Getting Analytical: How much are you really making in adult?
 

Another thread got me thinking about this.

While this can be applied to anyone in the biz, lets first take a look at people who have been around for 10 - 15 years, more or less since the 97 when i came into the scene.

Back in 97 payouts were roughly the same as today.
For example: Gamma was paying around 25-30pps as was Hpic and many others in the late 90's, and many had bonus deals going on as well (i can recall gamma was dishing out 2k prize a month for most signs sent which is pretty huge)

Today it's still around that same number for standard pps, i'd say 30-35 dollars is the norm now, but not a huge difference, as the membership cost for adult sites has not increased dramatically, still hovering around 20 - 30 bucks a month from what i see, and many have dropped their monthly prices.

Back in the late 90's hosting for adult was far more expensive to the tune of about 5x more expensive with less to offer of course.

Content was more expensive, not sure how much more, perhaps a content provider can shed light on this with a percentage decrease since 97.

I believe domain names were around the same, i dont think that has undergone a significant change in price.

Today for affiliates and paysite owners you can easily calculate how much you are actually making by adding these factors (net before taxes)-
hosting-
content-
domains-
design work-
internet service-
legal/accounting-

But it gets far more difficult trying to figure out how much more or less you are really making with adjusted cost of living, because while certain things have not changed much, others have significantly decreased or increased in this time frame of 10 to 15 years.

If you are self employed in this biz you know what i am talking about. How many people factor in adjusted cost of living every year to the money they make?

Affiliates-
Paysite Owners-
Content Makers/Suppliers-
Web Hosting Companies-

And many will say things are far worse and adult is dying etc., but thats not true. Adult is changing, but its here to stay.

What i'm getting at is how the online industry has monetarily adjusted in a large span of time, from affiliates to paysite owners to content suppliers etc....

in this biz 10 to 15 years is a long time;)

The problem in a single word:

in 1998: bandwidth
in 2011: bandwidth

I made 500 to 700 a week :) Since i promote xprofiles and rudesters

I can get 100TB for 119 euros, bandwidth is not expensive.

Which means everything can be given away at 0 cost, thus de-valuing the content.

Giving away content is the problem, users expect more for free which is costing you bandwidth. So indirectly I guess you could say each user on average costs you more bandwidth to get a sale.

yes of course bandwidth is much cheaper now which kicks in the dynamic of lessening content value etc.

but who does this figure in with a paysite owner/affiliate in this range of time with adjusted increase for cost of living?

its tricky as hell to figure out which is why i posted this thread, there are alot of factors to consider.

Tube sites are possible because of a cheap bandwidth.
In 1998 (with a dial up connection), you can't spend your time to chase a free (illegal content), it is more interesting to buy a membership.
However in 1998, it was more expensive to get a decent host.

(however if bandwith is cheap, i wonder why a lot of sites are closing, they could keep their promo content online)

Robbie has some interesting strategies to protect his content on claudia-marie, they are posted on this board.

As I recall, borked hooked up a streaming configuration [also detailed in posts on here] for the site and Robbie only allows a low res version to be actually downloaded.

For a small paysite with exclusive content you will need to protect it and if it is pirated have an aggressive DMCA takedown strategy in place.

To be honest I think the adult industry needs to start lobbying in order to get into areas were it's currently not allowed.

Take the UK for instance, hardcore porn only became legal in like 2006 under a new R18 certification. Consumers need to confirm they are 18 before being allowed to purchase. Thus selling online isn't allowed, only in licensed sex shops.

THIS NEEDS TO CHANGE.

It's fucking stupid that I can run a paysite in the UK and sell content but I can't ship a fucking DVD to the same customer.

Then there's VOD stuff like Boxee that the industry needs to tap into.

Get a chinese manufacturer to make a box that can accept streams, create an api for paysite owners to stream content, sell the box to a customer with say 3 months free viewing.

Just a brain fart but you've got to think outside the box. There's not a lot of creative things you can do with porn except exploring new niches or stupid ideas like 3D.

Don't beat a dead horse and expect it to go faster.

Although I haven't seen the details, if you can stream it you can download it.

Yeah camtasia works well for that, it still makes it a little harder though.

That is weird, so you can sell an adult membership to a paysite legally in the UK but you can't legally sell a DVD online? How does the govt discern the difference between the two?

