Your Sales Are Down Because You Have Not Read This.
 

I see so many webmasters lately, complain and cry over tube sites again and again. This seems to be a very hot topic. How many threads were on this within the past 7 days?? To ALL YOU people, have you ever really put some thought into this and try to understand that your sales have absolutely nothing to do with tube sites?. I actually tried to search the term "TUBE" on GFY to look up the older posts and trace back to the first person who suggested that tube sites are the problem. I find it further amazing that the "experts" who have been around in the industry for over a decade, fuel the negative mindset and the spirit of all adult webmasters by confirming such theories. You are not doing a good job as being the authority and drive behind our industry.

Lets put some facts and suggestions down, and analyze these facts to see if tube sites are the real problem to your sales.

Fact #1. Free porn existed on the Internet since the first porn picture was uploaded. Tube sites are just a new way of presenting such free content. People used to trade free porn starting in AOL chat rooms in the early 90s when it was the #1 ISP. Most of your visitors already had free porn and the idea of using a credit card was not a common thing like today. Credit card use and sales were nothing compared to the numbers today, and yet, sites who started in the 90s made millions and millions of dollars.

Fact #2. File sharing sites have been around passing free porn, like bangbus content, and shitload of other sites since the first file sharing softwares were coded. This fueled even more use of free content in other ways such as warez rooms, forums, IRC, etc. Free porn exploded when file sharing sites came around, yet once again, a lot of the websites that were around that stage, made millions and millions of dollars.

Fact #3. every year, twice the amount of competition if not more are created and marketed across the adult industry. Every month and every year, the piece of pie becomes smaller for everyone. There are limits on what consumers spend in an industry, and the number of sites that share this limit grow faster than the spending limit itself.

Fact #4. The economy. Why is no one paying attention to sales numbers across all businesses in the world? you are not the only one who is down in your sales. Are you paying attention to all these huge companies going out of business? people don't have the money to keep an Internet connection at home, let alone pay for your $30/month site. How many people do you think have a valid credit card being in debt? without a job? Why does no one take these things into account?

Fact #5. Supply and Demand. You cannot expect to get $30/month in this economy when $30 to a consumer is more important than spending on porn. Porn is considered a luxury, not a necessity. Food and gas are necessities. You cannot expect people to pay for luxury in this economy. You must lower your prices to accommodate the budget of the average surfer. Offer more billing options than a credit card or bank account, think maybe food stamps or whatever (you get the point). Think of new price structures that are more attractive. Approach new ways to monetize your traffic. Give 10 free memberships away a day capturing people's e-mail addresses, and monetize these e-mails beyond what the 10 memberships cost. People obviously like FREE shit and will do anything for it.

Fact #6: Boycott all business relationships with websites and sponsors that employ bad practices which damage the consumer base for our industry. I am not going to name any sponsors, but you know some of the top sponsors, who for example, cross sale a $2.95 trial membership into a $200/month worth of subscriptions. Do you think when "Joe the plumber" opens his credit card statement, he is going to be thrilled with his choice to surf and buy a membership to a porn site? Statistics show, that such consumers almost never purchase such a product again, and will always view it as scam. You have just lost a consumer who could potentially bring 1000s of dollars in sales across the industry in exchange for a quick $200 dollar. Everyone is destroying each others consumer base this way. Think about this over 1000s of consumers a day. You are losing out billions of dollars a year in revenue pursuing such practices. People talk about bad experiences more than positive ones, so you are reducing the growth of such consumer base as well.

Fact #7: Not enough vision and innovation in our industry. Everyone copies someone else's idea, that is why you have website names that made up of generic 4 word keywords that are repetitive over and over again. TeenFuckingBlack, BlackFuckingTeen, AnalTeenBlack, etc the shit gets old after a while. Can you please get some ideas in design and brand building from mainstream web2.0? What is wrong with a digg website for adults? why must every single site be a copy of the past 10,000 sites. Surfers are fucking bored with what we have to offer them, you are not focusing and spending time on user experience as much as you are focusing and spending time on how to setup yet another sponsor program with the same niche content as 10,000 other sites.

Fact #8: Stop ripping off each other. If you steal from Tom, then Tom will steal from John, and John will steal from you. Not only that there is no point in doing this, but also it builds a bad culture in an industry that is already suffering.

