Old school webmasters, what were the early days like?
 

I want to hear what the early days were like in the online porn biz.

Tell me about good times when you could slap a banner on a webpage and make money with little effort.

Sponsors used to pay $75 per click, RAW!

more like $0.000000001 per click :)

business was best in the middle of it

not the beginning

I called Yahoo in Dec. '96 and asked for them to create a celeb directory for my celeb site. They did and the next day I was getting 70K a day in traffic. I sent about 40K a day to Babylon-X at .03 cents a click. I was origianally getting .02 cents which was what everyone else got, but my traffic allowed me to ask for more.
I kept getting that 70K a day for about 3 months until they started adding more celeb sites. After a year I was still getting 20K a day. Today there are hundreds of celeb sites listed on Yahoo and I still get about 2K a day from that original listing.

Those were the good 'ol days :thumbsup

it was a gold rush.
Times were good.

The rush is over.

Go back home.

Nothing's changed..... LOL:pimp

I had to walk 5 miles every day in the snow to get to the internet, and it was uphill both ways :stoned

In a certain sense nothing has changed...just the number of new fools competing for the same cake.

When I started out in the Winter of '98 I owned my niche and probably got about 90% of the traffic for those search terms.
I would do crappy pay sites over a weekend and be making $7k each by month two from them.

I miss being able to doorway the shit out of the engines. Now that was quality traffic.

There is still plenty of money left in the business but if you are using the same techniques as the old days you will make squat, as everyone else is using them. In fact these days if you are not
a Unix god I wouldn't even get into it.

I sort of foresee the same thing happening to porn as in the ISP business. It will just be too difficult for the mom and pop operations to go on and the small players will be out eventually.
I have actually recently seen some sites that I think will be the wave of the future and they are for all practical purposes live broadcasting channels.

I often wonder about life after porn...How I might have to go back to a job in which I make less in a year than I do in a month now. Thank god I have invested my ill gotten gains.

I thought he said oldschool?

Back in the day....There were no banners. Everything was BBS style and done in ASCII. You could charge per month, per minute, per file, or per download size. People read descriptions of what they were gonna download then they downloaded it...no thumbnail previews.

I remember all the old nasty McHenry BBS shit that was floating around. That was good money with very little effort. The challenge I had was getting the phone company to run all the lines into my place for the dial up's. I also had a 64k ISDN line brought is for those who wanted to telnet into my box.

Getting members was easy as hell too. I just advertised in the local swingers papers and set up forums for them all to meet and chat in....just like GFY has done for us. Geeks were easy to get too... Just add a couple of L.O.R.D. (Legend of the Red Dragon) games to the BBS and they would flock to you just to play them.

And you all though I was a newbie photographer. Shame on you. :)

Some people think old school is like 1999 and shit :)


I remember making thousands a day for 30 minutes of work, developing the net as we went, paying $100 a domain, $500 a month per page hahaha blah blah. Shit, you just could not count it fast enough. :)

My 2 favorite things as the net progressed was Web Site Awards that were just nice links back to a site and 50 page recip link lists hahahahah

Of course back then people would go through all 50 pages to see what was out there.

What has died? Type ins. Still happens but since things are more networked today, people just don't go typing shit in anymore.

Mogul
ContentLotto.com
:D

Old school olden days on the web:

I remember when "webmasters" would open a porn site, and without any promotion, they would get thousands of high-quality visitors (there were no other kinds) within a few days.

Anybody else remember this: most of the porn sites you would find on the search engines would have a note that said something like "Sorry, we've closed. We got too popular and can't affod the bandwidth"

There were no banners back then, and almost none of the sites had sponsors, so as soon as the word got out and they started getting hits, they would simply shut down.

I'd love to hear that compaint today "Oh, my site got listed at the top of Yahoo, and now I'm just getting too much high-quality traffic to afford my bandwidth!" LOL

BBS Style, what about BBS's themselves? All the free ASCII porn you could download at 300 baud. Printing out naked ladies on a daisy wheel printer. Shit, that was the 80's!

When i started back in december 2001, things were so much easier.

Old school olden days on the web:

I remember when "webmasters" would open a porn site, and without any promotion, they would get thousands of high-quality visitors (there were no other kinds) within a few days.

Anybody else remember this: most of the porn sites you would find on the search engines would have a note that said something like "Sorry, we've closed. We got too popular and can't affod the bandwidth"

There were no banners back then, and almost none of the sites had sponsors, so as soon as the word got out and they started getting hits, they would simply shut down.

I'd love to hear that compaint today "Oh, my site got listed at the top of Yahoo, and now I'm just getting too much high-quality traffic to afford my bandwidth!" LOL

Ahh the old days, $.02 cent checks from girlsgirlsgirls.com
Who remembers that ? (IEG)

Circle jerking was done with mkstats, uploaded every night.

Ynot was asking for 4cents a click. We all thought they were idiots and would never get that.

