Paysite owners: do you block members from sharing logins?
 

I would think that most do?

Wouldn't it be better to allow them to share it with like 5 people? If people are sharing a login and the owner decides to cancel, the other people might become paying customers once they realize their access suddenly isnt there anymore.

Word of mouth is the best and cheapest advertisement of all, and if people could give friends free access to your site they probably would do that before they would tell them to join and pay.

Hopefully someone's experimented with this..

well, in most scripts like strongbox etc. you can set a threshold how many logins from different locations you allow. try and see what happens.

but i would definitely always use a script after i once had to pay $2k in extra traffic cause someone posted a pass somewhere and i didn't catch it before the pass expired

There has been a lot of testing on this. The key is finding the right range where the password isn't being abused to your detriment.

I've done zero testing on this but my thoughts are that the majority of people who are willing to pay for porn, like to enjoy it in relative anonymity. They may make porn jokes with their buddies but they don't tell their buddies that they pay for porn or what specific paysites they like. Are there exceptions? Sure. But I think what would happen is you'd have 99% of your 4 "bonus users" systematically sign up with their leader for each site they join. And it would probably be online forum buddies who don't even know each other. 1% of the time, you'd actually get more paying members out of it.

:2 cents:

very good point...

Yes absolutely!

it's hard to tell if alot member's share their logins. i use proxypass and i think most of the IP's that get blocked are because the member picked and easy login to hack.

Short answer, yes.

A small investment in software, to prevent a bigger issue is solid business.

Yes and no.
We have it set up with 3 countries, 3 ip networks. after that you're done.
The problem is that most people dont shere. They have their weak passwords stolen.

Bingo, of the thousands of customers I have spoke with I can't remember but a couple that would give their friends the dvds they bought, or in this case the password. Strongbox is nice though. I think we have ours set at three. At home, work and maybe one more place.

Just curious, are you doing any blocking with GEO IP?

So - let me get this right - I can steal something from you, give it to my friends and it's ok because my friend just might like it and come back to get more.

Sometimes people amaze me.

It's digital stuff.
We may like it or not, but "stealing" a Jpeg is different than stealing a bike.
At the very least it's perceived differently by most people.

Just denying it, won't make a difference nor help anyone- entire industries went into trouble because of their denial-mode.

This creates hurdles but also opportunities. Most of the people on this forum would be doing something else without digital content.

Stealing stuff is no good, but distributing / promoting stuff IS. And there's a trade off between harm and good done if your content is spread - that's what OP was weighting.

it is easy ... put one ip per login as standart, if user needs more, just send in email that he can request more ip adresses if he wish. if he reaches number of ips, possible that his combo is hacked so block his account and send him new generated combo. if he goes over the number of ips again, send him next generated combo and tell him that he have to change pass to his email cause is possible that someone is reading. if there will be still more logins to same generated combo, the owner is sharing passwords so block him, but is possible that your system may be hacked ... oh, many things to think about :)

strongbox sends an email everytime it blocks a username. I have an email folder with 22,249 blocked usernames and ips.

In an ideal world that would be perfect but thats not how it works at all.

No pay - No access!

We spend some time each month checking up on password shares and change their password. If they bitch about it, we tell them to stop posting their login details in forums, and then they usually behave after that.

Personally I love password shares, because we get our tours posted in tons of forums, and when people try to login for free, they realise they have to pay like everyone else, and a lot of them do :)

If all our members were college boys then that would make sense, our market spans to a bigger demographic than that though and grown ups don't generally speak freely of their porn habits with their friends unless, as Hardeman said above, they joke around about it but keep what they like and pay for private.

That being said I think there would be a market for aiming at couples. Have it so your pass is good on two ips so you can share with your partner... that may help retention at least.

Yes. We use a threshold based one. That way you catch any abuse of it.

just one login, who dont like it take him off

Yeah you can't just allow one ip, lots of people have dynamic ips.

Proxypass all the way for fetishassets. Fully protected :)