During the "Disruptors" seminar in Vegas they addressed tube sites. It was said that they felt that by encoding lower grade videos in flash and putting them on the tube site it was a way to get people to pay for better quality videos that would come by joining a site or purchasing VOD minutes.
It is my experience though that the tube sites don't seem to convert too many sales for paysites, and like p2p traffic really only convert the dating sites.
I think that people who are watching the tube sites are doing it for the free porn and that they would not consider a paid upgrade when they can so easily watch the tube sites for free, I don?t think the quality is a very important feature to them.
All of that said... I do not believe that they are going away. I do not believe that the owners of the tube sites are worried about the paysite model being disrupted since there are so many other things that they could sell to this traffic.
I also think that no matter how much people want to blow up the tube sites and their hosts that we won?t find much resolve in that either. Red Shoe is correct in the sense that as a business owner we will have to overcome whatever evolution the tube sites bring to our biz, and those of us who do not will suffer greater than those who are willing to adapt and overcome.
I do not think his point was that the tube sites are some great example of new technology, only that when new ideas in general come into an industry they are bound to shake up the status quo and that is what tube sites are doing for us right now.
The dilemma is while it only took one program to say I will give all of my affiliates the sun, the moon and the stars in promo materials, it is going to take a whole industry to stop that snowball.
So is the problem really the tube sites? Or are they just taking advantage of what we have given to them already? Now the question is ... how do we adapt since we cannot back track.
If you know what the next best thing is please email
[email protected]