CaptainHowdy

¡Ajajajajajajajajajaja!

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Another approach would be to keep finetuning your site to maximize CTRs and also improve your branding/call to action. I do this with my adsense sites and you'd be surprised how much of an impact a simple change in WP theme makes.

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javok

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garce

Fixed it for you. And now I'll add to the fail.

99% of the people here will never create a successful tube site. I can't do it. Don't have the wherewithal...

Sure, you can start a tube site and get a bit of a community going, maybe make half decent sales using short promo clips. Unfortunately - no matter how niche your website is - someone is going to create a tube and post full videos on it. Or start a forum with full site rips. Why even consider competing with that nonesense?

If you have little traffic, I'd suggest trying fake tube. I mean really fake. No FLV players on your site at all. For me, there is no point in competing.

Quick overview: Install a WP tube theme. Propagate with posts. Your frontpage will be covered with thumbnails and stars and durations, etc - just like a tube. When a surfer clicks a thumbnail, they go to your "video" page.

On this video page, there is no video, no flv player. Instead, there is an image of an flv video that links to a hosted FLV gallery - preferably a gallery with one video, and hopefully that video matches your thumb. They click play to watch the video, they go to sponsor site. Buh-bye. I want to sell memberships - not entertain horny 12 year olds.

It actually works pretty well - and no-one gets upset because they still get served a video.

alias

Forrealz. Mainstream is great if you have interests that pertain to what you sell, otherwise the % is pretty weak in comparison. Owning your own product line works best in mainstream.

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Nicky

I'm gonna read through all replies and give my but this post is good and I'll start here.

Most my "tubes" are WP based and focused on Search Engine traffic. Most surfers now day's are conviniant with the tube delivery system, there has to be a way to work this to our advantage. Micro-niche or no micro-niche I know what I am doing with my sites(mostly free blogs) in this market. I make a good living out of them. Now I also work for ER and they provide great content to stay alive in this game.

Coming to a conclusion with your post, I in one way agree with you but creating completely fake tube sites won't impress anyone. If you can SEO a fake site to the top and reap the benefits that way , all the power to you but the way things are looking that's mostly not happening.

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digitaldivas

good thread, people are finicky. I know micro niche and it's a very small pond. And micro niche is much more "hands on". Foot and Pantyhose Fetishists will email you, much more interaction between site and base, at least in my experience. I love it, I am a fetishist, and love any interaction with my community, but sometimes, it's like a fucked up version of a first online date, lol.

As far as pretty, imho, I have run some of the slickest indexes out there, were my ctr'z and conversions better than text jerk sites?, ...duh. But in the end, if there is a huge glut of free shit out there, why the fuck, convert on ANY of our sites?!?

You know if paysite owners would "google" their domains, be proactive and at least take the stolen passes they have offline, that would be a good start to "tightening up the circle" as it were... How hard can it be to police your inbounds to your members access url?!?

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trevesty

When I did freelance consultation, I refused to offer marketing advice for something I either a) had zero passion for, or b) knew nothing about.

In adult, I won't market a pay site that I wouldn't join myself. It's dishonest.

Your point stands, though. I know of a few guys who are great with online marketing, absolutely great.. but they promote either a) shit they don't like/care for, or b) pure shit.

The few old school companies that realize throwing up a site and hoping people join days are over will still be around in 10 years.

The many others(as we have all seen) will continue to shut down doors and move on.

Nicky

I'm too tired right now to take on the replies but I will do It later. I do love the discussion we have going.

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Paul Markham

I was in front line selling for 11 years. Selling installations of office furniture, big stuff not the odd desk or chair, and advertising. I met many top marketing people which is different to selling.

They all knew their market, customers and product. Without that they were just spewing marketing phrases that didn't mean shit to the buyer.

Selling an office desk, is very different to selling office stationery. One is a one off buy every 5 to 10 years. Unless an add on. Selling office stationary is an every day buy. Both used by the same person and both require different marketing.

