So many people here have been complaining about slow sales lately but...
 

it seems just about everyone here has a tube site.
Every time someone asks about what tube site they should go with, I keep seeing more and more samples popping up.

How are people blaming Tax season over slow sales?

30 minute HD videos on some of these Tubes, that's why your sales are dead.

So easy to fix, every tube owner limit your videos to .30 seconds and let them upgrade to the sponsor to watch the rest of it. It's not that hard. :Oh crap

If the Porn industry worked together like the Jews do the Movie Industry. You would all be Millionaires now. We killed our own industry.

Hm. As for me, Tube-Erotique.com is sponsor only. My surfers do not have the ability to upload anything. And my longest clip is 2:59. I won't be having anything over 3 minutes,unless my Sponsors want to have me upload a free clip or something. And it is a mighty fine traffic redirector.

As for the others, yeah, full movies and scenes suck.

Hmm, maybe that's why my ratios are so low. Never jumped into the tubes.

And enjoy you tube site with 200 visitors a day

just imagine if anything that was hardcore was paid access only :)

freemium only works if you gear things to be paid at certain levels, right now that isn't what tubes are doing

Hence the reason I may be leaving adult. We kill our own industry then bitch about how conversions are basically non-existent.

It's dumb, very dumb. We did it to ourselves, plain and simple.

i sent an email out to the big tube site owners. they agreed with your suggestion and will start charging tomorrow.

I have a great idea. Let's all create only picture galleries with 5 pictures in them. We'll fill them up with links and make them very search engine friendly. It will be just like TGP v. 2.0.

We sure did. So Dumb.

If the GFY crowd was the whole industry, that might be a possibility. It's not though...

ratios arent bad, they are quite good

Very true. Theoretically, that would solve the problem of poor conversion ratios. Realistically however, there is no way to implement that kind of change.

Surfers don't like 30 seconds clips. Webmasters always have been greedy. Once video uploads were possible, they started to offer more and more.
I don't understand how a site like tube8 (all webmaster-uploaded content) can expect to make a sale. Okay, their content is generic and just plain sucks. Maybe that's what they are selling...

You can easily convert 1:500 on tubes with the right banner and tour, so those have nothing to do with it. And when sales go down just for a few days every month after tubes have been around for years, I don't think its tubes's fault.

One way to approach this problem is to SELL SOMETHING THAT CAN'T BE PIRATED. Simple as that... Illegal tube sites, Rapidshare, MU, etc etc desensitize the surfer and educate the surfer to expecting pre-made/non-custom porn to be FREE and WIDELY AVAILABLE. That's the bottomline.

How do you combat this? Well, many webmasters upsell tube surfers to dating sites or webcam sites. These work on the principle that you CANNOT PIRATE these. Can't pirate a date. Can't pirate and tube a live show.

There's a third alternative--custom 1:1 porn that is NOT cam-related. Just like the old Burger King ad "your way, right away", the new frontier in online adult entertainment aims to deliver YOUR PORN YOUR WAY. Catering to your suggestions. Interacting with you. Built around your tastes.

IN essence, the next step in adult entertainment is all about selling an EXPERIENCE. While cams sell an event and dating sites sell an opportunity, the next stage in the traditional adult niche site promotional/monetization model are high levels of personalization and interactivity.

I don't mean to spam but in the CONTEXT of this discussion it is highly relevant, check out the link in my sig. Get a glimpse into PIRATE-PROOF paysite entertainment.

I can remember the days when people used to complain about 20 second clips on an MPG or too many hardcore pictures in a TGP. Now sponsors are hosting 3-5 minute clips for Tube sites. :upsidedow

What was the industries reaction to Tube sites taking loads of customers?

It opened more Tube sites. :upsidedow

20 cents a GB hosting is my dream. :1orglaugh

I used to have 5 minute movie clips on thehun 5-6 years ago when most people used 10 second clips. I did 30 sales with such galleries, when others were lucky with 5-10. I'm talking about free submissions.

And as the rest of the business followed you your sales dropped and the same for the business over all. And that's the problem we all follow the leader and give away too much. The problem is how do we stop it?

Hosting at a price we could not afford is the only solution. Or no porn without it being paid for. Both dreams that will never happen.

are the tubes actually sustainable as they grow? will they be self defeating?

I didn't see much of a drop to be honest. Before you also had to promote unique sites to keep making good sales. Nowadays there is less unique sites, thats all. I still do very good with a few original sites.

