A Rare Business Thread (Tube Sites)!
 

Online porn has always been a business of "who can give away the most free porn and still make a profit." Surfers always flock to sites that give away the most easily accessible, high quality free porn.

In the beginning, webmasters gave away a few pictures on pages with loads of banners (pic posts) and made profit. Profit margins were huge.

Then TGPs came along and destroyed pic posts. TGPs consumed more bandwidth, hence profit margins were squeezed slightly, but were still huge.

Then MGPs came along and started offering the surfer even more free porn in the form of videos. Again, margins were squeezed, but profits were still good.

The adult industry has now taken a monumental leap forward with giving away free porn. I guess someone out there had an idea to build a site which gives away so much free porn, it could never possibly be out done. Hence, your first porn tube site was born. Profit margins are now as thin as they've ever been, but at least there is still profit being made, which is why tube sites continue to proliferate.

Tube sites are still relatively new, so most webmasters do not yet understand what kind of long term effect tube sites will have on our industry. Basically, the net amount of joins in our industry will decrease year over year. That means everyone's ratios will worsen, to what climactic effect, no one knows.

Personally, I think paysite owners will still continue to do well, even in the long run because their profit margins are so huge. Individual webmasters however are a different story. I think the number of new webmasters in our industry will either stagnate or decline as time progresses. Mainly, because the barrier to entry is the highest it's ever been and margins continue to get squeezed.

Some proponents of tube sites state that webmasters should evolve with the times and use tube sites to their advantage. That's fine in the short term. However, unlike pic posts, TGPs, and MGPs, tube sites pose a serious long term threat to our industry. The biggest tube sites out there, which get millions of visitors per day, are not only free, they're better than most paysites.

In conclusion, I believe our industry is experiencing a long downward spiral, which will accelerate with the proliferation of tube sites.

What does everyone else think? Agree? Disagree?

agreed,

imho paysite owners (affiliate programs and small paysites) should keep on hunting down their content on the large tubes that offer full length movies (we all know which ones im talking bout)

BUT to take it one step further imho dvd suppliers should make it rule that their dvds wont be used on tubes with this business model, which should pretty much kill the usage of full length movies on these tube sites, given that aff programs and paysite owners will keep on hunting down their content.

ATM wheneveri contact program owners bout their full length movies on tube sites, most of them are surprised to see it happening, and imho they should be the ones checking it every single day, get the message thru to the tube sites that you DO NOT want your full length members area movies posted on them.

theres also a few larger mgp sites using the same tactic as tube where they make "galleries" with a flv player showing up to 120 minute movies, imho the surfer hitting one of those is a lost surfer (well at least 95% of them are lost surfers) and will never buy a member ship to a paysite as theres plenty of full length movies to wank off to.

Its sad to see that theres a couple of webmasters that dont see what they are doing to this industry and the profits that we used to make.

i;m hoping for a better world still but i doubt it will ever happen that tubes will be forced to take down all big movies and use only 1-3 minute clips.

</rant-usefull reply>

Agree.....

The problem is the online porn industry is full of short term thinkers. Its sad really when you think of the amount of money we could really be making.

I couldn't agree more!

Ed, I'll do my best to get some time off and go to Spain and see you in Banus either in December or February. (rest is mostly tradeshows or holidays)

ill mail you my new cell number as the old one got knicked/lost in banus ;)

ok, please do :thumbsup

Before you get burned in effigy I think we, as an industry, should come up with a term to differentiate legal tube sites using licensed content from tube sites using stolen content.

The first is just an evolution of MGP, with short clips offered for free in order to upsell the site the clip is from.
The second is using stolen full length videos to attract surfers so they can display cam and dating ads.

The first kind is perfectly ok and doesn't hurt our business in the short or long term.
The second kind wouldn't be able to survive if it had to pay to license the content it's giving away, and is a fatally flawed business model IMO.
The long term effects are unknown....but I can't imagine they're good for either party. If the people producing content are no longer able to make a profit by selling it (and it's hard to sell when someone is giving it all away for free), then they'll stop producing it.
If they stop producing it, then the illegal tube site owners no longer have a free product to attract all of that traffic with.

So I guess the in the end it might be the "nuclear option" where the tubes put content producers out of business, and in turn put themselves out of business....and then when demand for paid for porn picks up, we start all over again.

Herding rattle snakes.

you will never get the dvd producers to tell anyone to not allow full scenes on free sites because they know that if the dont allow it, someone else would.

secondly, if i buy content, i should be able to do whatever i want with it.. if i can make money giving away content, then thats my business..

now, if someone is profiting off of stolen content, then thats a separate issue and that needs to be addressed.

i hear people here keep bringing up that all tubes that are offering full scenes are using stolen content. thats just not true. some do some dont.

in any case, i do agree that revenues from selling memberships is going to continue to decline. i still meet people that have no idea about adult tubesites, but they are learning.

free is here to stay, so you better get used to it and figure out how to embrace it or work around it... :2 cents:

although i have said that for $1,000,000 i will have all the illegal tubes shut down in 6 months...

first mp3s, then porn, later movies, the internet facilitates the spread and anonymous distribution of intellectual property, which is going to affect the motivations of the creators of content.

