is adult the only industry that implodes on itself?

Mortgage industry imploded too.

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Free content, broken promises and bad billing practices is what happened.

Years ago webmasters got pissed if a gallery had too much nudity. Now it's a race to give away as much free content as possible.

Shady business practices, lack of ethics, shitty content/members areas, carding, hidden sales, impossible to cancel billing, forced installs/dialers/Zango... a lot of which led to the huge increase of piracy. The industry is almost out of nails for its coffin.

Why just say the last 4 years?

It's been setting the charges for years.

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Who is "the industry" McBeaner?



The past 4 years has had a lot of outside influences that have changed the online landscape. Particularly in regards to "credit" or finance. I do not think some trolls on GFY are what effects the marketplace in one way or another.

Adult is way better than mainstream.

When there is negative news coverage of the economy, the next day my sales are shit. When there's positive news like Wallstreet closed 212 points higher and all that blah blah the next day my sales are fantastic. It really jumps up and down like crazy, 5 sign-ups on a bad day and 30 sign-ups on a good day. I look at traffic stats, Google AdWords, site rips posted on piracy boards, etc and don't see any connections there so I blame it to news coverage of the economical crisis.

That's extremely interesting. I suppose it makes sense, when someone feel things are getting even worse they'll tend want to hold on to what money they have, be hesitant to spend it. When they think more money is coming, that they don't have to worry about their job being next on the chopping block, they would feel more free to spend a bit.

Perhaps as the economy recovers in a year or five we'll see more of a recovery in adult than we have been expecting. The whole free content thing I've been hearing people bitch about since 1997, so it does seem there is something else going on (though pirates don't help).

Industries implode all the time, for a variety of reason. Changing markets, technologies, regulations, attitudes...
The "adult industry", at large, is not nearly close to implode.

If you mean the tour-join-affiliate model - that is probably in crisis, or at least it's changing. But that's not "adult".

It affects myself as well, after 3 days with good sales I find myself browsing for a new house on the web and when sales go down again start telling myself again that my current house is fine and I really consider myself a not so very materialistic person, I'm absolutely not a shopping freak.

It's a factor but there are so many other factors like content quality and quantity, market saturation, new internet consumer markets like Russia, India and China.

I don't think a porn company can get out of business due to the piracy problem alone. The whole industry is negatively being affected by the piracy, yes, but even with all the free porn available on the web, someone who's really into porn and has a credit card, will pay for porn sooner or later, I'm totally convinced of that. Most people are still paying for water as well, even though most people can get water for free at the nearest river or lake. So if a porn company goes out of biz today, I would say it's mainly due to poor content, and that could be technically poor, or models not being pretty enough, or content that's simply not unique enough.

Jesus are you serious? Read my post again, for me it works the other way around... doom in the news = less sales.

lol ok. I almost wrote that if you would be selling drugs, your sales would go up probably. And if you're selling suicide gear as well.

in my opinion the first wrong turn was Gallery Traffic Service,
Because they were forcing people to pay for shit traffic that was once free. I believe the tubes were a way to take back the balance of power (initially) but like all things they get abused & poor laws allowed them to remain litterally untouched if they followed the letter of the law.
ds

I don't think we are the only industry to implode on itself, but I do think our circumstances are extra special.

I can't think of any other industry (maybe journalism) besides the adult video industry that has reached a point where their products are more in demand then ever (the most amount of internet traffic on porn sites than ever) while devaluing the product so much that probably the smallest percentage of consumers ever in the past 10 years is willing to actually pay anything for it.

Many of the reasons have already been stated, most people recognize it, yet many are still unlikely to put any efforts in mitigating the damage.

I think the free *method* worked. I think it has now peaked and is on the downword spiral.

But when every facat of the industry is in a do or die situation... who's winning?

Kudos to AdultEUhost, AsianDivaGirlsWebDude and everyone else who brought up the issues. Mr. Deiz, Sara, etc.

Did you read those posts on DP... freeloaders were making $300 - $400 per day flipping stolen content. They took that *free* model and capitalized.

Kudos for CCBill making that last announcement... http://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=1071496

Imploding, I mean self destructing to where nothing worth monetizing is left.

What about a monopoly?

Clock work

Maybe the tour-join-affiliate model has out priced itself for some. Is a join for Brazzers via an advert on a Tube better profit than one via an affiliate?

Long term the pre recorded porn business is going to shrink to a shadow of itself. There's a balance between getting it away for free and paying for it. For some consumers that point was TGPs, for the vast majority it's Tubes or piracy. The customers will determine the future for everyone. The "drive enough traffic" model is dying.

The problem is can a sponsor today satisfy both the customer and the traffic model?

We all know the problems today and can bet money nothing will change in the way of improving things. Likely hood is it will get worse. So here's the question to Allison.

Can a big site like yours afford to turn out the quality level of a porn product that customers demand and pay for the traffic model. If so what's the cost?

I don't expect anything but a yes. Would be suicide to say anything else. Still is encapsulates the problem of today.

A site making 600 joins/rebills a month is billing $9,000 assuming the whole traffic model is 50% of revenue that's $4,500 to run the site. Take out other costs and what's left for the product, base and updates? $1,000 maybe, $2,000 at the most. 3-6 solo girl scenes, 1-2 lesbian and 1 BG of a poor level.

Multiply it any way you like and see where you end up.

600 joins a day = 3-6 solo girl scenes a day, 1-2 lesbian a day and 1 BG of a poor level a day.

As a producer I need time and money to turn out a great product in my field. If I'm reduced to working for little the client can't expect a lot. If the client has to turn to someone else with the same experience as me, he must expect the same.

Now will that paysite model ever compete with enough paying customers today is the question relating to Beaner's question.

English has never been your strong suit, right.?

I think the tube site model will be dead in 2 years. What evolves I'm not sure...

I sometimes post on my phone... I do not check spelling. now or do I know, now...

great post and great question at the end

This is all you need to know.

I saw three sides of the industry, online, magazines and DVD. From the days of TGPs, magazine sales declined. They simply could not compete with TGP sites giving away 1,000s of images every day. Whether all the money spent on magazines moved to online is speculation. We would need to look at the billions spent on magazines in shops world wide to take a stab.

As I said the paid/free model was a set of scales.



For many viewing a TGP site the amount of free was enough. As we loaded the free side with more and more, taking money from the paid side. The balance kept tipping. You can only guess where the balance is today.

The ONLY thing that made it look good was the increase in traffic. Once that increase leveled off, we were on the road to today. Tubes put roller skates on the process.

I was in the waterbed business for almost 10 years; manufacturer & retailer. The waterbed trade mags had been warning that if the retailers didn't stop competitive discounting it would hurt the industry. They didn't stop and in the late 80's the $49/$39 waterbed killed it and everyone went belly-up including me.

I think the extent of (even quality shit now) free porn will eventually do the same. Of coarse it?s sex and it won?t disappear like the waterbed, but it's got to hurt.

Not noobs, but uneducated people.