Want to get a glimpse of what we are up against when it comes to Free Porn? Check this out

Nothing, you should just put up another cookie cutter.

http://www.ferrocash.com/sites.shtml

Just thinking out loud here.

On the one hand you have people who will not pay for porn no matter how cheap it is. So no use adapting to fit their needs.

On the other hand, you have people growing up being educated that 'porn is free'. We could nip some of that in the bud. And that's where going against piracy comes in.

But then you get the attitude that all porn webmasters are either scum who don't deserve their money, or are selling crap you can get for free. And those attitudes tend to prevail in both groups.

People may say it's the way surfers have been ripped off by some porn companies, but it happens in mainstream too, but the whole mainstream industry doesn't get a bad name as a result.
No, I think the prevailing attitude is that we are scum and no one will help us but ourselves.

Then you get the price lowering argument. But if you are selling crap and people realize it's crap, there's no point in lowering the price when it's already out there on tubes or obtainable via rapidshare and co.

So one answer here is to produce good quality content. But what's the point if it gets downloaded and put on rapidshare?
And even if you sell memberships for a lower 'value' price, it can still be obtained for free.

I don't think we can apply on a broad scale the same thinking that iTunes applied to their model either, unless someone comes up with the idea of an application similar to iTunes.

Buy an iPod and you have to download iTunes to transfer your own CDs as well as download new music. OK, you can find ways around the system, but basically, if you want a piece of music quick and it's cheap, then you probably go to iTunes rather than search for the same music on rapidshare, because you have to get around the system before you can use the download on your iPod.

But would porn industry leaders want to get together to make an application like this? Especially when most of their movies are out there for free already. Would there be any point?

Perhaps selling tangible goods alongside porn is the answer.
Things like showing ads for HD TVs alongside the HD video you are showing on your website. That's as long as the video really is HD. Many are not.

Then Nautilus makes a good point, despite being shouted down. There are still many people who actually want to buy porn, not join interactivity web 2.0 type sites, or simply watch cams.
And yes, I know there's more to interactivity than this, but arguing against his ideas on that and missing his other points is not doing his comments justice.
I will say that the porn sites that do best for me are those who have an active member's area, with forums and member requests actually being answered. That's the sort of interactivity those porn buyers want.
Perhaps we should all be emphasising this a bit more?

As I said. Just thinking out loud and trying to 'adapt or die' myself .

can i get any compensation for my time and ideas? serious question.

or am I just suppose to lay it all out here for gfy rep and "i told you so". Offer me something, and keep the information strictly between us if you decide to use it. If you don't think there is any value, keep your money. Hell you don't even have to pay me up front. If you don't see the value in it and you really don't use it then I wouldn't expect you to pay for it.

To do it right I would need an hour or so of your time so I could understand what your current philosophy is, long term planning, completely understand your current business model and how your sites are setup.
You might not want to make the changes I suggest. It will take, commitment and will cost you some money. Some people are already in the going out of business mode, where they just cut costs down to a bare minimum don't add any new content and live off of those rebills as long as they can. For someone like that obviously they not going to want to make any of the changes I would suggest. The person would have to be committed and want to do what it takes to turn their business around.

I would spend some time going through your sites. I would have a bunch of question for you to see if you are willing to make certain changes and if you have the resources to do it. It's not as simple as "go do x,y,z... this will work for everyone". I would be spending quit a few hours on an initial report for you. However the general logic is pretty much the same just applied differently to different sites based on the nature of the sites and what they are capable of doing.

its up to you or anyone else for that matter if they want to take a shot and get another perspective. Honestly, though if you banking on your only option to survive on fighting content theft and winning, i am sorry to say the chances of that happening are very very slim. I'd be exploring other options to try to get sales up instead.

I have A/B tested my sites TO DEATH over the past 6 months. With prices as low as $9.99 and as high as $39.99, and everything in the middle. Wanna know what overwhelmingly made the most sales and what price point retains the most? The winner is.... $29.99

A cheap price has very little to do with it. I have 6 months of data and 1000s of sales to back this up. A consumer is willing to pay for something he WANTS. Thus the trick, giving them what THEY WANT. If you can do that, you don't have to whore out your product.

I've tried making the sites interactive. It failed. Most members do not leave comments. Most do not want to talk to each other. Most do not want to be interactive. Most all of them just want to beat off and go about their day, and if you have what they want, they come back to beat off again and again. If they want friends, they will login to Facebook, not a porn site.

