interesting have any of you compared classic free sites, aff and then social networking sites to see the variance in traffic patterns since July? might give you more of an idea than the old BS of the economy etc.

the simple fact is this.

people have been predicting the end since the day after it started. each new "threat" was "different this time because..."

it was gonna end because you could find anything in news groups
it was gonna end because people abused exit consoles
it was gonna end because people hijacked home pages
it was gonna end because people were spamming
it was gonna end because people were getting fucked with installs, dialers, viruses etc
it was gonna end because visa/mc were going to pull out
it was gonna end because google images offered endless amounts of free porn
it was gonna end because P2P made downloading everything possible
it was gonna end because torrents got popular

.... it can go on forever. in fact, that list of everything that was going to kill this biz since 1996 is so fucking long, it would crash this forum trying to create it

it was always gonna end.

yet, here we are.

the business changes and evolves. it won't "end" - people paying for content won't "end"

often times the same people complaining about how things are going and the direction things are going are the same people (not necessarily escortbiz) who are doing the same shit today as they were doing 5-10 years ago and are in constant shock that its working less and less for them. the guys that got killed in a google update as if ranking well for "free teen porn" was somehow supposed to be guaranteed for life... etc etc etc etc.

There is a lot of logic in this post...very interesting read.

long but a good read

many good points here.... and opinions are like assholes, everyone has one... i prefer to keep my projections to the future close to me, but like Paul and someone else touched on, innovation will set you free. Get outside the box folks.

two years ago when the economy was good, there were still complaints of conversions dropping.

this has been going on for years and there are multiple factors including the economy. perhaps the economy just poshed it to "critical mass" but it is far from being the cause.

lowing price points, abundance of freebies (by theft or not), biller scrubbing, the "hard drive" thing as mentioned by EscortBiz, competition w/ social networks... you could go on forever. and they ALL have been adding to the problem for a long time.

Paysites are 10 year old business model. Nuff said.

Today I just read this:
http://finance.yahoo.com/loans/artic...s-Credit-Cards

But back to the subject;
So I guess it's a mix of several issues (but not limited to);
-download speeds
-business model (they only last a while and not forever)
-big (external) HDs at lowwww prices
-bad experiences in the past with other sites, dialers or fraud, you name it...
-google dependancy
-pricing
-credit availability (like creditcards, income, value of houses)
-quality of content & updates
-currency exchange rates worlwide
-bad economy (or should I say scary..)
-expectations of clients (and affiliates)
-fear of spending and uncertain future
-trust related issues with CC and personal data
-cross sells
-shame !!
-porn overkill
-looks all alike
-other things to do or worry about then porn
-too much free porn on tgps, mgps, tubes, p2p, torrents, tv channels, what ever is on your harddrive...
-secundary competion from other media like low dvd prices, IPTV, mobile, free TV, dvd copying/swapping/lending, etc.
-direct competition; 200 per sign up deals spoil the affiliates in an unrealistic way and therefore adjusting their expectations based on one-time events and not across the board
etc.

Did you know that most people that buy porn feel ashamed about it ? So there is little chance the will mail or call you to say what they DON'T like or want. They rather just pay then contact you to avoid their shame. (My office number is almost alike to another number of a dutch company that rebills for websites, so sometimes when people dial the wrong number the ask about rebill questions or site access and if I ask what they mean exactly..they just hang up, stotter or say; never mind.)

Come on, everybody knows it just takes 1 minute to 15 minutes to get off....so the important thing is what to offer BEFORE the 1 to 15 minutes start because the surfer is horny. After he comes...he doesnt give a shit about any website he just visited. The goal is achieved :2 cents: and he doesn't even remember the domainname he just came on.

But let's take the DVD business for example. They used to retail at 29,95 or 89,- in sexhops. Now most dvds are retailed at 1 buck to 5 up to 10 bucks for the newest ones.
One of the reasons internet was sucessfull was you could watch ALL dvds at ONE price (when dvds were 29 to 89 per dvd), but now you can own them and play them on your PC or TV at a few bucks per title and not have any recurring billing on them...and you can still SELL them to somebody else, trade them, etc.
(i am not saying this is THE problem, but just another possible reason)

When I turn on my TV now I have (next to 3 free porn channels 24/7) also the VOD option since a few weeks (like 80% of Dutch households have) and there is a HUGE amount of the best & newest (and amateur) porn movies to see at 1 to 5 bucks a pop; the best thing is...I can just watch it for 24 or 48 hours in best quality or even in HD and I get credit...meaning the 1 to 5 bucks get added to my monthly bill. No creditcard needed.. who do you trust more: your 50 year old cable provider or this new website you have never been on that asks you CC and personal info ??

