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Confirmed User
Join Date: Mar 2009
Posts: 193
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MIS
I see so many webmasters lately, complain and cry over tube sites again and again. This seems to be a very hot topic. How many threads were on this within the past 7 days?? To ALL YOU people, have you ever really put some thought into this and try to understand that your sales have absolutely nothing to do with tube sites?. I actually tried to search the term "TUBE" on GFY to look up the older posts and trace back to the first person who suggested that tube sites are the problem. I find it further amazing that the "experts" who have been around in the industry for over a decade, fuel the negative mindset and the spirit of all adult webmasters by confirming such theories. You are not doing a good job as being the authority and drive behind our industry.
Lets put some facts and suggestions down, and analyze these facts to see if tube sites are the real problem to your sales.
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Excellent post! I agree with pretty much most of what you say here.
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Originally Posted by MIS
Fact #1. Free porn existed on the Internet since the first porn picture was uploaded. Tube sites are just a new way of presenting such free content. People used to trade free porn starting in AOL chat rooms in the early 90s when it was the #1 ISP. Most of your visitors already had free porn and the idea of using a credit card was not a common thing like today. Credit card use and sales were nothing compared to the numbers today, and yet, sites who started in the 90s made millions and millions of dollars.
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This is true but you had to be much more technical and there was a much smaller percentage of users out there that had the ability to do this. Tube sites make it really easy for the average idiot to watch porn for free.
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Originally Posted by MIS
Fact #2. File sharing sites have been around passing free porn, like bangbus content, and shitload of other sites since the first file sharing softwares were coded. This fueled even more use of free content in other ways such as warez rooms, forums, IRC, etc. Free porn exploded when file sharing sites came around, yet once again, a lot of the websites that were around that stage, made millions and millions of dollars.
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Same as #1.
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Originally Posted by MIS
Fact #3. every year, twice the amount of competition if not more are created and marketed across the adult industry. Every month and every year, the piece of pie becomes smaller for everyone. There are limits on what consumers spend in an industry, and the number of sites that share this limit grow faster than the spending limit itself.
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I think twice is an exaggeration but I definitely think there are more players coming into the game and more saturation of content. On the other hand business are consolidating and the small guys are failing. So I'm not sure which direction it is going.
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Originally Posted by MIS
Fact #4. The economy. Why is no one paying attention to sales numbers across all businesses in the world? you are not the only one who is down in your sales. Are you paying attention to all these huge companies going out of business? people don't have the money to keep an Internet connection at home, let alone pay for your $30/month site. How many people do you think have a valid credit card being in debt? without a job? Why does no one take these things into account?
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Gotta agree with that. There are some that say porn is a recession-proof. I think this is true to some extent but as mentioned below the prices are too high. If it was like $5 I think the average unemployed person could handle that but $30/mo is asking for too much.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MIS
Fact #5. Supply and Demand. You cannot expect to get $30/month in this economy when $30 to a consumer is more important than spending on porn. Porn is considered a luxury, not a necessity. Food and gas are necessities. You cannot expect people to pay for luxury in this economy. You must lower your prices to accommodate the budget of the average surfer. Offer more billing options than a credit card or bank account, think maybe food stamps or whatever (you get the point). Think of new price structures that are more attractive. Approach new ways to monetize your traffic. Give 10 free memberships away a day capturing people's e-mail addresses, and monetize these e-mails beyond what the 10 memberships cost. People obviously like FREE shit and will do anything for it.
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Exactly, lower the price and go for volume. People use iTunes because it is convenient and cheap. True you can find pirated music without too much difficultly but it is much easier to acquire with iTunes and 99 cents isn't anything that is going to make me take notice. Apple's DRM on the other hand is an entirely different matter.
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Originally Posted by MIS
Fact #6: Boycott all business relationships with websites and sponsors that employ bad practices which damage the consumer base for our industry. I am not going to name any sponsors, but you know some of the top sponsors, who for example, cross sale a $2.95 trial membership into a $200/month worth of subscriptions. Do you think when "Joe the plumber" opens his credit card statement, he is going to be thrilled with his choice to surf and buy a membership to a porn site? Statistics show, that such consumers almost never purchase such a product again, and will always view it as scam. You have just lost a consumer who could potentially bring 1000s of dollars in sales across the industry in exchange for a quick $200 dollar. Everyone is destroying each others consumer base this way. Think about this over 1000s of consumers a day. You are losing out billions of dollars a year in revenue pursuing such practices. People talk about bad experiences more than positive ones, so you are reducing the growth of such consumer base as well.
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The most important factor in our business in the coming years is going to be trust. This means not only that there are no hidden surprises on his credit card but that what you promise to give is what the customer receives. If your tour looks good and your members area is shit that is not trust. If you are a VOD site offering 2 Mbps streaming, get some decent fucking servers/bandwidth so that a person with a 10 Mbps connection can actually download faster than 700 Kbps from your site.
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Originally Posted by MIS
Fact #7: Not enough vision and innovation in our industry. Everyone copies someone else's idea, that is why you have website names that made up of generic 4 word keywords that are repetitive over and over again. TeenFuckingBlack, BlackFuckingTeen, AnalTeenBlack, etc the shit gets old after a while. Can you please get some ideas in design and brand building from mainstream web2.0? What is wrong with a digg website for adults? why must every single site be a copy of the past 10,000 sites. Surfers are fucking bored with what we have to offer them, you are not focusing and spending time on user experience as much as you are focusing and spending time on how to setup yet another sponsor program with the same niche content as 10,000 other sites.
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IMHO, tube sites offer the best user experience. That's why users prefer them. They don't have to worry about their cards being ripped off. They are more or less fast. The videos are easy to find and search for. The content on them isn't the greatest but if you could offer these features with higher quality content and the same user experience I think you would be doing pretty well off.
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Originally Posted by MIS
Fact #8: Stop ripping off each other. If you steal from Tom, then Tom will steal from John, and John will steal from you. Not only that there is no point in doing this, but also it builds a bad culture in an industry that is already suffering.
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Stealing is bad. Mmmkay?
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Originally Posted by MIS
Fact #9: Almost everyone believes that tube sites model is dominating the adult industry and its profits, then why not just go in that direction as a whole? If profits and income is what is bothering you, then you will be happy to know, that you could have your own tube site for a fraction of what you think you need. You can get an entire tube site coded from scratch, from an offshore programmer for $1000 customized to the last dot in the code. Scrape the content off the 50 tube sites that already out there, upload that shit to your own site, let google index, enjoy the traffic and webcam/dating signups. Maybe if there are 50,000 tube sites out there, and 100 real good paysites, those 100 real good paysites will start to make the multi million dollars a month.
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If you can't beat them, join them? Well, I say let's come up with something better.
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Originally Posted by MIS
Fact #10: Even if tube sites didn't exist, your sales would still be low during these times. Ask the mainstream guys who went from converting 1:50 on $30-$40/sales to converting now @ 1:1000+. Everything is connected, it is not just you in this industry. A lot of people in mainstream went from making millions a year to almost breaking even. Those who didn't accept failure and thought outside the box are still making their cash.
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Isn't this the same as #4? But yeah, the economy is hurting so it's only natural things would be down across the board.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MIS
Do you still think tube sites are your problem?
"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo
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The time has certainly come but so far I haven't seen any good ideas.
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