Porn is not rocket science. Piracy, saturation and credit issues are the main issues hurting this business. If you can deliver what your customers want, price has nothing to do with it.

you right not everyone wants interaction or (participation) they just want to log in watch the videos get off and go. Not a lot of people fit into this category but they are out there. Now if you added interaction to your site and I'm not just talking about live cams.... couldn't that same person who only wants to watch videos go still log in watch videos and go. Adding interaction to your site isn't going to cause you to lose anyone. It's not like you making the "loner" type guy walk through a crowed room where everyone tries to talk to him, its a porn site. He goes to the videos section instead of participating in the new stuff you added to the site.

I think there is a little rocket science to it, at least you need to have some these days. 10 years ago, you could have had 8th grade science and made millions.

Interaction isn't leaving comments ;) on videos. It isn't even web2.0. And you are right, members "typically" don't want to interact with *each other*or be friends with each other. You really don't know if they would like interaction or not because you haven''t added it yet.

I am convinced now that you guys have no clue what interaction is, or at least in the sense that I am using it. Maybe " interaction and participation" is a better phrase.

I said right in the first paragraph that I am not talking about lowering monthly membership fees. I would say this has virtually fuck all to do with conversions, maybe retention on the extreme end but not much different between $10 and $30.

While we're on the subject though, I put a paysite up with a friend years ago to win a bet. It cost $89 per month and converted at 1:200. I marketed it to people that frequented cam sites and used junk content and feeds from one of those cam places.

I partner with a small midwest US producer of traditional femdom content on my social site. He turns a healthy profit from having his content and promotions scattered across my site. It's beyond me why so many programs cling to the old $29.95/month screw you model which is clearly not working.

Yes, there will always be ppl who will sign up to old school sites. But those old school sites/networks needs to be of super quality to make any serious amt of sales in todays market. Over the years I have seen thousands and thousands of sponsors/programs and honestly, imo there are maybe 10 or 15 networks/sponsors in total who offers really super quality. I am not saying there arn't other sponsors who got some good titles here and there. Question is, is it worth $29.95 recurring monthly? If the market says no, chances are they will turn down $14.95 or $9.95 too

I'd like to plug Kink here as an example. They are old school with a hint of modern. They will make it (unless they do some unbelievably stupid things) simply because of their extreme uniqueness and quality.

Is it worth $29.95 *the first month* is really the first question you have to ask. Because if the site has no interaction then the only thing that changes on the site is a few updates. Even if the site updates every day, think about it... Person signs up for the first month to get access to 3,4,5,6,7,8+ years of content all for $29.95..... then these guys expect that person to pay another $29.95 each additional month for what, a most an additional 1% of new content??? Once they seen what you have they either downloaded it or watched as much as they want for that month and they moved on.

It's one (big) obstacle to get people to sign up initially for a picture and video site, but it is almost impossible to get them to rebill... besides the ones that forget, which likely makes up the vast majority of the ones that don't cancel after the first month. I am not saying that no one is doing, some sites are still retaining, but they are few and far between and its only g oing to get worse and worse.

So its getting harder and harder to make new sales for these sites and when they do they give the members no incentive to rebill, pay the same price to see a this -><- new content, every month? its crazy that people are still clinging on to this model.

Exactly. And you seem to think they'd leave our member area to go to some feature rich site with blogs and other shit. While in reality they're heading straight into the places like this one:

http://85.17.187.83/saff/index.php

Then they go straight to the download link, grab stuff and wank. And it's all happening in a deafening silence. Check this thing, it's half facebook size and it's silent like a fucking cemetry. Like a fucking tombstone.

They're doing there exactly what they did in our member area for years - download clip and wank, repeat. Only talk if you want more shit or more of this girl or something needs fixing. Otherwise, shut up and wank. The only difference is that they're getting their shit for free now thanks to DMCA.

Get rid of sick places like that, and things will be back to normal in no time.

Member to member videochat? Do Jesus... That's some pretty special community you have there. So you're basically saying that middle aged overweight mostly white guys (typical members) would videochat with each other while sitting in front of their monitors pants down and wanking? Jesus fucking Christ... But OK, if you somehow managed to have them doing that and even bitch when the shit is not working good for you... Although for me that sounds as something completely irrational.

Our members would not even talk to girls, let alone to each other. We tried that and many other sites in the niches we work with tried that too, and those live shows never attract more than 10% of members (which corresponds with the Mutt's estimations above pretty well), and make no difference whatsoever to the bottomline.

