions "epassporte" and has only seven year old 30 second clips for us to promote as we see 20 minute videos from the same sponsor on Pornhub. Now we get to see sponsors kiss the ass of these tubes while saying "adapt or die" to us on the forums. And now you're (not you but the average paysite owner) sitting here wondering where all your revenue went over the years and why you are broke because "only idiots pay for porn" while frantically uploading 15 minute clips to some scumbag's tube site so you can make one sale for every million views.

The above is pretty much the experience for affiliates who run the traditional non user uploaded tubes. Good on you if you really make the same content available to your old partners as you do with the CPPs but that isn't what is happening with most of the industry so many of us have "adapted before we died". We monetize in other ways now as opposed to pushing your affiliate links. Or we've moved on from adult.

I'm not convinced very many tubes give a good enough user experience to actually cannibalize would-have-been sales.

I think the paysites have cannibalized their own sales with shady xsales, misleading promo's of no-update members areas, DRM combined with shittily implemented stre (pause) aming, etcetera.

I guess there's a segment that has switched from pay to free, but I think the majority of purchase-less tube traffic were confirmed non purchasers to begin with and consume the free shitty quality, shitty experience porn because they can.

I don't have any numbers, but my personal experience on most tubes is fairly crappy. Some of them do it closer to right though.

Paysites generally do it worse, from what I've seen. It's a mix, of course, and some do it great, and there's always exceptions on both sides.

I think our own industry is to blame, personally. Not so much the tubes. When card bangers are feted and even respectable sites have deceptive xsales ... I mean, how long were those customers supposed to keep coming back and being abused?

I would never put my fucking credit card info into an adult site without having seen the inside and even then I'd think three times and want to use a prepaid or something. And I buy everything you can imagine online. I don't think I'm alone.

An interesting report out of the UK today said something along the lines of .. music piracy actually has not hurt the industry, and it may have actually helped. I didn't delve into the details, but one of the ideas was, all those "lost" sales were unlikely to have been sales in the first place.

I definitely agree with you about the length of the free promo clips on tubes. I've talked about it here on GFY and have taken some flack from this from tube affiliates (those that benefit from longer clips/longer time on site). But I don't care because, as a paysite owner, I KNOW the "sweet spot" for making a sale is a video between 3-5 minutes in length. Two minutes work well, too.

So I am definitely making sure ALL my affiliates get 2 minute and FULL (longer than 5 mins and up to 8 mins) clips.


Card banging and shady Xsells are another matter and don't really apply here. When it comes to tubes traffic and paysites the #1 most important factor is the TOUR the surfer lands on, or the page. While having Xsells et al are bad I agree and contribute to surfer's mistrust this would be the case without that surfer coming from a tube site first.

One of the biggest reasons paysites can't compete with tubes is that tubes are like Wal-Mart (you can get almost anything) whereas most paysites are "niche" in some way. You won't find pissing videos on Brazzers or BBWs on MoFos, for example. But you'll find ANYthing and EVERYthing on a tube.

they would loose search engine traffic

This. Most tubes receive their traffic from search engines directly to their video pages. If you remove these videos, those pages will fall in SERPS and tubes won't be able to build up their traffic with search engines.

A contrarian might say that it's not enough to have a channel or presence on a tube but that you have to update that channel along with your paysite.

Some people think you can throw anything up and it will sell. Some people will update tubes with their best work to give the illusion that everything in the library is just like what they saw on that tube.

Peabody, I wouldn't delete, i would add but do it smartly. if you throw up junk, you get nothing in return, not saying you throw up junk... but if you're not geting front page attention on all your uploads, something is wrong. You need guaranteed front page above the fold on uploads on all partner accounts.

PS I wish i had experienced your success with movies in the 3-5 min range. They just don't work for me.

There would always be the same # of videos, just old ones would be deleted. Exactly like rotating limited content within a paysite's Member's Area.

When I do Google searches and find video pages on tubes in the results usually the video is less than 2 months old. So we're still uploading videos, tubes are still getting their SERPs, but we're not handing out videos endlessly to the tubes.

Think about it: Where does it end? If I upload 40 videos a week per tube (on average) x 52 weeks x how many YEARS....I mean, all that content is being given away, "out there", with little payback to me. This would reduce that imbalance somewhat, I feel.

And how do I get that? I'm a Content Partner on all the biggest tubes and, try as I might, I only get a certain number of postings hitting the Homepage a week. Each site is differant but yes, I agree, EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THE WEEK at least one of my 17 paysites should hit the Homepage of each tube site.