Fact #9: Almost everyone believes that tube sites model is dominating the adult industry and its profits, then why not just go in that direction as a whole? If profits and income is what is bothering you, then you will be happy to know, that you could have your own tube site for a fraction of what you think you need. You can get an entire tube site coded from scratch, from an offshore programmer for $1000 customized to the last dot in the code. Scrape the content off the 50 tube sites that already out there, upload that shit to your own site, let google index, enjoy the traffic and webcam/dating signups. Maybe if there are 50,000 tube sites out there, and 100 real good paysites, those 100 real good paysites will start to make the multi million dollars a month.

Fact #10: Even if tube sites didn't exist, your sales would still be low during these times. Ask the mainstream guys who went from converting 1:50 on $30-$40/sales to converting now @ 1:1000+. Everything is connected, it is not just you in this industry. A lot of people in mainstream went from making millions a year to almost breaking even. Those who didn't accept failure and thought outside the box are still making their cash.


Do you still think tube sites are your problem?


"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo

There is not a single adult webmaster(and I use that term VERY loosely) that will read that entire post, they can barely see past the bong smoke.

Having said that I agree with you on most of your points.

Congrats to the winners

I read it all, but I did all my bong hits last night.... lol

"this time the threat is different because...."

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWN.

Nice post.

aren't you the same guy that is failing at your business and can't pay your employees?

pretty sure you started that thread yesterday or the day before.

Yeah well if all the so called affiliates weren't actually surfers looking for free porn, you might make sense...

Because I have not been on this board for years, I had to get a mental picture of what kind of thoughts float around here nowdays... some deep psychology shit..... it seems that no one is serious about business, or the direction of the industry. There are a decent percentage of guys who are worth dealing with in this business... The rest are selfish bastards who do not deserve help.. I could sit here and tell you I am already a millionaire, but again, I could just be a janitor at AFF and this is lunch break to post. Either way, this industry needs a whole fucking do over or most of you will have bigger problems than just tube sites. I will try to do my best to find the bright minds to work with, and the rest must survive on their own.

it does affect sales though. Not everyone knows how to use torrents, and they can be really slow or dead. People that want porn want it instantly and some niches are harder to find than others. However, tube sites are so userfriendly, instant streaming etc... with tons of content covering all kinds of niches, it makes it easier for average non technical people to get porn for free instead of buying.

I'm thinking about starting a tgp. Any advice?

another noob confusing facts with guesswork.
get back to me with your facts when you've done something in this business

your sales are down because you are reading gfy instead of working.

OP is an idiot.

/thread

Giving away 4 x 15 second clips does not equate with giving away full scenes. If you give out advice you should know this.

Yes there are more ways to steal content than Tubes. Let's close down Tubes because they are clearly the worse. Look at the traffic stats.

Yes this is true and we need to stop and think of the semse of throwing up more sub standard sites to get more affiliates to send traffic that clearly is not buying as it was.

Agree. The problem is affiliates still think it's better to get as much as they can today and screw tomorrow.


True, see above answer.

True. But this industry still sees traffic as the answer. Not content and converting and keeping people buying. Porn customers are repeat buyers. If you treat them badly they learn.

The porn business will just shrink and shrink if we go this route. Content sales are what drive the porn industry.

True. And the fall in sales started before the recession. The problem is this industry kept thinking the solution was send more traffic.

Part of the problem and even if they are shut down a lot of customers will not return. Many still think you can force customers to buy. Even when the evidence is that you can't.

The problem is changing the mind set of people in the industry and I've been trying for 8 years. I still try.

Fact #1: Videos are just a TAD more compelling than pictures. Why do you think adult mags are failing? Yes it's more convenient to be able to get porn without leaving the house, but convenient free video vs. images is a lot more to do with it IMO.

Fact #2: Some surfers aren't avidly filesharing because of the viruses to be gotten from it - not a problem on tubes...yet at least as far as I'm aware.

Fact #3: Surfers know filesharing is bad...they may disagree with laws but they more or less know they are performing an illegal activity. Meanwhile the morality of watching full scenes on tubes for free is in more of a gray area and surfers likely believe there's nothing wrong or illegal about it. After all, look at all the copyrighted content freely available on Youtube, owned by big G the god of the net.

Fact #4: I agree with you, porn is a luxury...which is why surfers are jumping at free full length scenes. Is price really an object? What would be your compelling argument to surfers right now as to why they should pay ANYTHING for porn? This is what ALL webmasters should be asking themselves and coming up with an answer to for any and all prospective customers...your competition is no longer each other but simply the tube sites, so why should surfers BUY porn from anyone instead of GET porn for free on tubes? THEN worry about why they should specifically buy from you.