With tube sites there are 2 issues, one being stolen content, which I believe can be managed to a large extent through 3rd party companies, but the other problem being just the easy spread and distribution of homemade porn.

With bandwidth pricing going down, competition among tubes, technological improvements, etc they will get better, faster, some will figure out how to archive and catalog videos with an easy search, etc =Internet Chaos theory ? everything moves to free

You cant blame the tube site owns, many started tubes to hedge what they saw was an inevitable trend.

I did not know most of this business did any thinking at all. Long, or short term.

:helpme

You got it. People try to make the quick buck any way possible in the wild west that is the online business world.

when you say shrinking profit margins that is true. but you have to take into account how many 3rd world webmasters now have cable/broadband and are in the porn industry. back in the day there weren't as many 3rd world country webmasters but that has changed dramatically with internet access growing in these countries. those small profit margins in US dollars are a HUGE amount to them when you factor in the cost of living in the third world country they live in. this is something else i think which is destroying the industry.

I'll give you $1,500,000.

Tell me the idea and I'll resell it for $3,000,000 and split it with you! :thumbsup

Forgot the two biggest issues in that time line in my opinion at least.

Bar of entry to this business is beyond fucking low and laughable when you compare it against other businesses.

Giving away content for promotion. Sure it would not be as practical to promote exclusive sites with licensed stuff like before. It kept a lot of the waste down. Programs really should not of dumped out as much as they do as often as they do/did.

It became a vicious cycle. New affiliates, free content, get more affiliates, need even more free content so they can compete with each other better, get more affiliates. Eventually most felt is some is good, more is better.

Latter on teaching people that they did not need to work to be in this business was not all that bright either. Again more affiliates competing with each other, thus sponsors offered them even more beyond the content- hosting, then design work, and so forth. Pretty soon everyone expected it to come easy and without much work. After that why should they really respect anyone else's work.

PS. I really do not think business threads are rare here at all. The board just moves pretty fast so they have that appearance. People just say it often, yet I find good ones often on here.

:thumbsup

It's called competition. In simplified terms that means that everyone is looking to one-up each other and not all have the brains to do so in a constructive manner, thus forcing the hands of the rest to do the same. You can't put the shit back into the horse, so adapt or get out. Everything is cyclical, so at one point there will be almost no profits left in the industry, for new entrants. At that point entrepreneurs will shift focus to other fields, which are still profitable. Regardless, all the legal and growing pains aside, the business and maturity cycle of the online adult industry is not different from that of any other industry.

YOU CANT own a tube :1orglaugh
If tube profits are thin (like you say), its not the business model thats wrong, its the entrepreneur working on it doing it wrong.
All you guys do is complaining because your crying about the old days.

Why is tube traffic sold out most of the time?
Why are tube ad spots sold out most of the time?
Why do they rank so great in SE´s ?
Why are sponsors more and more adopting to tube sites?
Why do you see thousands of new tubes a day?

Because their traffic is shit and they all make no money. Exactly.

Tubes are surfer friendly. Tubes give the surfer EXACTLY what they want.
Good thing is, that starting a tube and keeping it up requires more then $10 bucks per month, so most webmaster wont even think about launching a tube. That keeps the competition low and there is more money to be made for me. Thanks :pimp

Ya I know, no way to get it back either. Just adding my two cents to the history of the fuckup.

i think that you had some interesting points there but in my opinion the problem is also the lack of contents.....in the end, it's always the same and the variety is amazing now... so you know what? new ideas and creativity is the key....and yes tubes are probably worsening the overall situation but i think that it's wrong that some people still think that they can sell what was working 10 years ago.... things are developing too fast sometimes and not everybody stepped on the right bus, or they didn't take any bus at all, they are still waiting at the station...

where are you guys??? ;-)

How do you figure that our profit margins are huge? We have many many costs involved, in most cases profit margins are not huge at all.

Profit margins will vary of course, from sponsor to sponsor. However, on average I estimate a signup is worth over $100/member. This is taking into account upsells, cross sells, rebills, exits, and mailers. Some sponsors implement more monetization techniques than others. As for expenses, those vary greatly as well.

Pretty much. Its amazing how few companies people with illegal tube sites are making their money with.

What else is funny is how most others still send their traffic to these same companies that are enabling the model to succeed at least for now.

A good point was made earlier differentiating between "illegal" tube sites and "legal" tube sites. I agree that legal tube sites are not a threat to our industry. In fact, one of my favorite legal tube sites is tiavastube.com. However, legal tube sites are fighting a losing battle. It is logical to conclude that as soon as a surfer discovers an illegal tube site with full length videos, they will not waste their time on "legal' tube sites with 1 - 3 minute clips.

I don't think webmasters realize how prominent illegal tube sites are, right now. Last time I checked, the four biggest "illegal" tube sites ranked well into the Alexa Top 100. That's insane, because it means on average those tube sites receive 5,000,000/visitors per day.

