Tubes, torrents, and piracy. A webmaster's take
 

Last night as I was walking my dog, I was listening to an interview with Steve Knopper, author of Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age

It got me to thinking about the parallels between what the record industry has gone through (and is still going through) and what the adult industry is now starting to experience.

Some of the biggest mistakes the record industry made were
1) Eliminating the "single" in the early 90's
This forced consumers to pay $18 for a full CD, even if all they wanted was one song. This is fairly similar to our business model that requires customers to pay 25-49 per month to access our entire members area, even if all they want is one scene.

2) Not offering anything to compete with Napster.
You may be thinking "how could they compete with something that was free?", but I'm not talking about price. For several years the ONLY WAY you could get digital music was illegally. It wasn't until Steve Jobs came along with the iPod and iTunes that customers were able to purchase digital songs that they could keep forever and listen to anywhere on any device they chose.

Now, you may be thinking what does this have to do with the price of tea in China? I'm getting there.

In the digital evolution of the music industry, the key players are the artists, the record labels, the pirates, and Steve Jobs (and others who have offered alternatives to his service)

Artists - have always made most of their money by touring. I'm sure they're hurt a little bit by music piracy, but they've been getting fucked over by the record labels for years, and in some ways mass distribution of their wares can end up making them more money.
In our business the "Artists" are the talent and the shooters. They get paid per scene anyways, and the talent can always shake their tits and asses in strip clubs as headliners to make money....so porn piracy isn't going to force any of these folks into the poorhouse.

The Record Labels - These guys started by suing everyone and anyone, and they had some big victories (Napster), only to see something else pop up in it's place. They can't sue their way back to prosperity, it's like pushing against the ocean.
Eventually they smartened up and signed a deal with Steve Jobs, and have since sold 6 billion tracks on iTunes. Their margins are much much smaller, but they're going to survive. I think we all know who these guys are in our business.

The Pirates - Napster, Kazaa, Limewire, Bit torrent, etc. The biggest problem for these guys is that they don't make any money. Can't make any money.
They became wildly popular in a very short period of time, but that popularity and user base never turned into money.
In our industry we feel the effects of torrents, plus the infamous illegal tube site. I also don't see how these sites can be profitable in the long term.
They can become wildly popular and heavily trafficked in a very short period of time....but the "give everything away for free and make money on the advertising" model has failed many times over. Most of the nation's newspapers are going bankrupt after following this model. (And I'm going to guess that the people running the New York Times etc are smarter than the guys running the average porn tube site)
This is even more true when the nature of your business severely limits the type of advertisers you can get. Once the dating sites with fake profiles and the foreign girls on cam for $2+ per minute have run their course, there's really nothing else for them to sell. Not many advertisers want to jump into bed with porn sites built on piracy.

Before you jump up and down and cheer about the imminent demise of these sites, realize that Napster shutting down didn't bring back the popularity of the $18 CD. It just opened the door for the next technology that gave the end users what they really wanted, rather than what the record labels wanted to sell.

Steve Jobs - the right guy in the right place at the right time with the right idea and the ability to execute it. He's the one guy (other than consumers) who truly benefited from this situation. I wish I could tell you I had the equivalent idea for our industry...but if I did I'd be working on it, not writing this post.

<< continued >>

The biggest question for me, the webmaster, is where is my place in this scenario?
I, like 95%+ of the people here am just an affiliate webmaster. I don't own any content (I have licenses for tons of content, but I don't own the copyrights for any of it), so I can't sue anyone for copyright infringement, and even if I could I doubt that would be a profitable endeavor or stem the tide of freely available content.

I'm not a performer who can go on tour.

I am not nor am I going to be a pirate, even if my morals would allow me to do that, I've already explained that it's not a profitable long term business model.

I'm not Steve Jobs, nor would I benefit in any way if a Steve Jobs came along with a solution that would allow the industry to profit from the situation.

