Streaming flash movies, you tube movies, and drm streaming movies, all play on faster dialups. Yes, some HD movies won't. But some player and drm technology can detect the Internet speed, and on the fly provide a stream at a lower bit rate, that is much better quality that making your own crap clips that a person has to uniquely download.

The adult industry rides the trends of others, and we define them as we go along. We don't create them, we don't create standards, we are part of them. Right now the majority of the Adult Industry has been standing still for at least 8 years. (a new site is not doing something new)

We are part of the Internet.. we have to market to the global internet, we have to follow the trends so we can define them. What's bigger than the tube, piracy trends?

The social trends, like face book. If we as an entire Industry piggyback off the Social trend, we will define it along with finally allowing us to market to the global population again.

But you know what that marketing is going to based around? Free Porn, or free in general. But at least you will finally be able to market to the people again. But it isn't going to be the same marketing as before either... that changed too.

No, i'm not speaking of wifi, it's a normal cable. What i meant was, if i would move 2km west and get cable there. Friends of mine are living across the city that's why i know the max. internet speed. SpeedTest.net says i've got 2810 kbs down, 371 kbs up.

Edit, btw. 39 EUR per month here for the internet connection (flat rate) & telephone (flat to landline numbers)
Edit, 50mbit would cost 49 EUR incl. telephone, if it's available .......

A single gallery usually contained about 16 pictures and 4 minutes of porn. A scene on a typical tube site is 20+ minutes of uninterrupted video.

So you can't really compare the two. While the number of hits might be the same, the amount of content supplied and bandwidth used up is not.

It is worse, actually. I can get free access for virtually any site I want (yay for working in porn), yet when I actually want to look at some porn I go to a tube site.

Guys I know used to try to coax me into giving them passes for porn sites when I said I worked in porn, but these days that virtually never happens anymore. Instead, they send me links to rapidshare files and tube videos.

The big tube sites offer more content than most paysites do. Of course that's "better" than tgp/mgp networks... it's essentially the content of a huge members area, but for free.

They will buy what? Certainly not memberships to porn sites, in most cases.

Why do you think it is that dating and cam sponsors feature so prominently on most tubes?

They are kicking your asses because by offering what used to cost money for free, they manage to gain a very large portion of the market. Even if a single surfer is worth less to them, numbers make up for that.

What you're saying here is exactly what I'm saying: the tubes are taking market share.

Consolidation and centralization. Rather than a scattered network, porn traffic is becoming focused in a few spaces. A large part of that are the barriers to entry of tubes.

But look at it historically:
free sites -> picture galleries -> video galleries -> tube sites

It's been a constant trend of more free content with less advertising, and a constant trend of exchanging margins for market share.

Even with those things, we'd still be seeing declining margins. The easier it is to get something free, the harder it becomes to sell functionally similar things - especially when you can't offer a large amount of added functionality.

:2 cents:

Actually Escortbiz was very wise with his thread about the disk space, he got me thinking.

How many movies do I have on my PC? As many as I can store - no brainer.

So you are saying that you prefer masturbating with mayonnaise instead of lubricant?

Seems totally normal :thumbsup

(see what I did there? just like you, I responded to a post while pretending it said something entirely different than it did)

Now, an actual response to your asinine remark: what I am saying is that it pays to cover several parts of the market at once. Especially when the added costs are relatively small, and offering several options at once ensures customer satisfaction.

It partly depends on your content. If you've a site of content that's no different from 20 other sites then offer download. If you have content that is so great the surfers will sign up whether it's streamed or downloaded.

The main thing most suffer from is their content is not exclusive, it's just a another scene that's replicated on a dozen or even a hundred other sites. So why should a member stay in a site that offer the same content as all the others in it's format, niche and style when he can only stream it?

He has to watch it at the time he can get to a computer, he can't save his favourite scenes to watch later and the quality is dictated by his connection and your connection and servers.

And all this to view content that is on 12 or 120 other sites. OK different girl and different sofa, but the myth that is exclusive has been totally discredited.

Of course if your content is that good you will not need to bother streaming it, they will be signing up in droves. :winkwink:

Over the last year I have seen lots of techie or traffic or legal solutions to the drop in our market. Most of them pie in the sky and some even worse. The problem is simple, the product we offer the surfer is not good enough to tempt him back to buying porn from us. If we can fix that we can turn the tide. No other solution will work.

