What created the greatest explosion in porn sales and what can we learn from it?

Paris Hilton sextape
Reason? stupid meme blonde's

What we can learn? legalize abortion in the US

what he said + it made slutty fashionable

Not even remotely close. Not even all the "Celeb sex tapes" made as much as this one move in the market.

Think harder.

I know for sure that reality porn is responsible for far more sales than the Paris Hilton sex tape. So is the move to gonzo, for that matter.

Broadband connections

It has nothing to do with the Internet, that created a fall in sales. LOL

VCR's? ?????

I'm not too sure that's true, overall.

But either way, the rise of VHS (introduced 33 years ago, but it only really got popular around 1980) generated far more sales than the switch to the internet.

Amateur porn!

I haven't been in the porn industry for 30 years though. To me everyone has created their own explosions in sales by offering a variety of niches and fetishes that appeal to a vast number of people.

Search engines giving people the ability to find their own unique sexual fantasies is what makes me money.

Magic join links. Works every time.

i would say because its considered taboo.

i'm going with the vcr on this one, whoever mentioned that nailed it. the ability for people to take their smut to the privacy of their own homes exploded sales. home video blew sales up...

what's the moral? explore new mediums perhaps...

None of you are even close.

It was the rental market. In a couple of years the rental business over took the sales of VHS. For every guy who would buy a tape to own 100 would rent it. Or numbers close to it. The cost of a shop buying a VHS tape to resell was often 1/10 of the cost of buying one to rent out.

It was not a fresh 100 guys coming into a porn shop on impulse, it was the same 100 guys coming in night after night to rent. It was a repeat buying business with the client getting what he wanted and the selling earning over and over again. The money rolled in in small amounts and many grew very rich. Some became millionaires many times over.

They did not bother collecting, storing, copying or even remembered what they rented last year. They just spend a little bit of money to satisfy a short term need.

We need to learn from that.

Some still think the profit is in hitting a guy once for $50 when he would happily pay $1 a hundred times. Figures are to illustrate the point. You know what I mean.

The move from 8 MM to VHS helped, but not that much. The move to DVD did little. The move to a guy renting a tape for a night doubled the market. AVN mag use to give the rental sales and tapes sales separately. Anyone know if they still do?

Guys who would buy one tape a month for $30 would rent one every other night for $3 ($45 a month.)

The moral is to examine old successes and adapt them to our situation.

AVS in 199x

Paul, you are right that that was huge, but the internet is still the biggest thing to come along by far, and it singlehandedly killed the brick and mortar store market and the newstand magazine market as well. When we were younger, we all waited until we were 18 (or could fake it) to be able to buy Playboy or Hustler or whatever off the stands, now I don't think any 18 year old kid could care less about paying for a porn mag and has seen it all already online anyways.

The internet made it possible to get everything you wanted without ever leaving your room or having to go up to a store clerk to pay for it. And the early years meant that most still had to pay for the video content they wanted, but now that is being stolen and given away for free all over the place too, and teens learn how to get it free because they have no credit cards, so even when they do get old enough and get credit cards they are not going to spend money on porn because they have it all figured out already.... so the demographics are changing and that period of time has passed. The new generation expect everything for free, whereas the last generation was not like that.

Its the theory of things like webcam and phone sex... which I know a lot of people don't believe on here because they enjoy their hookers and blow ;) and the idea of sitting there wanking off to some chick faking it isn't appealing...

But your average man with a wife and kids doing the day to day grind... loves the fact that for 10 mins he can interact with the sluttiest girl he can dream of (even if she is acting).... Then he calls back time and time and time again...

Anything that promotes reusage or revisiting of the sex act or purchase... not forever content... is the most profitable form of adult entertainment... Anything that keeps the fuckers coming back...

Yes, more watch porn. But that's not what I asked and not what concerns anyone in the porn business. The number of viewers is meaningless. It's the numbers of $$ you get that counts.

The problem the new generation will face is some can't afford to give everyone everything for free. The free loaders want others to pay for their entertainment.

Probably with the advent of the Home Video Camara.

Beta VHS.

people think, "Oh if I give something they can keep for a long time... they'll like it more and we'll be more popular'

but they're shooting themselves in the foot in most instances. yeah, programs pulling in 1-2 million over the course of a year with tubes or with tons of affiliates spamming the holy fuck out of everything gets their name out there...