Basically what is comes down to, is as an affiliate webmaster, I'm a record store owner.

All I have is traffic, and the know-how to generate traffic. However, even the most popular and heavily advertised record store isn't going to survive for long in the digital music age.

Even the traffic dynamic is changing. The most popular free sites in the world are losing their surfers to tube sites.
You can't blame the surfers, one place has headphones where you can stop by and listen to songs off of a CD, the new place is giving away the entire CD for free.

Even the old stand-by profit machine, organic search engine traffic, is changing. Search for "sitename.com", or "pornstar name", and in alot of cases "niche name", and at least one if not several of the top 10 results are for a torrent containing that content.

If I were a record store owner at the height of Napster's popularity, I would either have to close my store and find a new line of work, or at the very least start selling other things in my store and become a "Music and <<other thing>>" store, that would eventually morph into solely an "<<other thing>>" store.

Dropping the price on my records, chaining my records to the counter so nobody could leave with them, suing Napster, complaining to everyone that walks by, tearing my clothes and doing the sackloth and ashes routine, none of that is going to bring back the 8 track, the 33, or make customers want to buy an $18 CD.

<<continued>>

I guess I said all of that to say, that if anyone has any suggestions for what that <<other thing>> I should sell ought to be, please let me know. (as long as it's not dating or cams, I'm talking non-adult)

If you have any advice on making a transition from adult to mainstream (i.e. what types of products/services to sell, what type of sites to build, etc) I'm all ears.
This can and probably should be done privately. I am willing to do partnerships, link trades, sign up under your ref codes....to a lesser extent I'd be willing to pay for advice from the right person via a consulting fee or percentage.

When I first got started in adult, and asked how to make money (back in early 2000) someone pointed me to greenguy's and tommy's sites, told me to surf the top 20 links there,.....then sign up for ARS or Maxcash and build sites like those and submit them. I kind of figured out the rest by myself along the way.
I'm kind of looking for the same type of "point me in the right direction" help here. Even if it's just a link to a good resource site like a mainstream version of cozy frog.

You can email me
lenny at bigeasynetworks.com
or ICQ 78465690

plskthx

You miss one major point though.

The illegal Tube and Torrent sites make HUGE HUGE HUGE profits.

Good read, thanks.

Says you. My sources and logic tell me otherwise.....and either way, they're not going to be around long term.....they're just today's version of Napster.

A business model based on theft or piracy isn't going to last very long. :2 cents:

And EVEN IF you're right and I'm wrong, it doesn't affect my place in all of this, because I'm not going to cast my lot with thieves.

Very well thought out, and excellent explanation and reflection.

I have explained the answer time and again at shows, and on here. No one wants to hear them because at the end of the day, especially with programs going under, they are greedy. As one program owner told me... making custom banners, and putting in the work for the affiliate that 'may' send one sale is worth it to them for $35 PPS.

So supplying free hosting, content, domains, to ANY affiliate whether proven or not has been the greedy way to doing things. Now the market is flooded by every beer money barons and surfer who just had to sign up and got all your content for free.

Instead, you should have had minimums, and requirements, and raised the bar for entry. You can still, over time, solve this. However, greed and short term thinking combined with this economy and companies on the verge of going out of business, will never change.

You are not going to, easily, put the genie back in the bottle. Year's ago, many program, cut their own throats.

Now reep what you've sown. Enjoy the tailspin.

:2 cents:

I have a feeling this might be a bubble that'll burst. mark womack of madisonavenue.com i remember had a good argument back at cybernet 2008, and I tend to agree with him.

Companies are throwing huge dollars at any and all tubes with traffic - just to block the other guy, so the tubes jack the prices...because they can. However, eventually this "auction" will get so high, and non profitable for any advertiser that they'll just have to bail out.

I think eventually advertising dollars on tubes will thin, and as a result, sites like megavideo are offering a "premium access" type deal.