Fact #4: We're beginning to reach a point where porn stars are practically interchangeable...I mean no disrespect to any when I say that as there's a ton of hotties but seriously, how many similar looking pornstars are there now vs. in the late 90s? Fake tits, perfect tans, and otherwise pretty similar looks are just rampant now. My point to this is that while unique and fresh content may have been a selling point in the late 90s, it's less of one now because the free videos that can be found on tube sites are arguably not much worse/different than new "fresh" content.

Fact #5: Thus IMO, you're left with HD quality and entire videos as your remaining primary selling points. As someone recently pointed out, at least 1 tube now has some full 2 hour videos. It's only a matter of time before one or more of them start having lots of free HD quality videos to one-up the other tubes and destroy another reason for people to go anywhere else. Web 2.0 is all about getting traffic first, then making money off of it, and tube sites will be doing anything and everything to do that, regardless of everything their efforts compromise (even their own moneymaking efforts).

Fact #6: Pre-checked and/or hidden cross sales may destroy some paying members, but honestly, with tube sites continuing to grow and grow, less and less surfers are ever reaching ANY sales page. Worrying about that over tubes is like worrying about some filth in the water when the well has a huge leak draining out the water.

Fact #7: Errr, "Not enough vision and innovation in our industry. Everyone copies someone else's idea..." , "Can you please get some ideas in design and brand building from mainstream web 2.0? What is wrong with a digg website for adults?" That's quite visionary and innovative right there. Hey, why not an adult Twitter, an adult FriendFeed, an adult (insert social site here)? Better idea, let's wait for more innovative mainstream sites to come out and copy them! Copy copy copy! Sorry, I just had to laugh at the blatant hypocrisy 2 sentences apart in your post. On a serious note, internet marketing is really where the revolutionary selling tactics are coming from - if I were you all, I'd pay more attention to them than anything else. One of the latest tactics I saw was giving "free" products away in exchange for a forced tweet about it on Twitter (forced as in you click a button to do the tweet before you get the product). That exact thing is obviously hard to do with adult, but shows the kind of outside the box thinking you all should start doing. If surfers aren't paying money for porn, what else can you get from them or get them to do that would result in more traffic or something else of value?

Fact #8: I would say people like you are detrimental to the industry because you might make some people believe that tubes aren't the problem, but honestly it's pretty futile anyways. Everyone except currently Teen Revenue are on the sidelines ranting about tubes saying someone should do something (and now that TR is, cheerleading them on instead of doing something). I mean for fuck's sake, put up a fight! Tubes are steamrolling over a lot of you with no fight back whatsoever. Kudos to the people whose sales are increasing - you are obviously not the ones who should be worried.

Fact #9: Yes the economy sucks, but would you be content sitting by idly using that as an excuse with the possibility that once the economy gets better, you find your sales continuing to slide for some uber mysterious reason? My gosh, what could it be?!

Fact #10: I love lamp.

Bright mind here. Please help.

great post

Paul Markham & PornMD. Thank you for your point of views. It really helps to get an overall idea of what everyone thinks about specific challenges and the solutions to them.

As far as the trolls, I don't want to know a thing about you as much as you don't know a thing about me, and lets keep it that way. I am here to communicate on a whole other level with webmasters in the same industry as me, not bitch about how much my life sucks. My philosophy is, you cannot be the leader in any industry if you come to a point where you are reach a level of success that you do not even bother to research what others think or invision in the same industry as you.... But then, that's the difference on who leads who at the end of the day. For all you know, I could be the owner of Youporn and already leading all of you. (Just saying) I am sure he is reading this already.

You seem too smart to be posting here. good points.. some companies are tanking and they are looking for one reason why, and there isn't one reason. There are multiple factors contributing to the downward trends in adult, as in all industries in this economy.

Exactly!

Some good points there.
Not all I would (fully) agree on, some just partially and other points (or parts) not at all.
This will be an interesting thread to read.

Seems like the people who start these threads have absolutely no surfing experience.

They just don't get it because they lack the needed experience to get it.

I've been stealing porn since the days of downloading it on newsgroups in what looked like text files.

Before redtube and youporn existed I used to hit tgps like Teeniefiles.

I haven't been to a TGP or MGP to get off in 3+ years.

99% of you were making money from Galleries.

