Anthony

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

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Cory W

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

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Anthony

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.

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rotterdammer

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.

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Nicky

Best thread ive read for ages here on GFY

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

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Anthony

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.

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rotterdammer

Less skimming maybe?

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Anthony

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.

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Anthony

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.

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Nicky

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

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Nicky

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

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rotterdammer

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?

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Nicky

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

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Anthony

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.

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Snake Doctor

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 )

minusonebit

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.

gentmaster

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.

Anthony

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.

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Nicky

ahhhh, you said shaving!!

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Anthony

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.

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fl_prn_str

stop buying content..........................

do more content trade shoots........................

Matt Frackas

These are all good points and illustrate an important question: "what makes your site/product stand out from the rest?" "How are you going to be different? and "how are you going to keep your members or keep them returning?

I do believe we are seeing a certain consolidation, leveling off, over saturation and the surfing public is a lot wiser now.....so they are more savvy shoppers.

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MattsMoney.com The King of Amateurs
MattsModels.com Online since 1999
icq: 234750958

Jarmusch

"I assure you there is no weapons of mass money production in porn."

gentmaster

I don't doubt this at all. Surfers are plucky masturbators and there's enough dollars to go around.

From a purely marketing standpoint, if I was running a TGP, I would leverage highly visible brands in order to boost my own. I'm looking to field bookmarks based on what could be perceived as leadership. A lighthouse. Of course this is only one piece of any business framework. And i'm just a loser. There's no money in porn.

The Other Steve

For those people who still think that our market is growing then you might be surprised to learn that the growth in the number of people getting online has slowed to a trickle and is not expected to increase in the next few years.

64% of American households are online and that figure is expected to increase to 65% by the end of this year and by 2009 it MAY reach 69%

The pie is finite so we have to learn to work with what we have because that's about all there is folks.

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jjjay

america ain't the only country in the world with internet access you know

minusonebit

This is a good point, and alot of countries that were previously not very connected are getting connected in a real hurry.

The Other Steve

No kidding?

I wouldn't know that sitting here on the beach in Australia.

But if Internet take-up is hitting the wall in the US then the wall is looming for the rest of the world too.

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Jarmusch

True. China also has a big percentage of internet users.

The Other Steve

And for those of you who think that hope rests with all us foreigners who are getting online - just take a look at all those sponsors who won't take sign-ups from outside the US.

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KRL

I'm glad this guy was smart and got out of Iraq OK. He was truly the funniest character during the entire war and looked forward to his daily dose of bullshit.

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Michaelious

i think it will evolve, there are others nioches and technologies that will become more important, like most things in life

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Snake Doctor

You're not allowed to mention Serge without saying shaving.

It's adult webmaster rule number 9667342 part B, subsection F, paragraph 3.

jayeff

Smug. Simplistic. Clichéd. Misleading.

The vast majority of people in any industry are "followers", but whether followers or innovators, most will fail: up to half within 1 year and 70% to 80% within 5 years is normal. A sizeable minority will achieve reasonable results and just a handful will be extremely successful. Although innovators often get the media attention, because everyone likes stories about how Joe Blow turned a used cardboard box into millions of dollars because he had a great idea in the shower one morning, most successful operators are followers. They simply do the job better.

We avoided such failure rates for most of the past decade (if you exclude students and so on who never had any intention of staying on), because online porn is a young industry and at least until about 2000, demand far outstripped supply. We are seeing declining ratios now because supply and demand are more evenly balanced and also because most sponsors are still using marketing methods and selling products which really have no place in a maturing, more competitive market.

We are about 2 years into a consolidation phase, but this is the first one in which operators with large bank accounts buy out those who see the tide turning and either have no motivation to react, or are unable to. Most of these purchases will not be successful because the purchasing businesses may be no more in tune with the changing face of the industry than those they are taking over. It could be 5 years or more before we see buyouts which will "stick" and the purchasers then will likely be companies which are either not now in online porn at all, or only peripherally.

Between now and then some sponsors will try to improve their bottom line by bringing more of their supply-line in-house. That again is an entirely predictable phase through which every industry passes and like the early buyouts, it rarely produces the anticipated benefits. We are seeing the beginning of this phase, with some sponsors putting designers and photographers on exclusive contracts, but that trend will likely reverse within 2-3 years.

Far from the industry dying, there is huge potential for growth. Online porn is still by far the poor relation of the adult entertainment family and has done very little to move beyond selling to those who come knocking at its door. We even turn many of them away. But most of the changes we see are merely tinkering with existing formulas: no-one has yet made any serious attempt to tackle legal, payment processing and other issues that are holding us back. So although we have businesses we recognize as at the top of the league, big and small we are all in the same league. There are no "super" businesses of the kind needed to drive the industry as a whole forward.

Profit margins will fall simply because the profit margins we have enjoyed in the past are unsupportable by any mature industry. That isn't a bad thing, because then we shall become more focussed on making sales and retaining our customers. That change in attitude will also help us grow.

And finally affiliates: the only aspect of our business, which although not unique, has no precisely parallel equivalents in other industries, so there are many more possibilities. Whatever changes take place in the role of affiliates and their relationships with sponsors, their impact will surely be to make this business, within perhaps as little as 5 years, as difficult as any other for new entrants. Inevitably far fewer people who invest little more than their time will continue to enjoy major rewards.

