10 years on GFY - my adult biz chronicles
 

Technically it's more than 10 years, It was Thursday Oct 20th 2005 when I registered on GFY among with at least about 25 (not kidding) other active adult webmaster boards. It was one day after I officially started working with Big Sister Media, the company running an online broadcasted sex club.

I remember the front page was always filled with threads with replies within 5 minutes max and I didn't want to post much as a rookie because of the strong GFY factor. There were the contests, the pissing matches, the program and TGP owners bravado, the celebrities, the mental moments, the Ambush interviews it was pretty dynamic. Then I got to read AmbushInterviews and I couldn't stop, was so excited said I want to be one of those guys.

As the time passed I made more and more connections, plenty of which in US since I usually worked from 5 pm to 3 - 5 am in the morning and only Americans were still online and that time. I wanted to build an ultimate pay site selling that worldwide unique product. Was studying pornresource.com for paysites and stats, was extensively studying all the programs and sites I could get my hands on. Always admired Nastydollars and what they did as an epitome of paysite business.

Then I went to WMA Amsterdam 2006, my first ever AW trade show, it got all the way more exciting as I could meet many GFY'ers in person. Was pleasantly surprised about the reception I got, almost every program I met I knew in detail, including the sites they ran, the people who run it, their history. So I got me a plenty of good contacts some of which proved to be and still remain golden.

Remembering that at one of the parties in a sort of a fancy club I've actually misunderstood that "homo" on the restroom door sign is not an acronym for "men" (like men as opposed to females). It actually meant a full frontal panorama in the mirrors all around that restroom, with a table full of handy apparel like condoms or parfums in the middle of it.

Plus an after party in our high end club in Prague that included our crew's middle aged men taking over the dance pole instead of the top looking girls exactly at the very same moment when a group of about 15 top VIP Japanese guests were seen in.

TGP's were still going strong back then, remember always checking the stats results from the selected top four of them that were published in AVNOnline.

AEE and Internext Vegas 2007 were my first US shows and I got the full Vegas package including the best dining, the Player's ball with pimps in furs, PussyCash awarding a Porsche as an affiliate bonus and lots of memorable moments including scoring with an ebony girl at one of the after-parties. They say if you haven't been to US you haven't seen the world. The vibe was still up and people were up to do business with you just because they liked you.

In 2007 / 08 the consolidation began with Dee on a buying spree as he bought all the available old school programs he could. They visitied me in Prague scouting for some live cam operation related feedback. Remember I was on the casino boat cruise they rented in Florida 2008 and also their $ 200 PPS promo as a sign of things to come. Those that sold at the time hardly ever regret.

MyFreeCams - a concept that initially nobody believed in changed the cam landscape to become the first branded freemium cam site and one of the most profitable businesses in adult ever.

Mansef / Manwin started with their first acquisitions that usually went terribly wrong right after they took over.

Meanwhile the pioneering tubes such as megarotic or youporn started to get into the game causing uproar and an internet wide traffic migration.

The combination of a card banging renaissance/ hosting prices dropping enough for tube owners to be able to stream full length videos under DMCA and the global financial meltdown leaving many with debt and no money to pay back were a perfect storm and the landscape started to change rapidly.

At the internext 2009 you could still meet many of the old school paysite programs on the showfloor. However, the marketing already became more aggressive. I can't say it would be any different with us as I've brought back from Vegas some viable cross-sell deals. Something we totally refused to do before (still we only did CCBILL cross sells).

From 2010 - 2012, after the ePassporte fiasco, many of the formerly overspending programs were gone as they were unable to sustain the decline in revenues. In some cases you were left to wonder how were some ever able to run a profit generating business in the first place. Plenty of those that I used to read about in their Ambushinterviews either vanished or got caught red handed while at it.

Google's anti spam updates smashed plenty of solid sites along with it (including the sites I've built during my non-compete period making me transfer to cams).

While every attempt to combat content piracy failed right at its infancy. Manwin's continuous acquisition spree resulted in several top brands ending under its umbrella. More importantly acquiring just about every available big tube with solid SERPS. Followed by their aggressive back link building campaigns this won them the unique opportunity to sell billions of impressions daily.

A trend followed by several traffic brokers / ad networks that were able to establish themselves on the market.

Mobile got a major head start and the regulators in many countries became busy instantly trying to catch up with the adult marketer's know how that was pretty much resembling the glory of the dialer era.

From 2013 up until today means the rise of mobile performance networks looking to get their hands on as much preferably carrier traffic as possible, although there is fewer and fewer loopholes to exploit and the competition is fierce. Then there are CPA networks teaming up with product owners to manage ads / returns for their publishers. A most logical step.