But slow and steady wins the race when ya want to make a career out of it... and the rental system is probably the purest, most profitable part of porn..

Getting back to where people have to pay for each instance that they get off... would bring more long term dollar..

But ya gotta remember, this industry doesn't exactly attract people who want to make long term, life choices..

It attracts hustlers... so once they fuck up and the porn dollar is gone because they gave everything in a big 1-2-3 year hurrah..

They'll move to another industry...
Then another..

No, I was spot on, if you think about it carefully ... those sites are the exact model needed.

True giving the buyers a site with 10 videos and a short low price membership might be a way forward. It will be a long road and we will need to keep climbing it, the problem is the people who think to the end of the week and not to the end of the year.

We already do it in part with $3 trials, the problem is we are so obsessed with a guy downloading everything in 3 days we piss off the 100 guys who want 3 days of porn for $3. Maybe we are thinking the members are all like us. LOL

Think about it.

Very true about the shortsightedness of many programs. There are a few who "get it," though, so there's hope overall. One thing the industry has always been and will always be is a series of "fuck yeah, me too" plays where it's "follow the leader" if anything shows some level of success.

You're right on the obsession, too. Bandwidth is cheap, and not everyone is a scammer ... if you make a bad impression on the other 100 guys, they're unlikely to convert .. so how much are you REALLY losing?

Joel Hall?

How did me RENTING a video 3-4 times a month mean more money for anyone. When I was BUYING 1-2 a month previously.

And does anyone really think that was bigger then the internet? If so, time to get back to reality and open my porn rental shop.

The Internet in terms of sales has never come close to Video/DVD. So please go check the facts before you post. Rental DOUBLED the turnover of the porn industry in the US and EU in a matter of a few years. The few buyers who saved money by renting 1-2 movies a month instead buying them were replaced by the 100s who rented night after night.

That was why the video producers, both mainstream and porn, charged far more for a rental copy than a sales copy. Same movie, different license.

Seriously go do some research.

BangBus.

Those horrible 640x400 sites were never seen again.
Except for allpetite.com :D

Like it.

I think you are living in the past. The internet changed everything. Everyone who wouldn't be caught dead renting/buying porn could suddenly get as much as they wanted. The net offers privacy, something you just can't get in the real world.

the betamax case
it created the fair use right of timeshifting which cause the copyright holders to find ways to compete
which created the pre-recorded movies marketplace
pulled porn out of the theaters and into their homes.
which begat DVDs.

The lesson to learn, stop fighting fair use, stop demanding the government step in and fix the problem, start leveraging the technology that you keep complaining about (torrents etc)

The impact rentals made was almost forgetful when compared to the impact of the world wide web and computers.

Stop thinking like a dinosaur.

The Television.

Sorry my friend... I have done the research. The mid 90's to 2000, sales were easily 10x what they were in the 80's. Hell, today we still make more sales, online alone, than all sales of every sex product in the 80's.

No amount of math in the world could change this, it's very basic. Still today, we have millions of more people that can buy porn and do buy porn, than ever before. I have millions of more possible clients than the 80's ever could have had.

Porn went from a medium of 3 or 4 things, to hundreds of different mediums. It went from a few 100ish pornographers, to a hundreds of thousands porn site owners in 10 years.

It's not even a competition. Single paysites today, just one paysite, is larger than the biggest producers of porn in the 80's.

Please show me where you got your figures from because I've never seen figures that show the Internet SELLING more porn than the video/DVD industry.

Still lagging behind.

Even Forbes does not put the Internet at the top.

But Forbes does point out that no one really knows for sure. All I know is the money received from rental out stripped the money from sales. Anyone got figures that are credible?

Seriously show me the figures. And you will find a lot of those sales were people renting a video for a night.

People looking at free porn are not people buying porn. OK 1-1000 are.

The number of sellers does not always relate to the number of buyers.

Now you are smoking a pipe full of some good stuff. Some magazines of the 80s were a license to print money.

Too many here thinking along the lines of viewers = sales. Not always the case.

The moral of my thread is there was an explosion because the sellers tapped into the fact that selling something for $3 100 times was better than selling it 5 times for $30. The only place you will see the figures are in AVN and even though it's discredited there is no other place.

