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Revshare vs pps is an old argument - one which is being more and more answered. Most likely in the next 12-18 months, unless (fingers crossed) a new president is in, credit cards for porn will be history.
Companies paying $75 per signup on a $5 trial counting on making that back from recurring will be hit -- hard. This continued use of pps way out of proportion with actual $ generated in a single sale will kill the biggest players first. It is after all much easier to recover from paying $75 for 50 signups that get cancelled by cc cos, than $75 for 1000.
Revshare can weather something like this better - maybe not well enough to survive, but there is a chance since you're only paying out 50-60% (if you're sane) of sales. There is time to adapt and shift to other payment options. Not much, but some.
That's where the only killer app I can think of lies -- alternatives to credit card processing that don't go belly up and screw all of their clients.
As far as mainstream, that's a tougher one to crack than adult. The demand is much more finite, the requirements to break in require much more capital and innovation. And if you go on affiliate-model versus what most of us are used to, subscriber-model, business, revenues are drastically less.
So I'd be curious about what others have to say about breaking into mainstream. I am beginning to wonder if, barring a sex scandal of some major SE execs, it is possible to pay the bills with a mainstream "newbie" site these days. Affiliate model, adult is 50+% - mainstream, 5-10% at best. Sometimes only $1 or $2.
The challenge is to create a fresh subscriber-model section fed by a front-end which is affiliate model - with, given those percentages, ten times or more of your current traffic to make the same amount assuming conversions are the same.
Which has been done, ad infinitum, by companies who got started like many us did back in 2000, 1999, or earlier. Look at gay.com - ranked #756 in Alexa. Is it even possible to generate that kind of traffic from zero in a relatively mainstream/crossover concept without millions in revenue?
Adult webmasters getting in today still have opportunities. As long as there are humans, the demand will be highest for three things - sex, cigarettes, and alcohol. I would say getting into the paysite end of things now is daunting and requires the same amount of cash as it always did - from almost nothing to huge amounts - but the key as with any business is to find untapped demand and tap it, which is much easier in adult than mainstream even today.
-doug
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