It's funny, these sites manage to monetize the content better than a lot of the programs they are ripping.

you people are doomed.

/thread

You're absolutely correct.

Of all the things we've tried over the years, member forums where you discuss what to shoot next with your members and take requests, that's about the only thing that works and it works GREAT.

We're not taking member requests currently because we're overstretched logistically, and we've learned the hard way it is better not to take member requests at all than not deliver what was promised. But if I'm to share a piece of advise with my fellow paysite/program owners - if you can accept member requests/scenarios and than deliver what's promised, $150 vbulletin script will be the best investment you made in your lifetime.

That's the kind of interaction that works - members would not talk to each other, most of them would not even talk to girls. But they WILL talk with you the producer, if you're willing to listen and answer and consider their suggestions for your new videos. Member participation in the creation of videos DOES increase loyalty and retentions.

I'd not recommend going 100% member requests route though because you'll end up being a weirdo site. 25-50% of updates shot using member ideas/scenarios is just fine.

Starting a racket where you are essentially threatening to air peoples viewing habits in public if they don't pay you isn't exactly going to dissuade that sentiment. Quite the opposite.

Shap Thanks for sharing, the comments are a good indications how "other" people are thinking about our business and in a way they are right!

This business is dying, there is simply too much free porn available, totally no innovation and/or chances going on and the consumers have multiple ways to spend their time online.

For sure floating on the same business model that once made you successful is definitely not a guarantee you will be successful in the future.

In my opinion by embracing new technologies, using other business models, offering your member base extra features, initiate star alliances with other companies in adult space there is a way to create a turning point.

Free porn will never disappear but it would be nice if their will be a definition of rules/penalties for each of us to use to minimize the quantity of free porn.

As for my own activities, I'm already looking for 4-5 months for the ideal partner to do some real voodoo magic and syndication but till today no results yet.

Till then we are doing a lot of innovating mainstream software development which we can later in adult space.

Like that's going to happen.

The vast majority of people have done nothing to change the way they operate. They still pay way too much to throw traffic at sites that except for HD have changed little in the last 5 years. They still don't spend enough on what the customers pay for.

Some sites still think adding 5 scenes that are exactly the same as the 500 already on the site id the way forward. Most sites contain bland "girl on a sofa/bed" porn. The same scene over and over again. How many sites employ on a full time or part time or even buy in from the top shooters in the business. People like these;

Viv Thomas
Pierre Woodman
Bill Wright
Jack Harrison
Steve Hicks

And I'm sure the list can be added to. All shooters working still in the porn industry and have always been "Guns for Hire". Except the Porn Internet could or would never pay them enough. But the DVD industry can and does. Yes the DVD industry has been hit, but they still can afford these guys.

How many sites have lots of live content, how many sites have a really good twist to their porn. AND how many sites just churn out the same porn they've been churning out for years?

How many sites update with a scene that makes the member want to stay?

I recently re reviewed a top site and was appalled at the basic mistakes being made by a shooter many praise here. So I sent the owner an email of suggestions to improve the content he's adding. Didn't even get the courtesy of a reply.

To sell successfully to a repeat buyer, you have to have something worthy of buying.

</rant>

PayPal has their dirty hands involved again. No surprise.

I am sure PayPal has made millions on theft - also with the sale of stolen goods on eBay.

so change your content so that it makes money for you when it gets shared.

there are more than 107 changes you could make that would do that.

Although I totally agree with you, imagine how many times Jobs was told that by the record and film companies whilst trying to launch iTMS.

I guess you are forgetting about the price of PRODUCTION.

D'oh. Your response is evidence of why you don't understand how to turn a buck in 2010. You think middle aged men in the femdom niche with money sit in front of their screen and cam jerking off to each other? You sir have a fairly large femdom network and yet you don't understand what's embedded in the word femdom. Who do you think is on the other end cross selling and upselling all they can? It's a social network, social networks include commercial players in 2010.

Because you are not running any social sites. You run old school cookie cutter sites with large amounts of old rotated content. Your retention is awful.

That's like saying people won't pay for food.

Porn is a major part of human life. If there was no free porn available, everyone would be paying for it.

I was so damn tired this morning I skipped the whole "men don't want to jerk off with other men on cam" stuff. Thank you.

wow we agree, for once. I should play the lottery today.

Dead on. We've tried all of the above too with exactly the same results.

Again, nobody is saying otherwise you thick fuck. Read, read again.