A lot of the marketing talk I see on the adult Internet is appropriate to buying it once. Yet porn is something a buyer buys repeatedly and often. It's aimed at getting a one off sale, no thought is put into the next sale and the next and the next.

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izzynew

I agree, and the better sponsors do try to give their members an experience worth rebilling for.

But as I said earlier, if the surfer can't sign up in the first place, you're fucked, whatever you can offer them in the member's area.

When it's a case of making porn so good, with content that will rebill, you have to find a way to get that surfer past the join page, otherwise all that hard work and expense is wasted. And nowadays many surfers have to be really persistent to get their cc's accepted, with or without cascading billing.

Unless you are offering those surfers something they can't find anywhere else, or another way of paying for what you can offer them (which still includes the affiliate who has worked hard for that sale), most won't bother to be that persistent.

candyflip

Technically, wouldn't ratios be increasing?

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Nicky

This is a big problem for sure.

At Euro Revenue each EU member state has its own established online payment options other than just credit cards. We offer amongst others: direct debit and direct pay, this is great for those who can't be billed with Visa or MasterCard. But ultimately It's the CC sales that make up the majority and It's not good with the high decline ratio on them right now.

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izzynew

I noticed that post too. And that certainly could be part of the problem.

But those cc declines can't all be down to blacklisted cards. Despite the economy, new cards are still being issued and to new consumers.
There has to be something more than this that is hitting cc sales for porn so badly compared to mainstream, which often has just as shady cross sells.

My ratios this month on some good sponsors who usually convert on great ratios are as high as 1.4000 at the join page.
My sales tactics haven't changed. My carefully sculpted traffic continues to grow. But my sales are lower than they have been for months.

Nicky

Yea, well, you know what I mean

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Agent 488

yes there are some ridiculous ratios is some niches for me, some are ok still.

candyflip

I know. Just thought it was funny this made it to page two without someone mentioning it.

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Odin

Because making money in mainstream is impossible right? It's a much broader market with much more money floating around then adult. Personally I've never shown off or bragged about any of my successful investments. Call it being paranoid, but I do not want to invite close competition. In the last 12 months though I have made solid money in mainstream. Just don't waste your time dicking around on little blogs.

As for micro-niche, I don't think it is the solution for everyone (simply isn't enough traffic) but it obviously does convert well for certain people. Usually those who enjoy the niche really tend to succeed. Amateur (true), solo girls, webcams, etc which exist to build a fan base also still remains very successful if done right.

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BIGTYMER

The sneezing niche is really hot right now. Don't ask me why... Its bizare as shit.

Paul Markham

1) Creating a site

2) Getting traffic.

Is only half the job. Without selling something the jobs not completed.

Sadly too many in this industry thought it was all about step 1 and 2.

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Nicky

Sounds like you have a winner there

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Rochard

We need to create something new. I'm working on something that will take fantasy and make it real. We'll see if it works.

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Nicky

Sounds interesting. Playing the surfers fantasy is very important to make the sale.

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scubadiver626

Genius. I have an 11 year old dying AVS site i'll do exactly this. IOU my first sale.

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sweetcuties

I got into porn not because of the money, because I like getting amatuer girls nude... I like seeing what they'll do. It's a lifestyle for me, the money is secondary... I get s/up's I'm happy

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jesse_adultdatingdollars

Step up, show us your mainstream revenue.

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PR_Glen

I don't think its a matter of shaping up or not. My statements were more geared towards ratios and older techniques. We have plenty of webmasters who get decent sales from tube style sites, but most of them are aware that because they have LOTS of content up that the ratios climb and they have to work harder for that sign up. It's just a different marketing strategy really. I find that tube people usually do better with free joins or 1$ joins as opposed to 3.99 because their traffic is used to getting things either free or cheap. Offer something at a discount and give them the impression that its a good deal and you will get your sales.

As for not being able to market unless you 'believe' or 'purchase the product yourself' I'm sure there are some fashion designers and car salesmen that may argue different!

