Why arent paysites using Walmart business model by continuously reduce signup prices?

You put stick some old fucker on the index.html page to greet the surfers to the site?

When you import models from China for $0.50 hand job scenes, 1$ blow job scenes, $2 boy girl scenes, $4 gangbangs and bukkakes, you can see membership prices for $9.88 or lower. LOL

Yet another great post.

With conversion rates of 1-1,000 it's plainly obvious we are selling a product the VAST majority of surfers dom't want to buy. And ratios are getting worse and we continue down the same road.

Does every surfer want to spend $30 to jerk off while he has 20 minutes spare? And that's a sort on minimum price, with many sites doing their utmost to rebill and upsell him.

How many guys are going for an inferior product on free sites, simply because they want to jerk off there and then and do not think of doing it every day for a month?

But we have to sell $30 memberships, to convert 1-1,000 that with a lot of hard work will generate 1,000 clicks to the site per day and a member will stay 6 weeks on average. Paying an affiliate $22.50 or about that. Or we squeeze the surfer hard, make converting harder and pay the affiliate more.

Here's an idea.

A site that converts 1-100, that generates 2,000 clicks to the site per day and pays the affiliate $2. So the affiliate earns $40.

But will affiliates go for it?

Will they fly to the moon?

More likely they will sign up to a program offering $50 a sign up that 50 other people are joining at the same time. While telling you to think outside the box.

OK I know we have to get a site that appeals to surfers more than affiliates, but isn't that in the best interest of affiliates?

Because conversions are so poor. Now do the sums at a better conversion ratio.

But would you buy a Porsche if you only wanted it for an hour?

Over all we struggle to sell at $30 and you think the solution is to jack the price to $40. Got any more bright ideas?

Don't be silly. Then you can't tell the affiliates that your amateurish shot by a newbie exclusive content is what converts.

haha, pwnd

If a well known content shooter like yourself doesnt value his content do you expect anyone else to?

Try raising your prices and see what happens. You will be pleasantly surprised.

Lot of good posts, the ones that agree with me, and a lot of stupid ones, those who do not agree with me.

Let's be completely honest here.

WE AS AN INDUSTRY CHARGE $30 TO PAY THE AFFILIATE ENOUGH TO SEND US TRAFFIC THAT CONVERTS AT AN INDUSTRY AVERAGE OF UNDER 1-1000.

No other reason than that.

Our business model is not working, look at the conversion figures.

We need to change it.

The hard part is how and biting the bullet for the long term good of all.

Heh, now that I think about it we need to stop being dumb asses and selling memberships for $4.95, $1.95 and so on. The majority of memberships sold are trials that allow members to get a good wank without rebilling.

As men we all know we really dont give a shit about anything after we bust that nut. So why do we continue to act like surfers are a whole different species that feels differently.

Does that make any sense? This industry could use a little collusion.

I do value my content. I'm saying we need to think a bit longer and harder about where we go as an industry. Your other post gives a clue to what I'm thinking.

A guy wants to spend $4.95, so you think take away that option and he will spend $40. Or he might spend nothing and go jerk off at The Hun.

Because I beleive there's still plenty of room to reduce the price of signups.

probably said already.. but I didn't read the entire thread...

b/c webmaster payouts have to be competitive so you can get the traffic...

If you take a look around many of the bigger pps programs rebill at 39.95

I'm not quite sure what that proves, since the vast majority of PPS programs aren't exactly known for great renewal ratios. A really cynical person might even guess that with a high proportion of renewals coming from those notoriously forgetful surfers, the high price is just another way of squeezing surfers' pips.

umm that whole $10 dollar porn site deal seems to be doing so great..

A pile of shit site is still a pile of shit site no matter if you pay $10 to join or $40.

We will soon see quality sites lower prices and increase quality even more. This will drive lots of low quality sites out of business and that is a good thing. If the bottom 80% of paysites vanished today nobody would miss them and everyone would make more money.

The bottom 80% are going nowhere. Are SEO spam pages from 1999 still on the serps? Yes. That's one of the bad things about the interweb thingy. Old shit doesn't die, it gets archived and runs on autopilot.

If you look aound lots of the larger programs convert at 1-1000, that's 999 people sying "Fuck you I'm not paying that"

That's what so few people realise, while everyone is grabbing a camera and putting up a shit site they fail to see the damage they do to the industry. I've never been in an industry that praised mediocre so highly.

Affiliates are the ones using the balance right now ... or it would already have went down.

10 bucks site existed years ago and failed.