Probably easier to decompile the flash player or watch your HTTP traffic, there will be a .flv link in there somewhere.

You can't protect your stuff.

DVDs need approval from the BBFC, paysites don't.

So most online shops ship from the Netherlands.

Okay so first consensus is bandwidth prices have plummeted which proves both negative and positive for paysite owners/affiliates. Cheaper to operate a paysite but more saturation and competition, tubes etc.

So increasing prices on adult bandwidth would help the industry by scaling back huge free content farms?

And for content owners/producers? I would think the cost of shooting content has risen in 10 -15 years while the actual prices to buy content have dropped, so an increase in bandwidth price would help them as well?

Hosting is cheap

should it be?

are you a bot ?

[TRUTH]

I made a LOT more than I feel I deserved to have made...

As such, I am embarrassed by my bank account..

[/TRUTH]

The Internet has now become a daily part of most people's lives, unlike 1997 when people were still going "what's an inter-net?"

So today, the web has seeped into people's lives in a way no one ever expected; "virtual reality" is a reality, with more people taking their online profiles more seriously than their "real world" activites.

So: more users, more free porn, more more more equals less less less. Simple.

Okay forget it, increasing bandwidth prices on adult would mean an industry consensus which would never happen.

And the lack of direct response to my query would suggest that everyone is making less money (NET) than 10-15 years ago.

[/thread]

yes but you would think that in some aspect of this industry people are netting more now than before, and i am speaking of something which existed back in the day as well.

Of course everyone is making less. Big tubes give away a ton of porn and make less then the big TGP's did back in the day. Sleazy was probably grossing over a million and netting just under a million in his best times. Compare that to Redtube or some of those. They are grossing 3-4 million and netting less then one. They are also many times bigger as far as uniques. The value per unique is way off but did we add that many more credit card carrying uniques? Nope.

the conclusion is we need more traffic to make the same or less then we did.

How much am I making?

Not nearly enough!! lol

I think every wm should set his minimum and if he is not making that, change the game

Ive felt this way as well until about 2 years ago.

I asked a (website) customer what we could do better to earn his business and he flat out told me...
"nothing, why pay for the cow anymore when the milk is free"

Then he pointed me to a 45 minute video on one of the big tubes.

Well, first off: how many people who have been in this industry 10+ years are posting here on a Sunday/Holiday Weekend? LOL

Also: I would imagine (total hallucanation here) that if you've been "in the biz" for a decade or longer you either:

A. Made a fuckload of cash and got the fuck out
B. Make a nice (steady) living but are not a zillionaire

Lastly, you are trying to compare net profits from a decade ago versus today, right? What about mofos like ME who only started in 07 and didn't launch my own network til Jan.09? I make six figs, and if I had started 10+ years ago I'd be fucking retired by now. :D

its been 1.5 years and i havent reached my goal of 400 bucks /month.,

good luck

You might bother to look at people's avatars now and then;)


It took you that long? LOL i was making that 6 months after i started in the biz you slacker!

To be honest i made alot of money back in the day, bought a house, bought cars, blew money on extravagant parties etc...then completely got out of the biz in 2003, travelled the world for 4 years and came back into adult in 2007 because i like it and i'm addicted to self employment;)

I must admit there are times when I have thought like this, but when I look at things as compared to my friends it's certain that I have worked much harder than they did. I cannot think of a single day since 1998 that I have not worked at least part of the day, including all holidays. I've earned it for certain.

I'm still working at it, and the reason is that I don't see much in the brick and mortar world that even comes close. All around me I see book and video stores closing, restaurants failing and people losing everything because of ridiculous ideas of selling goods at street level. Do you guys have any idea how many cups of coffee you would have to sell at your cafe per month to equal what you make in adult? I did a business plan a while back and found out and it wasn't pretty. So I am still here.

That said, things are nothing compared to the glory days and they never will be again. And one thing OP didn't factor in their equation was the USD exchange rate long ago. Compared to AUD it's off 40% or so.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

For general RMTP streams, you are correct. For RMTPE encrypted streams with a security token and a few other tweaks, the only way you're getting it is via a screen recorder.

And if a new ripper is created that can get it, you tweak it to defeat it.

I've had this set up for about a year now on a few sites. You can't download what I don't allow you to download.

