Quote:
Originally Posted by Axeman
The only way you get back to the early days of the net, is if you get worldwide gov't laws with teeth that regulate piracy as well as nudity/xrated content available for free and not behind an age verification paywall.
Without those two things, then it will never been like it was in 98-04.
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Anyone that equates "conversions" to "stolen, full length videos" is simply not going to have a long life in this biz or enjoy any sort of enduring success. This biz is built on spectacular rising and falling and the average life of any business in adult only i'm sure doesn't exceed more than a few months. Just because you made some money, doesn't mean you can last as its a highly fluid and ever changing climate where most will not adapt to change.
Well, the way you get back to really low conversions is to duplicate the circumstances that led to great conversions.
1) You make bandwidth and hosting extremely expensive.
Anyone remember when a submission to the hun might cost you $3,000 - $4,000.00 in bandwidth? If people could have shown more content at the time, they would have done it. Remember when these sites could image source another and shut it down in hours? The problem was hosting/bandwidth and slow user connections.... making surfing very difficult and tiresome, increasing the probability of one just stopping where they landed and joining a site.
2) You eliminate broadband from homes.
You need to turn back the clock so sites load very slow and browsing porn is the tedious chore it once was and where when an user gets thrown into a cj network for example, its just easier to give up and buy a membership. Anyone remember when a page had to be 100kbs or less? All connections will need to be 56kbs or less. We will need all those 15-30 second real/wmv streaming files that buffer endlessly and look like shit if they happen to load. Also the videos can't be bigger than 320X240.
3) You dramatically decrease the amount of porn online.
Scarcity was the primary driver of demand (in addition to other factors). That is true with porn as it is with any commodity. It doesn't have to be "free" to be a commodity that is less scarce. There was always free porn online and its always been a relative factor.
4) Reduce the number of paysites and niches.
I remember talking to J$yles in 98 about this new "asian niche" experiment doing very well for them at IEG.
Shortly after that, I was talking to a guy (that well built guy that died), at traffic cash gold about "pissing" and thinking there is just nothing left to be explored in porn. Obviously it fractured into a million niches and new niches are coming up all the time.
When Karasxxx.com, cybererotica.com etc was all there was, that's what people joined. The more niches that pop up, the more the customer base gets spread around and conversions to those generic mega sites drop.
5) You change peoples perception.
Make them think again that its a new way to access porn as opposed to buying a magazine in a store or adult store like a creep... this way the idea of anonymity and online is still fresh and new and something they are aggressively exploring as a new way of accessing porn.
This is probably the second largest reason porn exploded how it did online in the late 90's and early 2000s.
6) You make them naive again.
Make them forget all the scams, the dishonesty and outright fraudulent behavior of porn sites. This will result in higher overall trust and better conversions.
7) Get rid of youtube, facebook, twitter, blogs, netflix etc etc etc...
You know, all those things that didn't exist or weren't competing for porn surfers attention at the time. This will result in higher conversions as the mindset then goes back to "where's the porn", not "i need to kill some time... whats going on with facebook"
8) Change online demographics.
I feel like I'm the only one at times that understands how radically online demographics shifted and how fast - directly impacting ratios. We will need to get rid of all the 3rd world countries and just have premium countries. Basically, it needs to be 80% US surfers, 90% of which are male nerds hiding in a basement as it was in 1998.
The list can go on and on as to all the factors that contribute to declining conversions. There idea of "putting the genie back in the bottle" implies there is a single cause of declining conversions which could be undone. This is simply not true and never has been.
Markets evolve and mature, customers evolve and mature, products evolve and mature. Remember when the mantra was "surfers are stupid"???? That was said every single day by multiple people on every adult webmaster forum. Guess what... surfers aren't stupid. They are your potential customers. They know whats out there. They know quality when they see it. They are capable of making well educated decisions which they weren't capable of in 1998.
"Adapt or die" doesn't mean "steal or die". That's just a sad and convenient excuse for failure. It means, "if you don't come to grips with the product demand and the direction of expectations and demand and you fail to produce something which isn't better, unique, well branded and well marketed (this biz incidentally, understands jack shit about actual marketing), you won't survive no matter what".
I remember that woman (CJ?) that used to own purve.com laughing about how all her asshole members wanted to be able to download content. She didn't last much longer. This is a business which has historically had a very adversarial relationship with its own "stupid" customers and today, almost everyone is paying the price for that and people continue to as they fade in and fade out.