1 reason the business is dying, well a couple of them. LOL

Paul I have to disagree on this one.If you have what people want they will gladly buy it. When we started on clips for sale stores. People pay all day long 15-18 dollars per clip,its what they like they will pay for it. I think if the action is weak then you got to give it away to sell it. People tried 10 dollar porn sites and they weren't some big success. I worked for a guy that had a site during the gravy years early 90's that was 10 dollars/ 5 bucks recurring. Didnt do a big business in fact and you would be amazed the people that would cb $5.

Maybe I wasn't too clear in how I wrote my post. I guess what I mean is given the choice which would be better for your business? 1. you spend most of your time out trying to get people to your store. or 2. you have a team of people out bringing people to your store and you focus on making sure the store provides them what they want and treats them well so they will want to come back.

I understand owning a business is more that just running the store. I was trying to make a point that maybe an owner is better off letting other people get them business while they work on making sure the store is as good as possible instead of neglecting the store while they are out trying to drum up business.

i think this thread title should be changed to...

"1 reason why MY business is dying. well a couple of them. LOL"

Yes you can fool everyone once, a lot of people twice, a few people three times. Fooling them over and over again is impossible. Even you look bright the first time you post.

Porn is a consumable product. If you base your business on DX's concept you will fail, even affiliates are bright enough to look at stats.

Wow you got me on McDonald's. I will bow to your superior knowledge on the name. I never give them a second glance.

there is always niche market of it, and the quilty of the films. A lot of these free website offer very low quilty movie(at least for now).

Not the same. You're charging $30 for a month.

There are hundreds of thousands of surfers who want 30 minutes to meet their needs.

They will not sign up for $30 for 30 days what ever you offer them. Ignoring them is leaving money on the table.

pornguy the hole in Kane's argument is when employing the 10 people to promote your site costs more than it brings in or hinders your growth or the 10 people become more important then the 1,000s of customers OR the 10 people dictate how you run your business.

Employing sales people is good and sales people are an asset to a company. However letting people with billboards standing in the high street directing people looking for your product limit how you structure and develop your company is lunacy. How many sales people are affiliates and how many are people holding a billboard?

I do hear what you're saying Kane, but look around you and do you see an industry aimed at satisfying the consumer or it's marketing force? Even DamageX, a comic at the best of times, thinks you can keep selling people a 3 cent product for $30. Maybe he can, or maybe he's losing members to Tube sites because he's not the marketing genius he thinks he is. Not just his members, it's also your members and mine. This is a revolving market. If you're in marketing you will understand that term. ;)

I agree with you Tony. We sell very well on clips4sale and the surprise is how many people will spend over and over again at $4 a clip when they can buy a trial for less for 3 days. There are many different needs and many different sales to be had. We will continue to go for the 30 days @ $30 memberships and look into others. The cross over from clips4sale is well worth it as well. A traffic site that pays me to advertise.

As for the $5 site business not being good back then and how their sites failed. Well that was then, this is now and because they could not do it does not mean we can't.

Well, I see a little of both. Clearly people are buying memberships to porn sites and they are staying members in porn sites or all of these affiliate companies out there would be out of business. So there must be at least some customers out there that are happy. Affiliates are making money off the commission they get from these sales to the sites. They too are happy (or as happy as you can ever make an affiliate).

I understand the point that making a great site that really gives the customer what they want in the way they want it is a good thing. But you say if you have too many affiliates or sales people they start to dictate how you do business and become more important than your 1000's of customers. My question is, without a sales force where are you getting these 1000's of customers. They may eventually find you through word of mouth. You can get some of them yourself. But without any type of sales people you will be limited in the amount of members you get. I'm not saying you should try to sell junk to people and make it up in volume (although that is a tried and true business model that has worked forever and will forever work), you can create a great site with interesting and unique content that will cater to the needs of your customers, but where are these customers going to come from?

I have twenty different burger joints within walking distance that sells a better hamburger at the same price as McDonalds, yet McDonald's is still making bank.

I think your saying create a better product and do less marketing. But McDonald's puts out a crappy products and dominates in marketing - and that's why they make so much money.

I think you're wasting your time talking marketing with Paul. The only marketing he knows is spamming the boards to stir up shit. As for the superior product you think he advocates, just look at his content and you'll see he doesn't actually practice what he preaches.

yeah.. he's a genius.

won't Wallmart be shocked to find they became the worlds first trillion dollar company by doing it all wrong according to paul.