Market it like you would be buying it if you weren't selling it and leave the beliefs to the religious and you will do just fine ;)

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DamianJ

In order to answer the OP, with ratios declining what you need to do is makes shit loads of landers and split test them.

Run each a/b test for a couple of weeks, work out which elements on the page are pushing conversions. Might be a change of colour, some copy, a well written caption, a strong call to action, a joke, making the JOIN button green. Etc.

Rinse. Repeat.

It's not rocket science. But you do need to come up with interesting ideas for the marketing. If only there was a company to help people do that.

Nicky

This is true, split testing is very important, that way you can fit landings in that are tailored to your traffic in the best way. This is one thing I am pretty sure many many affiliates are too lazy to do.

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mgtarheels

What you can do is stop bitching and start innovating.

Nicky

Also a good idea, for those that are in fact bitching. Some try and get a discussion to get some innovating things flowing too.

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Paul Markham

Great idea. Let's all start Tube sites.

That will turn 1,000 buyers into 100.

Just because a few are getting sales from Tubes you have to look at the bigger picture. How many of those browsing loads of free 6 minute video clips on a Tube site would of bought if they were only 10 second clips?

One fashion designer or car salesman who doesn't know or like the product, makes a sale and the guy next to them who makes ten because he knows and likes the product. But the first guy proves you don't have to know or like the product.

Where did you learn your marketing?

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Paul Markham

Running tests on different tours is a small part of the problem.

What if the content on the tour simply isn't good enough. Or the content in the site isn't good enough. Or the guys running the site don't understand the product. Or the designer making the tours doesn't the product or the buyers needs.

Making 5 tours out of crap content by a designer who is only a cut and paste artist won't solve the problem. And everyone who signs up will quickly realise the tour was the best thing on the site.

Great for a one off sale. Sucks if your market is based on repeat buyers.

Repeat buyers of porn as we all keep telling ourselves have learnt the lessons and now far more wiser than they were 10 years ago. Relying on the newbie buyer in the porn market doesn't work.

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redwhiteandblue

At the end of the day ratios don't matter. What matters is how many people are buying the porn. As long as we keep building more sites, be they blogs, tubes, free sites, whatever, our ratios will get worse but that doesn't mean sales will.

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izzynew

That's what a lot of us are being forced to do at the moment.
And it's making domain registrars and some hosting companies richer than most of us.

DamianJ

You are awesome and shooting down ideas without actually offering what you believe is a better solution.

Paul, listen, you cannot get someone to rebill unless they bill first, can you?

So what you need to do to improve RATIOS right now, which is what the OP is asking for, is to do split tests.

If you do split tests you will learn what aspects of the tours convert and then you can improve the ratios by combining those elements in a new tour. Rinse and repeat.

What is your suggestion for improving ratios in a site, right now? Not over 6 months. Tonight. What would you do if you were on The Apprentice and Sugar asked YOU to improve ratios on a site in 24 hours.

Nicky

Magic join links!


Sry Paul couldn't resist

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Paul Markham

No doubt testing different tours will tweak sales with what ever content you have. Finding a design that makes a surfer feel comfortable enough to start viewing the content will always help. Nothing to flashy, nothing too innovative. We don't want design to over power the content.

But isn't not going to bring more people back to buying porn in the long run. And as redwhiteandblue posts that's the real problem.

Todays buyer is very wise. What ever the design he will make his first decision to look at the site based on content, might be content on a TGP, blog or a tube. So if that content isn't good enough he won't even arrive at the site to see the tour.

Yes when the traffic arrives the design helps. However if the content on the tour doesn't arouse enough interest the surfers off again. To quote one phrase often used "Porn is an impulse buy." Well if the porn on the tour isn't good enough to arouse that impulse the tour fails. What ever the design.

Then affiliates start to see a site not performing and traffic falls.

So the design is so good the surfer converts. The site promises, a forum, which is on the tour, lives shows, webcam, web chat, and loads of new content every day.