Now, getting the tubes to agree to this.....:helpme

I am very sorry to say this, but you are wrong. Most big tubes receive 10-15% of their traffic on their homepage and their category/tags pages. Everything else is on their video pages... and that traffic builds up if you have more videos that target more longtail keywords.

In 1999, people were building sites that were targetting some keywords, submit them to link list and forget about them... to gain SE traffic. Tubes are not different in that aspect: they build up their content to target multiple long tail keywords and get more SE traffic.

If you delete old videos from the tube sites, they will lose the long tail keywords in SEs.

Oh, and you can't expect a tube owner that have a site worth multiple million dollars to change its business model just because you want to. They will simply stop doing business with you.

However, I believe your idea is very good for a different type of site: mine. I currently don't allow video uploads for legal reasons but will do again in the near future... and you will be able to add/delete videos whenever you want.

The reason why I want to do it that way is that I promote my site in social networks, not in search engines. That means that people visit a particular page because it is CURRENTLY hot and trendy. Your idea fits perfectly with this. Have a look in my signature to see the site.

You need to be smart in how you post your videos, there's no point tagging your model each time from a solo site, if you tag her then a tube user can load all the videos in one hit - we limit our tube vids and only tag the models name 3 times, we then tag specific niches on other videos that we post to tubes. The theory is somebody searches 'blonde dildo' then one of our videos will come up in the search, they then see the watermark with the models site and search for the model, they get 3 videos to wet their appetite. It works well although we do not post as many vids as you do, no where near weekly as imo it's just too much.

Yes and no.

Yes, you want to leave stuff up that helps with SE and is well reviewed, commented, and tagged. But you don't necessarily have to leave up anything that might be hurting in some of those respects.

If you have a few clunkers that are bringing down your studio's overall ranking then dropping them can help boost everything else. However, keep in mind that some of the best traffic in terms of highest conversion comes from those low traffic pages so leaving them up is obviously a good thing not only from the SE perspective. Like everything else, let the analysis of the numbers guide your decisions.

:2 cents:

Why would you upload videos if they are not hitting the main page?

If I upload to a tube I expect 100% of my vids to see the front page. If not I'll contact the person in charge.

If they don't see the front page then delete them...

Also it sounds like you are giving way to much away for free.

content partner program = bigger scam than card banging

One of the main problems is I'm a CCBill program, and CCBill does not break down affiliate sales by URL/website, only by Program. So having 17 websites it's hard for the tubes (or so they tell me) to tell WHICH of my 17 sites convert the best. I can tell, judging by flow of sales for a posting, but apparently the tubes cannot (merely by reading CBill stats; I'm sure they have their own stats heh).

Anyway, I will be contacting all my tube content partners verifying my vids hit their Homepage. If not, then the vids gotta go and I need to adjust my uploading.

(PS: Some tubes choose vids from my uploads to go on their Homepage while others they deem "profile-only".)

Shemale and Gay for one example. Most of the big boys shove you in the back of the bus. Sucks balls to not be able to really be able to work the tube efficiently with such content. I would love to see a section on the font page, even if it was just 8 thumbs, of shemale, as that is a cross over niche that sells to straight men. Tube owners and content owners lose out when they don't showcase them.

This is an very interesting thread and concept.

As of late I have been increasingly contacted by tubes of all sizes to partner, partner, partner. This wasn't always the case, so clearly things are changing in the tube owners world. What things have changed?

I think

Many content producers, (and some of the best ones ironically) were forced out of business because of the dual pressures of content theft (tubes and torrents) and the economic downturn. Less quality content is being produced.

The library of old/ancient content that has been licensed by tube sites from companies that no longer produce new content is drying up quickly and sucks for the most part.

As high speed internet spreads consumption is rising.

Submissions by "real" people are either drying up or staying steady, however I would bet they aren't keeping up with the rising level of consumption.

In the beginning a lot of content was stolen by a lot of tube site owners. I won't say all of them, but many. This still is happening, but now there are ways to fight back.

All these things combined mean that the tube owners need to partner with content providers in a mutually beneficial way.

However what are they willing to do for that partnership?

I was approached by Dr. Tuber last week about submitting videos, I asked how many was optimal, they said as many as possible. I asked what the minimum was, they said 500 with daily updates. HAHAHAHA!

Yanks.com is good site, however we only have shoot 500 models over 10 years, with 2-3 videos per girl outside of her video interview and behind the scenes stuff. And we shoot 3-4 girls per week now. So they were asking for 30% -40% of my entire site with an update schedule beyond what I shoot now. Not workable. But my content is good and they need good content.

