Too much free porn!
 

Signup ratios have steadily dropped over the past few years. Do you think the glut of free porn on TGP1s has contributed to this drop?

hmm. Seems like crabs may be the answer.

Boneprone,

Crabs is the never the answer! Jusy say no!

... ever thought it could be because of excessive scrub list usage ??

I think what is affecting the conversation ratios is that Adult sites (free,avs,wahever) are rather new market in the economy as a whole and it takes time for the free market system to get things balanced

When you made easy profit in the past, more enterpreneurs joined the industry off course.

According to theories: in time this will lead to a balance in supply vs demand and the profits will become as big/small/whatever as in any other business.

In practice this means that anyone can make any kind of site as long as it's legal and there's nothing you or I can do about it. If someone makes a profit with TGP - good for him. If someone else makes a bigger profit with TGP2 - even better for him.

Funkmaster,

Yes. :)

I think that is a key component. You?

If you put out good shit and keep the wankers happy they will stay with you....................... because you have become an extesion of themsleves or their appendage:)


But with all of us out there there is a lot of cow cudd going on ....

... it´s amazing how signups vary on different cc-processors. would be great if processors could publicly post how hard they scub ...

come on people! Do I need to lobby for more crab votes?

What is hurting convertions most is when surfers try and signup for a site then they forget to unmark something so they accidently join 50 other sites also that charge $19.95 per site while they can't cancel unless they send a letter to the company (not E-mail or FAX) writting down the site names + URL's and the letter should be signed by them and their contat person at the bank + they should also send a copy of their SSN along with a picture of their credit card and wife.
Or basicly shitty sites with crap content that are almost impossible to cancel

:thumbsup Hey All!!

If you want to post some galleries I know a very good place!!

http://www.teenplanet.com/cgi-bin/brownie/submit.cgi

Thank you!!!!!!!!

Sebastiaan

I believe its due to several factors and free porn is only one of them. A few weeks ago one of the webmasters here was joking about how it takes two midgets fucking a goat to give him a hardon because all he does is look at porn all day. That kind of desensitizing happens to surfers too. If you have e-mail and net access odds are you will see porn daily. Surfers are spammed with porn constantly and they are mislead to porn through deceiving doorway pages.

All our new tours show little nudity and our mailing lists include pics that show little or no nudity. Its working for us. I even had one of my paysite members comment on the fact that the lack of nudity on our tour enticed him.

Well, thats my .02 - I dont want to say too much or you guys will beat me at my own game. Bottom line is I do not think tgps deserve all the blame. In part its the way webmasters compete, the way we force porn onto surfers, and how we make porn impossible to avoid.

wrong forum.. you.....must control self :)

Everyone wants to blame it all on scrub, but sorry, it just doesn't work that way. In the land of cc processing you don't want to scrub out anything more than you have to, since we don't make any money either without an actual sale.

Bank declines are on the rise, have been for quite some time, and there's not one thing that scrubbing or not scrubbing will do to change that.

As for the free porn issue, I've said it until I am blue in the face. So here we go again:

Why buy a cow when you can have as much milk in as many flavors as you ever wanted?

Thankfully my momma grew up in the fifties and she could pass this great phrase along to me ;)

Kimmy Kim....Your right...so how about you poor me a glass...:D

Yes..
I think all the free porn available hurts our conversions..
It all really depends on where the free porn is coming from..

Like the Hun for example..
A surfer who regularly visits the hun, knows that the Hun webmaster will check the galleries for popups, blind links etc, so the surfer knows he can find good quality free porn all day evry day..So, why would he join a paysite? he can loaf all day on the hun..

Now, lets use a cj as an example..
the surfer see's the galleries list & clicks on a gallery link & chances are, he's sent to a trade, & so on & on down the chain of trades including the popups & consoles, etc..
This surfer may convert easier than the hun surfer..



As the laws get ammended, we'll all see some drastic changes..
Pretty soon, tgps & free sites will not exist..
All that'll be left is AVS & paysites...

Just my :2 cents:

It's the fucking newsgroups...so much porn there, jesus....

ONe Word: Prime Rib!!!

jollyperv

It's not the fucking newsgroups believe me.
Over 90% of surfers dont even know ,there is
such a thing as newsgroups.

Can't blame the newsgroups entirely... I post samples of whatever I just put on our site to the newsgroups (all tame, just teasers) and I get good converting traffic from them. Most of the time they are so tired of mass spam that they are happy to come see my shit!

