5 Year Trends (1996-2001)
 

Well, I've been in the porn slinging business for about 5 years now, and I've never made less money than I do these days. I am learning to adapt, however, and some of my checks are getting larger.

When I first started in 1996 there wasn't really as much competition. I made all of my money from Adult Check galleries that I posted to newsgroups, top lists, and IRC. I didn't spam the newsgroups (on topic posts with no URL on the pic). I made the most money ever during this period and with a lot less effort.

In 1997-1998, I partnered in a cartoon/anime paysite and made okay money. I think this was the time that I was advertising for Xpics. Remember them? They paid 25 cents per unique click...I made a lot of cash with those guys.

In 1999-2000, all my money was from Adult Check sites that I had made in the past that were now getting decent SE traffic. I was not updating or maintaining these sites, so my checks were small, but I was receiving them regularly.

In the last year or so, I've put more effort into TGP galleries and reseller programs. I barely make any money from Adult Check (because of Adult Check Gold, I think). I have to work 10 times as hard as I did in 1996 to make 25% as much cash.

So how are some of the other long-time webmasters out there doing? I think there's just so much more competition out there, and I haven't adapted well to new methods of traffic generation. Am I the only one who is making less money or is this a large trend in recent years?

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"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes."

To grow indefinitely you have to look for permanent solutions.

Permanent traffic sources -- build good relationships w/ your trading partners -- a good link trade will never die. Your buddies won't let you down.

Searh engine placement can be a source of permanent traffic. The search engines only get smarter -- if your site is a real resource (and not just some keyword trick) you will only get more and more traffic as you become more deeply rooted into the internet -- also link popularity will get you more traffic -- the longer you are on the net the more people will be linked to you and the higher your popularity will be. Also the longer that you are in the search engine -- the more priority you get (I heard somewhere that re-submitting can actually reset that er "duration" factor)

The longer your in the biz -- the more people will know who you are as a webmaster -- the more often they will see your link or button all over the fucking place. I remember a couple of years after I had been surfing I came across Molson from Irecommend Sex irecommend.com -- I had remembered his site was a big deal back when I first started so I knew that I should give him a little more respect and special treatment.

Partnership programs -- although I don't use them much now -- damn years down the road you can have a pile of lifetime members under your belt. I was promoting pornmegabucks -- i only got a few signups there, but they were sending me checks over a year after I had quit their program (which not many programs will do) -- I think you really have to have a lot of trust in an ad program to be on a partnership program. If you send signups to JoeBlowCash.com and you have 300 potential lifetime members on there -- and JoeBlowCash decides to cancel you or fuck you hard, you will be out of a LOT of fucking money that you could have been collecting until you were old and fucking gray.

Don't waste your time w/ fly-by-night sites... Don't trade 10,000 hits w/ 1000 losers when you can trade 10,000 hits w/ 10 professionals. Professionals can be identified mostly w/ common sense (talk to them a little) -- 1. they have the technical knowledge and work ethic to produce a very large quantity of sites -- if you meet one pro -- you may in effect be able to do 100+ link trades all in one shot (usually they can do a search/replace or just adjust their script to add you to all their pages) 2. a pro always keeps his sites up -- this means that they have a domain where all the traffic goes through (even if they are using free hosts) -- saves me time -- if some loser webmaster has to email me every week when the free host kicks him off (or more likely the case he just gets deleted off the free host and you never hear from that webmaster again) -- then that's basically a waste of my time. Invest time in people that are worth investing time in.
3. they don't fuck around w/ child porn links, popups, or other stupid bullshit -- meaning pro's aren't too greedy -- you take a little piece of pie for yourself and you will have a lot of people coming over to eat pie with you.

I could write more but if I give away all my secrets... hahaha!

-- pete

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-- thefly.net

Rictor, I think your story is a perfect example of why we all need to keep changing and moving forward in this biz, as you said there is lots of competition and if we stand still it will run us over.

From here forward, the key (as always) will be traffic generation. Try to focus on the search engines. Also think outside of the box, look to new sources of traffic.

Also look for new sponsors, try different programs because some programs lose their earning power over time.

And finally, get away from per-signup programs and try to build a recurring cash flow from partnership programs, it's the future - you will see per-signup programs go away.

LENSMAN WAS RIGHT! WHERE HAVE THE PER SIGNUP GONE?????


THAT MAN SAW TEH FUTARE

What is the best recurring gay sponser ?

Lensman is truly right about this! we always kept our core product Partnership, we don't have much flat fee webmasters, as they earn much more long term :thumbsup with partnership!

yes

Short UIN sales have skyrocketed since then!

i give per sign up another two years before it goes bust,

the per sign up models forces more agressive marketing techniques, which eventually cause the government to step in

I used to make a shitload of money with search engine traffic. Back when excite, webcrawler, etc rocked and google didnt have a monopoly. My pages had no content, just text, so bandwidth expenses were tiny even back when bandwidth was more expensive.

That business model declined as competion increased, free porn increased, credit card billing went to shit, and internet boom came to an end.

Im not willing to take the risk of putting hardcore porn on a site, so I have no desire to develop quality adult sites with pics etc which would be needed to develop link trades, get dmoz links, improve link pop, etc.