I'm offering live shows and from the first week I think it's doing well. Yes it needs more design work and possible more daily shows, but I've been busy recently and will be away more in the coming weeks. If you run a site think long and hard about how you get more people to willingly sign up and stay rather than a techie solution.

use memberchannels.com flash and streaming content with no buffer time

no one wants to wait around to download..they want action instant action.

compete with the tubes...give them better then tube quality and just as much content

:1orglaugh

Agreed 100% :thumbsup

This is the real problem. In the 2 years, might be more, Tubes have been around how have we changed the product we sell? We have not, we still offer sites with 50 to 500 videos sometimes all repeats of a format and charge $30 recurring and expect the surfers to keep paying when the major Tubes offer 5000 and more from different studios, different styles and different formats. I can log in when I please, stay as long as I like, download what I really like and it's all free.

If they charged me I would pay because they're BETTER than what most of us offer. And until we get that into our plans we are screwed.

Hang on a minute. You are talking about the way we ran our business for 10 years, Don't just single out review sites, we are all guilty of pushing sites based on what we get.

One of the first things we have to realise is the amount of traffic a site gets is irrelevant. It's the number of sales that site makes that's important and the key to the solution.

So what if a site gets 1 billion hits an hour. Those 1 billion hits are all costing money until some spend money. If they don't spend enough the site goes down to BW bills. You can put a store on Times Square but unless that store sells something you only have the rent to pay.

I imagine traffic - spend ratios on a Tube are 1-1000, we only need to get 1 in 1000 to come back to buying to make Tubes a problem we USED to have. Sadly we have been focusing on the 999 and not the 1 for the last 10 years.

We will not win the 1 back back by continuing to focus on the free loaders.

That's what I will be doing and you can see if it works. What will not work is caring about how many free loaders are looking at free porn.

My girl self lubricates so no need for lube or mayonnaise.

Do you think Netflix chose to go streaming only for their online rentals in order to keep the 56k crowd happy?

Customer satisfaction eh? My favorite analogy is the rental car one. I would be VERY satisfied if I could walk into enterprise car rental, pay 39.00 for a days rental and keep the car too. If they gave me a free car every time I rented one, I would be very unsatisfied if I could not keep the brand new car the next time I rented. You are right.

HOW DARE they not satisfy me by not giving me a 20,000.00 car.

Wait that analogy seems silly. Who would give away a car for 39.00? Well how much money do people think programs spend on their content? Customer satisfaction ends, when satisfying the customer is hurting your business, and there are other customers plenty happy to pay 29.00 to VIEW your content, rather than keep it, you go after the customers happy with just viewing.

Wastes breath....

thanks...i will look into CDN. Do you get any shit from customers because of their connections or because they cant download?

TheDoc talks more sense on GFY than most of the others put together. :2 cents:

You're missing a minor point: the competition is already doing it in adult.

Genies do not easily go back into bottles. Any adult company that decides not to offer downloads effectively delivers a lower standard of service than the bulk of the competition. Meanwhile, that same company will still suffer from the illegal competition that tubes with user uploads create.

Switching to a streaming-only model could work if all major programs did it at the same time. However, most won't. There's a reason for that :2 cents:

No, no complaints. CDN serves the videos from the server closest to the member. I've had people in Costa Rica, Japan, Thailand, Canada, Mexico, etc etc test our vids, and none have had any problems with playback. Feel free to drop me an email or icq later today or tomorrow and I can show you some stuff. Don't listen to the "must have downloads" crowd.

Good idea. If a whole industry is being retarded follow along, and that will make you smart. :thumbsup

Maybe just maybe, you try to provide a higher quality product than your competitor, and you will start to garner your own market.

Shit loads of places have served coffee for years, yet somehow Starbucks is normally the first place that comes to mind to the majority of people that are craving a cup o Joe.

Think about that.

If you can deliver a higher quality product, you can still be successful while delivering a lower standard of service in other areas. That much is true.

However, even then it will still negatively affect your retention, and only benefit your conversions in any noticeable way if your content is truly unique.

Plus, very few programs actually succeed in creating the truly high quality unique content that would be needed to somewhat negate the negative effects of not delivering the expected standard of service.

How much money do we spend on our members areas?

Clearly not enough because the members are supposedly leaving us to go to Tubes. We only think they are preferring Tubes to paysites. We can't prove it.

I doubt also if the cost of satisfying the customer is what's hurting us, it's trying to satisfy the people who do not buy that really hurts us. Sponsors know their biggest cost is outside the members area.

OK I don't have a simple pre packaged solution, just like everyone else here, but at least I see the problem. That is the customers don't want to buy and until we turn that around we will go the way most industries go when they lose their customers. We need to win back that 1 person in 1000 to close Tubes down. Streaming content is not the solution, it's more of a problem.

Wastes breath....

100% spot on. We deliver pulp content and think it's special. It's so special the members are, supposedly, leaving us to watch any crap on a Tube.

