The only one getting pissy here's you chief.

I made the joke. Explained it to shap in regard to the face. It's all good.

2-3 posts later after this, you still post in regards to it? Sounds like you need to brush up on yor reading skills.

:pimp

Retired. Their ships have sailed. :D

And the ships remaining today are pulling up increasingly empty nets because they've dumped overboard all their bait, rotting on the seabed, the fish are bloated. And the guys that are benefiting from this free-for-all are the ones who are piping this all back up such as TheHun.

Let's get serious for a few moments and take a look at TheHun. I've said this before, "The brand is everything", and TheHun has gained a large enough mindshare over the early years to whitenoise-out any outsiders. Trying to grab a large enough piece of his market and swing the tide into something that fuels itself profitable isn't going to be happening. Because today's noobies are simply priced out from that competition. There is a reason why TheHun can look like a piece of shit and still remain top dog.

There is a reason for most everything :winkwink:

Sherm,

I'd like to make a point here real quick about site content...

Shap has awesome content...

Kristin and Doc do too...

Things you can't find anywhere else.

Duke Dollars is another program that does the same thing.

I truly believe, and this is a rapid departure from my thinking 99/2000, that traffic is still King, but CONTENT is now just as important!

If you don't have something that grabs a surfer's attention by the balls, and holds them to your site for that CC, then you are going to see 1:5000 ratios as normal on middlin traffic.

Call me crazy, but I've been watching the trends, and from the little bit I've been working myself.

New products make a buzz and ppl buy.

It's being innovative and giving them the same feeling to break out the CC. Look at Bang Bros, as the pinnacle of this trend.

How about, I didn't see your post, due to me replying to your original post?

You came out a hahahaha, Shap noticed, I noticed.

Give it a rest, and let it go. No one cares anymore except you.

It's not a perfect analogy, but there will probably never be a perfect one.

Here's the thing.....

Was it easier to sell porn in 1998? Hell yeah it was. There were ALOT fewer people in this business back then competing for signups.
Sometimes you need to think outside of the box. Digging for gold isn't always the best way to make a fortune during a gold rush.

The glut of adult webmasters has made it harder to sell porn, but has created entirely new markets.
Think of the money being made by people like NATS, MPA, Stats Remote, Hosting Companies, Offshore outsourcing companies, etc etc etc. (Hell, look at GFY)
These people made the webmaster their customer instead of the porn consumer and in essence turned lemons into lemonade.
None of these types of companies (with the exception of hosting) could have made it back in 1998, but they're thriving now while alot of the people selling porn are struggling.

The only constant is change (cliche I know)
If you want to make REAL money you can't just copy what everyone else is doing. Create your own niche, start a new market, be the only one doing something and have a monopoly. By the time everyone catches up to you and copies what you're doing, you'll be ready to cash out anyways.

Post of the day.

Very good thread. Another factor to keep in mind--regulatory and technical issues that may shrink the traffic pool even further.

Sex will never die and neiter will the internet.:2 cents:

Content definitly plays a huge part. That's why the amazing sites have amazing numbers... They're not common.

Even in the freesite game, that's what counts. Why is it that niche sites see better ratios? :)

I have sites that do 3k a day (nothing but hard links and SE) that probably make more than a lot of 50-100k a day skim tgp/mgp's... And that's because you focus on specific content and really market it.

Cheers and hope to see you in PHX!

It's those hot girls you got there ... See Taylor and the crew in a couple of days!

Oh yeah, and make sure you give me my "favor" :winkwink:

No disrespect to the industry, but the honest reality is the bulk of adult webmasters are not professionally trained and skilled businessmen, just surfers turned porners who think with a little luck on their TGP's they can be Hugh Hefner too one day.

I'm not saying it will completely die ... read the post before you.

It is shrinking ...

Technical issues, laws, regulations, competition, surfers getting smarter.

Most webmasters prefer to swear at each other and getting drunk at conventions instead of having decent meetings to discuss these type of problems and team up to protect their business.
Program owners are more bothered about the freeloaders eating and drinking on their costs than they are about the fact their content is offered for free on numerous boards or being shared on networks.
Making money in this industry is still more easy than making money in mainstream (yes it is) but yes, the golden years are over so John Doe setting up his tgp with 50% skim and 50 trades won't get rich anymore.
But still, this is a nice market, and porn will always sell so don't worry.