To me adult stuff is short term money. Any of the third party cc processors could go belly up tommorow. And its only a matter of time before obsenity busts clean up the amount of free hardcore.

I honestly believe many people are making less money, even big time sponsors, otherwise, I don't think that shaving would be such a huge issue. There's not an inexhaustible supply of newbie surfers as once thought, people have become very saavy at finding free porn (P2P has a lot to do with that), they are not going to buy at the first hint of a bare nipple anymore.


The key to staying in the adult game is to always stay on top of finding new sources of traffic. Also, you have to have a long term game plan now, you can't just think that everything is ok because you got some checks in the mail. It is easy to find your money dwindling if you are lax about staying in the quality traffic game.

thats not a bad thing though.

Well, I heard a rumor that Visa is going after AVS sites.. that would kill alot of free stuff and it would be for the better..

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NO. AVS is good. Anything that makes someone enter in a cc number to look at porn is good, even if it's free AVS, it's awesome traffic. And free AVS is different to pay AVS, TGP outstrips free AVS in terms of size of free porn and access to it many times over.

avs applicable to that argument like adultcheck "regular avs" aren't anywhere near the problem p2p and tgp are. They're worse than tgp2.

AVS shouldn't even be included in that statement. AVS is good for the biz on every level. There is no way to lump it into the free category.

Avs was probably over-done a few years back and is over-looked today by far too many webmasters - Me included.
It is true that back in 1996 it was so damn easy to make money where as now it is much harder.
Trends change - And we either have to adapt to those trends, or be the beginning of new trends to do well.
Pay per sign up nearly killed the industry dead as figures had to be made to look equal - Hence shaving. Lensman is right - Recurring payments are far more solid - Even during bad times, I never considered paying out a sign-up sum and my new program being launched next week is not only unique all round, but payments will only be recurring.

I also think the sheer amount of free porn has made life harder - That is why I think cj sites will grow over the next few months - If nothing else, they keep content minimal (depending on skim)

To add fuel to the fire all FREE and pay sites will need to check the 18USC2257 compliance and I doubt records will be there for all of the free content passed from computer to computer for years.

so quit

I don't remember ever paying out 25 cents... :Graucho

I think 18 cents was the most we ever payed.

Just found this interesting article. I remember the day it came out like it was yesterday.

lol you're the xpics dude??

Not THE Xpics dude but I did work in thier "Special Projects" group from 97 to 00.

Yeah right dude...you were THE xpics guy...don't try and hide...lol

:winkwink:

I know this thread is 2 years old ( BTW, what's Rictor doing right now? ), but since someone mentionded Partnership vs per sign up... I can understand that Partnership may be better, but on the other hand... since surfers are more "porn-educated" nowadays, it happens more often than before that they cancel their membership to a paysite immediately after they join. In that case - for the webmaster - per sign up is way better...
Partnership programs must be better for small niches...

You worked for Xpics? Nice...
Did you get busted?

You guys used to have 30 cent days on Saturdays in July. That rocked.

Hmm...nice bump.

Things are definitely looking up for me. :Graucho

I'd say I'm making about 10 times what I made in 1996 now...of course I didn't own any paysites back then.

25 or 30 cents...I don't remember...bonus days, I think. I could go back to my old tax records and check, I guess...I have all my old check stubs.

I think he's running some niche paysites.

Yeah I worked there for years... as far as legal issues, I wasn't involved in any of that and am not really at liberty to discuss it.

I forgot all about the bonus days. It's been awhile. We went to a straight $25 per signup in 98 not long after I started there.

and to think you were bitching about not making money in 2001
i wish we were back in 2001 with the knowledge i have right now

But now seriously

I can't believe people are blaming AVS for the market saturation. The tgp's are to blame, and all those easy tgp making scripts. It's so fuckin easy to make a tgp now everyone's parents, sisters and grandmas are starting one. There are also too many newbies myself included, but hey i make a small living at this.

Newbies were to be expected.

As for pay per signup, i don't think it's gonna disappear unless the gov makes some new laws that would prevent shaving. Also as competition increases, why would paysites offer only revshare when the webmasters are asking for PPS?

It's a bit like the tgp's. Even if every tgp would stop giving full hardcore stuff, there would always be an idiot to give all the hardcore he could to gain his share of the market. It's a vicious circle.

I believe the same applies to sponsors. Don't forget that we, webmasters, are a very prized market.

Takes one to know one from what I hear.........:winkwink:

After all this time, you're still not allowed to talk about it? There's a gag order? Crazyness!

You went from pushing a 18c per click program to a 6c per click program :)

The Wired article you posted above was really good, as well as this one:
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,12412,00.html

Guess they were wrong about Hawaii, huh?

Fucking $0.25/Click was nice.

9 years ago, long before tubes, torrents and file lockers people were bitching about the same thing they are today. So much for PPS going away as well...

Less bitching, more harder and smarter working and you'll have nothing to bitch about.

It's not as gloomy as the likes of Paul Markham would like you to belive. It's just gloomy for them because they are pessimists.

Good fine

Holy crap heart attack.

Nice bump. I really enjoyed the flashback.

I've always said this exact same thing. Nothing has changed over the years, but the excuse for failure.

Sounds like that's your problem right there. TGPs? I find it hard to believe anyone is doing TGPs these days...