Let's say it's 1998 again.
 

You're a new webmaster and you want to make some money.

There are no blogs.
There are very few TGPs/MGPs.
There are some link lists.
There are less than 50 sponsor programs that provide you with not much more than banners and link codes.
There is NO FREE CONTENT.

How do you succeed?

You buy all good domains ;)

dailers and shooting my own content

thats what I did then and itll work now too Im sure :)

funfunfun

you make your own and gain surfers from se's and word of mouth

you get mediocre SEO skills and get at the top of the SE's easily cause the competition is 1/100 of what it is today

and..

:thumbsup

hindsight is always 20/20 but my point here is how would 99% of webmasters do with no sponsor content at their disposal?

we had sponsor content

they got a share of the dailer revenue and could use content, gotta say though over 80% was direct traffic

I started in 1997 so this would not be a problem.. Can I go back to 1998 knowing what I know now? If so it will be a breeze.

The funny thing is no matter when you started people will always say it was better before. There are tons of opportunities now but no one sees them.

Don't you mean how would 99% of today's webmasters and those from say 2005 and newer do with no sponsor content?

Many of us who were around back then got by just fine. :winkwink:

I was around too. What I did was -

1) submit to big TGP's (easy stuff back then)

2) I had purchased content, about $500 a month worth

3) i can recall 2 of my major sponsors had given me free content

4) mainstream sites selling stupid information, even had cc processing lol

5) a million free sites on porncity & sextracker? that had done well in the SE's

I wish I had less testosterone and more business sense to spare way back then!

go back 2 years prior.

There were no pay per signups programs
Revshare was just becoming the norm
The top sponsors were paying 13 cents a click

a mega sponsor like Tropixxx would have 15 sites in their portfoilio with same backends and just different tours no matter what niche.

I had my own merchant account and used to hand punch in credit card numbers as i received them via email. I would then approve them using the same password for all of them

I think Everyone had a copy of Flyng Solo content.

oh man Chris you've stirred up some memories

Let us not forget the tons of "public domain" content on the newsgroups. I wrote all kinds of NNTP scrapers back then and just stuck them into themed galleries with good meta and text content. It was totally automated and awesome.

Oh you mean if its 1998 and you had all the knowledge of the industry from then until now?

Holy fuck is all I would say...

Also:
toplists, toplists, toplists!!!!!

What a lot of us did was produce our own content.. Much easier if you're a woman or if your wife/girlfriend wants to model.

Setup a tube!!! LOL

I jest :)

I think I'd do everything I know that works and buy a shitload of domains. It actually pains me to think of the domain-purchases I've missed out on.

We would all die from y2k anyway.

Make a celeb site:thumbsup

I did it. Much easier then than now. You did't even have to give anything away.

Voila... :thumbsup

But why live in the past just to envy what you didn't do.

Move forward, there's tons of money to be made on the web just need to be innovative.

I got my first solo girl site coming up and it will blow many people away. Web 3.0 is around the corner, who's going to get in first :D

Totally agree.

These are exciting times. :thumbsup

My point here is not to live in the past, but the PRESENT.

ie... free content, out of control.

Then focus on something else then generic porn content all over tube sites as we all know everyone can bust a load on redtube.com without paying.

There's so much to do. I am doing same thing with my new solo girl site that I will do with a Rapper site I'm building for an upcoming hip hop artist.

Same layout, same concept... different niche.

Thats funny. thats how I actually started...gf posing with blurred faces...lol

I'd do just what I did then - just a shitload more of it :1orglaugh

Hookers and blow!

I'd make tubes and torrents and give away porn for free so you fucks in the future would be out of work today and flipping burgers.

If anyone needs me for further comments, I'll be back last week.

Oh...

And I'd be the FIRST to cash in on trannies, bi-sex and dating sites.

THEN after I was filthy rich I'd create tubes and torrents and fuck up your future, which is now.

This is the best answer, no doubt

You didn't need so much back then to make the bank. I still kick my self in the ass every time someone says 1998 and porn. Fuck man I remember looking into AVS's back then and was getting close to getting into porn then but I just didn't believe the money was real. I thought it was some scam or something.

Hell man I remember my days on AOL with a 286 Dell and trying to be a l33t hacker, getting into porn sites for free. lol you read about how some guys got started back then by stealing content from other sites or scanning it on a flatbed from a magazine.

lol I was almost that guy back then.. I had a bunch of porn saved up on my little dell hard drive and had a cheap scanner. Didn't think anything of it back then, had just bought a house and was trying to make more money. I never ended up getting into the biz then, but damn I wish I had.

As far as content though, I was just thinking a few days ago at how different even gallery submitters are these days. It wasn't too long ago that you had to buy your own content to be a gallery submitter and there wasn't thousands of FHG's at a webmasters disposal.

IMHO it's way too easy for webmasters these days and I think that leads to the problems we have today. It cost no money to get in this biz because everything is free, so many guys that should get weeded out never do.

I think there is just too much competition for affiliates these days and if one program wont give them 10 min tube videos 5 other programs will.

Don't forget domains were a hell of a lot more money back then.. It wasn't any of this $7 to $10 stuff. You had to buy from Network Solutions and they were $100.

Not knowing then that they would become so valuable today, that was a lot of money to spend every year.

Same thing we did in 1998. Build our own REAL TGP's. Buy picture content discs (movies weren't used due to internet speeds) Build galleries daily. Make sales. We were clearing 50 grand a month in 98 just as an affiliate. 10 years later, still doing it. 10 years from now...I'll still be doing it. And loving it!

use charter pacific bank as your merchant and download their daily blacklist of cc's then bang them out

One word: Cyberthrill!