The solution, except in the very short term, is definitely not in looking for new marketing "angles" or in knowing "which niches are hot". That approach guarantees you are fighting over the same pizza as everyone else and investing all your imagination and effort into directions that only work for as long as it takes everyone else to climb all over them. Meanwhile the market evolves, leaving you further behind and each new direction becomes harder to develop and less profitable than the one before.

To make money long term, identify markets and learn about the customers who populate it: then provide what they want at a price they are willing to pay. Clever marketing can certainly play a part, but to enhance the intrinsic appeal of what is sold, not as substitute for that appeal. We must have lost millions of dollars by behaving as if we are selling to people from another planet, rather than to people exactly like ourselves, the same people to whom every other business sells. Now that repeat customers are far and away the largest group, that myth needs to be finally put to rest.

jjjay

??

I was simply commenting on the statistics that internet growth in the US is slowing. well, if that's the case and you want more customers, why not target faster growing markets? seems logical. localize your website for different countries, and away you go.

some people still seem convinced that the US is the only country in the world where web surfers have debit/credit cards and actively use them online

After Shock Media

I have been watching and reading this thread since it was brand new. Patiently waiting for someone to bring up the obvious yet it still seems to have gone ignored. Unless of course I missed it somewhere while reading and checking back. I still have hopes it may surface.

One thing I do feel though is people need to learn the inside of the box before trying to think outside of it.

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Nicky

Ohhh I didnt know that, hope I didnt offend Serge now

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gentmaster

You are not suggesting the cliquish comradery needed in order to succeed in adult right? Evidently if there is some other level of dumbed down social connectiveness necessary in order to ensure my success, please tell and instruct me. I've been eager to put my bar manners to good use.

Drake

Great thread. I was going to add but it's all been said

datatank

Sell them jeans

pocketkangaroo

I don't think you can ever say this industry is dying. People will always want sex/porn. It's human nature. Are certain old methods dying? Yes. Are old ways of selling dying? Yes. The industry is evolving, like every industry in this world and those that are on the cutting edge will flourish.

It amazes me when I hear someone in any industry complain about an old method not working anymore and then claim that things are dead. Did you know that some of your biggest dating companies used to rely exclusively on direct mail? That music companies shunned the idea of selling songs online? Or that someone would dare pay for radio when they can have it for free?

So your galleries convert 10 times worse now than in 1999. Maybe there are 10 times more people online? Maybe there are much better methods of selling? Ask your biggest mainstream companies right now if they use the same methods they used in 1999. I doubt you'll find many that say yes.

I guess what some see as half empty, I see as half full. With high speed getting better and more easily accessible and other technology improving dramatically, I foresee those companies that step up and do something unique succeeding. Those that embrace personalization, user interactiveness, and high definition technology will thrive. There are so many areas that have yet to be touched in this space.

Industries never die, they just evolve.

abyss_al

VERY POSSIBLE REASON

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Mr.Right - Banned For Life

That is so true, what sets you apart from the other 10 million porn sites out there ?

Peaches

It's not dying, but it's certainly consolidating. If the only real job you have ever done is porn and you're not an owner who can afford to retire soon, it's best you sharpen up your education skills if you want anything more than an entry level job in any other industry.

I've watched salaries (and commissions) for the workerbees plummet over the past 4-5 years in this biz and I think it's going to get worse. There will be a few who are making good money for the larger programs, but they will be working with golden handcuffs. They and their employers know they're stuck there.

stev0

excellent point

After Shock Media

Well that cliquish stuff helps but is not what I was talking about.

Though out this thread there has primarly been talk about traffic, getting it, and converting it. Been some talk about being innovative and even some talk about content.
Still have not seen a whole lot of discussion about keeping the members you do get. Businesses are built on returning clients and most fail if they rely on one time shoppers. New blood helps but it should never be the main focal point of any business. So often it seems programs spend obscene amounts of money trying to get new customers but if you take a look inside they obviously are not spending the same amount or more keeping the ones they do have. Of course there are several exceptional programs that do just that and they not only see the results but so do all of their revshare affiliates (even if the offer pps for the fools). We all should know the saying about keeping a customer...

Now before anyone goes on about customers quickly cancel or are to jaded or what ever the fucking reason, think before you reply. They only quickly cancel or are jaded because of just what I was saying, few programs give a rats ass about them once they have them inside the doors.

For affiliates of course this may not seem to apply but trust me it does. For once look past the amount they are willing to pay you and check into the sites and the program. Make sure it would keep you as a customer before you decide to push what traffic you have at it. Because trust me if you just keep throwing your traffic to whomever happens to be paying a large sum you very will could be one of the very reasons so many customers are getting jaded to begin with.

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The Other Steve

Amen Brother After Shock

It's been something Marie and I have been saying for quite a while but few people listen.

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Peaches

I think a lot of people would be amazed at what's inside some of the larger programs and how few times new content is added (if ever).

Join a few sites for each program (NOT UNDER YOUR AFFLIATE CODE as that's frowned on by several programs) , take a look a around and keep your membership for 3 months and see if you see changes. If not, you can guarantee the surfer isn't either. Yes, it costs money, but geeze - it cost money to make money ;) Treat it as a business.

You can do the same with the free email proggies - come up with several different emails and use a different email for each (like [email protected], [email protected], etc) and see what's inside there AND what additional mailings that specific email address gets.

After Shock Media

Shh people may learn something and actually have to do some work.

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Peaches

Sorry, sometimes I forget most are working for beer money