State of the Industry: Newbies and Traffic

That answer sounds like a cop out....You left a top notch program that you helped BUILD to go work for a joe blow sponsor (no offense yanks)

What you just did is like helping build the brandname of Mercedes-Benz and then leaving them and instead of opening up a Toyota of your own, you go to work for Scion with the reasoning, "We're all competing for the same drivers so fuck it"...

If the owner of Yanks cash took that option then you wouldn't have a job...Therefore, SOMEBODY has to take the risk and compete for the pie...Don't try to rationalize for not at least TRYING to grab your own slice.

Oh....And....

50 (FIDDY)

I know a better thread for that --



2hp

At some point we will peak. It is pure math. BUT tons of industries have peaked and those folks do not get out. We will peak later then most people think. Older people are afriad to use their card on the web. Every year the $$$ amount grows by leaps and bounds. Our surfers are a lot more comfortable paying for stuff. I was surfing in '97 and everything was FREE. The internet model was that it is all FREE. It took me years to get over that feeling that if I looked I could find it for free.
People trade $$$'s for less time surfing. Sure you could find Sunny Leone pics for free but it is easier to sign up and get it all in one spot.
Tons of new programs is just part of the cycle. Look how may were on your top ten list in 2003 and do not do anywhere near that business now. Cecash, ARS, AVS systems and email sponsors. Someone had to step into the void left by those guys.

Growth in Internet takeup has all but dried up in North America, but to be strictly accurate, that is not the picture for the world as a whole. However very little growth is coming from countries acceptable to most payment processors, so from a commercial point of view the effect is the same as if little growth were taking place. The main thing many have failed to take into account for several years is that new surfers make up a very small part of the total pool, and therefore targetting them must inevitably produce diminishing returns. Successful sites in future will be those which can attract and keep experienced surfers.

No-one is encouraging newbies into the business: zero entry cost and what we sell does that. The real question is whether sponsors should try to attract newbies to join them?

An experienced webmaster has a certain number of sales placings, whether they be promo spots on his sites/pages, galleries, PPC campaigns, or whatever. He has had a few years to collect a reliable list of sponsors and learn how to sell them. It may be worth having some spots to temporarily promote new sites, but it's not otherwise normal in this business to get better results from someone you are not used to promoting. So unless one of a webmaster's long-term sponsors has gone into decline, what incentive is there to try someone new? Which broadly means that any sponsor looking for a lot of new affiliates is pretty much stuck with trawling for newbies. The mistake of many, is how they do it.

Most programs seem to assume that newbies are idiots who can be attracted by bullsh*t and a bag of candies. Which may well be true of the majority (how else could GFY be so popular?), but then the majority will never produce any real income. Meanwhile the few experienced webmasters who want new sponsors, along with the more serious startups, are likely to turn to sponsors who come across as more professional. Even if such programs land a few webmasters who might otherwise make money, I suspect that many catch the "money for nothing" message the sponsor is putting across and end up going nowhere.

<raises hand>

http://coldcandle.com/wegjbmnatnet%20happy%20hour/

I cant believe someone as experienced Rochard could come up with such a moronic thread.

1. Number of Internet users is constantly growing (not shrinking)
2. You can count the number of truly good programs on the fingers of one hand.
3. If you are afraid of newbies overtaking your business - then your business sucks ass.

There is PLENTY of room for good/creative sites. Right now most programs rip each other ideas off and put out shitty sites by the dozens with very little emphasis on quality.

Everyone is competitng for the same traffic but only best of the best get it. This competition stimulates business, rewards innovative and hardworking individuals and weeds out talentless and lazy people.

I'm not afraid of newbies taking my business over - because i'm the best at what i do.

Internet is huge and business opportunities are endless - if you have brains.

80% of the new programs out there are pure shit, recycled content on some 50/50 revshare and tours that really don't match the theme of the site.

Getting into this business has always been easy and probably today even easier than 7-8 years ago. Making it work is 100 times harder.

You want a traffic driven program you're up against all the other monster sites giving everything but a free BJ to get a submitter, and they will get a decent one laid if he can send 100 a month.

Getting a quality program together is tough, you're up against the guys with 5 years of buying quality content and look at well into the 6 figure range to finance that baby.

Maybe you want to be a content provider, got a spare $200,000 to spend? Not to mention the skills and talent.

Want to submit galleries for a living, like the other 1,000 people who decided that was the quick way to get rich.

And I can go on and on.

The reason is simple and has little to do the number of people getting connected to the Internet. It's about the people already waiting to supply them with what ever they need.

This is now an established industry. If you want in, you're competing with guys who've been doing it very well for years and they will not cut you a break.

For instance bigdog says 80% are shit, well last year it was 82% and how much of them are really making money and will continue to make it?