The business today may require more tech and math knowledge than before, one can hardly be utterly stupid or have no understanding of money anymore to make a bank. On the other hand one can't also be an MBA trying to manage an actual pornographic website with no knowledge of the market as this usually leads to horrendous results.

No matter how many dysfunctional individuals will yet enter the business thinking they will get rich quick, I guess that, after all, it is still the ability to learn, common sense, guts and instinct that counts.

cliff notes?

Congratulations!

Love the part where you said "dysfunctional individuals " . It is possible to get rich quick, tho problem is to stay rich. Meaning, if you get rich quick, there is a big chance how you will bankrupt quick as well.

Congrats on 9000! Nice post, enjoyed the read :thumbsup

Congrats, Carlos :thumbsup! Good to see you around.

Amazing read, congratulations on 9000.

to long :S

Pretty good review of the last 10 years !

Thanks! Great summary of a decade of works and days.

Great summary, nice read.

Brings back a lot of memories,good and bad.sounds like you had a good run

Nice Reading... And congrats Carlos!

Great post Carlos.

Hello Carlos

congrats on post 9000 :upsidedow
Lots of recognizable things you just shared

Be good now and we talk later!

He said 10 years, but it more like 11. And then he went through stuff that has happened over the past 10 - 11 years.

Thanks for sharing, it was a good read.

Nice summary! And congrats on ten years in the biz :)

how about reading in case you are serious about this business?

if that's too much already, you might consider hiring at McD.


and yeah, excellent summary :thumbsup

Greedy (and mostly shady thievy) tubes destroyed a big part of the industry.

Bump 4 you as this was about to slip off front page :)

Interesting read, because around the time you started, was around the time I started to wind down :)

I vote CTG for a hall of fame. For being an Eastern Europen at frst, for fucking making it working US hours, for leveling up his English on his own.

Great read. Just starting out and wonder what the next ten years will bring

Is there a long version I can read? Those are some decent highlights.

That's impressive!

Here's to another 10 years :pimp

http://i.imgur.com/5UHPqy7.gif

i have you beat by a little bit :winkwink:

So, tubes and the free model destroyed the industry and nobody here seems to disagree. It wasn't long ago that an affiliate would say the same thing and get HAMMERED HARD for even thinking it.

Google made big changes to its algo and many in adult lost a main source of traffic. Again many here said that google just 'dances' and what goes up, goes down etc... and to stop worrying about it. Guess not.

Oh yeah, backlinks are still king when it comes to SEO. That has never changed.


...

Good post and thanks for the write-up and memories. I had forgotten about epassporte.

did you make any money?

Congratz man!!

Congrats on the 9K :thumbsup:thumbsup

You have good average post 800yearly..thanks for the info

It's good to hear a positive story for a change. Congrats on O.G. status, I hope when I hit 10 years I can remain positive.

15th year on GFY, 50th in the porn industry.

Robbie is right, I have 100s of stories to share.

"memorable moments including scoring with an ebony girl at one of the after-parties" ...

:thumbsup

Interesting information - I've haven't thought of actually putting it down but it's a great overview from someone alike

congrats :thumbsup

Very good writeup.

Nice Carlos

It's still a good run..nice one Carlos!

Go for the green, Carlos ...

Meaning my Austria-Ungarian heritage? Too early to aspire for HOF for me, gotta make some moves yet

There is actually, it's not that I would be borderline self-obsessed, but it may be eventually true that there are probably not too many people who would experience similar things. Meaning especially in connection with a live broadcasted club that was on a daily basis full of horny clients, girls, swingers, productions renting the place, and all kinds of weirdos that make for stories only life could write.

Including the record time for achieving a full ejaculation from the moment someone gets close to a nude girl, copulation country specifics, how many guys from the street signed up for an all amateur gang bang (hint we're talking triple digits), what a straight guy shooting gay porn has to do every 5 minutes, an 80y old guy with a mechanically enhanced endowment and many, many more.

Since I traveled long distance by train almost every week at some point during the last couple of years I made it a habit to write down some of those memories.

The crazy stuff combined with more serious business like stuff for example how the idea started, how we rent a huge Peterbilt and toured the World cup in soccer in Germany with a mobile version of our club, getting into TV (mainstream) and later PPV, the story about owning bigbrother.com, how much new sign ups can a full feature in NYTimes get you (mainstream traffic always converted better than porn traffic) etc.

I guess it's about 40 pages now, but it's really just a raw outline that needs further work on details.

Btw. wishing all the best with that surgery (not sure if it's over already).

Thanks - btw. if I remember well we used to work together in the past, sent you a PM would be glad to reconnect.

