Are we fucking ourselves over?
 

I was thinking about this a lot last night, and was wondering what some of your opinions might be on this:

Are we totally fucking ourselves as adult webmasters by giving away so much shit for free? There is so much free porn out there, why anyone really needs to join a site is beyond me. Surfers are smarter these days, they actually know how to use their computers and understand the internet. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how to change a numeral or a letter in a FHG to get another FHG, example, ND (if you don't know who ND is then you're a surfer so stop reading now) FHGs, you change one digit, and wham-o next FREE gallery of either pretty damn good videos or photos, and you know exactly how many more galleries you got to look at (hundreds)...

I always hear "Oh I remember the good old days when all you had to do was put up a banner and you'd get some sales"... Did it ever occur to anyone that maybe it was like that because content was so hard to come by that you wouldn't dare give it away for free so the surfer was forced to join a site to obtain it?

In my opinion, TGP's are our worst enemy, they give tons and tons and tons of that shit away every day, and they are almost all catered toward the surfer, ie, no full page ads, banner placement, images can't open in new window, no ads on the image pages, etc etc etc...

Could you imagine if you owned a Surf shop, and in 1 day 1,200 surfers came in and only 3 of them bought something (if you're lucky), and 2 of the 3 bought a $299.95 dollar surfboard for $49.95 because they only needed to use it for 3 days? You'd fucking commit hari-kari.

Nevermind the fact that we have to deal with them downloading our content and posting it on all the newsgroups, fuck let's make it easier for them, let's give that shit away for free, that'll teach em. Hey here's a bunch of free pics and movies, join my site, cuz I know it takes you like 3 minutes to whack off and all this free shit is enough, but hey, join my site.

This trend is only getting worse and worse, first it was photos, now there's videos, what the fuck is next? Are we gonna start to come over to their houses and fluff up their pillows for them and make sure that their vaseline is nice and warm too?

Why do we do this? I mean it is really fucking insane if you sit here and think about how much free porn we give out daily, busting our ass to give it out for free, and then seriously expect them to pay for a membership. No other business I can think of gives away so much for free.

People want porn, and they ALWAYS will, why oh' why do we give it to them for free? They will pay out their asses for it if they are forced to.

Opinions? Thoughts? Solutions?

ohhh so true, but with todays trend the webmaster needs to give more free content to obtain the surfer and hope for a sale...... :disgust

I am afraid there's no real solution

that was a good read... though i don't think theres a solution... maybe if all the main sponsors together stopped giving away fresh content.. and the surfers got tired of seeing the same galleries over and over forcing them to buy a membership? but getting all the sponsors to do that would never work so i don't know...

but i'm still new... this seems like the solution... but i havn't been doing this for long enough to be able to really know....

interesting thread though, bookmarked :)

But could you imagine (and this is total fantasy) if on every FHG you went back and put a big all blur or some other kind of block on the good photos, or if you took out all the nudes and just showed the girl and explained how she did blowjob, anal, and cumshots, but only for members, do you think the fucking sign-ups would go thru the roof? I do.

too many tgp owners here for my real opinion - :winkwink:

Agree about that TGP part. Its a big feeding machine, with those "genious" scripts.
I found out that making 2-3 updates per week, with quality and mostly exlusive content, is 10 times better for sales.

But I dont think TGPs are the worst "enemy". Filesharing will be the worst with the future internet speeds, unless paysites starts protecting the content from beeing downloaded.

This phenomenon isn't really isolated to the adult biz. Look at GoDaddy's crazy assed $3.99/year domain registrations, etc. Everyone seems to think they can be the next walmart if they give everything away for free to get marketshare.

If you are pushing the same shitty bulk content as someone who is selling monthly memberships for $1, you WILL feel the pain.

Way I see it the only sites that will survive and be able to keep their prices high are going to be the ones with unique custom content in their member's area.

The only solution is to stop everyone from giving it for free. and Good fucking luck on that.

This industry's been fucking itself over for a long time. I remember a few years ago when i started 1:150 conversions sucked and those were 1st page uniques. Now most programs try to get you with 2nd page uniques and people are happy to convert 1:550

Unrealistic. All thanks to the TGP's who have been giving too much free porn. Don't think most people get their shit from IRC, kazaa or torrents. It's the TGPs, not all of them but most of them, that fuck this industry up.

Another thing I was thinking about, and maybe this should be a seperate thread, was affiliate programs. I, again, can't think of any other business where anyone can be hired on to your team. Affiliates are after all, employees, in one way or another just working on commission, but anyone can sign up, there is no intereview process, there is no need to show that you have any sort of skills or credentials, no resume', just sign up and here's a bunch of free shit we paid a lot of money to produce and design, have at it... I bet at min. 25% of affiliate sign ups are just to get the free content.

Too much free porn thread #6872

Is this your first week in the business or something?

Ya, but look at how much other shit Godaddy tries to sell to you on each and every page. I have a lot of clients who I tell to go to godaddy to register their domains, and they ALWAYS end up buying shit they don't need.

You could NEVER try to sell that much shit on a TGP post.

i doubt that, click his signature... hes got quite a few sites

It'll only get worse as time goes on. Not too far from now expect 3 or 4 2 minute clips on every gallery. You might as well do that now and get ahead of everybody else while you can. As far as a solution, there is none. Free porn is as much an internet standard as popup ads and free email.