I think what Mister Peabody is suggesting is the start of the right conversation.

If tube sites want to become affiliates/partners how are they going to make this work?

How are they going to get quality niche content from quality sites without killing the golden goose?

How will they become a productive member of the adult ecosystem rather then a pollutant that will eventually poison it?

Innovation is needed.

Tube PPV would work, Why can't I upload 200 videos and have 10 free a day with the others $1 to watch? Why can't I advertise on tube sites under specific categories, niches or keywords in conjunction with my partner account?

Why can't I rotate my content out while leaving up the container page with the tags, categories title etc while giving the user a link to the next video in the player?

"Sorry folks this videos free period has expired, click here for the next free video from Yanks.com"

Google won't know the media has changed, will it?

Attention Tube sites, do the coding, innovate, become true partners and we will bring the content.

I agree with most of this, but I am not sure about this.

A lot of multimillion dollar tube sites are spending a lot of money reaching out to content producers to satiate their surfers consumption. If they didn't have to reach out, they wouldn't be. That act of reaching out means that there exists a negotiation, I just hope that the content producers of this business are smart enough to realize that and take advantage.

Tube sites have a low barrier of entry, that is a scary place to be if you are on the internet and what to keep operating and billing (even advertisers) in countries that you want to spend time in or have your money in.

Evolution is possible.

If content producers DMCA big tubes sites to remove older videos, the big tubes will stop using their content and will only work with the content producers that don't mind + buy their own content.

They might open up new sites to try this idea... but they won't risk their 30-60 million dollars worth site. This would be totally stupid.

Good luck if you try it out...

this depends on how many content producers have this mindset. I talk to a great many who aren't winning in this current model and are looking at this approach as individuals not as some movement.

Like I said, tubesites aren't approaching me daily because they just want to be good guys and chat on IM.

Buying quality content in every niche under the sun isn't all that easy. As squishy as it is, it is the passion of the smaller individual content producers with pay sites that deliver the sought out content.

Plus what is the difference between buying that amount of content or developing a more viable channel for the producers to monetize.

$75k and $3k a week for 500 of my scenes plus updates or doing the coding work so that I can add a Yanks.com banner under a shitty scene of a played out model fingering herself?

Its always evolving and since all the sudden my content is being looked upon as more valuable, it's logical to assume it's evolving in my favor. :thumbsup

Your argument is a good one though and is logical.

You are right on the fact that things will evolve very soon... but don't expect the big tubes to join in until they lose traffic.


My logic comes from history. Some TGP owners were not successfuly 10 years ago, so they started MGP's. In 2007-2008, some MGP owners were not successful so they started tubes and got successful.

Right now, everyone is starting a tube site. Some won't be successful, so they will do something different to be successful.

I personally really think that a site that shows 1-2 videos per niche, then delete that video after 24 hours, would work well if the given video for the day would be full and HD.

So, the visitors would have the best quality videos for free, and the site owners would sacrifice 1 video from time to time to get its brand known. Most of their content wouldn't be public, so the sales would still be good on the paysite.

This is, of course, my personal opinion.

Makes sense, cool site btw.

This is very much like my idea for it has the same effect: limited "free" content for surfers while still providing tubes the content they need, thus generating the views/time on site they need to sell their ads, cams and dating (and raw traffic).

But again, being a "content partner" is, at best, an after-thought for most big tubes. Do CPP's make money for the tubes? Sure they do, and it's significant, but tiny compared to ads, cams and dating. So a tube's focus is - shocking! - ads, cams and dating. We paysite membership owners are really just suppliers for someone else's business model.

There will come a time, very close in fact, when major tubes will produce their own content or strike "sweetheart deals" with certain producers promising huge PPS or 80/20 revshares. Then what?

Surfers will get bored silly seeing the same 40 pornstars fucking in every-increasingly odd ways until they say ENOUGH and look for amateur sex again.

Or maybe not, maybe porn is dead. But I don't think so. Soceity may have to change a bit, laws may need to be written (and enforced), loopholes tightened etc but this Wild West of Internet Piracy cannot last forever.

We have tried the tube thing out, and yes it does bring traffic, but it is shit traffic. low ratio's. I have heard from many people that they will not pay for porn because it is free...

Soon we will be sending out dmca's to all tube sites containing videos over 2 minutes. If they would like to stop using us because of this, That is fine by me.

I suggest you all to do the same.

