I've been following this thread with delight. I'm a "noob" as you call it and I've been steadily building my network of tgp sites, legal tubes, blog, forum and paysites for a bit over 18 months.
I work six days a week, sometimes more than 12 hours a day, just to get it this far. I reckon that I've invested well over $20,000 to date. It was easy to spend it!
To pay somebody to do what I've done would be frightfully expensive, so I went ahead and built it all by hand. I'm nearing the end now and just gathering the link codes from my various sponsors, so hopefully if the tedium doesn't get me first, then hopefully I'll be on deck properly within weeks. By the way, I previously ran a successful webhosting business here in Australia. I sold it early last year.
As for making money out of porn, I can't believe how simple it is. I have two well ranked tgp sites which are presently making around $400+ per month without any sort of special promotion, just good seo and quality sponsors.
I have set aside a certain amount of money for promotion once I get the all links done - I'm thinking around $10,000 will do it.
It is hard work and I feel good about the project and its prospects for making money in the future. I have come up with what I think is an orginal idea, which will set my network apart from much of what is out there at the moment. I have used my 38 years of experience in running my own successful businesses to set this up as a proper, full time, income producing venture.
Every business that I have run in the past has taken over two years to produce any sort of profit for me, so I went into this with my eyes wide open, fully expecting to not make a cracker for a long time.
To be making over $800 a month without trying, is a thrill and an indication to me that my idea has merit.
While most of the world is in the grips of this lingering Global Finacial Crisis (GFC), one should be mindful that there is still a lot of money out there and to pry what visitors to our websites are prepared to pay for quality porn product, will take a lot of thought and originality to be able to achieve anything near the halcyon, pre-GFC incomes that many of you enjoyed.
These are just my thoughts as a "noob" with more than $20,000 to spend.