I saw people make a fortune renting videos from their stores. There were still buyers but the canny guy who did not want the evidence of a cupboard full of porn videos rented. Would we make more money selling single scenes on a 50 cent a scene basis, minimum order $2. Than trying to sell to a few a package we clearly can see he is steering away from.

The Internet is a different medium, but the buyer has not changed much. He still wants 20 minutes to get off and get on with his life.

That was classic. I wonder how many people know what your talking about.....

[QUOTE=Paul Markham;15441756]Please show me where you got your figures from because I've never seen figures that show the Internet SELLING more porn than the video/DVD industry.

Still lagging behind.

Your Forbes article says adult video makes shit.

Do you understand how research works? You don't find 'a credible source' you read 100's of them, good and bad. And you compile your own set of statistics.

First the review stats, lump video sales/rental together with sales produced from the Internet. Since most adult companies aren't public, when they release numbers it's a lump together of all sales. Not a split between the mediums.

They can get far better stats from mainstream too, far more are public around the world. So if the numbers we see are from online is what they can find.. Just think, what they can't see, it must be in the billions. Like processors in EU that don't report they process adult but are as large as any of the U.S. porn processors.

They also say 'online sales' not, online companies. Huge freaking difference. Online companies produce for online, but make sales all over the mediums. Far more than mainstream DVD companies and Magazines do.

Back in the 70's and 80's, you shot a magazine, used different girls for pornos, and then you rented. Late 80's came PPV, cable, etc. Very tight market.. very slow moving across the mediums.

--

Such as a figure like this: Playboy, hit its peak in 1970's - The largest money they ever made from a magazine sale was in the 70's, and if every copy sold, sold at the cover price (which almost all didn't) they would have earned a max (an impossible number to reach actually) of 10 million in one month.

Cost of equipment was much higher back then, but the cost of models was $25k less, per model.

The largest hustler ever reached was 3 million magazines, down to 500k today. He just happened to really do well in many areas of the Industry. The cost, again per magazine at the time, was dirt. He diversified like no other.

Crazy to think these guys 'peaked' WAY before the Internet came out.. So you could say, Internet Porn, saved the Porn Industry!

Now, don't get me wrong.. these two monsters cleaned house. Not that hard to two when you have 3 or 4 people that own 90% of the market at the time.



Lets look at today, single paysites have 50k members, that's before some of the really big programs, that have sites alone with 10-20k members in them.

So, just from one medium alone, a paysite with 50k members earns 1.5 million a month (in memberships alone, no upsells, exits, or any other sales on that huge traffic, like 50k a month in xsales). That's a huge f'in paysite even a program, and almost everyone diversifies the content. (we don't split the total up, but each market we give it out to does)

Since 1.5 million a month is only 18 million a year, we know for a fact several porn companies, online, are larger than that.

So.. As we sell our dvd titles, in stores-online, etc.. broadcast rights, hotel rights, cable rights, produce content plugins, sell to download sites, broker the content to brokers, and we do this year after year after year.. and many have studios too, that also shoot for others, still making the main porn company money.

We supply the other mediums with porn and traffic, ONLINE companies help produce the sales for mainstream today, help move people over, help create new fans. Those numbers don't get credited back to the online Industry sales, they are part of the DVD numbers.

What a skew..

Even today, we have online porn companies pulling 50m-100m a year and higher. Screw the 90's which killed anything today. However, 25-40 million of that, may have produced some place other than the 'online paysite'. BUt online things, like plugins can make $10k-$30k per plugin, per month, for 3-4 years straight, that's PER PLUGIN.

That doesn't count for 'online sales and money isn't credited to our industry', it's lost.. Across the board, that's a godly amount of money.

Now, let's "assume" playboy or hustler pulled in 10 million a month at some point. They might have made up to 120 million a year. Thing back in the 70's and 80's, we can easily name those huge companies, and back then even if it was 3 million a month, that's freakin huge.

Today.. You can't name all the big adult companies, even in America let alone world wide. Well maybe today since most jumped ship, but that's beside the point. It's not a hand full of major companies, it's 50 to 100 of them pull these numbers down.

Today, the world wide magazine market, number of producers and owners of that medium. Is much smaller than online porn companies. We are both global, we both are needed since both of us can't reach all the consumer demand.... <-- wow how it all works..