I don't consider myself rich, maybe apart from the fact that I was at some point likely the most earning student at my university (usually combined 11am - 4pm university, 5pm - ?? work). Spending most of the January exam time in Vegas was the tough part, usually had to pass like five exams in five consecutive days as those were the only terms available after I returned.

Glad to see you around Shemp!

Thanks and I salute to your charms and professionalism alike my dear :pimp

We did and will :winkwink:

:thumbsup:thumbsup

Can't tell that, Mate, you are CZ to me :) , means Eastern/Central European block. Tho I understand, if you call me Russian I'd be pissed off :)
And sure, I give you credits in advance, for many things I achieved I was never given any, at least publicly - except may be GFY nominations nobody remembers now LOL.

Regarding the Get Rich Quick people.

I've found that no matter what the circumstances in life or business the output is always related to the effort invested.

Work out 5 days a week for 6 months vs Not working out but taking magic diet pills it is obvious which will yield the better results.

The same goes for relationships, health, and of course business. I love people thinking "If You Build It They Will Come" when it comes to the web. It doesn't work that way. You have to work your ass off to get ahead and to get any sort of return.

Work hard, work smart, work efficiently and you'll see the rewards.

10years on Gfy is good anniversary.Nice read

Nice mate.keep it up

All right so I've realized that it's 20 Years now, as of last October 2025

Instead of writing a new post - Let me just bump this one.

So what I can remember that we've seen since 2016:

The mobile gold-rush faded with more regulations, the Wild West shut down basically over night, those that actually made money and were smart kept them, or at least a major part of it.

We've seen an immense growth in the fan page OnlyFans type of business.
Leo Radvinski (Rest in peace and peace for his family) buying himself in and officially dominating yet another most profitable market segment, at exactly the right time.

With many OF clones come and go, some that had solid backing remained online, some that were sold, some that disappeared, and some that remained live and profitable or semi-profitable. A large part of the traffic volume the fan site creators make fueled by social media promotion, with more and more strategies implemented to scale and, often quite successfully, to avoid the ban hammer, at least for as long as possible.

We've seen the fan site management agencies implementing chatters, and various legit and often not all that legit traffic acquisition techniques in order to boost and scale their earnings.

Live Cams have been doing well, especially those that didn't rest on their laurels and worked their product in order to improve the user experience utilising some cutting edge technology, and pattern recognition techniques.

Both massively boosted by the infamous 2020 - 22 lockdowns, keeping the spenders at home and getting new at home spenders hooked along the way.

With both these segments having in common interaction, custom content, personality + micro payments and custom pay per content structure, that's stimulating impulse spending. The same as in a casino, there's little to no limit how much can one spend if he feels the urge to do so. And it often ends up as somewhat more than planned.

The trade shows crowd became more visually interesting, with business savvy creators and their promoters looking for fan traffic opportunities.

At the same time - there's a Major storm of billing and age verification related regulations that soon affect more than what most originally expected.
Many dating companies losing their processing or having to put an extensive effort into migrating and adjusting their billing and product requirements, in order to comply or semi-comply with the ever more complex regulations.

And now also with the big sites over a certain threshold being forced to implement age verification, which in turns means that they can easily lose around 90 % of their traffic. As those 90 % may simply flee to a competitor site, where they don't need to age-verify.

Fast forward to 2023 - to the age of Artificial Intelligence.

All sorts of automation, data processing and pattern recognition systems all of a sudden getting a new supercharged engine. Early adopters being able to serve content at a level and scale that wasn't feasibly realisable before.

The rise of AI content creation (and semi-creation / duplication) presenting a major opportunity, with many fascinated by the idea of being able to create content that could drive sales, without actually having the typical production or licensing costs, apart from the setup and tech related infrastructure. This has been advancing rapidly, with new and better / more suitable content generation models being introduced every couple of months.

Sparking also a large amount of, mostly unanswered questions, regarding copyrights and regulation in general.

Recently experiencing an outbreak of AI companion websites and APPS and their clones, and clones of their clones. Many of which appear to be fuelled by third party (non-industry) investment.

While the AI enabled to automate / outsource some of the tedious tasks that one may need to deal with in a day to day business. It also may be at a brink of an AI created content overload - check several unrelated entities, their social media or blog content, and if you're only a slightly more intermediate user, you'll find patterns.

All and all - the consolidation and over-regulation of the market may be a drag, especially for those who still experienced the heydays. But the AI era also poses exciting opportunities and threats alike.

The key is and will be to find a way to take advantage of this, and land on the right side of the equation.

Thanks for sharing some of your nostalgia and experience.

Nice summary :thumbsup

This is great information, as a newbie who is getting his aggregator site off the ground. My vibe is these days there is more bang for your buck on building backend products for adult websites (video and cloud services), so I’m trying to pivot.