Tubes are convenient as hell - before, we paysite owners I think thrived on people who weren't all that tech savvy, and didn't want to deal with torrents or p2p and just wanted the convenience and ease of a paysite...however, tubes are actually EASIER, more DIVERSE, and CHEAPER than most paysites. The three words I capitalized are the 3 most important things to a consumer (based on my own personal experience anyway).

I think tubes will be around forever, whether they charge a small fee, or whether the advertising dollars continue to flow in. So - I think our challenge is to basically make our paysites worth purchasing. I think the days of slapping up a 20 minute update a week and thinking our members will be happy, are over.

So...who has some ideas to make paysites worth the money? What are you using to make your paysite worth the money? What have you innovated recently?

I just launched www.femdombride.com, through spicecash.com - we do live free webcam shows weekly in which the members can tell Goddess Starla how to torture her husband...we also offer key holding services, we try and create an emotional bond with our members - and in turn, our retention thus far has been pretty damn good.

So...anyone care to share how your creating a better place for your members? :)

Even if a given tube site isn't profitable enough to stay in business longer than a year, there are thousands of others in the line, willing to take the traffic and fill its place. It's not just Napster or BearShare anymore.

AWESOME points.

I don't download anything to save anymore, it just takes up space. For music I stick with the am/fm radio, internet radio, and youtube. For movies, 500 cable channels, and borrow dvds from friends. Porn, heck their is over 5 million adult websites...99% of them at least give you a free sample. Even Free cams out there.

Something new, if someone had a great idea he is not posting it on here with a many pro-webmasters.

For mainstream, it is going to be about who is going to offer something that is easy and least time consuming. We just want things done faster, pay bills quicker, banking, medical, customer service....smarter and faster. Make this happen :thumbsup

For example Ebay sucks these days, who has more money and technology with a great domain name and better system.....and you can steal this market. Even facebook is fucking lame, but can you make something better...maybe with cams, etc. I have the ideas but not the technology sense to make it happen.

The fact that you don't think Tubes make money and you go on to compare newspaper advertising to online websites pretty much set the tone for just how serious I take you. Not very.

Damn, and my whole reason for starting this thread was to win your approval.

Now what am I going to do with the rest of my life?

and most of them have aff ads on them imagine that.

nice one

thanks for the info

We arent like the music, producers create porn just like musicans create music. I cant go on tour. Most music sharing wasnt for profit. Where in adult its a big money enterprise funded by the industry its fucking. It would of been like the music industry buying ads on napster.

I want my 5 minutes back.

5 minutes?

Then I recommend
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/044...SIN=0446676675

Clif Notes: Blah Blah Blah, Adapt or Die.

You are all welcome.

this guy is better i actually went to a class he had it was really good.
http://www.amazon.com/Super-Reading-...3099036&sr=1-1

I don't think that is true.

:2 cents::2 cents:

Great Post! :thumbsup

Very good read! The number of sites/forums linking to tubes keeps growing as well.

When I first read your post, it got thinking that maybe a pay-per-scene model might work better in the feature, but with so much free shit out there this market is unpredictable.

yes, thats why a lot of them rely on pre-paid deals, while 70-80% of non-adult WEB 2.0 isnt able to run a profitable sites.
People in adult are "geniuses" once again

It's most certainly not true in some cases, but I can't speak for all.

Just consider the price of bandwidth alone, and couple that with companies started to reduce their advertising budgets.

Careful, WarChild won't take you seriously if you don't think tubes make money. Then he'll go on to misinterpret other things you've written and ridicule you for that as well.

I actually do think it's headed that way.

The products currently out there are missing the mark though. There's pay per minute VOD, but just like music, people want to "own" the movie so they can watch it whenever they want, just like the DVD's on their shelf.
There are some pay per download stores, but their prices are kind of high.

I think a porn movie is worth more than a 99 cent song....but you're not going to get far charging 6-10 bucks for them either. (I'm talking about individual scenes here, sold as a download)

Eventually there will be some sort of clearinghouse solution where people can download porn movies for a couple bucks a pop and producers can make money, albeit at lower margins than they've enjoyed in the past.

