This Businesses' Challenges - Stated Logically
 

The purest form of an adult business transaction is a girl or guy doing something sexually stimulating for direct compensation.

This transaction involves Talent and a Customer.

The simplest form of an adult product is:

A girl or guy being captured (live, streaming, drawn or written about) doing something sexually stimulating for compensation. The capturing can be in the form of photo, video, voice or text and can be live, recorded, drawn or written about. The captured product is known as Content and the capturer would be the Producer. A dating profile would be content.

This transaction involves talent, a producer (the talent and the producer can be the same) and a customer.

The talent, Producer and Customer transaction is the foundation of this industry. It is this Core Transaction that every reputable company and person in this industry should strive to preserve and protect.

Scaling these transactions offline or online requires peripheral products and services. Some are absolutely necessary and some are optional.

I have identified three tiers of support products.

1st Tier ? Necessary for any measure of scale
? Domain Registers (online)
? Hosting companies or Landlords
? CMSs or storefronts
? Banks, credit card processors and gateways
? Government regulatory agencies

2nd Term ? optional but necessary for greater scale
? Affiliate solutions (NATS, MPA3) ?could also be first tier
? Resellers - Affiliates
o Review sites
o Tubes
o Other producers
? Advertising Networks
? Traffic Resellers

3rd Tier ? optional but necessary for optimization
? Stats tracking
o Nifty Stats
o Stats Remote
? Adult Industry Publications
o Xbiz
o GFY
o YNOT
o JFK-FUBAR
? Misc. services
o Chargeback Help
o Fraud Detection

The top three problems that face this industry are:
? Content theft and Copyright Violations
? Fraud
? Predatory Entities: Patent Trolls- TLDs such as .XXX could also be an entity which extract assets without adding significant value ? conservative political parties.

The problems above arise as the stake holders of the core transaction engage the 1st Tier of support products to scale their business.

If the Talent, Producer or Customer is creating the problem it is most likely fraud, however if a third party is creating the problem then they are most likely extracting from the core transaction stakeholders illegally and using the 1st Tier support services to monetize that theft.

While all tiers as well as the stakeholders of the core transaction have power, ultimately the choke point of all these issues in scale resides in the 1st Tier of support services.
It is these Tier one companies that need to commit to fixing the problems and return the extracted value back to the core transaction and ultimately the 2nd and 3rd Tier providers as it trickles down.

That is logical, it is right and I believe that in the long run this legitimate state of the industry is ultimately the most profitable.

Solving these problems will certainly have a cost and that cost may need to be passed along to the core stakeholders and additional tiers. However I believe this cost would be justified and will have a solid ROI in the future.

Who are the top people in that first tier that can make this happen? Will those people stand up to the ?bros?? Those are the important questions.

The first tier providers are who needs to buy in to fixing this industry. Whomever does so needs to do so with money, time and strong public actions, always keeping in mind the explicit goal of protecting the core transaction at all costs.

The protection of the Core Transaction effectively needs to be the Prime Directive for this industry. Anything less is catering to the leeches on the core transaction whom are extracting value from anyone trying to engage in legitimate business.

Nice bud, thanks for the free info! :2 cents: :pimp

re: content theft and copyright violations.

Very few people fully understand the breadth and depth of this problem and there are only a handful of people dedicated to dealing with it.

This industry needs to come together to fight this issue and fight it hard.

I agree completely and I am not doing nearly enough myself to be honest. This is something I hope to rectify in 2014.

What grade did you get on your paper? :winkwink:

People would side with you if you weren't overly arrogant with a "holier than thou" attitude.

That's not leadership. Those aren't traits people align behind. That's not the person people will listen to. You need a face. You need a mouthpiece. You need to stop posting stupid attack shit on the boards, assuming people will just blindly line up behind you and start working on your image, defining your cause, defining your message and building something that people can get behind.

Seriously... at what point do you stop and ask yourself "what is it about me, that i have so little support?" when you are fighting a fight that is so widely agreed by 99% of the industry to be incredibly important? You should spend some time pondering that....

We have plenty of support from some of the biggest names in this industry. :2 cents:

you need the search engines on board the big ones too not the less well known experienced searches they are the key to stopping content theft, piracy... copyright violations. you can weigh this up in many ways.

Well thought out.
good job.

At first glance seems somewhat accurate.

Problem is tier1 get paid no matter what so no incentive to act.

Well......okay......but not really.

All this '1st tier' '2nd tier' nonsense is just that: nonsense. I can look at anything on your list and extrapolate all kinds of wrong conclusions.

Having said that you hit on some 'basics' - piracy, tubes, etc - but what's the point? It all comes down to:

Traffic
Content
Marketing

Now go ahead and argue which is more important (Paul Markham)*. Everything else you wrote (or most) comes down to basic web-based business 'infrastructure' as in hosting, domains, etc. How any of this helps improve the bottom line I know not. LOL

* Marketing is the #1 most important thing.

You are talking micro I am talking macro.

For example when the economy tanked and tubes really hit their stride (2008/2009) our sales dumped by 50%+. However none of the three things you mentioned above changed significantly. Why because what you are talking about has much more to do with creating successful transactions than creating a successful environment.