I've tried all sorts of things, the members really didn't give a shit. I've tried building "communities" and it just didn't pay off. I've even tried having members direct the shoots so I could cater to THEIR fantasy. I've even offered trips to Thailand where they can come and fuck the girls. Almost all just want to beat off. Nothing more. You can't get much more interactive than blowing your load inside of the models, so if you have some magic tool that is better than that, I'm all eyes and ears. Nothing I have done has helped retain them, other than to keep giving them relevant updates.

You guys all have cocks I assume. When you rub one off, what do you think about? Whatever that is, there is your answer. For me, it has EVERYTHING to do with finding a video or photo that will help me play out the fantasy in my head at the moment. That's it. That simple.

As addressed earlier, it's not so easy to add social aspects to a standard site. First you have to get it there, then you have to market it as such. There is some overlap obviously but you are going after a completely different customer for the most part.

I tried making a few social sites. It didn't help my bottom line. Could be the niche, but I just don't see porn as being a social system. Freeloading, looking at pic profiles, yes! But something that makes money, I couldn't do it. Kudos to all of you who can.

It's an awful magic tool if you are basically selling the rights to view video clips online. It's sex tourism and probably not what your demographic is looking for.

However, if you can cater to a broad spectrum of ppl through a diverse site the link between the net and the real world do work, but probably not for all niches. Just be careful not to be on the wrong side of the law.

It's not the cost of production that binds us to the present day system. It's the cost of promoting a site. Until that's altered nothing will change. Tubes get millions of hits with no or little cost of promotion. That's the only reason they can afford to give porn away for free.

If too many move to the free model with the profit in advertising, the cost of promotion will sink many.

Start with the easy, vids and pics, but make it clear from the start that it is a social site. Then broaden out with social and interactive tools. Slowly you will get the ppl who likes this stuff to use it. Voila, you got activity you can monetize.

Which shows how the "Lock Down"solution won't work. 90% of the content on the Adult Internet isn't worth locking down.

This is where locking it down works. It won't turn the clock back to 2005 but it will save some.

Good luck getting affiliates to send traffic to a site that bills 99 cents a scene.

Most people know in spades what their affiliates need and churned out crap that only worked when the consumer HAD to buy. Few sites really understand customers needs or porn.

******************

The road ahead is rocky and for many will end soon. The irony is while most on the Adult Internet chuckled that free porn was hurting mainstream porn industries. They now are losing their jobs to free porn.

Piracy isn't the problem. Eliminating it will still leave the gate open for people to put up free legit movies, or do you think Manwin will give up and go away? The problem is the low cost of hosting, the high cost of promotion and the lack of innovation, imagination and skills of those who produce the product. Most people pay as little as possible for content and the result is boring porn that's cloned on site after site.

OK, I'm not clear on one thing. What is it that the tubes are doing to lower their promotion costs?

This is the easiest part of the equation, period.

Thanks, drove my gf to the night shift.

Yeah,

1. 10 mins signing up
2. 40 mins finding something I thought I'd like
3. 5 hours downloading a 750M movie in free mode
4. 5 mins joining files
5. boooom, nailed, german girl with cum on her face. Ok, not spectacular

I get it, you want those "half of Facebook" visitors. You don't think you can come up with a better product than this? And monetize it at the same time? Thing is, they perceive this as free. It is not, if I want to get a reasonable experience out of this I have to buy at least a 48hrs premium DL product at 6 bucks or so. X 3 if I want to be able to download from all 3 filehosts this site uses (and I want to so I'm not limiting me to only 33% of their content) Thats 18 bucks for 48hrs, 26 bucks for a month.

You don't have to go down the anti piracy route to get rid of this. Just put out something superior. Trust me it's easy, your marginal costs are low. You just don't dear to let go of large parts of your library.

edit; I now want to see if I could DL something else I might like. hmmmz, Your Free-Traffic is exceeded! pls wait another 48 mins to start the next 5 hour download. Perfect.

Here is some facts:
- If you only offer pictures and videos then you are vulnerable to having all of your content stolen and put on tube sites, thus decreasing the "value" of your site since everything that people would be paying for they can find for free.
- If all you have is pictures and videos what incentives do people have to rebill? They already saw all of your content, so they paid $30.00 for a million pictures and videos (for example) and now you expect them to continue paying $30 a month for a couple hundred new pictures and videos each month?
- Stolen content is not going to go away. It's only going to get worst.
- Interaction and participation is something that is ongoing. Will it appeal to all of your users, no. Will it cause you to lose anyone, no. It will help you get more people to sign up and it will help you to retain better.