I have surfed Tubes, the decent content is hard to find. OK decent for me, but I'm your typical porn buyer and should be the target for most sites. I would imagine most Tube site content appeals to 15 to 25 year olds. A lot is abusing or degrading women, faked and the same scene over and over again. The creativity level is low.

I love you Paul, but you are 100% wrong by saying that last remark. lol

Let's be real here.

I said unless the content is so marvellous and unique the surfers into that type will sign up, I feel making the package the customer buys less attractive is going to increase them flowing away.

Yes if you have content that is unique and very special stopping people downloading it will help. But how many sites have that and how much would it cost to create that kind of content for some of us? Most of us will not bother, we will spend more money outside the members area and wonder why people are not buying.

Tubes will continue to flourish, continue to get content and continue to take members away from us.
Unless you truly have something unique.

Just saying I'm wrong does not help, tell me why I'm wrong.

Tubes flourish because the door to the porn store is unlocked, not because tubes are better. Tubes of course have a huge variety of content available. Why? THEY DON'T PAY FOR THE CONTENT! Well the illegal ones don't. ugg not going over this for the millionth time. Read the March issue of AVN for the article I wrote on it. lol

The problem also will be the number of affiliates who will not send traffic, the number of members who will cancel and the number who will leave after the first month. The content has to be so strong the members will stay and not move elsewhere and the affiliates will see better sigh ups that sites offering DL content.

Yes I know how Tubes can exist and maybe if 100% of the paysites went to streaming it might help, assuming the code can't be broken.

But in reality 100% will not stream and most codes can be broken. Assuming a Tube site faced with no content did not site back on what it has or/and did not start ripping DVDs.

Tubes will not just give up because 50% of site start to stream. And do you expect 50% of sponsors to change. What about the sites supported by people like Brazzers and AEBN?

I love you to Ryan and I wish streaming was an answer, just don't see it happening and see gaps in it.

Bump for the night crew...

First, keep in mind that streaming versus saving to hard drive are
only SUGGESTIONS to the browser. The bad guys can easily save
whatever they want to the drive. Notice I said streaming versus
saving, NOT streaming versus downloading - all video is downloaded.
The difference is ether it's watched WHILE it's downloaded or AFTER
it's downloaded. To the bad guys, it makes little or no difference.

To the good guys, it's about what's convenient for them and personal
preference, and about compatibility. A plain link to an unpackaged
unpackaged mpeg4 file will play on any system, a desktop running
any version of Windows, a Mac, a mobile phone, a Playstation, any
Linux machine - it works well for all customers. If you wrap that same
video with embed tags in an attempt to stream it, it will likely not work
in some old version of IE, or in the next version about to come out,
certainly won't work on most mobile phones, probably won't work
on the Playstaton, and will be a pain on Mac or Linux, so you're
turing away perfectly good paying customers. Flash is an extreme
example of this, in some ways, because it won't work at all on Microsoft's
latest operating systems, Vista 64 and XP 64, so with Flash as the only
option it's not Mac, Linux, or mobile users you're turning way - it's the
with the brand new Windows systems. Those of who have been
running Linux 64 bit for years have a beta Flash player, but the
Windows 64 people don't. Macromedia and Adobe have been promising
for years that they'll release one "real soon now", but don't hold your
breath. They said it was coming soon in like 2005, so offering only
Flash is definitely the worst idea.

A simple link to the video file probably WILL stream for most people,
if the MIME type is correctly set on your server, and they can right
click to save it to their drive if they wish. So that simple link to the
video is probably sufficient, but there's no reason not to offer an
embedded player as well.

Sorry Ray you are wrong on this one. Flash Media Server 3 ENCRYPTED Streaming. Is NOT downloadable in any current means. Attempting to download any of our streaming file links (which you can't anyways in our members area as our player does not allow this, there is no link for the surfer to find), using something such as RealPlayer allows people to attempt this, will get the surfer a 8kb or so file.

I really am not worried about that .05% linux usergroup. If they want Ill be glad to refund them before I allow a member to keep our videos for 29.95 and do whatever they like with them including uploading to their favorite tube community, or rapidshare forum. Flash has something like 97% coverage, Ill stick with that. :2 cents:

Downloadable
 

I use a download site to sell content and it makes more than I could ever make with pay streaming sites with low promo energy.

thanks stickyfingerz & Doc I am making adjustments to my business plan because of your advice.

-Josh

Interesting discussion... Anyone know of any adult programs that offer paysites with streaming-only members areas?

Might as well send some traffic and see how they do :thumbsup

I'm with you on that, never did like the downloadable model, and some of the paysites are crazy with it with gigantic file sizes that just have to turn off a good percentage of their users, streaming makes so much sense imo :2 cents: