For my 3000th post, a discussion on how we were right in ?96 and ?97
 

I?m amazed how often we were right back in the early days of the World Wide Web. Just the other day I was pondering how during 1996 and 1997 you could walk down Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley, mention the word search engine and get a check from an investor. After all, we knew that with the billions of web pages to come we?d have to have a search engine to find anything. We were absolutely confident back then that most users would start at a search engine and surf from there. Thus was the birth of the portal.

Well, a couple of years later the advertising market fell through the floor and companies like Yahoo, Alta Vista and Lycos went crazy. They focused all their attention on crazy products and outsourced their actually search technology to Google!

Here we are in 2004 and all Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL spend their time thinking about is how to catch up to Google. Google kept it pure and concentrated on what was right. Right was having the best search engine technology. The savvy Internet user would certainly figure out which one was best and set Google.com as their home page. This is exactly what has happened.

What does this have to do with the adult Internet space? Well, our top converting site in CJ Bucks is our all access site www.adultvideoonline.com. Also, through Consumption Junction, nothing converts better than the Nasty Dollars all access site and the other all access sites we are sending traffic to. Does that mean that we were right in 1996 and 1997 with the super site? Did we spend the last 6 years thinking that we had to go niche only to find out we were just doing the super site wrong?

What about TGPs? In 1996 and 1997 you just wanted your site to be sticky and to attract return visitors. You didn?t care if it was a free site. You knew that you would be building an asset that would make money for decades to come. Then we spent 6 years claiming that TGP traffic is the worst you can get. Flash forward to today ? we all wish we owned the biggest TGP.

Am I on to something here? What else was right in ?96 and ?97?

Congrats on the 3K Rick :thumbsup

This is a post to be watching...

Congrats on the 3k!

Yesterday
All my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as thought they're here to stay
Oh I believe in yesterday
Sudlenly, I'm not half the man I used to be
There's a shadow hanging over me
Oh yesterday, came sudlenly
Why she, had to go
I don't know she wouldn't say
I said, something wrong
Now I long for yesterday
Yesterday
Love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away
Why she, had to go I don't know
She wouldn't say
I said, something wrong
Now I long for yesterday
Yesterday
Love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away
Oh I believe in yesterday.

:1orglaugh

a super site with real content can be marketed AS a niche site actually and you blow away the consumer with the aditional content gettiing better retension

Congrads on your 3k Rick :thumbsup

Now I will reflect on this and comment in a little bit :thumbsup

As you said on IM, the problem with super sites back then was they didn't have any fucking content!

I remember the frames with "1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 ... 102 - 217 - 418" on the left linking to the pics :1orglaugh

Congrats and good post :thumbsup

We've learned the same thing that other Industries did... in order to stay in business you must provide quality products and goods...

Big doesn't mean best.

TGP is working because you have more SALES people doing your job... and TGP will push quality sites (% to close)

If everyone on the Internet read some good Zig Ziglar (rick's little secret) books then maybe they'd do better!

I like these "what has been done right" threads!

I think what has been done right by a lot of companies involved with every aspect of the adult web was simple but effective:

They treat their customers and business associates with

HONESTY and INTEGRITY

Just because we sell porn is no reason to be dishonest or unethical! The guys who never went for the fast money, who never tried to fuck people over, who always tried to DO THE RIGHT THING are the ones that are prospering in today's market.

I personally hope to see that trend continue!

Steve Lightspeed

:thumbsup

Sarcasm? :winkwink:

our allrealitypass.com is doing great!!

:thumbsup

Congrats and good post, Rick.

Nice add-on about business ethics Steve Lightspeed.

Since I wasn't doing much back then in the way of porn online... I'll just say...

congrats on 3k :thumbsup

Rick conrats ..

i think that in retrospect we did have it right in 96-97 it was easy to come up with something new and the people would flock to it. as long as the content was there and also so much more they would stay... people say that the TGP's ruined signups but when i look at TGP's they have the best model and actually give the user what they are looking for .. free porn and for some reason they still have converting traffic ... hmmmm... it works now i kick myself in my head when i stopped doing a TGP and did a mega site.

it is sort of like fashion most of the sites out there are regurgitations of what some of the sites maxcash had in the day. guys nowadays are looking to have the next tawnee stone or the next bang bus but it is not going to happen you have to make exclusive content but build it into one members area so the surfer is really getting his money's worth...

so many people made sites that said that they had that stuff but maybe had a little bit of bought content to make a "niche" but the rest of the site was full of just feeds... so the surfer has gotten smarter and is now wary of anything that is mega general they are looking for the mega exclusive sites ... i.e. your new mega sites on CJ ... Nasty Dollars and Lightspeed .. all of which convert quite well still and will continue to do so ... they are exclusive but now are able to be a mega site of just that content keeping the surfer coming back to your site more and more...

well that is way to much thinking for one afternoon .. congrats

I'd like to apologize to Steve Lightspeed. I thought he was being sarcastic but I know now he wasn't.

Not at all! I've been preaching business ethics since I started in 99 -- it was a shame that being an honest porn company seemed unusual!

Lots of good companies have made a nice place for themselves on the net by staying honest. I'm very happy to see them continue to flourish, and the rest start falling away.


Steve Lightspeed

word

Congrats dude :thumbsup :drinkup

congrats with 3K Rick:thumbsup

The sad truth is that a lot of people saw online porn as a way to make money without having to know much about business. When that didn't work... the honesty thing went out the window.