Idiot.....

personally i think the free hosted galleries need to be gotten rid of. i like the free content because, lets face it, you need a reason for the surfer to want to visit your site but there has to be a limit. what is shown for free should only be samples, something to get the surfer interested, not daily overdoses of 100's of new galleries each day.

Thanks for identifying yourself
:1orglaugh

Yesterday was my first day.

This is completly true, but there is no real solution..

Give it a few years at current trend levels and you will love 1:5000. Theres a reason why I only do dating now, nothing there to give away and earnings per click dwarf porn earnings per click, for me anyway :2 cents:

The sky is always falling for idiots,

Adapt or die.

Innovation works better :thumbsup

I love these kinda fantasies.

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Like cd's in Walmart, domains are becoming the loss leaders meant to get people in and using godaddy hosting and associated upsells. I think you'll find they aren't losing money.

Your wisdom exceeds all of our expectations. Now go post in a "would you hit it post" and let the rest of us talk business.

Its a mind set and a business model. GoDaddy isn't the only one, Register.com is now doing them for $4.95 when you buy hosting (the hosting is dirt cheap too). EV1 servers, $6.50 domains for clients, the list goes on and now everyone wants to do it. Of course these registrars want to upsell to other products, and thats the point of a TGP.

I'm not sure why people in the adult business think they should be exempt from having to compete or innovate. If thats your mentality then maybe the civil service is more your speed.

Or signup to find your promotional tools are shit and skip to the other 500 sponsors? :1orglaugh

I rarely use any affiliates promotional tools. Why would you want to use the same shit that 1,000 other webmasters are using? I base my choice of affiliate by content and site quality, then I create my own tools to promote them.

great thread/read

In the end, the content owners are the ones who'll complain first.

I've heard so much about how TGPs are ruining the business...umm the content owner gave them the content and often hosts the actual content, if it was hurting their business they'd let everyone know. MGPs are just an extension of the business model, conversion is always going to be an issue because everyone sees the 250:1 ratio as being 249 missed sales rather than the real numbers.

Not everyone finding your site on SE's is over 21 with a credit card and a willingness to spend money, predicting conversions is part of the job. Quit moaning and start finding ways to increase your money rather than complaining about the business model

I didn't realize I was complaining about anything, I was merely asking the question "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?"

Forum
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No shit. Just infest the computers of the 99.5% of surfers that won't buy with spyware then sell them spyware removing products. SIMPLE.

Sorry, you just seemed a little annoyed with people for giving content away, liek it was causing some kind of problem for you

People have been saying that for years..I don't see it changing

No, I give away content too. I dont' like to give it away, but I know it's what needed to be done. I am just saying that maybe it wasn't such a great idea for us to give it away, or give so much away as we do, cuz it may be biting us in the ass now, or at least starting a small itchy irritating rash.

I am also not saying TGP owners are the enemy, duh, free content, get surfers to your site to see free content, sell shit... can't blame anyone for that.

I could be wrong, but I believe that TGP2's were trying to start the process of change.

Someone bumped a thread from 1998?

yeah but in alot of cases the free porn sucks and i dont mean that in a good way

I'm glad someone here is bright enough.

With that newbish thinking, Nasty Dollars/Bang Bros must be doing 0 sales/day now! :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Same ol' "TGPs are killing us but my business depends on it" thread :1orglaugh

No shit Mr.Fiction!
Go bump the 1999/2000 threads on AWI about the same topic! :1orglaugh

No matter how many products are available there will always be new customers (often not familiar with the competition) who choose loyalty, just ask the cigarette industry.

Thousands of new people enter a bar for the first time every day.

It's just a matter of being the first bar they like enough to become a regular. :glugglug

Exactly, but it's not until you've become a regular of that bar that they begin to give you free drinks and/or discounts...
:winkwink:

this has been discussed like 50 times already, it's a good observation on your part...
but there isn't really any solution to this...

You didn't hit the first bars I went to :1orglaugh

I am a surfer and I sign up to at least 5 sites a month. If you have hot chicks (who you cannot see other places) you will get subscriptions.

The illusion that everyone who surfs for free porn is a potential paying customer is just that, an illusion. There are kids, people from countries the card processors don't want to know about, plus thousands and thousands who simply would never consider paying for porn. Check out your friends and see how few of them ever bought porn mags or rented porn movies, except maybe once or twice out of curiosity.

But the main thing about free porn is that it is the great leveler. Sure The Hun pulls in his million surfers or whatever it is every day, but there are scores of sites with 6-figure traffic and thousands of sites pulling in thousands of visitors daily. People talk as if making free porn go away (even if that were possible) would leave the porn scene exactly as now, just minus free porn. But that simply isn't true. If we could only chase search engine placements or pay-per-click traffic, by the nature of these sources most of us would never get a look in and the traffic market would be dominated by a far, far smaller number of operators. Apart from leaving many affiliates out in the cold, the cost of traffic would rise dramatically, harming sponsors too.

paying for porn is like paying for water. who the fuck... oh wait :upsidedow