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I predict this for the future. A lot more price and membership options to suit the surfer not the affiliate.
The reasoning is simple. Porn is generally a 20 minute product, most people want 1 scene, in the extreme he will watch 2 scenes. Very very few watch more at a sitting. Very very few want it 30 days a month.
A porn scene costs 5 cents in BW to deliver, plus buying it, programming and the rest the whole cost of satisfying the average surfer is less than 30 cents. Sell it for $1.00 a scene and you make a 200% mark up. Good profit margin. The surfer comes back time after time.
The fly in the ointment is the affiliate. He demands $30 a sign up, in payment and support, to send a surfer looking for a $1 product. 5 years ago the surfer had no options and there was a lot of newbie surfers. So the odds were good on selling him a $30 membership.
Today the odds are worse and I suspect getting worse by the day. With competition from PPV, VOD, Torrent and simply people giving it away for free the $30 x 30 day model is becoming redundant. No matter how much traffic you have passing your front door, if the surfer knows you are over charging that's all he will do. Pass by.
Will the affiliates send traffic to sites selling scenes for $1? A better question is will they have any alternative?
We priced ourselves so high we left ourselves open to those who were cheaper. We were selling to 1 in 100 and watched it go to 1 in 1000 and thought the solution was to give the affiliate more to send more traffic. It did not work.
The future is about having a product the surfer will pay for and finding ways we can deliver it. Not finding ways to deliver a surfer to something we can force or trick him to pay for.
How will you compete with people giving it away for free?
By having a good product, not selling a site of 30 poor videos for $30, by adding on extras like mobile phones porn, ipod a PSP versions. By satisfying the customers needs better than sites giving it away for free. For some that will be tough. For others not as tough.
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