It's not web2.0, or have your member's create a profile, chat with other members, add friends, leave comments, etc.. if they want that shit they will go to facebook or myspace. While giving a trip away is something different that really doesn't work either. I doubt you can afford to give a trip away every month, and a trip will only appeal to a select few people. How many people can get off of work or school to take a trip. How many married guys would be able to pull that off. Then there is the shy, lonely type that might be intimidated to do it.

Again not everyone will want the interaction and will want to participate, but you wont lose anyone from it just generate more new sign ups and help retain people longer. You just need to add the right things to your site and promote it properly. Every site is going to be different, every surfer is going to be slightly different. If you can make cost effective changes that help makes your sales go up 10,20,30% would it be worth it ? Or at the very least cause you to stop losing money each month like a lot of membership sites are doing right now.

I totally agree... and the free porn is enough to jack off too most of the time.

we pay our members to stay its the only thing so far that has worked for retention. for us

more like your members pay to stay for the opportunity to make money.

Interaction only works for gay sites and cam sites
straight guys just want to blow their load then they are done

they not only stay to make money and watch porn they chat live with new comers and get them to join. its working great i guess its somewhat interactive

Get paid to watch Porn is the future

Roger, out of all the websites posted on this board yours has the potential to make the most money. Unfortunately, the way these kinds of sites are advertised are not compatible with adult so most people here are clueless on how to generate the traffic.

How's it doing so far? I assume you're dealing with mainstream webmasters more than adult webmasters?

TO be honest I advertise in the mainstream realm mainly but the people joining are just regular folks looking to make extra money. Its not a get rich quick system at all. just talk to those already an associate

its doing amazing. I think there are like 10 people in chat right now on holloween weekend. during the week its alot more.

they feel like its a business and they dont care its with porn. alot of couples and women join

Chase Bank just approved our merchant account now thats sick

I didn't even look to see if you had a regular affiliate program but I just made a post here. http://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=995199

My comments are based solely on the fact that people pushing mainstream products similar to this are making more money as affiliates than anyone here could dream of in this day and age. I've seen your sig and noticed you talking about it but I never really paid attention until now. Great shit.

Hi. I might like to promote your sites but there's a fair bit of broken English on them. Is that intentional so you can imply that this kind of thing isn't legal in America?

and you can prove this how?

That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. How do you monetize that. So you pay people money to watch a porn? Where does the money come from to pay them and how do you make money if you the one paying them??? And please don't tell me its your pron MLM bullshit, because that is not people paying to watch porn. It is people paying to be an affiliate to sell porn, aka get rich quick money opportunities.

The only people who get paid to WATCH porn is people who write reviews. Way back there was the paid to surf people but to my knowledge that died out years ago. Some tube sites pay people to upload stolen porn, but don't think you were going there. People get paid to make porn, don't know of anyone getting paid to watch it.

How is Chris Mallick doing btw ?

My jaw dropped when I saw this. If Tubes had to pay out for sign ups they wouldn't be able to to support the system. They might pay for hits via people like Choker. But the fact the surfer sticks to them makes paying $1 for 1,000s of hit affordable.

That market is gone and while sites still chase it the Adult Internet will continue to shrink. Chasing the market in 2010 with what worked in 2005 isn't working.

Some people will never realise Tubes changed the business 100%. In 2010 the customer is KING. And unless you deliver what he will pay for it's not going to work. And you have to protect it.

I think you're wrong about all members not wanting to visit porn shoots. In Europe on satellite TV we have a program called Euro Porn. It's documentary style on what goes on in the porn business. The Internet angle is very very small, it's mostly DVD producers. One of the serials is about people visiting porn shoots and meeting all involved. Even couples turn up. The shoots are run by Private and I'm sure something like this would work for the Internet. Maybe not on a monthly basis, maybe by getting people to act as surfers. But the interaction you promote, what can be better than real one to one interaction?

The problem is as always affording it. After promotion costs what's left?

The customer ALWAYS was king Paul. That's the problem here. Years and years of thinking the customer is an open wallet and trying to rinse him for as much as possible.

If we as in industry hadn't done hidden prechecked xsales, carb banging, dialers, hard to cancel sites, etc etc we wouldn't be where we are now.

Piracy has always existed. The problem we face now is down to our own making.

Maybe if people thought the customer was king 20 years ago things would be different.

Christina Walsh = Capri Anderson (currently under contract with Medium Pimpin)