And seriously if you can't sell porn for $1 a day against what's available in the free porn sector move on the future is not going to get any better for you.

The reason 90% of the free porn exists is because it brings surfers to sites to spend money. If the the site you have or promote can't compete get one that can.

Agreed.

The surfer who spends money is getting educated by the sites that deliver a product worth having. Making it tougher for the shysters.

In my inexperienced opinion, I would think that it would depend on the quality of your product and service - just like any other industry.

The only thing left to do is to get anyone who owns a TGP to make it back to a good old CJ with no content at all and put massive ads on the site showing the surfers where yhey could buy the shit instead!!

You have learned well my son.

So what are you saying? I'm the Lee Iacocca of porn?

I'm sure I'll open up my own program in good time. I have all of the domain names in place and I'll work on that someday when I have time. But my point is why bother opening up a program with the same exact crap as somoene else? Every program is the same now, for the most part offering the same things. Anyone can do it, but few do it right. You can make money by slinging traffic at anything - everything will convert, although some much better than others. But with more and more programs slinging crappy sites around there is less of the pie going around.

Someone mentioned something about soda companies in this thread. How many soda companies are three in the US? Ten? Twenty? One hundred? Now imagine that there was five thousand soda companies, all willing to throw money into marketing their product. I'm sure that when the grocery stores discovered they could market their own soda that Pepsi and Coke's market share declined. I don't see Pepsi and Coke giving away their recepie to make soda in public forums.

My point is that we encourage newbies in this industry more than any other industry. And today's TGP newbie is next year's new program. The day of the huge traffic deals are dead. And it will only get worse in the next five years.

I'm not afraid of newbies taking over my business. I am concerened about newbies coming in and burning through traffic that would be much better off in the hands of a few companies that do so much more with that same traffic.

I just figured out who you are. Your sig file gave it away.

this industry needs consolidation. so many shitty sites and so many 'reality sites' with the exact same models.

there's money to be made, but less than before. margins have dropped because the pie is being divided up between more people.

wrong, competition hurts profits

Never a good idea to talk things about newbies. They can become bigger later on. I never say anything bad about them but always good things. I was also a newbie and when I hear things like this makes me shrug ...

The pie is divided in every industry. Not only that, it's divided and monopolized in every other industry by 9 to 10 figure a year making heavyweights. Yet, that never stops someone from coming in and making enormous amounts of money.

This is even more true for internet porn except there's no real domination from any huge companies. Even porn's biggest brands compete on equal footing with newcomers. For example A1R3K relatively just started his program but the way his biz is trending I bet he's not long off of Playboycash's ass as far as joins go. Nothing beats this porn biz.

slower growth with more and more programs starting up. supply and demand factors in a mature industry. the low barriers to entry which allow new webmasters to compete with the 'big boys' isn't good for an industry. you end up with a commoditized product.

even if you can create the next blockbuster site, competition will quickly hurt that sites profit making potential. a lot of people in this thread don't seem to understand whats going on.

i agree most programs are crap and there seem to be too many of them

best solution is to not send them any traffic

there is Nasty Dollars, Top Bucks, TCG ( + a few more ) that are big, reliable, honest and stable

sometimes i don't undertand why ppl even promote the tens of new crap programs that launch each year...

Nothing bad about newbs... Their shit sucks, they make no money and they just contribute money... That is a win-win for the industry. Free porn is out there that no one wants and doesn't convert. Sweet, makes the rest of us look like a better alternative to the surfers who are buying. These newbs buy domains which drives down the prices for the rest of us. They buy hosting which drives down the price for the rest of us.

VIVA the NEWB!

rochard's a tech guy, not a marketing guy right? would explain the first post...

When I got my first credit card at 19 the first thing I did was signup for the Playboy Cyber Club, the only porn site I knew of in 01...

I don't think this is much of an issue. Just because programs open doesn't mean they get all the traffic. Sure, traffic splinters with the more programs created but it's still up to the program to set itself apart from the rest. If it does that effectively there's plenty of traffic for it to have.

Our traffic and sales goes up steadily and that's only the beginning for us.

I see many new programs coming out all day and I've been requested to beta test some of them, but I politely deny even if their niches do not compete with our paysites. Why? All of them are poor attempts in so many levels and some of them even offer payout models that underestimate my intelligence.

I agree a lot with Rochard on the fact if you dont have anything new and good to offer don't even bother. Even if you do you'll still have to convince the community its the real deal.

Many new revshare programs have the same recycled dvd content that some bigger pay per signup program have. Why would i promote the smaller unknown revshare program over the larger pps programs with the same content. Also these days many smaller programs are doing their own payouts, not something i want to deal with.