Isn't RMTPE just RMTP with SSL (tunnelling) I still stand by the statement, if it's streaming to your computer you can get the files. Sniff with URLSnooper to get the links and then use RTMPDump.

Adobe has been very vigilant suing software makers that allow users to download the encrypted streams.:pimp

All you have to do is record the audio and video outputs of the computer, if everyone starts protecting content this way, thats all that will happend, people will use dvrs and recor the output then put it back online unprotected.

LOL I know, there must be other nutjobs like me posting on a holiday weekend-Sunday who have been here ten plus years. Sad really....:D

No one has to tell you then that times have changed, eh? So what, is it like ten times as hard for you to make money online with adult these days or easier because you have more skills/experience/contacts?

This plus competition + saturation + free porn = :Oh crap

yes there is also a saturation.
But this is also true for maintream business

http://i.imgur.com/yZN9S.png

http://i.imgur.com/M15qy.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/CnB4h.jpg

I'm not gong to go into detail on a public board how it's done, but you can block all the current rippers, leaving only the option of screen recording for 99.999% of the users.

I'm sure there is someone somewhere, sitting in their moms basement who can get them, but there are other things you can do to reduce that risk as well. But those guys, if they even exist, have yet to bother.


"All you have to do" is apparently more hassle than it's worth, especially if your username, ip address, and date of viewing is stamped on the video.

This issue has been beat to death on GFY, and it's usually by people who don't have any skin in the game. Not a single video I've protected has made it to a single tube, torrent, or cyber locker. At least not yet, and it's been around a year. Sooner or later they will, but maintenance will be minimal and at that time we'll find another way to combat their methods, while GFY experts say we're wasting our time.

Sounds vague. You mentioned tweaking before, obviously this can't be done since it would break the player on the client end. There's not much you do, there's a handshake in the encryption that is needed to decode the content, you can do a man-in-the-middle attack to get that key. It's not like satellite encryption where there's a piece of hardware or keys are constantly updated. Flash doesn't handle that (well not without stopping and rebuffering the stream).

You re-encoding every video before you stream to users? No, so there's no embedded information.

I don't know what sites you run but if you tell me I'll find a link somewhere :thumbsup

I've been in the business fifteen years. Between 1996 - 2000 there was a drop because
supply caught up with demand. Prior to around 2000, there basically enough sites for
the number of surfers, so money was easy. There were three main content suppliers at
the time, so content was a lot more expensive than a few years later.

Bandwidth as been good to the industry, though. Here's why. Of course bandwidth was much
more expensive per GB. It was more expensive for surfers, for pay sites, for free sites and for
bad guys. So surfers on "56 Kbps" (really 38 Kbps) connections downloaded 400X300 pics
from the free sites and 640x480 pics from the pay sites. That's about 25-50 KB for a pic.

Today, surfer's connections are a couple hundred times faster and the content is a couple
hundred times bigger. Your host gives you a couple hundred times as much bandwidth for the
same money. You're actually probably spending about the same amount of money on bandwidth
per surfer. The free sites too are still spending about the same amount, they are just delivering
high res videos rather than low res photos.

As web hosts, we used to charge $5 / GB. A GB was 20,000 photos - enough for about 400
customers to jack off for a few minutes. Today, for the same $5 we sell you 50 GB, which is
80 hours of video - enough for about 400 customers to jack off for a few minutes. Either way,
$5 worth of bandwidth is roughly 400 short jack off sessions.

There's really nothing new about tubes. They were just as prevalent in late 1990s, only
they had pics. Soon we learned how to monetize most of them as TGPs. The people giving
away content, stolen or legally, do NOT have any bandwidth advantage over the free sites -
both sites pay the same amount to deliver the same video. Where the tubes have an
advantage is that while today's pay sites look pretty much exactly like they have for many
years, the tubes are trying to innovate a little bit. Most pay sites follow pretty much the
exact formula we developed 15 years ago, except it's video now instead of pictures. That's
good to learn from experience and do what works, but also experiment with different
little changes one at a time and innovate. Let your business model evolve. I have an Android
device connected to my machine right now and we'll have an Android app out for Strongbox
over the nest few months. What are YOU doing with Android?

btw microsoft continues to sell microsoft word while open office is free...