Cams have been doing well, same with dating. I never sold pills before but maybe I should start.

give all for free
serve ads

He talks about running a business - not a site. You fail to understand the difference.

OP, did you run an affiliate program with your content network?

Who did you sell out to?

Cams convert very well but you need some way of getting good quality traffic to your program.

Shap (true story)

There are plenty of people who have been in this biz for more than a decade, all have the capital, skills, connections, etc and very few if any are launching new adult projects. That should tell you something.

So like Paul said, unless you have some unique skill, know some way to get ton of traffic, or have some other breakthrough idea, adult is not where the money is. :2 cents:

you mean sig whoring? :pimp

He talks about running a business, I understand that. We need to know what skills he has, how much money and what resources he has. Otherwise, no one here has a clue what to say.

2003 memberships made me lots of $, mainly reality porn. I invested some of that previous adult income into mainstream stuff. So today combo of mainstream income and on the adult end mainly cam income driven by backlinks from my other 40ish adult sites. So I basically just built a network of adult sites just to have properties to link my cam white labels from. So I buy less traffic than the old days as I have 40+ sites to link adult from and 400+ mainstream domains to link mainstream things from. So if were just talking adult I make income from Cams, Toys, PayPerView, Tubes etc... but majority of the adult income is from Cams. :2 cents:

Not like that have kept you from running your mouth the last 15+ years

:thumbsup

Freesite, not paysite. One of my best business decisions was not to deal with paysite business, because it a endless hole of money drain. Unless you have horny girlfriends willing to work on percentage starting a classic paysite would be a big no-no, even if you have tons of money to waste.

Paysites DO make money these days just not as much as in 2007. Also, unless you are connected with a major tube or ad broker the way of creating paysites today from scratch is too expensive. Who wants to drop 50k+ on content that will be worth pennies on the dollar a few months after filming?

No, you have to be more creative these days, spend less on content if you can and keep a close eye on ROI. Do not waste even a second on a project that isn't earning.

In other words, the days of launching a single paysite and having it explode into millions in revenue are over. Now you have to WORK to get anywhere.

Thanks for all of the replies.

My "skill" is running a business. I am not a photographer or programmer. I can run almost any ecommerce business and run it well. I can also run free sites. Marketing is my speciality.

I agree with many of the posts here, it looks hard to get started.

A membership is out of the question. I will not pay for all of the content needed just to have that content worth nothing in a month.

The business I am looking to start needs to generate at least a million a year for me to consider.

Capital is not an issue. I will buy all the traffic needed if the model makes sense.

Options seem to be cams, products, dating.

I am not starting a cam or dating site. So the options are promote all of these with free sites or create a product.

So, let's talk tubes.

From what I gather, it seems that a tube with 1 million uniques should generate at least $100k per month. BW expense might be 30% of rev. Buying traffic to get it to this level will probably be least 70% of rev for the first year. Once organic and book marks build up, profits will begin to build.

Anyone around this level? Are the numbers off?

What are the challenges to build to this level?

AdultMillionaire.com - was this your site? If so.. I remember reading that, was extremely motivating back in the old days.

You did well with AVS sites and tgp galleries. You retired at the end. Miss adult that much? :)

nailed it.

1. 30% and 70% of revenue = 100% of revenue
2. the first year you will have zero to little revenue
3. there is little chance of building a $million tube unless you have $3-5 million to invest. even then...
4. you'll never be on page 1 of organic searches. the tubes and torrent/pirate sites on those pages can't be beat.

there's way too much competition to build a $million business in porno now without spending (and likely losing) a ton of money. we have a handful of clients hitting that mark, and one or two that invested almost nothing to do it, but 99% will never see a million a year.

porno today is an act of love and passion. its not much of a business anymore. its still a lot of fun, which is probably why most veterans hang around.

if its profit and fast growth you are looking for, you are better off in mainstream. at least you can find investors if the idea is good. there's also a LOT more available skilled labor.

one last idea, if you really want to get back into porno, is to invest in growing/successful projects. there's dozens of good projects going on that need money and you wouldn't have to start from scratch.

#

Tube/freesite is indeed way to go, however biggest challenge is numerous update from main search engine, google. You could do a single mistake in backlink building, and you are out of bussiness and all your investment void.

I asked a perfectly reasonable question.

PinkTeenVideos was his right and then sold to Shap

Getting it to a profit margin before you run out of money. Then recouping your original investment.

Unless you can offer something better than those established to make people bookmark you haven't a hope.

This is something all businesses suffer from and not just online. Your product has to be good enough to people traffic away from the big established brands. Not rely on people going there once, they have to prefer you to the ones they already know.

"perfectly reasonable" maybe with your perspective. But I dont expect a mcdonalds senior burger flipper to be a great chef either.

i dont think that 1mln tube earn 100k per month

maybe half of that

these days successfull tube should be very clean
almost no ads

so i don't even think that $50k per month is possible, 35 is resonable

Yea, i remember his story as well.
Not sure why you'd want to come back in. The business is much more consolidated in the hands of few people then before. Im sure there are opportunities at hand, as there always are, but they are
a) for people just starting out willing to consider a way less paycheck then your original statement
b) for people that can invent something "new" that booms (but then this is the same for everything)

So you basically need the b. a is bellow your paycheck, and you can't really compete with the big boys without something original.