There was something I read a few weeks back on the net posted on some big Ducth news site. It said that the porn searches & viewings dropped 23%. The reason was ( and it scared me a bit) that people spend more time on facebook kind of sites. People think that is more real then porn. They wanna meet real people, have real excitement, have realistic fantasies and real sex (hopefully).

Is there something like porn-overkill? I used to think that was not the case or even impossible for many years. I watched SO MANY movies since I was a young guy that it becomes harder and harder (nearly impossible) these days to find porn I actually like. I've seen too much I guess. You always compare what you see, to what you already know. That's your reference.

But I am still positive and I still make my living in this business. But it changes so fast all the time. Go with the flow I think it's best these days. But consumer must ALWAYS come first; exceed his expectations or fail. That I believe in! People are no longer stupid.

I am closing down my retail stores, reorganize & consolidate the dvd wholesale bizz with less stock, warehouses & staff & invest more money on internet related business.
Production company is stable but not growing anymore, the model agency we closed down, studio rental is no longer interesting but we decided not to close it, content sales is growing well and so is PPC advertsing per click with HQ traffic. PPM sites dropped a little but not much, VOD is stable and growing, payment systems are growing, free sites are growing, communities do well, domain sales is extra, cams are super and dating is too. Recurring sites I don't have so I would't know.

The last 2 weeks were the most surprising ones I ever encountered to be honest.

I feel like I just wrote a whole book :upsidedow
There is no absolute answer. But there are good questions.

So after 10 years of Internet porn the customer now chooses to not pay for it or not look at it at all?

Well he's still looking at it we can see that by the stats.

He's choosing not to buy it. Because p2P and tubes are a better option than many paysites?

So who's to blame for that?

The economy is the last few months and the decline was before then. You guys are the best at kidding yourselves.

Pleasureplays is spot on.
It gets to be a collection of 2000 movies because each one is different in some way. Now imagine it was 10 scenes performed by 500 different bad actors in 500 different locations. You have to keep giving the "the best/newest stuff" you can to a repeat buyer. Or he stops repeating. Who has ever stopped watching TV soaps or certain actors because they keep repeating the same storyline or character?

That's professionals on real budgets and still you stopped watching it. The porn consumer has stopped buying from a lot of you because Tube sites are better for him than your product. You need to make your product fit his needs better. And don't forget you have a bigger budget to play with. If you don't think it can be done close the door on the way out.

Spot on Rorschach.
The problem is we still think he should pay $30 so we can give half of it to get him to the door. :upsidedow

The business is not dead, it will not go to free content to support advertising. It will be dead for some though.

Read my point of view here :

http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showthread.php?t=865694

Two major flaws in your thinking. Tubes are not free, they're paid for by Cams and Dating sites. So if people stop spending on paysites this will drive more to Tubes where they will not spend on the Cams and Dating sites. Traffic does not equal sign ups. Which some are starting to discover.

As for protecting content with DRM. Please stop making me laugh. So I run a Tube site and by some miracle every paysite goes DRM tomorrow. So the day after tomorrow I go to the local sex shop and buy 100 DVDs at $5 each and digitize them in house. This is in the extremely unlikely possibility of even 10% going to DRM. The problem is with most sites it does not matter if you go to DRM. The next site does not and there is nothing to distinguish between the two sites. Your content is the same. Just a different girl on a different sofa.

shooting "fresh/exciting/new" scenes in & of itself is not gonna fix the issue either because at the end of the day it's still pixels and 1's and 0's (that costs 2x or 3x more money to produce) that will be up on tubes/torrents right next to the run of the mill shit

Tubes have already moved on to the new revenue stream.

Dating + Cams = Money...

Porn is now dying of a tubal-cancer.

:2 cents: Quoted for truth.

A 1080i HD-quality shot of some dogshit is still dogshit. In fact, the fact that it's in HD highlights its shitty qualities even more.

some real good points people keep em coming, im hoping more people who run pay sites like myself chime in as well

A few things about the paysite model being 10 yrs old so then its done .The retail model be it amazon, homedepot or joe the tailor is 100's of years old. Basic business principles dont change. Remember during the internet boom, the old ways dont matter any more its the internet new rules what happened? it went back to tried and true business principles.
Something interesting happened today, my wife got an email from a guy who was interested in joining but had gotten fucked so hard by some site. He wanted to join by postal money order and he needed assurances that we weren't going to bill him for extra things. This is a big problem.

People will pay whatever you charge, but they want to feel secure with the deal/promise.
You got an email of one of the VERY few surfers that actually asks the big question.
These rare emails/questions are the most interesting ones. Inside intel on surfer psychology :2 cents:

SHHHHHHHHH! :winkwink:

gimme about 45 mins
have to knock the bottom out of something first
i'll be back

http://www.qwipster.net/t2.jpg

more input pls

It was more like he found a bunch of charges on his cc statement that he didnt remember signing up for. It freaked him out so much, now he wants to use snail mail to sign up for sites.