Think about that, 20,000,000 surfers viewing full length videos for free, every day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year.

official tube site bad for business thread #4592

I had a quick look at youporn.com and a 25 min. clip here. They advertise their cams on top of the left, close to an aff advertisement. They offer a premium membership for DVD´s at $ 9.95 per month as well.

Their index site is built similar. AFF, cams and the premium membership as well as web.tv and other offers on top of that site as a navigation bar.

I couldn´t find other advertisements than porn or porn related like dating and cams. So nothing is for free, even youporn isn´t really. They seem to make money by advertising those offers listed above. So far, so good.

Obviously they attract users by offering free porn. So the question is, do they legally provide the free content to their users. If not, it´s a problem for those competitors who are working legally and there should be a way to stop them tube sites using stolen content.

If the content is used legally, the question is do porn upsells work on a site which offers complete scenes from paysites for free (I found full publicinvasion scenes for example searching for "public" on youporn). My answer so far is I can´t believe it, but cams and dating sites should work. AFF advertisements for example use the following text:"Still watching porn? Fuck real girls near...!" So I think that´s the way it maybe works, but of course it´s just one possible way.

So in my opinion illegal working tube sites should be fought, but you can´t blame legal ones for their business model. If some tubes are better than many paysites, the paysites should be thinking of a change. At the end of the day it´s a question of competition. But of course the huge bargain of porn movies on tubes affects the paysites, especially niche sites if their content is used without permission.

Maybe paysites can turn the tables and give away dating and cams to sell porn.

YouPorn isnt illegal.. probably questionable but thats it.
User uploads and SPONSOR UPLOADED content.. its the new "hun" for sponsors if you know how to work it.
First video on YouPorn ->Bree Oslon Fucks Her Pussy Hard -> Twistys
Link below the video -> Click here for the hottest and sexiest babes online! All the Twistys.com babes are waiting for you, click here to see everything right now!

Now ask someone from Twistys what amounts of sales they sent per day. Prolly more then most of the people here per month.

What is Banus like these days? I was there a couple of winters ago. Quiet, but there was still life around the harbour. The popular places, Sinatras, Picasso etc. were still busy every night.

But, I heard Banus is slowly dying and is like a ghost town now. True?

They are doing WAY more than 5 million visits a day.

I didn´t say youporn is working illegal. Believe me, I know a thing or two about legality. But some tubes are sailing close to the wind.

And of course you are right, revenue can be generated from tube sites. If not, nobody would advertise there.

Talking about sailing close to the wind:

http://www.youporn.com/watch/41568/a-czech-public-girl/

I can´t find any advertisement let alone a bangbros advertisement below that video. Maybe they get revenue from one of the other ads. So I simply don´t know if they have the right to distribute it. But I highly doubt that anybody can think of that movie as legally user uploaded content.

I agree. My research indicates that the biggest tube sites are actually receiving in excess of 10,000,000 visitors/day, but I wanted to keep my estimates conservative, so that webmasters would not get distracted with trying to disprove plus or minus 1 million visitors.

false

8chars

Well, that is good to know. I quite liked it over there.

What in your opinion, or anyone elses, is a happy median? How do you leverage the free content to get more affiliates / traffic, without shrinking the pool of potential customers by "giving away the farm", if you will?

My biggest concerns with our content is where it will be seen, and if it will be used to genuinely promote our products, or some other company instead. For the most part, the former issue can be controlled, to a certain extent; my bigger concern is the latter, and without manually verifying sites regularly, how else do you make sure your content isn't being used to promote some other company - possibly a competitor?

Most of the people on the Adult Internet came in to make a million dollars a year in their first year and retire before they're 30. We actually spread the impression is was that easy and all they needed to do was start by sending us some traffic and build from there.

Every time I said this is a tough game for professionals I was flamed and told I was scared of the competition. I will now say it loud and clear.

WELCOME TO THE WORLD WE MADE.

Get it?

This is now a tough business that eats fools and newbies. It was easy in 1977 and if it had of been easy I would be driving a cab and not a pornographer who can still afford to ride in one. :1orglaugh

If you buy content you should definitley be allowed to do with it as you please. So long as you buy the content. I guess in most cases you buy a license and not content. So if you buy a license you should do what the license allows you to do and nothing else.

Or is it any other way?

As an example. I buy 20 DVDs and make up a site because I bought content, or I buy a membership and give the content I download to 20 Tube sites. Is that right?

This is how you do it and no one will fucking listen so WTF?

First you improve the members experience in ways I've been telling you to do for years.

Then in every site you have a live cam girl or girls depending on the size of the site. We give this to members for free.

Lastly we band together to form a dating site, legit or not, which we also give to members for free.

This will cost money and needs an accountant to sit and work out how much. The big mega sites can do it on their own the medium to smaller need to club together to get it done. The cost comes out of the traffic budget. You can choose to spend less on advertising for affiliates, going to shows or cut the rev share by say 10%. The affiliates will not lose because the sales will increase.

By taking away the main revenue stream from illegal Tubes you soon will find them deciding to go rip off another industry. But while they get paid by dating and cam sites they will stay.

Now tell me why it will not work.