KimmyKim,

What banking/cc issues have hurt signup ratios and how much of an effect have these issues had?

cj traffic convert better than thehun listing ? i don't think so

I have NO COMMENT TO THIS POST.

(Its only been mentioned and asked about a thousand times.)

:stoned

If you really read what KimmyKim and HeadPimp are implying, this post is very infomative. HeadPimp is converting NewsGroup traffic and he just told you how! His marketing technique lends creedence to KimmyKims comment and mine as well. The "in your face" porn marketing is not that effective anymore. Theres too much free porn for it to be effective. You have to catch the surfers eye, then tease them, then lead them.

Movieposts are definately the number one cause of the dramatically falling conversion rate. I remember two years back when I could pull in tons of signups with just a flashing banner at the top and bottom of my galleries. Now, the competition is immense. The gallery design has completely changed, and although I convert extremely well with what I do, I think that all the free content on these free movie sites are not helping us gallery makers out at all.

All I'm saying is that I do not think that these 100k+ unique movieposts have to post a new 2 minute movie per day in order to bring back visitors. If a visitor is coming to your free site just for your movie, you've got yourself a fucking leech. It's simple, you post good galleries, you've got yourself bookmarkers.

- Brad

60% of TGP gallery pics are pure crap and those that are good just over cook the quantity and lose the tease trail.

Simple test - drop 4 exclusive cute teen pics (no pink) in the newsgroups and you can almost guarantee results. Why, because your surfer has fallen in love with the girl and been left hanging with the want to see her pussy.

I have just dropped 10 topless pictures of a cute 18 YO amateur teen at TGP sites that accept partial nudidty. The gallery is simple and contains one small text link "Eat Me"

Does it click - you bet it does. Tease works every time.


TGP 1 is now extremely inefficient, and if you aint got the right goods you are just wasting bandwidth on gallery hoppers who have seen it all before.

Nice tag line dopy..


:thumbsup

Well Colin, the banks are getting tighter, there is no doubt, of course I would imagine it's in response to the fact that people are over reaching their credit limits or not paying their bills on time. That's pretty much the only reason for a bank to decline a sale. And as a % of sales, bank declines have been steadily rising and scrub declines dropping. I can't speak for anyone but us however, so other processors may have different scenarios.


The bottom line in this business, just like any other sales or marketing type of enterprise is actually marketing to your customer, and making the sale.

For instance, I got new tires last weekend. I also paid $60 extra for a warranty, above and beyond the mfr warranty -- would I have bought it if the sales person didn't a. tell me about it, and b. ask me to buy it? NO.

What about the issue of sponsors not tracking legitimate sales? I'm not talking about illegal cheating/fraud by sponsors but the built-in technical limits to session/user tracking.


All those dirty fucking ?riÇKs with the auto-homepage, auto-load ActiveX exploits, even pop-ups, just condition the surfer to disable the services that allow referrer tracking.



One cool thing would be an "online coupon". Like the e-mail programs that credit full sign-up conversions. This would not only help with nocookie surfers (assuming the unique e-mail url code is passed to the cc processor without needing cookies) but with "bookmark referrals" - the type that ckickthrough to the sponsor but join during a new browser session (consider the people that browse porn during work lunch break).

Yeah, right... link-sites have been around longer than affiliate programs have... So nothing changed there, they were there for 8 years now, now stats are dropping, so it MUST be the fault of something that has been around for 8 years...

The solution is so simple. People are not stupid. You can throw consoles at 'em once, but they will not click on a banner again. How many times would you use a sponsor when he screws you every time you use 'em? Once... And then you tell people about it. And people would stay away from it part from the occasional webmaster that doesn't know yet...

Agressive advertising is causing the drop. Simple as that. Treat your customers with care and they'll buy. Fuck 'em over with blind links, consoles and dialers and they'll walk.

Hard to say.....
Some TGP's are there TOO much for the surfer and not for the webmaster to make a few bucks.
With rules like "only hardcore" "our surfers demand quality so only high res. hardcore pics", only 2 banners etc. etc. won't make things better IMO.
After all it is the webmaster that submits galleries who keeps the TGP business alive so why not allow them to make money.
Too agressive ain't good but making it all TOO clean ain't good either.

I agree with The Hun that dialers and popup hells make the surfers run away.