In regards to my tiers. Would you say then that JFK of FUBAR has the same amount of control to shut down file lockers as CCbill? They are both part of the online adult ecosystem. Of course not, this industry like every industry has threats and certain entities in the ecosystem are in better positions to deal with certain threats.

in my previous comment I said at first glance because I'm sure if I dive into it with an attitude that its incorrect I can find all sorts of inaccuracies are contraindications or things that just don't make sense but from a macro standpoint that is the structure of the industry and the top tier are the people that have the power should they choose to exert it to stop piracy and theft or other issues however those people don't do anything about the new problems.

Billers hosts etc are still more concerned about whether your contect is obscene than if they are billing for somebody that criminally stealing your content times have changed approaches need to change

Thanks and I agree with their being no incentive to act. It is my hope (dream) that the first tier begins to see the unsustainability (my opinion) of the current path and figure out how to better monetize that core transaction.

Hm... Two "biggest names in the industry" showed me the agreement you wanted them to sign and in both cases we had a great laugh about the insanity of giving you all the rights you wanted to "act on their behalf". I can't see many credible attorneys signing off on that. Particularly with large companies that produce their own content. I'm sure the occasional companies do, but i dont believe for a second that any large producers that take IP law and rights seriously do.

Besides.. .the simple fact is that no one that matters is talking about how awesome you are.

Basically, your crusade is you talking to yourself and attacking others. Given your personality problems, its obvious why you don't see that... i'm just saying its a shame you don't have the wisdom and maturity to put someone at the front who has a softer and more diplomatic touch. Regardless of what "good" you think you have done, you come off as an arrogant, out of control, douchebag.

Spot on. I think the interesting thing about online adult is your look at other vices, alcohol, cigerettes, drugs, brick an mortar sex all the key players have come together to extract a whole lot of value out of the end consumer. While we extract value from each other in circles.

That's NEVER gonna happen.

The people/companies in this industry are too afraid of each other. People lie, cheat, and steal without any second thought so why should we trust anybody enough to pull together? There is little respect for anybody other than themselves. The greed FAR outweighs the common sense.

A great example of this is the DRM technology that content owners more or less refuse to use. Many companies tried it initially but when their members started to complain, most jumped ship on the idea. Had the industry stuck together and supported the technology then the members wouldn't have had a choice and the content would still be under much better control than it is now.

Common sense says you protect your content. Greed says you don't because you're afraid of losing members. In the long run, members were lost anyway and many programs/sites have gone out of business because of it.

As a content creator, I've seen producers sabotage the efforts of other producers every chance they get. Personally, I don't understand why we don't work with each other instead of trying to screw each other over. A few months back I was talking with the owner of a well known adult program. We were discussing a specific site. When I found out the site was being produced locally, I backed out of the discussion. I did this out of respect for the other producer. I've done this a few times as well as referred potential clients to other producers when I felt that somebody else could provide a better service for the clients needs. Most people are too greedy to even consider such a thing.

GREED has had the single largest impact on our industry and we have nobody to blame for it other than ourselves. Until that changes, you will never see enough people coming together to make any significant difference. :2 cents:

Wow, you just described yourself perfectly...congrats! :1orglaugh

http://content.internetvideoarchive....7/001144_8.jpg

Remind us what you have done to fight piracy (except attack those that take it on)... :winkwink: :upsidedow

Good thread, Todd!

:stoned

ADG

that's a good alignment of the text to the personality

I don't even have to look at the posters name when I see a post belittling the persons intelligence how everyone on this board is idiots and lazy and basically condescending in every possible way I know it's the Squealer.

Good branding.
you seem intelligent in a way so Try using that higher intelligence to be a positive rather than a constant negative.

2 votes for thread of the year! I hope to comment on page 3 or 4 in due time.

LOL, the same can be said about many others in and out of this industry....Myself included. Believe me when I say it's not an easy thing to change. :winkwink:

I get that. You and i are pretty similar in that regard. However, you and I aren't on a crusade and trying to rally the troops. I am just always struck by the fact that he comes off as so hostile and arrogant and like a loose cannon. If he had a better face for his efforts, he'd have the support of an industry. Instead, he's going it alone because he's too immature to see the harm his personality does vs the good he believes he does.

His efforts REQUIRE rights holders to get on board, get behind him and support him and grant him the legal authority to protect their rights on their behalf. Thats not an easy sell in the best of circumstances, definitely not easy when the guy wanting all those rights acts like a 1/2 crazy, self righteous and arrogant loose canon all the time.

I don't care about piracy. I'm not you. I was making a comment one why he has such limited support to deal with what every single producer agrees to be the industry's single largest problem. It's pretty fucking obvious to anyone who can read, what I was saying.

When i'm talking to you, you'll know.... i'll post retarded pics and quote other people under the guise of having something intelligent to say.

Ah I see now! Thank you for clarifying and I do apologize for misunderstanding the 'macro' nature of your post. (Being obsessed with building new sites and gaining new traffic lately, I am all about 'micro' these days LOL).