A lot of excellent and very insightful posts so far in the thread.

One thing that many people in the adult industry do wrong is they become too reliant on their adult revenues as their sole income. Not all...but some people. We've kept our production company afloat over the years partially because both the wife and I have maintained other employment outside the adult industry. We offset the up and down adult trends with steady 9-to-5 jobs - which takes the worry out of economic downturns and trends for us.

During economic slumps, we just keep plugging away at increasing our production buffer (we have enough unpublished content to continue updating for a full year). We can afford to be experimental when it comes to the photography...trying out new ideas to see what works. Too many other producers get into that 'formulated rut' and churn out basically the same thing over and over and over.

So my point is - those who don't put all their proverbial eggs in one basket are the ones who'll weather the economic storms. It helps greatly to love doing what we do - we'd still be producing original content even if we were barely breaking even.

There's always tomorrow.

i really don't think hd space and b/w speed is an issue
why?

because in 2002 they were selling pc's with 200gb drives, hell. even 100gb is a lot of porn to save.

Sales were fine back then. Conversions have steadily dropped over the years little by little

but there were always new people coming online everyone was happy,

overall sales still increased each year for me since I started in 99

this year will be the first year for me where that is not the case

now there are a jillion more paysites than their used to be

i remember when there were just a few wet tshirt spring break sites

me and a few others pretty much owned the niche at one time

not the case any more

we are splitting the pie up more and more and more and more......

new surfers are coming on board as well, but the novelty of this whole interweb porn thing is not like it used to be

the wow factor was greater back then and has slowly diminished to where it's commonplace

surfers are smarter

not only are there shitloads of paysites competing against each other

but now the paysites are losing sales to illegal tubes and torrents, and the like

customers are smarter now, not so easily entertained, and expect much more

when you combine this with our so called bad economy, whether there is one or not, the media has people thinking there is

just like orson wells had people convinced the Martians had landed

during the last debates were my worst days in a long time

people are tightening their belts, whether they need to or not, i know i am even trying too

as far as more people with broadband, IMO that should actually help new sales

the faster you can go the more places you can visit

high speed internet might affect retention somewhat, but not new sales

between the economy and so much competition, (legal and illegal) i believe that is the problem

if everyone's hard drive suddenly shrank to 100GB tonight, I don't think it would change anything.

but what the fuck do i know

cheers,
BV

this is not true from what i have observed

i have a future brother in law that has a huge dvd collection, maybe he even has a 1000 dvds, not porn but reg flicks

he is also probably one of net flix biggest customers on top of that, he has dvds coming in the mail almost every day

people that have collections like that are junkies

they can't get enough :2 cents:

I think porn is different, if you have a collection its the stuff you like to wack off too. So you are watching for 10 mins maybe. There are only so many times you can watch the godfather, I have over 250 movies and never watch any more I rent all the time.

maybe, maybe not
people get satisfaction from regular movies also
just in a different way
you can not jack it to the same pic or video forever, it gets old
who still strokes it to 80's porn? not many i bet
people always are searching for new material

I jerked off to dirty debs 1 til I wore out the vhs tape lol

Um, not to spoil the party, but you guys do know most industries use surveys and focus groups to find out what customers want. But I know, your money and time would be better spent buying sigs or skinning GFY than actually finding out what the customer wants.

Has anyone thought about offering surfers a free download if they complete a simple survey? Then all this bullshit about why people don't buy anymore can be put to rest once and for all. Heck, I'll even supply the clip if someone sets up the survey.

sure you can, i did that 5 years ago the first time, to see what kind of bonus feeds they wanted

also i am constantly pushing for info/facts from members that email me about something and usually i slip in a question or 2 on them

some of them answer and like to converse and let you know what they like, after a while you get the picture

That's good to hear. I try to keep in touch with members as much as possible. Actually, the billing issue comes up more than anything. People being scared to join.

Why is no one with a merhant account complaining about sales?

Great business thread. I had a long shoot day so I am goign to be relatively brief, even though this thread has made me think about a lot of related issues. I agree with a lot of what has been said so far. I especially believe that the pay per download model will become more common as more surfers shy away from recurring subscription billing. A lot of consumers prefer to pay a fair price to download and own each scene or movie and I think it is smart to give them that option.

The surfers are indeed getting jaded and harder to please. But those who can tap into the demand for particular niches and those who are able to deliver unique content with a certain director's style or flair will still be able to make sales. A lot of the more generic pay sites are going to find it much harder going.

I do a lot of market research talking to fans and consumers via email and on some surfer forums and I am trying to give them what they want on DVD and online with pay sites and downloadable videos.