The problem with that for me, the affiliate webmaster, is that there's nowhere in that model for me to make a profit. I'm still the guy who owns the record store in the mall, while people are downloading music online. :2 cents:

Someone is definitely making money. :)

1. Clip stores already exist.
2. Clip stores are already successful.
3. That allows customers to buy the SINGLE clip they want.
Even if they pay more for the convenience.
4. Solution is already here.

You are correct.

we have that already its called clips for sale. also porn cant be sold at 3 dollars a clip its not like music where u sell a million downloads. I think we keep forgetting those looking for free arent going to buy anyway you do it. Once again unlike the music industry,our industry helped finance this.

You can't really compare clips4sale with iTunes. That's like comparing your old gremlin with a new ferrari. Yeah they're both cars, but c'mon.

There are some companies I know of working on an iTunes like solution that will allow them to monetize their content in this way, and possibly even sell other people's content for a % or fee.....but again, for me, the affiliate webmaster, it still cuts me out of the picture.

Music is available for free on limewire, bittorent, and other places, but iTunes has still sold 6 billion downloads.

:thumbsup:thumbsup:thumbsup

If they think almost giving it away is going to make sales they are kidding themselves. Porn isnt music.People dont bargain shop porn, if they like they will buy it.

:2 cents:

all torrent sites and illegal tube sites will eventually be closed!
They are spending to much time on the illegal porn and incest websites at the moment, once they are sorted out then the torrents and tubes will be dealt with.
It's already happening! torrentspy=dead, piratebay=dead. a lot of the music download software that used to be free like edonkey etc... is now legal and you have to pay for it. the internet will eventually become very legal, at the moment it's only halfway there.

Slippery slope...

PS napster is not shut down FYI! it's gone legal

If that was true then the review sites wouldn't have any traffic, but they have tons of it. Tons of joins also.

Alot of times porn is an impulse purchase, but alot of other times people do shop around to get the best value for their money.

They aren't looking for price on review sites, if thats the case their best sellers would be the cheapest.

Is it? I don't think so. porn is legal! selling porn, dvd's and music which doesn't belong to you is illegal!

These thing will still exist but the cunts stealing everything being cheap arseholes not paying anything will be fucked! and I can't wait to see the day when that happens :thumbsup

I agree with your hatred, and thoughts on content theft. However...

I believe it is a slippery slope because when you refer to 'legalizing things', that means government intervention on a grand scale. I do not think government intervention on the internet as a whole is a good thing.

They tend to use a cannon or an axe instead of a scalpel.

They are.

Check out videobox. Alot of sites offer special pricing to the surfers of review sites...specifically because they're so price sensitive.

Thats very true, I think the 2257 introduction was a complete fuck up and didn't really help with the underage content situation that much.

But as for torrents and illegal downloads it should be pretty easy to get rid of them.

I don't see it in their traffic they send us. From what I read on big tit surfer forums (which I frequent to watch who is stealing what content and uploading it to which torrent to make sure CM's is removed), the review sites are now a useful tool for surfers to browse through and then go to the torrents to find what they liked for free. That's why they have sooooo much traffic and not that great in conversions.

Excellent post, Lenny. Thanks for taking the time to share with everyone.

Brad

I am right in line of what you are saying - > what will be the next hoopla ?

:2 cents::thumbsup

you need to stop being an affiliate
move yourself up the chain, or create a new path that put you in a prime position.

sell physical goods/services that can't be distributed via torrents
if the girls are making money by touring and showing up at strip clubs, find a way to make money driving visiters to the club.
If the girls are escorting/ find a way to make money for refering paying customers.
sell the stuff that can't be "stolen".
HMV expanded their business to include movies, posters, tickets to live events, dvd, merchandising, ipods, zunes.

sam the record man did not.