I wonder how an r-rated tgp would do. No offense to anyone but TGP2 isnt the answer. You might think Im insane ( and maybe thats true ) but if you ever surfed amateurindex you'd see that 99% of the sites listed dont even show nipple.

thats why 100k CJ makes $350 and 100k TGP makes $50

Amateurindex, if it's the one I'm thinking of (and from your description it is) has converted well and retained well for a LONG time. None of the owners sites has hardcore or much more than tan lines on the tours, and most of the tours don't offer a trial price, just a join. And it works.

Hmmm, I think he's been around about 8 years come to think of it, so maybe someone in this thread is referring to this instead of the give away the cow and then try to sell the milk theory that seems sooooo prevalent among most tgps.

I can't believe how low some paysites seem to think of themselves if they believe sites like mine are giving away the cow and trying to sell the milk. Come 'on! Look at my site. Sure, nice galleries, but mixed, ads with 'em, different resolution pics, movies, but no life chat, no huge series... A good paysite has a superiour content compared to my site, and I'm one of the most surfer-friendly sites out there. Why else would you think paysites would advertise on my site. And with success I read elsewhere on this board.

Now we could start the whole story from scratch again with the expamples of the food courst at the sawgrass mall in Miami, but let's not do that. Link-sites are not giving away the cow. If they'd do that they would kill themselves in bandwidth. It's weird to see people whine on and one about free content, while good free content is harder to find these days then let's say 5 years back... and conversions are worse! A free site could never offer what a paysite can. It's up to the paysites to show that to people. But I very much doubt console loops, 6 dollar dialers and blind ads are prooving that to people.

This discussion has been up and going for a couple of years now. Two years ago people predicted my site would be gone by the end of that year... well... check sextracker. Unless they haven't updated their site for 2 years I'm still alive and kicking. And trust me, I will be for a long time? Why? 'cause I treat my visitors with respect. And I make sure not to link to dialer traps and console hells so when they see a banner they like and click it they actually feel tempted to sign up. Might not happen the first time they see it, might not happen the second time. But build trust and people will buy. Look at amateur pages. They have cancellation buttons all over their page so when people sign up they can easily cancle if they want to. Why? To build trust. Ask Lensman, he'll second it. They're going for the long run. And that's where the money is. Kimmykim, you should know that.

Also, that salesman sold you something you gain nothing by. They know the cost for extra warrenty is about 50 USD (that's how much the item you bought breaks down AND is returned for the warrenty), that's a well know fact. Anyway, would you still buy if that same salesperson started showing you every damn item in his show? Would you still buy if he started showing you around in the neighbor's shop? You showed interest. You bought and so he showed some more available options. Just like any good paysite would offer. But let's assume you wouldn't be interested and the salesman would keep on nagging you with more commercial talk. I think you would be pissed off especially when you very clearly didn't want to buy as you walked out of the shop...

Many people fail to see how a market, any market for that matter - Internet or "real world" - works. We're selling a product to customers. Our goal is not to get 'em to the sponsors, it's to show 'em a product they're interested in so they'll buy. Try to put yourself in the surfer's shoes for a change. Just give a fair answer to yourself: would you buy a product if it would spam the shit out of you?

Hun,

You and I will never agree on some things, that's for sure. ;)

And surfers will never pay for porn when they can find it for free.

You can claim that pay sites have things you can't find without paying, but that's not the case. You can claim that paysites are superior to yours and others like yours but what does that matter when the surfer jacks off, wipes up and is done for the night?

So long as he can find ENOUGH STUFF FREE to get that far, what reason does he have to pay for anything more than that?

KimmyKim - thats definetly the site I am referring too. It's 100% tease, the guy has been doing good for MANY years using that marketing style.

And thehun - nobody ( or atleast not me ) is blaming you soley for problems webmasters are having. If the problem was that simple tgp2 would be a beaming success by now.

I think alot of it is the way webmasters sell their sites on tgps, newsgroups, spam mails, popups, CJ sites and so forth. At first 20 pics of hardcore sex equaled memberships. Even webmasters who know marketing just threw their raunchiest pics up anywhere they could. At this point everyone does it and it just doesnt work as well. Webmasters blame YOU - I blame webmasters.

Not too long ago thehun posted one of my galleries that was mostly lingerie and little nudity. That gallery sold very well for me. It's not like he insists on a certain amount of penetration shots or cumshots. Ya tease them, then lead them.

Maybe I'm looking at different facts than you do...