But it's all not good enough. The forums dead because people don't bother to post, the lives shows are boring, the web cam is boring and the web chat is some girl wishing she was at home. And the surfer cancels and the site doesn't retain. AND affiliate see poor earnings and send traffic elsewhere.

The problem with "Rinse and repeat." Is the process also happens with surfers. They also rinse and repeat and learn by experience. They've become for more cautious today and very picky. As I said arousing their interest is tougher in 2010 than it was 2005.

There are no overnight fixes to todays problems. It took time to get here and will take time to get out.

But testing different tours will help overnight.

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redwhiteandblue

That absolutely was not the point of my post. My point was not to worry about ratios, worry about the bottom line. If there are 1000 porn buyers per day, and 100 webmasters, each webmaster can make 10 sales and everyone is happy. If there are 1000 porn buyers and 10,000 webmasters, someone isn't going to get any sales, even though the number of sales hasn't gone down. If you're not making any sales, get better at what you do, because someone else is.

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Evil Chris

So I start a thread yesterday about how the monthly billing model is in decline and nobody wanted to talk about it. Denial maybe, or maybe I should have cloaked the discussion by just calling it "ratio decline" like this thread.

Nobody wants a montly porn membership anymore. Tubes and other free outlets have hurt the business, yes. But, people are still willing to pay for porn as long as they're getting exactly what they want. Specific niches, cams, (some) dating, and VOD will all thrive as long as they play nice. People are way too fucking savvy now to be fooled, hence the disappearance of many affiliate programs that used to make a shit-ton of money using shady practices.

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Paul Markham

The flaw in your argument is the last part. Getting better at driving traffic is all you can do as an affiliate. But it won't stop the decline in ratios. Maybe others will drop out of the race and you can pick up their sales. Or maybe other affiliates will get better at what they do and drop you out of the race. It becomes a game of leap frog with everyone leap frogging each other.

Improving the product keeps buyers buying and will bring some back. Nothing will bring back the old days but the future might be brighter with a few more buying. And you working hard.

Monthly memberships are declining for many reasons.

1. The old buyer who use to buy anything half way decent is long gone. Tubes have him and he's not coming back.

2. Many sites aren't worth a months membership. The content of the site isn't good enough because too much is spent on driving traffic to sites that aren't worth signing up to.

Selling on the Itunes model might work. Good luck earning a living out of porn scenes at 99 cents a go. Maybe a membership to a great site that altered membership to actual days and not calendar days. So every day the member logged in a day came off the membership.

Maybe paysites with 10-20 scenes in for $5 will work. Someone should try that.

What ever the solution is it will require more to be spent on what's inside the site and less on what's outside.

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DamianJ

You, amazingly, didn't understand.

By rinse and repeat, at the end of a paragraph about split testing I meant that once you have done one a/b test you do another one. You are never finished. A tour is never 'done'. There is always something you can do to, as this thread is about, improve ratios. You have two slightly different landers/tours. You test them. example b wins. You then test b against another design. and another and so on and so forth. rinse and repeat. Continually change and test.

PR_Glen

If you are under the impression that we only have a few webmasters using the tube model to get sales then you truly have no idea what the hell you are talking about...

Are you suggesting we pretend that a large number of surfers aren't going to tube sites? do you have any idea how big that market is? Obviously not... Like it or not, it's there and wishing it away isn't going to make you any money.

In what circle jerk fantasy world does the salesmen who 'truly believes' in his product make ten times the sales next to the man who just markets it well instead? What a crock of shit... you think our top tranny webmasters are dying to get free passes to our tranny sites because they LOVE it so? Do they BELIEVE in tranny cum swapping? OR are they just niching it out to the people who want it in an effective manner?


Everyone around here is selling porn when you are selling sofas...

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Paul Markham

I understand fully. I was giving you an example of how marketing in a one off way like tweaking tours isn't going to fix the problem we have today. Because tweaking tours is going to at best lead to more people signing up to sites they feel didn't meet their expectations and more people turning off buying all together.

