Quote:
Originally Posted by Lichen
Now what is left is milking surfers for everything you can. Take their money and run.
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Not only is that false, it's pretty much the opposite of the truth from a consumer POV....
Consumers benefited from the free tubes, they benefit from the business models that have come since the tubes and they benefit tremendously from the fact that successful companies now go out of their way to keep them happy rather than to score a quick buck. Having reviewed and re-reviewed thousands of paysites over several years in pretty much every niche, evaluated the terms of service and billing methods used by hundreds of sites and so on, I'm in a pretty good position to let you know that the user experience consumers get now is far better than it was before the tubes existed - and Manwin paysites have been pretty strong in that regard for the average customer.
I fully agree the tubes severely damaged business models and shrank the financial pie for many webmasters (which is something that pisses me off), but most consumers couldn't care less about any of that. Consumers are much more savvy now, faster to chargeback, unwilling to accept bogus charges and demand a much higher level of quality than they did in the past. The paysites that are making real money are the ones that provide a product consumers trust, and ones that consumers believe are 'better than free.'