If what you're saying is true Kimmykim, then how come I'm still selling banners and people (as posted on the board) make money on 'em? If you're right then I wouldn't make a dime and the banners on my site would not make any money either... Doesn't make sense, does it?

Sure, if there would be no free porn at all people might pay, but then the paysites would start promoting their product to everybody by giving some previews. And that would expand quickly to today's situation. Call in inevidable. Saying no free porn at all would increase sales is like saying cutting gravity in half would make flying cheaper. Both might be true, but it will never happen.

Sponsors give away free content to promote. They pay people to build galleries. They pay sites like mine to put up ads, but so far I haven't heard a single one complain on this board.

You should do your homework better... you should be able to see how many sales come at CCBill for galleries listed on sites like mine. I'm surprised you're fighting this "battle against free porn" while you're making a lot of money from galleries yourself... I think some more respect to people that are part of your market would be in order. You make money off my site. And good money as well.

Interesting thread.

I've never had [the pleasure] of getting a gallery listed with The Hun (but that's neither here or there), but I see both sides here.

As a surfer, I hate popups, blind links as such, but as a webmaster, we're "taught" that they're our friends and good marketing tools.

In the end, it comes down to sheer volume. Throw enough dirty socks at the wall and one will eventually stick.

One thing I feel sure on though - we're about to see the demise of pay-per-signup. That model only can last so long. I think revshare is going to be the only safe option soon.

jm2C YMMV

Nice thread...

Got my :2 cents: of daily reading.

I think that The Hun sells banners and people make money of them because of the MASS traffic that he gets. From 1 mil people there HAVE to be at least 100 that dont know about napster-like porn programs and LOTS of free porn. And they see that the galleries are nice and updated so they click on the sponsers to see what they have to offer.

But YES there is toooo much free porn. About 3 years ago it was impossible for me to find a porn clip over 30 seconds. Now I have full DVD rips on cds all from the internet. I as a surfer would never ever sign up to a paysite that offers conventional porn. I might sign up to BangBus cause thats original but nothin else.

The Hun is not the problem. Gallery makers are!! They are flooding the internet with free porn. Some people submit like 10 galleries a day to about 1000 tgps! Thats a hell lot of content!

So people stop blamming a single source. Especially the hun (who also lists crappy looking galleries which make people go to paysites) Its the gallery builders fault!!

My :2 cents:

I agree ! Closing thehun doesnt fix the problem. The problem is bad marketing. At first hardcore sold memberships. When that stopped working it became a race to see who could post the most outrageous content. At this point guys are selling transsexuals, midgets, goats and friggin child porn.

You know, you can post lingerie and tame photos on thehun and get listed. Its not like he insists on a certain amount of cumshots or pink shots. He is also very liberal about testing new sales and marketing techniques.

I hate to admit it but SR makes good point too. TGPs that insist on high res photos and "only the best porn" are a joke. If I wanted to give my best photos away for free Id do it on my own site. Thehun just gets lumped in with those idiots cause hes the biggest player.

BTW, fantastic thread everyone. theres alot of really valuable information and ideas being shared.

Money money money... here's my :2 cents: to play.

The Huns correct about the majority of the problems are brought about by too many popups and blind links and cj trades etc..

Build trust and build bookmarkers that may not buy today but may tomorrow... I've had people that have been at my site for a few months before a purchase before... They wouldn't have ended up buying anything at my site if I had lost them by messing them about on day 1 ... I gave them a reason to return.

[And no they didn't suck my bandwidth dry.. lol.. and I do make GREAT profits from this traffic... and they purchase other programs and products also... I don't just have bookmarkers, I have REPEAT CUSTOMERS/BUSINESS]

You dick the surfers around and while you'll get impressive looking traffic figures, you will really just be pushing around crap traffic that gets EVEN LESS productive the more you stuff them around because they're gonna get ticked off... and do you reallllly think they are going to want to join a site that you will be making money off of after pissing them around so much... NOT FUCKING LIKELY... they're also going to be more cautious about clicking on banners/text-links in future,(that's a negative for us all.. if they don't click to our sponsers we can't sell them anything) unless you majorly tease the surfer into clicking,(note I say tease... get them horny.. but keep them with blueballs and in pain till they pay for something :D) .. the more you fuck them around the harder it is to get the clicks to sponsers and thus sales.

The more you mess them about the better the banner/text and everything else need be to encourage surfers to click to sponsers,[that's NOT good].