Ahh the old days. Shit the new days are here and better than ever. Its better now than it was then. You can actually count on a real check coming in.

I remember the days before thumbnails existed.

I don't know who invented thumbnails, but it was a great idea.

who gives a fuck
concentrate on today and tomorrow

who the hell would ask this kinda question, it'll only get you depress cause you dint take advantage of it back then i know i dint, am sick of people kept saying to good ol days.

That's true, but we can also learn from those who came before us. What about Larry Flynt, Hugh Heffner, Sleazy Dream, Bob Guccione, Al Goldstein, The Mitchell Brothers, and all the rest? Study the classics!

Cyberthrill Casino ripped me off about 4 years ago, ah those were the days....

when i stated back in 98, i coulda made a killing if i did what i do today. i thought the business was saturated then. its nothing compared to how many ppl are doing it now.

What the fuck is Bob Guccione and Hugh whateverhisnameis doing printed next to the great Sleazy Dream's name. If I remember correctly they can't turn a f'n profit on the net!

hugh hefner shoulda hired me a couple years ago. they'd be makin a killin on the net with that brand name.

What are you gonna learn? the internet changes constantly.
You must keep up with today's market
besides what works or has worked for them may not work for you.

I've been around 4 years now and when I first started my really crap ass TGP galleries on free host made money.. AVS, SE's Free sites all made money.. Times were good..

that time is history now..look forward people..!:thumbsup

the old days?

1 listing on persiankitty would get your AOL account shut down with the scanmaster playboy pics you had on it....

Next Page links on galleries snagged 80% of the hits to the gallery page....

people signed up like it was going out of style on even the ugliest galleries....

amateur hardcore paied .025 raw, because there was no such thing as unique back then

I believe it was 97. I spammed for a living!

I still miss XPICS :Graucho

i had clicked 100s times these fucking Next Pages and never found one! :winkwink:

at the age of 12 i wrote a porn story which my mother found...well, my parents thought back then i would become a writter or a sick male which will abuse women!!...... Also i recall in the same age that i had a notepad and with glue i was sticking hardcore porn pictures whenever i got a good porn magazine in my hands. I had an extreme desire to show it each time on the girls in the school.... which were freaking! I prefered doing it few seconds before the teacher entered in the class


true story

:helpme

Mailing lists with FTP sites that disappeared within 24 hours and the ever-reliable fountain of the alt.* newsgroups.

Then came the Web...

I used to kick arse on that game! Not as much as I did on trade wars. Trade Wares became a major underground movement in my high school. People were getting kicked in the shins in the hallways and stuff over things that happened durring the game on the local BBS. It was like gang wars for the geek crowd.

I remember going into Red Dragon as a guy character cause I wanted to bed the bar maid.

I sometimes think when you buy a modem you should have to take a test where two of the questions are : #1 what is a sysop? #2 What is a door game?

Unless they hand over their credit card to buy porn right there and then they should be denied access.

5-6 years ago I started my own website, with my own content. because of the lack of time, knowledge and experience it failed miserably or so I thought.

Then this guy called Richard contacted me and said he could make me a bucket load of money, my content/money, his experience knowledge. To be honest thought he was a nerd and not impressed. Told him I was not interested.

Was making good money shooting for magazines and most of the photographers I knew had got bad experiences with someone trying to sell them the same deal. Which left them making $1-2000 a month after spending a lot of time and trouble.

He was Richard of Richards Realm and I am an idiot.

If only I had got into this business then, plus sold content. The few clients I did have buying Internet rights were more than willing to pay $3-6 a shot for non-exclusive. But I just did not think it was worth the effort.

We've now had the content store up and running 9 months. Last month we sold more on the net than to magazines. The magazines are steady, but the Internet is growing fast. If only I had started back then.

But NEVER cry over spilt milk, am on the net now. Making good money, married to the greatest woman I've ever met and living in a country I love.

Might have been all different, but not better.

I plead with Search Engines in 1995 to ad my Escort Directory. They did! I was the only Escort Directory in Yahoo forever. (Got grandfathered in thank god!)

In 1996 we went pay and I made a fortune in my first month. I had no banners, no outgoing links, no paid advertisers not anything.

Ynot was the shit and the best source for webmasters on the internet!

Ibill and Lancelot was the billing companies of choice. Ibill had pincodes and you had to pay 800 bucks to have it installed.

Hosting companies charged 13 bucks per gig and had almost no techsupport

ICQ didn't exist

Meeting members for parties did not exist.

I had a 15 inch screen, SVGA, a computer with a 14.4 modem, 100 mgz and I thought I was the shit.

I wrote all my sites in notepad and paid 800 bucks for a software to resize and edit pictures.

I like things now better, I do however miss some of the rush when you opened a new site!

Before: People would signup and forget to cancel.
Now: People signup and cancel before they even login.