I don't think it is shrinking. I think it is growing. Yes, the pie is being split a lot more ways. Think back to the early days. How many programs then compared to now? How many making big bucks in the industry compared to now?

Ratios for some programs will not be as good as before, where ratios will be amazing for others. Like the ocean, there is an ebb and a flow to this business, power shifts amongst players sometimes. It won't die, won't come close to it.

That's true, you can see this even on these boards, spot a thread where they are giving away a free xbox, the thread gets hundreds of posts.
Even some adult programs (the small ones) are amateurs. I remember I got a mail from a certain webmaster program (won't name it) a little while ago after I asked them a question.

Instead of replying with 'Dear sir' or 'Dear affiliate' they started with 'Yo dude' :1orglaugh I haven't used their program since that mail, what if a check gets lost in the mail and they need to help me out.

Good post, alot of what you have said, you can see in the companies that are successful.

Serge posted back in the day using the "Gold Rush" analogy, that very few miners made millions.

It was the Bankers, the Hotel Keeper, the Restaurant Owner, the Supply Shop owner, it was those who catered to the 49er's.

What's true then is still true now.

Remember when the Visa fees were a big deal? I thought it was a hopeful sign.

If you want to open a bar, a liquor lic runs you roughly $100k. You don't open a bar unless you are serious. These days, people open full-out paysites at will.

You hit the nail on the head. If then entry fees were higher, you would weed out those that are not serious.

Excellent post, and true. I don't know how we always miss each other living in the same state, one day would love to just sit down and shoot the shit with you.

:)

The same can be said about every industry, though. Many entrepreneurs don't have formal training and experience before hanging their shingle and launching their small biz.

"Getting smarter" has nothing to do with surfers purchasing decisions. If anything surfers are becoming increasingly jaded. I mean who wouldn't be when you must deal with approximately 9,000+ pornsite names? Compound this with the thousands of gallery pages with retard domain variations. I mean, how many combinations of TeenFuckingAnalTeens.com can you barrage them with? I'd say fuck it all and jerkoff to the free shit too.

This is a far cry from a decade ago, when the total number of meaningful porn site choices numbered in just the triple digits.

Closest analogy is the gold rush. Everyone heard you can make money. Unfortunately, nowadays, ppl are just happy with weekend beer money. :(

I don't think the same can be said for every industry.

Considering the free stuff nowadays, who needs to go to a paysite?

http://www.phatforums.com/main1.shtml

Surfers never need to join a site. Seriously.

If I have 100 TGP's sending out 1500 uniques to sponsors daily each site that would mean 150K uniques to sponsors every day. 1:400 ratios would be cool but 1:1500 or higher is also a nice amount of money each year IMO.

Best thread ive read for ages here on GFY :thumbsup

Convertion ratios where better in 99/00 for me as for everyone, but really, it's the amount of money you make that matters, I work just as much as i worked back then but I make more money now. Ofcourse that eaqualy as much has to do with sites that I built several years ago as sites that I build now. Traffic is KING, be it TGP traffic or SE traffic, it's all about the $ you make from it, what is starting to suck though is that all TGP's and Linklist's want better quality content for me to get that piece of traffic I want from them. They want more pictures, better looking pictures, bigger vids, more vids and even better if it's exclusive.

I just loved putting 10 crappy looking thumbs with 600x400 sized full pics on a gallery and get listed everywhere. Now you need ~15 quality pictures with like 150x130 sharp thumbs and if the tgp has seen those pics a few times your gallery goes down the shitter. It all connects to each other, TGP's and LL's demand more and higher quality content because that brings them more traffic and bookmarkers, affiliates try and get better and use more content to get listed more and better, sponsors have to produce and supply their affiliates with high quality exclusive content for them to be listed at the high traffic places, surfers see the content and get used to see that sort of content on tgp's and ll's, surfers go to the sponsors tour's, they see the same content as they see on the tgp's/ll's and they wonder why they should signup when they can see all the "exclusive high quality can only been seen in members area content" all for free....Traffic is still king, why? Because without traffic no money. Personaly im using tgp's and ll's as traffic sources less and less. But since traffic still is king it's dumb not to take what you can get, allthough the tgp's and ll's are slowly killing themselves. LL's will survive longer though.

Have you heard google ask you for better pictures/videos?

Hmmm I'll have to read through this post after I've posted it, im not sure what I wrote :1orglaugh

Point I was trying to make earlier. At the end of the day, it's money from air.