As for this and your other overall point - that may make sense in the short term, but I've seen several videos sit in the "50 views, wtf that was a waste of time" category, then some random person posts it to reddit or a big forum, etc., and then you're exposed to all new customers that's targeted traffic to your content.

Then it's all put into perspective.

This may be the future for smaller site owners and programs. We can never compete with a giant porn factory willing to give away 5,000 free full videos.


I don't like the spaghetti principle of business, sorry. That same Reddit poster would find the same video if it got 50,000 views and was only 1 of a handful of a sponser's videos. True, he may not 'stumble upon' it but that's so random it's not worth making solid long-term business strategy decisions over, IMHO.

"content partner program"

Us old timers from "back in the day" used to have these things we calle AFFILIATE PROGRAMS.

And the guy wanting to make money promoting sites with his traffic signed up...not the other way around.

Our industry is in reverse. lol

Exactly! This is why I'm advocating the "less is more" strategy because, again, for ME, saturating the tubes with 10-12 minute videos - dozens of them a week for over 16 websites - is NOT producing the avalanche of sales submitting less videos did only a few short months ago. So it's back to the future for me. I want every video that goes "out there" to make the maximum impact and make the most $ for me, my production partners and, since they make the most of this deal anyway, my affiliates (tubesite).

We ARE "partners" trying to make the most money TOGETHER aren't we tubesite owners? So let's try some strategies that might actually make more membership sales.

I'm not sure if you know about this or you are referring to something else but on the affiliate side anyway when running the reports for affiliate transactions there are two check boxes. One is to show hits for sites without sales and the other is to show urls. If you check that one it will then list something like 'referring url' and 'destination url' on the far left. Next you click on which one you want and it should show you the data for that row with the referring url or the destination url of the sale. :)

Here are my lifetime stats for Xhamster.com. And if you know me, you know I am transparent because....really? why not at this point.

217,581 uniques, 332 joins, $28,808.66 earned.

1:655, $.13+ a click

I haven't uploaded in a few months as I am deciding how I want to work with the tubes long term, however the traffic isn't always shit.

That being said, I totally appreciate your approach and am not saying you are wrong in anyway.

Thanks for posting

It is shifting though, I am noticing a lot of tubes signing up and then asking for me to do the legwork with the content.

Not that I won't do the legwork normally for affiliates, however the scale is different with the big tubes and the ask is greater. Good point though, hopefully the shift will continue.

Yes it is. It has reversed for sure. Problem is everyone is uploading now to tubes.

Peabody's suggestion would work if *everyone* removed their content all at the same time and DMCA'd using google as well.

That would cause a mad drop in traffic to tubes and send surfers elsewhere.

But that will *never* happen unless another solution is in place for those sites to make money. It is the same analogy as opening up a cam studio, without the girls... no money... without the traffic... no money.

A site owner *must* see the money before they drop the model of uploading to tubes. At least for the programs neck deep into uploading to tubes... which is a lot now, unfortunately.

What many don't realize is that by giving them all this great content of yours you are building up their business and not yours. I own a couple sites (non-porn) which accept user uploads and I do a happy dance when I get a new regular uploader. Especially if they write decent descriptions and put up good content. It means an increase in traffic not only from having more content for Google but also because people will tend to stay more on my site more when there is more quality and quantity. Some contributors will even regularly send people from other places to check out the content they put on my site so it will grow my traffic directly.

So realize that you are building up their business and helping them keep all the traffic. And a question some might want to ask is what happens after they have all the traffic? What will the terms for you be like then? 30 minute videos or higher only? Will you have to pay them to submit like the old partner programs with the TGPs? Then as mentioned if someone is giving these CPPs all this content but not their normal affiliates then they are pushing out their long time affiliates in favor of these guys. Say what you will but pissing off long term partners for shifty newcomers with poor ethics usually isn't a good business move.

xhamster from my experience was the best converting tube. Even so... the problem is that with 217,581 uniques that is likely around 21 million views. What does a view to unique translate as?? Not sure... it's still pretty bad.

What are your views to get 217K uniques?

your getting $29K for 332 joins? wow...!

It was 41 million views, so around .5% CTR. What does a view translate as, that is the question. I am not sure of the answer. How does 41 million picture views over 14 months of Hun galleries compare to these stats?

I don't really know. I believe to get those sales I would have needed to put up, and get approved for at least 20-30 galleries on The Hun and I don't think the CTR and join ratio was that much better for yanks.com at that time. I think solo girl sites did much better, but we are more niche.