Before: 70% of the trials would rebill on a good quality paysite.
Now : 70% will cancel their trials if you dont offer an additional site as incentive.

Before: Anyone could compete because search engines were free.
Now : Search engines are owned by large adult companies. You either pay up or get buried.

Before: Surfers would signup with their real name and e-mail.
Now : 80% of surfers join with a fake e-mail.

On the bright side many of the companies that did this to the market are now sinking in their own shit.

The Adult Biz should not be viewed in a mercantalist way. The pie is not finite -- it grows and grows because the internet population grows and grows. Just think of unique ideas and market it and you'll make cash.

-eru

shoplifter, how does being a unix god help you in this business much less be critical to your success? i'm a "unix god" and really see no use or application for it in this business so far (in my whopping month of experience)

old school?


living like a king off of pagemill, 1 content CD, and a little time.

Rusty N Eddie's.

the main hassle was those damn dinosaurs. T-rex was the worse, they ate everything that moved. and the brontosaurus, and stegosaurus, and triceratops, man it was dangerous just logging on. :1orglaugh

I'm going to answer this question from my experience. Daily I have new people telling me how much money they aren't making yet how much money they are paying thier hosting companies. I have a list of questions I ask them.

The list is this:

1. How many gig's did you use last month?

2. Can I see your stats?

3. Do you have an .htaccess file on your site?

This is old school basics that many of the so called unix guru's setup first. Yet 90% of the people I ask these questions to cannot get by the first question never mind the rest.

And 99.9% of the people doesn't know the answer to all three. It's simple business practices people if you can't answer all three of these questions you need to be learning something.

When a brick and mortar company closes for the night doesn't the owner lock the doors behind him ?

If you answered yes to this then why doesn't your site have a lock in the form of a .htaccess file to keep your merchandise from being ripped off. Before you start any business the locks should always be in place first.

Bandwidth ... I talked to three people today about bandwidth. None of them could tell me even approximately what they were using. Yet they are paying the bill to their ISP. Before I pay my hosting bill I want to know what I used and what I'm being charged for. Just like when I go into wal-mart I want a recieot so I know what they charged me for and that I actually got what I was charged for.

Now maybe you don't need to be a unix god to figure all this out. But by god you better have an understanding of it at least or your going to get ripped off big time and it will be your own fault.

Meta Tags, Keywords, SE Optimization, IP address blocking, If you don't know these basics your throwing good Search Engine traffic right out the window.

Why do webmasters have servers on different networks with different hosts? They know search engine optimization thats why. It's not about putting all your money in one place it's about putting all your ip addresses in one place also.

Ok enough of my ranting. But if you understood what I just wrote chances are your making money. If not .... Your wondering why your not making money ... and this is all before the design starts.

:2 cents:

Not as many newbs.

It was glorious.

Back in the days like maby 3 years back I made like 1000$ on 3K daily to a site a month.

No I make the same on a 40K...

Go figure ;)

jfpdude, yeah that's true, i've been dealing with colos for a long time so i understand traffic management etc and i guess the average newb doesn't know how to do stuff like limit the amount of bandwidth he can max out at on his interface, parse apache logs, etc. its also startling what people will pay for scripts, "dedicated servers" with minimal amounts of bandwidth, yadda yadda, but none of that helps you GET the traffic, build relationships, make the best out of saturated sponsors, content, and bored picky increasingly paranoid surfers. it seems to me someone with a unix background has basically the same learning curve as anyone else.

Ha ha ha, they got me to. I remember thinking that I was gonna get in some nice checks, only to find that they screwed me good, ha ha ha. Gold Rush was another place that fucked me, they paid good for a while, then like a switch was hit, they went sour.

Wow, I just think of the good ole days, it's close to 8 years since I opened up my first bikini page on Angelfire.com, ha ha ha.

I wish that things were as profitable as they used to be a couple of years ago :(

I worked for them briefly. Before that, I put their banners up, and they were paying anywhere from $.06 to $.13!!! per click-through. Of course, they were doing it by shaving and by nasty credit card tricks, but what the hey!

I sold BBS memberships for $20/year on a 2400 v.42bis modem ;)

When I was a freshman in college my buddy was making $1 per click to a software company from his porn site... I have no idea where that guy is now -- it was Fletcher Island I think -- at UF. What a dumpy dorm that was -- the only dorm on campus w/ internet access and it was a shithole w/ toothless girls...

I hear my buddies... and 3 years ago we all thought we were going to be ROLLING in money TODAY! We all expected the obvious MORE PEOPLE ONLINE = MORE MONEY! What the fuck happened? Christ when we we giving the rest of the world a credit card?!

I remember when business 2.0 came out -- they were charting internet growth -- I was sure I'd have at least 3x profits in 2002 according to their predictions...

I blame it all on the fucking credit card companies... I'm going to have to try some non-adult stuff...

Fucking A.