So to that end I totally agree with you. But at the end of the day it's human nature, to concern yourself with what works and ignore what doesn't (or what you have little to no control over). Same thing with webmasters/content producers not 'getting together' as an Industry. So many webmasters are isolated little islands, even some companies are like this, who all come together via the Net. Trade Shows aside, there's very little organization to ANYTHING most webmasters do and what little exists tends to be focused on the webmasters own little world (micro).

At this point tho I must say that any Industry-wide attempt to unionize or organzie or even get together to protest as a single entity would fail miserably. Sad but true I think.

It was done with Acacia probably to the greatest extent of any sort of attempted organization in the history of this biz online

I think people will always rally behind leaders who can communicate a vision people will buy into. This industry does not have many of those people. Whether jts been webmaster health insurance or fighting patent trolls or even the FSC, there is never leadership or a clearly communicated vision that people can get behind. Acacia was probably the closest this industry came and it's only because so many people got a legal threat in their mailbox. No other threat is tangible. The benefits to fighting intangible threats are both hypothetical and intangible.... which is why effective communication, charismatic leadership and a clear, well communicated vision and benefits are particularly critical. Adultking for example posts long lists of sites he's shit down. Yet no one is saying "wow, my sales are really picking up" ... that is the second biggest problem of his fight, no matter how "right" it might be.

give content producers a choice as to what they want to do with their work, copyright laws should apply to those who choose i want to make money, or much rather in many living situations, need to.

I agree. There are absolutely not enough of these people and perhaps more importantly there is not enough of these people with true power to step up. I totally applaud AdultKing's effor though, so I am not knocking him in any way at all.

If I were to be able to propose a plan it would be that the biggest owners and CEOs of those tier one companies go to an Island somewhere, Curacao maybe? And then convene some type of summit. No Xbiz, no AVN, no GFY, no programs, no ad companies no tubes. Then they make a plan and an agreement on how to essentially extract value out of the end consumer rather preside over us feasting on each other. Baby steps.

This sounds impossible and crazy, but it's not. Think of other industries built around vices; booze, cigarettes, pharmaceuticals, drugs, sex (brick and mortar), gambling. Most extract a ton of money from the end consumer.

Relentless said this in another thread; it is about training the customer to pay. We have mad it easier to steal and SAFER to steal then to pay.

I mean ask yourself the question in the simplest way. Why aren't we just selling porn?

So that would be the focus of the summit. Let's start selling porn. That would benefit the billing companies much more then them supporting grey market file lockers. The later is just what we have trained the consumer to do.

That sounds like the TGP2 conversation to me. "we're killing the industry with 'free porn', so let's do it differently"

Free porn was ALWAYS used to sell porn. JohnIP(?) hired a guy who has a physics degree from Yale to post on tgp2.com and do fuzzy math all day long showing a better way and a better future and still, no one cared.

So, you agree to start "selling" it. Then what? What does that mean? What are the hard numbers? For every single person here that makes money, what does it mean to them besides hypothetical scenarios of a brighter future? How do you say "Bob, this is exactly how you will benefit this quarter and its going to be much better than your current business model".

People respond to simple numbers. Ideas are much more complex and subjective and mean something different to each and every person that hears it.

The mistake in this thinking, in my view is that you can't easily organize people to do something for their future benefit with the same easy of getting them to do something for their immediate benefit. You're brain is wired to place a higher value on immediate rewards than future rewards. No amount of reason and logic will change that impulse. The entire economy tanked because of that very same psychological principle. People were infinitely more likely to go for what they could get in the moment with an adjustable rate mortgage and the threat of rising rates in the future was still... the future. Uncertain and psychologically, very far away.

After all, smoking means a very high certainty that you'll die of cancer... but ... that's just sooooooo far away. Your brains rewards center in the short term, will almost always trump long term rational planning/reason, even when it means death.

Think about this... AdultKing posts long lists of sites he's killed processing for. That's fine. Great. Ok. Good for him. But... from a practical standpoint... so what? Did your sales spike? Did anyone's? Did you notice the difference? Did anyone? Are people talking about it? Nope. It's a very similar problem to overcome. You can't identify a tangible benefit. You can't say "this is what it means to you exactly". You can't say "support me for 3 months and you'll see a 82.4% increase in sales. This is a real problem. A guy is doing something people believe should be done but at the same time, no one feels any direct tangible benefit either... so how do you motivate them to care in light of that fact?

Some good reading in here :thumbsup

As much as I would like to this clearly isn't going to be solved in a GFY thread. However I think taking the attitude of "fuck it, nothing can be done" is just boring. BTW I am not saying that attitude is yours as you are clearly engaged in this thread.

This is spot on. It is EXTREMELY difficult but not impossible.

The day I posted this thread I had hit highs in volume of sales, number of sales and profit. This month is on track to do the same in 28 days. I started getting agressive with my DMCAs last month. In full disclosure I have been pushing hard in many directions in our business so I would not claim a direct correlation, however I would say it has been part of me making more money.

Thanks! :thumbsup