Stories about webmasters golden years

I wrote a long detailed post about one of my projects back in around 2003 including all the math behind it, along with the earnings.

I posted it within the last 3 months - I'll look later when I have time to see if I can locate it - I just know it wont come up easily with the search...

there's so many analogies for those years. gold rush is the most common.

early adopters paid the biggest price but got the most gold. once word got out, everybody wanted in. now today, you need African mining rights to make money in porn



i got in late in the early wave (2002).

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The golden era is coming with age verification. The big players are struggling.

I look forward to age verification and being able to sell porn again

you mean the thieves and pirates who crushed the early winners?

the 2008-2019 era was pretty sad. many producers left...

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Found it - Its all written hypothetically of course, but it gives a good idea of the money coming in, from just one single solo site that was updated once a week or so...

https://gfy.com/23095533-post12.html

A little more info, in order to answer obvious questions, is that the site displaying the banner was the Sunday Sport Newspaper in the UK. I wasn't paying for advertising - It was a straight split with David Sullivan (The Owner)

Obviously I didn't earn that EVERY week, but even after the split, it was still pretty much more money each week, than the average UK person would have earnt in an entire year...

Those were MY golden years...

You must mean before there were tubes. Because before there were tubes money in porn was easy to come by. Oddly enough tubes came in right about the same time the housing market was taking a shit. So, as stated earlier, the porn industry was taking a shit right around the same time as the rest of the world.

How did I get paid? Epassporte. I also rarely had to buy Xmas presents because most programs like traffic cash gold, pimp dollars, light speed cash, etc had pretty generous bonus programs where they also paid you in their own currency that you could then use in their stores.

For instance, back when ipods were the new thing I got 5 of them, plus two mountain bikes, a laptop, a large flat screen monitor, an HDTV, etc, etc. I literally did all of my shopping for my kids, nephews and nieces in this way.

On top of that, I was considered a large affiliate by many programs so every year they sent me an Xmas care package filled with things like scotch, branded clothing, branded koozies, pens, coffee cups, etc. If you came to my house and got something out of my kitchen you knew I worked for porn in some capacity.

I still get those care packages. But they aren't as nice as they were back when I was 1/10th the affiliate I am now.

I never paid for stats remote. I always got free years of it from one of those bonus programs.

2000-2008 were great years.

I remember one kid bought a cute sounding domain name and put up a TGP. All he needed to do was create a logo and put it on top, install a script, and select which sites to promote. Two or three hours worth of work and he was making money the following day. Within a year it was making him six figures.

One TGP.

It was crazy.

Given what I know now about billing, those companies back then paying $25 pps were banking...

I started making real money after the tubes. Despite doing tgps and freesites since 2003, 2011 and 2012 were my biggest years until recently. 2021 and 2022 were bigger than those, and 2023 is looking to be my best

I was in middle school tricking people to go to whitehouse.com to try to get them in trouble..

With a new virus and lockdowns we can get the golden ages of the Corona period back.

that kid could have been a lot of guys on here. guaranteed he has gray hair now

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My paysite experiences:

The excitement of getting a getting a listing on thehun.net (for free), then worrying if the traffic will bring your server down. That one listing usually guaranteed me 25+ full price sales (not cheap or free joins).

Remembering my first sale and thinking it was pretty easy and a year later, 5 figure weekly checks were rolling in.

The magical day of breaking 100+ new (full price) joins in a 24 hour period.

The excitment was so much more back in the early 2000's. It was great fun dealing with and talking with affiliates who were also really keen. My ICQ list of active affiliates was big and was a pleasure working with almost all of them ;)

GFY used to move so fast. An unanswered post could be knocked off the front page by the day was done. There were some other cool forums too, now theres just here really and its so slow but a sign of the times with market being so fragmented.

I wish I could re-live 2000 - 2006 again.