Industry ratios have fallen 8% every month for the last year on average!
 

We have been collecting and tabulating data for the last year over many of the largest programs... how will you compensate for this steady decline?

I blame the massive growth rate of the free porn movement

Well lets look at the phone sex business for a sec.

It started out with people calling and paying per minute to listen to a sexy recording

Then you where able to talk to a live operator

After that the system allowed you to pick the look of the lady you want to talk to (well you still talk to the same 500lb ladyloon)

Now they let you talk to 2 at a time

The key is coming up with new things for the surfer.

Now for those who dont tweak their site and add interesting stuff etc. yes it will go down and down but being a bit creative can help

just my 2 cents

wut about competition between paysites? don't they try to "out fuck" each other?

we eliminated creativity from the analysis to provide a more "clean" view of the problem...

I think a massive selection of free porn sites has a bigger impact on signup ratios. Many free sites has a minimum requirement of 15 thumbs per page and increased standard of hardcore graphic content. Many TGPs offer just as much as some paysites. In my own opinion anyways

that doesn't say much about the quality of paysites out there.

You mean the paysites quality is decreasing and free site quality increasing? Both can have a impact on conversion ratios

How can that be? 90%+ of the paysites I visited were more or less the same carbon copy of one another;)

On the bright side internet traffic in general should increase, maybe that will balance things out.

And in so doing ignored the most important issue. That's like ignoring tourism when talking about how to improve the economy of a tiny new england state. Why cripple the discussion?

it was only eliminated as an issue through the incorcporation of it throughout the entire tabulation process.

like the way you do trig and find variations of sin/cos/tangent, etc. cancel out each other

we kept the dataset as large as possible and the traffic sources were all equally weighted in the totals

I think I see what you mean. However, the main problem with doing that is that while it is mathematically acceptable to use average creativity at a given time, it would be inaccurate to assume that average creativity remains constant. A big part of why conversions are going down overall is that the adult internet is a huge mess of identical cookie-cutter sites using oversaturated content.

Yeah it's like one of those self-contained puzzles... or like you're saying more like an illness that just overly complicates itself within its own stagnation...

Its the increased quality and quanity of free porn sites, and the increased intelligence of surfers finding free porn. All those paysites that cross bill and shit effected it too

Porn is a business. Lately, it has become harder for small new people to get started, and easier for big programs to dominate more of the market. This means less creativity.

To add to that, we get a lot of midsize programs popping up. They don't know how to do something new, so they copy OxCash, or Nasty, or Adult.com, or ARS. The result is *thousands* of sites that are basically duplicates of one another. Rarely does something new come along.

In any creative industry, lack of creativity is going to hurt revenue. It's a no brainer. The problem is, most people think of adult as being all about the money, and forget that in any industry, you have to have a product, not just a sale.

its a number of things:glugglug

- Lack of creativity

- Lack of trust in the industry

- Poor economy

- Too much free porn

- Lack of forsight, every man for himself. (See "free porn" and "lack of trust".)

- Paysites that trick surfers into cross sale making them not join a porn site anymore
( detailed version of lack of trust)

I think you summed it up
:winkwink:

That's pretty much the kind of stuff I have in mind. Too many people here are out to make a quick buck at any cost. It's going to pull the rug out from under the entire industry, in the long run, though. Then we will all be fucked.

What about TheFLY's original question, though? What are people doing to make up for this?

Personally, I have been looking at the reasons for the decline, and avoiding them. I create my own content, and there's nothing quite like it. I am honest with my surfers.

It seems to be working. I am tiny now, but I used to be microscopic. Soon, I might be simply small. My average sales are at least doubled this year, with some really exceptional weeks. The scale of my operaition is still small, but I think it means something that it is growing.

I agree doing buisness like that causes alot of long term damage to the industry.

- I also agree, something that is unique converts better. Creativity is a important factor.

- Free porn isn't going nowhere got to work around it, if you cant beat them join them

- I refuse to promote cross bill sites to play my small part in keeping the surfer happy and not causing damage to the industry

a few of the measures I have learned to adapt to

Escort gave a good example.

The question to ask yourself in this or any industry is "You don't expect change?" If you aren't prepared for continuous change in all components of your industry you will eventually fail. The Internet has accelerated the traditional speed of change because now its a more level playing field and things happen in real-time. So your competition can literally come up with a creative marketing ploy in the morning and have it out on its site network by the end of the day and effectively outflank you.

One of my biz partners asked me the other day why I work so hard and get up at all hours to check on things. I said because I worry. I worry about the competition coming up with something new that will screw up my sales, or new laws, or servers going down, and on and on. And I do mainstream non-adult and non-internet biz stuff as well, so its quite a task, but I strive to be the first one at the fishing hole as much as possible in all the different things I do.

I see so many webmasters come into this business especially and start to make some bucks and think they can kick back and put it on autopilot. That's one of the surest ways to get clubbered. Start partying too much and you'll fall asleep at the wheel and crash. Someone else will get your customers.

The best way to compensate for a decline in sales is by implementing one or more of several strategies:

1. Outprice the competition.

2. Give the customer more value for their purchase.

3. Be more creative in your marketing and site presentations.

4. Expand your site network to offset decreased sales individually.

5. Network and get involved in mainstream sites.

6. Improve customer service to make sure your customers are happy and content with the service you are providing them. Happy customers means retained customers. The longer you keep a customer the more people he will tell about how good your service is and he'll stay longer also.

7. Expand advertising and promotion. Get your sites out there so surfers can find them.

8. Sometimes you can take the opposite approach to expansion and consolidate instead. Dump the dog sites, and focus on the ones doing the best. Don't ever lose the focus. That happens a lot in this biz too. Like when you get to the point when checks come in and you don't even know what they are for.

9. Boost your content up. E-mail your customers and let them know your updates. If you don't keep your publishing fresh and new, people get tired of looking at the same things and will leave.

10. Build up an affiliate program. If you have a hot site niche other webmasters will gladly market sites that convert.

There are lots more things you can do. But any of these is a start in the right direction!

Work Hard. Take care of your businesses and they will take care of you.

Unless you can show us this "study", you are just pulling numbers out of your ass.

:2 cents:

This is a very lame attempt at spamming a per-click program...

Do you doubt my statistical craft? :321GFY

Will there be some sort of prize in this thread?

Has the average paysite membership gone up as the affiliate programs fight to pay out more and more?

And more webmasters pushing programs without a clue how to sell.

"What are people doing to make up for this?"

Most of them are pumping out even more free porn to drive it down another 8% next month.

TGP owners will tell you it isnt them to blame... its your marketing skills that suck LOL

Ok, the info is interesting but what is the source of the data?

Every man for himself. "I can make a few more bucks short term, who cares if it erodes the industry as a whole." It isn't old selfish, it's short sighted.

:1orglaugh