It's the people who know business and know how to make it work that can continue to operate with the level of integrity and respect that companies such as Lightspeed has.

The funny thing is that I couldn't agree more. That must be why we are such good friends. I thought you were bashing everyone else!

Great Post :thumbsup

I think you are right. hence remotethumbs :)

i am still wondering if CC processor keep going the way they are if we are going to be transported back in time to 97 with a new way of processing orders (prepaid cards? dialers? maybe) if we go back to stoneage only big big companies and medium companies will survive. small companies may do so if they have the capability of cashing in some tecnology or programing or something if not they will die. i am going for the small company with good programming power. but then again i may grow up before we are transported back in time.

The internet is in constant evolution ... Right now the whole adult scene is WAY behind mainstream . Just look at new technologies like CSS popping out ...

Anyways great post rick

Great thread and congrats on 3K Rick. Great advice from both Rick and Steve too.

WG

well said, rick and steve

:thumbsup
duke

I agree. I'm working on a few projects right now that are for the adult business but based on what works in mainstream.

I think this brings up an excellent point. However, I do not believe you can assume that all users are the same batch of buyers. In other words, there aren't 1,000 porn site subscribers all running around looking for the newest thing. There are thousands of different types of buyers, all responding to different types of marketing and sales techniques.

A particular type of Internet user may respond much better to a TGP because it fits their desires: they need to try out a product for days, perhaps even weeks before feeling compelled to purchase. However, other users need a marketing technique that shows as little as possible, to tantilize their interest, make them compelled to join a site to see more.

I've looked at free content on CJ for years. Given that loyalty, I would feel very comfortable donating $1, $2, even $5 a month to their site, even if the content is still free. (Keep in mind this is just an example-- it doesn't fit their business model.) Other users would not do this; they would continue to use the service for free. It's easy to dismiss this as loyalist versus cheapie. I believe there are deeper behaviour patterns that can be used to a site's advantage in marketing and sales.

These differences of purchasing trends have not been researched within the online adult industry. Have any research studies or market analysis of your clientelle been done? Do you know what type of marketing strategies affect the different types of subscriber users you have? You may know how they got to your site, but do you know why? Do you know what other sites they visit, and why?

The online adult industry is still very young, and can learn from older, more traditional industries. The soft drink, automotive, even computer sales industries spend millions on marketing research. The adult industry essentially plays blind roulette.

I think Rick started a great thread, and Chaos added some great comments. However, I'm not so sure all the good ideas were back in 96, 97.

Lukas

The thing I've learned more than anything in running your own business is to go with your gut instincts.

If I had listened to all the people who told me my ideas wouldn't work I would never have achieved a lot of the big hits I've had. Most all the winners were concepts everyone boo hoo'd.

I figured out long ago, sure its always good to seek advice and opinions, but at the end of the day, give those only so much weight in your decision making process and go with what you think will work.

The only thing I regret is not buying Internet real estate in mass quantity in the early days. But who knew how valuable this shit would become.

Re-reading an old thread ... we were also right with CJ sites ... conversions were WAY WAY better.

We feed the surfers too much free porn and they don't buy anymore ...

We were wrong on dialers, wich are total crap now .

I'd like to be able to go back to 97 and start over knowing all I do now.

IwantU back then was the first dating site to offer searchboxes to affiliates to use on their sites :thumbsup

Too bad we kind of vanished for few years, since no marketing was being done :BangBang:

Now it's time to kick things back into high-gear!!
:Graucho

we'd all like to :glugglug

This is why alot of my clients really like my work, i try to take what i know from all of my mainstream development, and apply it to this industry, and i generally end up using stuff that most people aren't used too, and they think its 'really cool'. CSS and the other new stuff always being developed could change alot of things.

I'm working on some stuff now, that i'll hope will make some of this type of 'goodness' available to anyone that wants to take advantage of it in this biz.

CSS is definitly the way to go ... It's sad nobody in this industry wants to adopt it because nobody are real webmasters with a recent formation :(

Interesting that you brought this up. We?ve recently modified our business model, with a key mandate of returning to our roots.

We had our most success in 1999-2000, by gambling on relatively untapped ideas, repackaging them, and using our knowledge of adult marketing to make them successful. We single handedly brought things to mainstream porn that few had ever heard of. That was our edge- we did our research, and developed a product that mainstream didn?t understand, nor have faith in. Their reluctance to take us seriously helped us to avoid competition for a while. Now everybody and their brother has jumped on, with amusing results. No, we weren?t the first, but we did it best and will continue to do so. Our future plans involve returning to the same idea of perfecting tiny niches that others can?t be bothered with. We will continue to give our customers exactly what they are looking for with precision detail.

I firmly believe that the internet has made sex consumers more conscious of their needs. With the readily available supply of a vast array of stimulating material, horny surfers are learning what works for them and what does not. What might have been an unusual habit or attraction, is now a community as surfers learn to find each other and share information. ?I thought I was the only one? is something we hear daily from our customers.

Essentially, big is good; but community & interaction is better.

DRM will be everywhere within 5 years

Zig :thumbsup :thumbsup

I C-A-N

Steve,

I agree with you 110%!! I was just pondering earlier about how a lot of companies in the adult scene are just fucking people around and are seriously lacking honesty,integrity, and professionalism. They just aren't handling business correctly.

To those individuals and companies who treat their business associates and customers with honesty and integrity I give you props! :thumbsup

:2 cents:

Congrats on the 3k btw!

Good thread as well :thumbsup