How do we improve this:
1: Clean up all this major popping and blind crap etc..

2: ARS wake up to your fucking selves!!! [I've heard of many people straight out pressing power buttons because they couldn't be fucked with all your popup shit.]

3: Get the sponsers giving more enticing tours... The last lot of Maxcash I saw sucked severely and were mostly just 2 pages of bugger all... not even any decent tease.

4: You want to see your signups increase, GET 100% of the exit traffic if your sponser runs an exit console... I find it funny that last time I looked there were lots of programs where the links on exit consoles that you DIDN'T get credit for, also had the most appealing tours. [you're losing money to your sponsers and they have NO EXCUSE for screwing you like this..(80% of the popup is NOT ACCEPTABLE if one is forced to run)]

5: Try to keep links to sponsers as clean as possible... Deep linking to bypass sponser popups where able too, is a great way... Then you can frame your own popups if you like and make sure of quality, that you get 100% of the links and also make sure that there will NOT be any popping frenzy. [Ps. if a user bookmarks the tour even if the sponser is a crappy cookie/(session ip) tracker since you reload the cookie/(session ip) setting link on the return to your frame your affiliate tracking will be enabled again... Some thing that users, I'm sure, of ccbill lost a few signups on in the past since ref. code used to dissapear most times on affiliate link clicking and only show program url, which would then get bookmarked if traffic wished bookmarking to return later for signing up]

6: If one market seems to be going flat during different periods are you diversifying... if not WHY NOT? ... Surfers may come to your site seeking 1 thing but that doesn't mean that is the only type of stuff you should advertise... With sites I run I have a mixture of porn and products .. they may come to buy products and just window shop but end up buying a porn membership or vica versa .. MAXIMISE YOUR TRAFFICS POTENTIAL!!! [in the stock market do you buy stocks in just 1 industry, even if in different companies... not unless you're fucking stupid]

7: Galleries should be more tease... Entice them into your sponser with tales of what they will see... Like

"CLICK to our sponser you'll finally get the opportunity to see this babe with cum splattered all over her face... and boy can this bitch moan when she's getting it up the ass... Yeh man... We have vids of her getting reamed & creamed... Our members ALWAYS GET THE GIRLS - Click Here"

8: Use some color ... Don't be bland .. Color doesn't cost you bandwidth... Used at the right times and on the right text it'll make you more money with more clicks thus more signups.

9: Your sites don't need to look like they were designed by a graphic artist,(a good one.. lol). Just show the surfer what they seek and also show them some other stuff that may interest them and make you more money in the bargain :)

10: Have typed too much... [fingers need a spa bath & massage]... but think and hope above may help some of you still wondering how to improve on making more money...

11: HAVE I WON FOR LONGEST POSTING YET?? :D

Later, RIPP
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TGP2 might still be TGP and about giving away free content (5 pics is still 5 free pics) but it's more efficient for both gallery makers AND TGP OWNERS.


GMs get a 5 pic "warning page" or gallery index page which leads to the sponsors tour. Think of the 5 pic gallery as a free site index page that doesn't lead to several galleries of multiple pics but to 1 pic-on-html gateway pages that lead to the REAL galleries (sponsor site).


TGP owners send traffic to fast loading/visually simple (lots o' thumbs can distract the surfer ya'know). It's more like a "window shopping" experience. That's what TGP are about - being an online catalog of sorts. Quicker gallery views means more gallery views per session which means more traffic, more trades and more surfer friendly brownie points.

There's no reason a TGP2 gallery should be considered "low quality". Just call it a "scan collection". Personally, I'd rather post 4 galleries with 5 pics each than a single gallery with 20 mixed pics. I bet the surfer would like having these pics catagorized and linked to individually also.


Reviews have shown that the majority of bandwidth invested in TGP is from the gallery page and thumbs. This isn't good for anyone. Surfer (56k) waits. GM pays. TGP owner gets fewer clickthroughs per session from surfers expecting / being conditioned with that annoying world wide wait. Remember, "30 HOT TEENS" is just as much a blind link if the surfer waits for the gallery to download and finds he has no interest in the content offered than if he finds himself on a cj site after clicking the link. Smaller galleries help with that problem.



BUMP

Actually there is no such thing as free......all that shit that is floating around is another way of marketing . Its not that I approve of it, its just a fact of the business. TGP2's are a more suttle and refined way of doing the same thing, and they seem to be working to some extent.