HOWEVER, U.S. Magazine sales VS. U.S. Online Porn Companies (in the 90's), was no competition, online porn killed magazines, in every way, even its business.

DVD companies have went poof left and right, for years.. Narrowing the market down, however Online porn companies, opened DVD companies.. and they took off! Wait, they did what?

Ok, so if a nobody puts a DVD in a store, does it sell? Not enough for serious 2! But when PV, a massive branded label ONLINE, moves to the store, rentals, etc.. it works. Crazy shit.. I wonder how all those people knew they could pickup the new series at the DVD shop, to own.. or buy it from an online dvd shop, that ships from the mainstream store, straight to your house.


That's research man.. I have 1000's of hours of it. I have been working on graphing our Industry growths, falls, releases, events, ect for 2 years now, globally.



And with your other post, volume is god.. repeat that 1000 times. If me or you convert 1:1000, that means we didn't sell 1000 people, it doesn't mean 1000 people can't be sold. The truth is, 1000 people didn't like what they saw, but easily 1:100 will buy, if they get sold the proper site. Sites still, even today, convert 1:100, let alone some of the 1:10 sites of the 90's.


Crazy thing is... The Internet is bigger today than ever, and the real Adult Industry BOOM, hasn't even started yet!


Big ass post awayyyyy!

can't agree with you. apples vs oranges. the rental market exploded moneywise because it was a "monopoly" distributing porn. buyers had no internet, no PPV, & buying videos mail order was expensive. If a consumer wanted to rent 10 movies, that was $30 for 1 night.

Now the buyers have many choices. They can order PPV. They can buy microniches. For the same $30, consumers get far more than 10 videos for 1 night; they get an entire library for 30 days, & get to keep the downloads forever. Most important, they no longer even need to pay at all. Just surf the tubes, usenets & torrents, & pay only when necessary. Todays consumer has so much choice the eras are incomparable.

Paul, you could easily test this by converting all your $30 downloadable paysites to $3 streaming/rental sites, & see what happens to your revenue. If the answer was an explosion in profits, the big sites would be doing this by now.

The industry really is in serious trouble with all the free content. the producers will have to live in a model with less revenue coming in & make the adjustment. less movie releases, more focus on differentiating the product in the market. The only people that make money in a glut are the ones selling something unique.

I thought you were retiring or some shit?

Actually Paul, it was the VHS. Whether you want to split hairs over rental or purchase doesn't matter.
One of my former clients has been in the business since the 70s, and the stories he can tell are just amazing.

I've been using magic join links for a few years now since I discovered Paul using them.
They are the best thing since sliced bread!

thats what we do. its a dollar a day so its $30 for the month some are more and some are less

The internet.. it was likely the biggest explosion in porn sales world wide but also the biggest downfall in spite of it's sucess. The only other thing that would be close would have been the VCR.

then why didnt $10 a month sites do well. thats fuckin cheap for a month.

until we clean up all the free porn no model will work. and we will just get the scraps till they figure out how to get it free

gotta agree with this

Yes there are more choices, but that was not the question.

Yes we have free porn delivering what the customer wants, when he wants it, how he wants it and in the quantity he wants it. We need to think along different lines to win him back. Until we do he will stay where he is because no one has a clue how to close the free sites.

Yes if you have something truly unique and still in demand you will get sales, just being unique will not do it. But you do highlight one of the problems. People sinking thousand sinking $1,000s in cloned content that has nothing different to it than the next site. Yes unique desirable content will help.

We will never have the same explosion that rental provided, but we might just save ourselves. Some of us.

The solution to our decline in sales lays in the customers. Those who dream of closing Tube sites and Torrents are dreamers. And dreams don't pay the bills.

We need to find what some will pay for and deliver it to them, win them back to paying for porn and leaving the free loaders to the pirates.

Deep Throat

I had the first right answer. It WAS the VCR.

The same way the VCR allowed consumers to consume more porn, the home computer did the same thing.

It wasn't the internet, it was the home computer ending up in every home. It's about the device that allows consumers to consume MORE MORE MORE that drives content.


The VCR and the explosion of dirt cheap PC components fueled porn more than anything else.

As a side note to all the Apple fanboys, if Apple had it's way you wouldn't even be reading this as the internet would be about 10 years behind what it is now. The cheap and open architecture of the PC drove most of progress and adoption of the internet.