Please don't confuse McDonalds marketing with ours. It's like comparing a rabble with a well trained army.

I would love to say I have it wrong and all you wise guys have it right. So if we have it right explain why so many are struggling? Yes it's all due to Tube sites giving it away for free. If you're looking for excuses that will do.

Won't solve the problem though.

I'm sure tube sites and free porn have something to do with it, but I think it is just simply a numbers game. 10 years ago there were a whole lot less people selling porn on the internet. Over that time the number of users online has gone up, but the number of people selling has shot through the roof. There is no less money being spent on porn today than before, for that matter there is actually more money being spent on porn than ever before. The problem is it is now being split up among more people. We still have a pie, it is now just being shared with more and more people so everyone's slice is smaller.

I think having half the webmasters and program owners disappear would be more profitable for the industry than getting rid of any tube site. If you offer these people customers something a lot of other people aren't maybe you can attract more of them than you would and you can keep them as customers longer, but the competition for them is at an all time high so it won't be easy.

Paul The Retarded Entertainer

If Darwin's theory applied to today's world, Paul would be long gone.

The policing option will never work. It's a classic finger in the dike scenario. The music industry has way better tools, resources, and coordination and it hasn't gotten them anywhere.

First off, they do sign up. I have the sales to back up my approach.

Secondly, I'm not charging $30 for 30 days, I'm charging $30 for an hours worth of niche specific video. They have 30 days to download them. I could shorten that I guess. The same scenes would cost the customer $70 at my c4s store. It's a bargain. I even cross sell the traffic back to my c4s stores.

How much video are you giving them for $5? 10 scenes? How long are they? Is it just short scenes with an upsell to the higher grade/longer ones? That certainly is a bargain! Especially if the same scenes sell well at $1/per minute elsewhere. Who's leaving money on the table?

My point for even chiming in on this thread: I think you are reducing the value of your product too much. But hey, it's just my opinion. I'm not the Grand Poobah of porn. I hope it proves very profitable for you.

I gotta give credit where credit is due....This was fucking profound right here.....The most profound statement I've ever seen Charly write.

Agreed. Yes there are too many sharing the same, similar or smaller pot. We will never know unless CCBILL and Epoch tell us. Individual stories of success or failure are guides of an individuals success or failure.

MRock if you produce something better or different that makes people WANT to spend more then you support my argument. I'm saying with the generic porn we could sell from the content store for the last 8 years one of the ways to profit from it is to sell it cheap, limited selection and short term. Maybe a site with a weekly recurring billing would be profitable. There are many buyers with different needs ready to spend money. Do we as an industry focus a little too much on our needs rather than theirs?

DX actually brought up a very good point about the quality of our paysite. This is the quality of the content stores, the quality of the content we can sell. Is it limited by our talent to shoot or the market that buys. If it's our talent, then look around and see all the other great content stores, if it's the buyers look around at all the other stores of a similar nature.

Yes some sites shoot themselves or have it shot custom to ensure a level of quality content producers don't provide. And some sites produce or buy in conveyor belt produced porn that reflects in sales. MRock says they produce a product that is good enough, how many others do? Sales and retention ratios are a good guide.

Do we need to think more about the content we produce and less about the marketing?

Will probably be 5 to 10 scenes in a site depending on the content. We will be upselling and cross selling from within the site. To the 30 day @ $30 site. We don't want to limit ourselves to selling to a few buyers. And yes we will continue with C4S uploads. we're amazed at how well it does. I'm saying there are buyers looking to spend $1 for 1 minute and buyers who want 10 movies for $5, buyers who want 30 days for $30. and even more, we as an industry need to focus on the buyers needs more.

Next week we will launch the new affiliates area, yes we have been working on the marketing of our site. LOL

The programmer is close to finishing it and I will announce it soon. I've been working on getting all my content shot in the UK from the 1980 and 1990s digitised and some is on the site. It's unique and mostly exclusive. And it sells. Why?

Because of the word unique, there are not 2,000 other sites on the Net with exactly the same content on. OK different girl on a different sofa, yet still doing the same thing. Will I sell it on a $5 site? No way, the guys who want the three videos of "Vida Garman" will but a months membership. The site has lots of models like her.

Might make a site dedicated to these UK porn stars and a site dedicated to unshaven pussies. But the sites will be full price because the content is hard to find and worth it.

And we will have the $5 sites feeding the bigger sites and providing an income to affiliates who have traffic that's not willing to pay $30 for 30 days.

The police don't stop all crime, does that mean they should not bother?

So what's the answer?