Now it's up to you to figure how to increase it.

:)

Less skimming maybe?

No Bro, you made a great point.

YOur galleries and sites are what TGP's and LL's call their content.

You know that traffic, and what it can do. Great, maximize it.

The last part was the best part. "You don't hear Google asking for bigger better pics"...

Have you started working the SE's? If not, why not? Why have the epiphany, if you aren't doing anything about it.

:)

Nah, then you affect your trades.

I just posted a link where one link gets you a shitload of surfers.

Why don't you try them as a traffic source? FYI, they are smart to spammers and will lock you out if you do.

It's another board, become a member, post on it, and then get some traffic.

Yea, you can see the same content everywhere that the paysite's have in their members area....

Yea the best thing is to maximize what you already know and do, but its just as important to explore more ways to make money(get traffic)
I work the engines more and more every day and I love it.

Build your empire, use all forms of traffic.

Side note, I loved making CJ's back in 99/00 :upsidedow

Well, my opinion is (but who am I) that you have to make people volunteer to your site. A couple of ways to do that is hardlinking and trading traffic so you get listed in others toplists...

I think skimmed traffic isnt converting very well but "volunteering" traffic is? am i right?

You can do it both way's, it's less how good it converts it's more how much money does it make? If you make $100 aday from a 50k skimmed site and $100 a day from a 5k no skim all hardlink traded site, what would you prefer to do?

answer: both

Please chime in with your opinion, it is welcome.

Trading traffic has one goal in mind.

Surfer comes to your site... He doesn't buy anything from your links, you trade that surfer out for another from another site. You get another chance to sell that surfer.

Your sources of traffic should be diverse, where you get first and best chance to sell. Don't send good traffic to your CJ, send it to your sites first, then filter them out.

There's so much on filtering traffic that can't be taught, but only learning yourself. Your traffic reacts differently from mine, just by the different use of words you use, and I do.

Don't be sheep, be the goat that climbs the peaks by himself.

Yes I got that quote from Colin, he wrote a great article on his Building an Empire site about Wyatt Earp and how he made a fortune by opening saloons in gold rush towns.

Serge is a good example of coming up with an idea first, having a monopoly, and then being ready to cash out by the time everyone copies you. (That along with "a little" shaving can make a person very wealthy :winkwink: )

Alot of sites ARE cookie-cutter. The industry isn?t dying and it isn?t shrinking, its just stagnating. The reason for this is because its so damn hard to do something new here because everything has been done. I thought I had a truly original thought last night. I was goanna go to town. I did some searching on it. Its already been done.

I don?t think free porn has alot to do with the current state of affairs. Surfers are actually thinking about their purchases now and purchasing very carefully. As has been mentioned previously, its not enough to just fill them up with moves and stills, they want to be part of a community. This is especially true with the gay sites. We saw this first start to make itself evident when sites started including message boards and chat rooms. This wasn?t because the webmasters wanted to tell their surfers how much they were loved, it was webmasters capitalizing on the desire of surfers to buy into this community thing.

Porn is definitely not going to go away as long as the human species continues to exist.

Twistys, Lightspeed, BangBus, ATK, etc etc. Revshare all the way. And for good reason. Brand and leadership. Any surfer that is going to spend $$ will at least wish to feel confident about the quality of their purchase. Like smoking an expensive cigar.

No duh, cliche right?

Here is where it gets interesting.

When you inject so many shared content sites into this mix, you end up with an increasingly skepticle consumer base who will settle instead for all the free crap available on the TGP's. This sets your surfers up to even more confusion given all the pages they have sift through for a decent wank. I mean, seriously, I get a headache myself surfing the tgp's, so most likely "the pay sites must be shit too if they sponsor this crap", so why bother signing up?

Trickles down to the webmasters from there. You desereve what you coddled folks.

http://buildinganempire.com is an awesome read. I"m not just saying that, I was one of Colin's first converts back in the day. Colin was the orignal CJ'er. I loved it so much, and used it, that my name is proudly on there stating so. :)

Serge made alot of ppl rich. A man I listened to all the time. One of my closest friends and early mentors. I'm trying to catch up with him to retire and just travel the world. :)

ahhhh, you said shaving!! :winkwink:

Awesome way to break it down succinctly.

However, those sites you listed, cream of the crop, and it shows. Surfer will rip out the CC if they cannot find your content that makes them wet anywhere else.