And how would you rate the quality of those sites?

VideoBox seems to be doing quite well for a $10 site.

what he said.

Well put, Paul - and I heartily agree.

Its all in the perception...and the more shit sites that inundate the web, the more the general public perceive them as ALL being shit sites.

Meanwhile, those of us who actually took photography courses, learned our craft, invest heavily in production...and produce good quality content, get burned in the process because more potential customers are becoming disenchanted after previously paying for crap.

I wonder how much of a major factor the price of content is! There's lots of sites with $1 a set content that are still charging $30/month....

Nobody wants to be the one blammed for destroying the industry. The "big sites" who are making 90% of the sales could get that extra 10% by dropping their prices... but look at how much money they'll lose. Most of the big guys in this industry are already Wal-Mart. They have a great % of their niche with their dozens of sites. Any drop in prices will just be competing with themselves.

In the long run, they lose more by allowing competition to continue.

Some people are writing in this thread as if the "traditional" paysite model of poor quality, generic content, high prices, cross-sells and the rest, came about because a bunch of smart businessmen developed it as the best model. It didn't happen that way.

Back in 1996, almost all the content which was available was third-rate ex-magazine material. Fortunately the surfers' appetite for porn was such that it didn't matter. At least not in terms of new sales, although by 1997 threads were already appearing on YNot discussing poor rebills, asking why the average member was signing up for less than 2 months. The other part of the equation is that affiliates needed maybe a whole month's experience online to begin spamming Alta Vista, or in one way or another generating traffic and sales.

It was never a smart business model, because it depended on excess demand and large numbers of newbie surfers. It was obvious from day one that these prerequisites weren't going to be around for long.

Maybe if today's large traffic sources and the concept of buying/selling traffic had developed earlier, subsequent development would have been different. But by - say - 2000, when reality had started to bite, just about every sponsor depended on affiliates for sales. Instead of attempting to change direction, they dug the hole deeper, increasing payouts to levels which - since rebills weren't going anywhere except down - meant using all kinds of smoke and mirrors to balance the books. In other words, no-one planned this business model, it happened and we got stuck with it.

If this way of working is so bad, how has it survived 10 years? Why are people still getting rich from it? The answer is a huge army of affiliates still willing to chase $40 payouts, even if their conversion ratios are pitiful. So long as Hummers, X-Boxes, antics on GFY and the rest keep pulling in affiliates, the "traditional" business model can stagger along. And, apart from greed and short-sightedness, affiliates don't have so much choice. There are probably still only a couple of dozen sponsors who provide a real alternative.

One test is to ask whether the average affiliate is earning more than 10 years ago, 5 years ago? Few would claim he is, despite all the experience he has gained; despite the traffic sources he has had time to build and develop; despite the huge reductions in hosting costs and content prices; and despite all the additional scripts, site types, etc he now has at his disposal. And heaven knows what cost-per-sale figures the major sponsors are seeing these days.

People blame competition and not the business model itself. They talk about big fish eating smaller fish. Certainly that is a part of what happens as an industry matures. But the bottom line is that according to estimates published by XBiz and others, after a decade, online porn still only accounts for 5% of the "adult entertainment" market. That minimal penetration is a result of having spent 10 years squeezing the surfers who show up at our sites of their own accord, instead of actively developing our market. In addition, there are probably more people in this business preying on each other for a quick short-term profit, than there are people attempting to develop lasting business relationships to make the most of the massive potential market out there.

What next, if we don't change direction. More prizes? Bigger prizes? Higher payouts? All of which means higher prices of course: for a mediochre product that very few of us would ever consider wasting our money on. How far can you stretch a piece of elastic before it snaps?

The question posed by this thread was either naive or badly stated. Price isn't something to look at in isolation: it's just a part of a picture which has to balance price, target market, what you are selling and how you plan to sell it. I prefer to work at slightly above average price, because it is far too easy for people with deep pockets to buy market share when low price is the primary factor. But I believe you can sell $10 a month porn or $100 a month porn, providing you get the package right. What you will not be able to do for very much longer is sell $10 porn for $30+.

I agree 110%.

Too many people think about thier prices in a self defeating way. "Surfer's won't signup at anything over $29.95."

Well, you are fucking wrong if you think this. People will signup at whatever price point you would like as long as the package is presented and delivered correctly.

Stop being pussies guys. We run this show, for the moment at least, as long as you aren't trying to sell bullshit don't be afraid to charge what you are worth.

Not sure if thats the "Wallmart" business model..