30 sales on a gallery on The Hun does not seem a lot to me. The prices they charge I would imagine that was what was the norm. Still does not counter that today we give away far too much and this effects sales.

As for unique sites, I've seen few unique sites unless they are a micro niche or have a unique model in them. Which limits appeal.

It wasn't the norm, surely not on free submissions. Some people were able to make more, some made less even on topspots.

time to switch from porn to mainstream

see sig

Incorrect. It's not a matter of surfers liking 30 second clips (they do btw) but whether or not a 30 clip is sufficient in selling the item. The answer is YES.

Why?

Because if those 30 second clips are done right they have more selling power than any 10 minute clip ever possibly could achieve. That is, if you are actually trying to sell the item the trailer is advertising.

There are differences in mainstream and adult films yes, but at the core what makes you go see or rent a movie? A great 30 second- 1 minute trailer. Thats it, no more.

I find that good adult film companies who make decent short trailers SELL. VOD is still rockin' and its largely due to kick ass advertisements companies do for their movies.

Mainstream means different planet? Because I don't see how it would be easier to process a credit card in mainstream over adult, if people don't have as much money to spend in the first place.

Last year my sales started to bounce back after some adjustments.... I'm up 200-300% this year over last year. Things keep going as they should, it will easily be my largest year.

As bandwidth prices come down you are going to see more Tube sites giving better content. For example http://www.100tb.com/dedicated-hosting/unmetered.php , 1 gig for $599, at this rate the Tube owner only need to make 20 sales to cover his cost.

Telling Tube site owners to limit the movie size is like telling craigslist to limit their ads so the news paper biz makes money....it will not work.

All most 20 years ago I wrote a MS Dos software and gave it as a shareware. People who used it a lot and wanted it seen developed paid for it. I made a ok income that allowed me to drive a BMW while i was still in college (every one thought i had a rich dad). May be that will work on porn, people who like a given studio / type of content continue to pay for it . This involves educating the user and making him a fan. I know few studios have done a good job and got a loyal following that they get pre orders in the 1000 - 2000 dvd's even before the movie hit the street.

I developed VOD software for the porn biz for the past 10 years and I know first hand how bad sales are.

Jay
objectcube.com

Majority of the tube site owners (i suspect) have never really made any (real) money in this business.

Many of them are new to this business.

So if they can throw up a cheap tube site easy enough, that alone gives them a thrill so they can show and tell all their friends that they are cool and have a pRon site.

cjs are dead,
tgps are dead,
blogs are still alive,
tubes are the future..

and i agree, if you put advertise in right way you could easily make 1:500!!


and remember, dont be evil guys..

What kind of adjustements did you make?

Very well said, Thank you.

Lots... but the biggest was understanding that money isn't made just on a webpage online. The traffic you have right now is willing to buy at least 4x more than now, always... and 'selling' people, even things they want, means less money. You need them to attach to you, so you can sell them forever, any flavor of porn or any product - and not just this single page right now.

I know this is/was a TGP/MGP board back in the days.

But where our webmasters made their AVS money was pretty simple, show the surfer a few images of what you have in your site, send them through AVS first, then they can have access to all of it plus all the bonuses. It's a no brainer and that is why all the AVS guys made bank before all this broke lose.

Same should go with the tube sites.

Can you imagine thousands of legal 30 Second Porn Vids teasers in HD, you know that is't going to convert like crazy. This would be the time to do it because the traffic is there.

Problem is, everyone needs to do it at the same time. Two words...GOOD LUCK!

aw come on man, every industry is being shaken and up broken down by the internet, it's just not porn. there are larger forces at play and getting a bunch of tube site owners to start charging isn't going to change shit.

whether it is sustainable once other side, no one knows .... and if it's the end of the world no one knows as well.

Name a Few?

Record sales are off the roof for the Music Industry, Avatar just broke the record for the highest earner in Movie History,

quick google shows music sales down 10-20 percent last few years although digital sales up.

Jay did you make this up on your own?
You are SPOT on..

I also want to add that the people who are being hit the most are the ones with the same old content. Get creative people.
You now have the ability to get your content in front of the eyes of 10000's of people a day.

Make something DIFFERENT and you will kill it off tube traffic.

Good luck and get to work. If you are trying to make sales with the same old boring generic porn and dvd content guess what you are fucked.

Time to put that on my sig

Not everything in mainstream requires a credit card... including some of the most profitable, most competitive niches.