Ultimately the success of a tour relies on the content on it. A nice design won't turn bad content into good. The success of the site depends on the ratios the affiliate gets. Good ratios more traffic. Bad ratios less traffic.

Your solution to improving ratios is an overnight fix. Rather like taking an Aspirin for a broken leg.

Glen, you were the one that brought up Tubes.

The only way to succeed in the future is to provide something a lot better than Tubes. Yes they exist and we shouldn't ignore them. ONLY giving them more reasons to succeed will eventually lead to the downfall of many in the porn business.

And yes a person with no interest in the Tranny niche will shoot content not good enough, will build a site not good enough and will drive traffic not well enough. Maybe my example of 1 against 10 was wrong. But are you saying people with no interest in a product can create and market the same as those who do have interest in it?

I've been selling porn for decades so the sofa jibe is way off the mark. Or punters have been buying my sofas for decades.

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Nicky

This is true, tubes are huge and I'm not only talking about the biggest ones that get all the heat. All the sponsor hosted content tubes, saying that they simply don't make sales is a lie, then you have the bigger legal ones that are making a real mint with sponsors, I have first hand knowledge that membership sites do sell on tube sites, It all depends on how you want to build and market your tube. The tube is simply a content delivery system that is more suited for today, It's the people, as always, that have taken wrong advantage of It.

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DamianJ

You didn't do that though, Paul. You took the rinse and repeat phrase I used to talk about continually a/b testing and posted about that totally out of context, but whatever...you can lead a horse to water.

No one is asking here about how to fix a global problem of how to sell porn, which is the question you ALWAYS answer, whether it was the question or not.

The question was about how to improve ratios, which is what I answered.

No it doesn't. As I have said before. I could make a tour with your content on, that you say isn't good enough any more and I could make it sell.

It's all about design, copy, layout, and understanding how to sell.

I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is on that. You're not.

That's exactly what it will do. That is what a good designer does all day long.

Only if your business model is built to rely on affiliates. And any site owner that does that is stupid nowadays.

Yes, that is what the OP asked for. Not a lecture on how better content is the sole thing that will save the industry, Paul. Which is all you EVER say. Regardless of the question. Like a stuck record.

So I guess we have a difference of opinion on how to help the OP improve his ratios. I think he should split test his tours. Something that is REALLY cheap simple and easy to do overnight. You think he should throw away all his content and make it again, but better.

I guess he can decide which he'd prefer to try.

x

DamianJ

Great post.

And yes, I think he really does believe what he posts. Be much easier if he was just trolling, but sadly, I don't think he is.

Paul Markham

So I see what you mean now.

Start by testing A against B. The one that is the best wins. For instance B

Then test B against C and if the winner is C rinse and repeat.

Great idea.

Anyone see the flaw?

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Paul Markham

What if testing B against c only reveals B works better?

Test it against D.

Crap B MIGHT still works better, so test it against E.

Double crap B MIGHT still works best.

So rinse and repeat and test it against F.

My example is just that an example to what COULD go wrong.

The flaw is obvious. While a site is testing it's risking the new site tour not working. Throwing 1,000 at each COULD result in 1 tour losing sign ups. Not a given the second, third or any tour being tested will work better. They can work worse.

So each tour has cost $3,000, spending less the site owner might end up with a crap designer. And the subsequent testing might lose sign ups. Which might lose affiliates.

MAYBE surfers returning to the site get confused landing on a different tour over and over again. What about branding. MAYBE a different tour mean TGPs and banners have to be changed as well.

Testing tours all the time is great if each test reveals a positive result. But life isn't that simple and business definitely isn't.

I think Damian really does believe what he posts. Be much easier if he was just trolling, but sadly, I don't think he is.

THERE IS NO OVERNIGHT FIX TO THE PROBLEMS THIS INDUSTRY FACES. It took years to get here and will take years to get out.

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