kane

While they may send a fuckload of sales to sponsors they are not sending enough to cover the cost of bandwith. For example AEBN which is one of the largest sponsors and content producers out there owns a couple of these porn tube style sites and they get a ton of traffic. They tell the reporter in the article I read that the sites basically break even because the bandwith cost is so heavy and that right now they are keeping them around as traffic sources and to see what will be happening in the future with them. PornTube is basically just making enough to pay the bills (if even that much).

The bottom line is that there are only certain types of sponsors these sites work with and can sell. Why would I join a porn site when I can get hours of free porn movies right there on porntube? To combat this they sell dating and cam sites and stuff like that.

There is a big difference between porn and the record industry. The record industry has something else to sell you, we really don't. Even if they gave you a band's record for free they could sell you DVDs of concerts, concert tickets, t-shirts and other memorabilia from the band. They also hold licensing on the songs that they can sell to commercials, TV shows and movies. If you run a porn site your streams of revenue are limited. You can sell memberships to your sites, maybe turn your content into DVD or streams to sell to other sites and maybe put it up on pay per view for hotels and cable companies. Well, again, if I can get hours of free porn on a site why would I want to buy a DVD or join a porn site?

In the end I think tube style sites will eat themselves up. I think more and more sponsors will just not take their traffic and their bandwith costs will eventually shut them down or force them to change in a way that makes them less of a problem.