Some of the large internet porn companies who made the easy money back in the 90s and early 2000s seem to be at a loss now on how to continue their pay site success in this more jaded time. My opinion is that just like in the DVD market, it is going to take a real pornographer- someone who loves porn- to be successful nowadays. If there isn't someone running a porn company and making decisions and/or someone who is filming for the company who is the kind of person who would pull their pants down and jack off to porn, then they are working at a serious disadvantage on the creative side against those who do.

I got into the porn biz in 1991 because I love it. I started filming porn for VHS & tv broadcast with Hi-8mm and Beta SP cameras and I am going to continue through high definition and 3D holograms or whatever evolution it goes through because I am a pornographer, and there will always be customers who are willing to pay for unique content that they just can't get everywhere else.

If you have porn like Party Hardcore that is unique different and well shot you can protect it. Then when the surfer who likes it sees it he has to join the site to view it.

If you have porn of a blond on a sofa getting shafted and faking it you can't protect it effectively. Because if the surfer see it, likes it, wants more and you have deleted every scene you produced, the surfer can watch any of the other 10,000 videos of a blond on a sofa getting shafted, then the surfer does not need you. Don't complain about the number you know what I mean.

This industry for ten years built the number of sites, DVDs, affiliates, traffic, shops and lost the focus on the buyer. Now the buyer does not see any reason to pay because very little is worth paying for.

BV has a good point.
Where and who are the new surfers coming online? Probably not places we are selling to as well as we did.

This industry spends millions talking to people with traffic they have little clue what it requires. Too many computer guys trying to sell a product they don't know to a person they don't understand.
I will also give a scene to anyone who wants to run an independent survey. I talk to members all the time, the main problem is they want more of the girls from 6 years ago. I am constantly being asked if I have more of girls who put everything into a scene. Even people who saw the scene on a Tube site ask for more like it.

Most content buyers only want too know how cheap and how many scenes can they get for the dollar. So they can spend money sending traffic to sites the traffic is losing interest in buying from. So send more traffic. This has been happening for years.

morning bump

I do not think paysite subscription model is flawed - yes you sell your entire content base for $30-40, but it has already paid off. Whatever you get for it is pure profit. And if customer rebills, he pays about the same price for your updates as he would at VOD sites (if you update weekly).

Also providing a huge base of movies helps getting repeated customers - they'll rejoin not only to download fresh stuff, but also to download what they missed previously, or already deleted but want to view that movie again. It is unlikely customer is going to keep all of your stuff at his HD for a very long time - so he'll use your server as an online storage place where he can redownload from.

Sure we all want more money for our stuff, but let's be reasonable. If average paying customer spends $60/month on porn it won't turn $200 overnight if we all switch to VOD. Subscription based model is well balanced in terms of customers/producers/affiliates interests and I'm pretty sure will serve as our industry's backbone for a long time to come. Maybe even forever.

But getting more use out of VOD model will surely help to diversify income sources and get more money from those customers who prefer buying exact match, or do not like recurring or both. It will not magically increase your sales by 200-300%, but 20-30% is possible if marketed properly.

A good business thread, am i on the right forum?? :)

why do so many people act like it is one thing? How about a little bit of everything. All this shit adds up and for some reason people list ten things and ask which one is the reason for the problems LOL,
I have had members email my girls and say they are sorry but they have to cancel even though they love the site. When they write back and ask why the answer is "I found a site called redtube" or "I feel stupid paying for porn when it is free" Sure that same tube site might send some sales too but where the fuck do you think they would be if there was no tube sites? Do you think they would sell their computers and grow a garden? fuck no they would be on any other site while we try to get them to join. How come that is so hard for some people to understand, It is fact. Put a poll in your members area and just ask them. Or after they cancel write them a thank you letter and tell them 1 out of every 10 people get a free membership if they will take two minutes and tell how we could have improved the site so they would have stayed and you will get more people that say "make the price FREE" There is probably 50 other things that mess with the bottom line too.

tubes and torrent sites hands down.

holy shit where did you come from?? I have been doing this for 3 years but try to tell people who are happy with what they make something and since they have 7 cars and I have 3 then I must not know what the hell I am talking about.
The first thing I tell the girls is find out WHY they joined the site and WHY they left the site and every single change we make will be based on those two answers. Fuck all this new shit. Oh I have to get flash.... I ran polls and 1% of the members wanted flash LOL yet people were on GFY saying it was why members would not join. Ask 100 customers what flash is and I bet most will tell you some red dude in a comic book hahhaha. And after that I will be the first to admit I know very little compared to most but I sure do get a lot out of what I do. You might as well ask the mailman why it hurts when you pee or the guy in the deli when is the best time to water your lawn. If you wanna know a good fart joke come to GFY and if you wanna know what will keep people on your sites and what will get them to join in the first place how about you ask the people that joined the fucking site. They will not bite you. In fact they are quite nice.