Your sales are down because most surfers have gone from Galleries to the tubes.. Some people still prefer pictures tho I can't ignore that.. But nobody likes 30second clips. Some smart webmasters have 10 30second clips for a scene and they all linked together to play as one.. I love that.. sneakkkyy..

Look at the webmasters who opened up tube sites and used their TGP/MGP to feed traffic to it.

They aren't complaining.

Excellent post! I agree with pretty much most of what you say here.

This is true but you had to be much more technical and there was a much smaller percentage of users out there that had the ability to do this. Tube sites make it really easy for the average idiot to watch porn for free.

Same as #1.

I think twice is an exaggeration but I definitely think there are more players coming into the game and more saturation of content. On the other hand business are consolidating and the small guys are failing. So I'm not sure which direction it is going.

Gotta agree with that. There are some that say porn is a recession-proof. I think this is true to some extent but as mentioned below the prices are too high. If it was like $5 I think the average unemployed person could handle that but $30/mo is asking for too much.

Exactly, lower the price and go for volume. People use iTunes because it is convenient and cheap. True you can find pirated music without too much difficultly but it is much easier to acquire with iTunes and 99 cents isn't anything that is going to make me take notice. Apple's DRM on the other hand is an entirely different matter.

The most important factor in our business in the coming years is going to be trust. This means not only that there are no hidden surprises on his credit card but that what you promise to give is what the customer receives. If your tour looks good and your members area is shit that is not trust. If you are a VOD site offering 2 Mbps streaming, get some decent fucking servers/bandwidth so that a person with a 10 Mbps connection can actually download faster than 700 Kbps from your site.

IMHO, tube sites offer the best user experience. That's why users prefer them. They don't have to worry about their cards being ripped off. They are more or less fast. The videos are easy to find and search for. The content on them isn't the greatest but if you could offer these features with higher quality content and the same user experience I think you would be doing pretty well off.

Stealing is bad. Mmmkay?

If you can't beat them, join them? Well, I say let's come up with something better.

Isn't this the same as #4? But yeah, the economy is hurting so it's only natural things would be down across the board.


The time has certainly come but so far I haven't seen any good ideas.

there is only one thing that says it all

Now there is to much free porn on the internet.

So specialize, thats it!!

MIS. I like how you think. Your comments make me believe you are one of the few people out there that get it. Please hit me up on ICQ. I'd like to discuss something with you.

It's funny all the people that write a bunch and think someone will actually give a fuck what they have to say, fuck off retards.

this one of the reasons why GFY is loosing its charme for a lot of people.
You are one of the retards reacting like this.

FACT #1-2-3-4 this "business" is full of fucking dipshit, hypocrites piece of shit.

Your sales down because lower surfers with their lower clicks. Your surfers down because TUBEs and dating sites!

car sales are down by 50%, some of my sponsors are converting 20 TIMES worse than last year, and I bet you if 10 000 dealers start handing out free cars (even not the best models in the World) some car makers will have their sales go down by 2000% too

well, interesting reading

The niches on tube sites aren't really that niched out in my opinion. Additionally, they are pitifully organized. Viewing a category doesn't really show that category. It's not really accurate. This is where someone can excel in that area and gain some market share from the tubes.

I don't agree with point #1 and #2

I will never ever buy the fact that giving away free shit like this ain't hurting.
After all those years online and born in the mid 60's NO FUCKING WAY !

:2 cents:

if you have a skype, PM me your username. I don't use ICQ.

It's the economy, stupid.

Fact 1: Video Secrets has already had record months in 2009.

Fact 2: We continue to convert new customers better than any time in our 13 years online.

Fact 3: If you are not promoting Video Secrets, you are losing money.



/Facts

Sure there's always been free porn but it's never been so easy to find as now. You used to have be at least a little net-savvy to know how to get into newsgroups and such to get the good stuff, now any jackass with a connection searching for porn on Google finds himself in a world of full free downloads.

I don't know how many times I've heard people outside the industry talking about porn and saying things like "who pays for porn?" like they're entitled to it. "Fuck paying for that, I'll just find a torrent" and this coming from regular shmoes who don't know much more about using a computer than hitting the POWER button.

Shit, every time someone on GFY announces some new content, chances are you could go to PureTNA and find it to download for free.

Exactly.

Do you guys have paid memberships to porn sites ?
NOT !
Do you guys used to have (here and there) memberships to porn sites ?
YES !
So guess what surfers do ?

If someone gave you a brand new car (cheap one), you would take it, no question asks huh ?
Would you buy a brand new luxury car then (or something "middle class") ?
NOT.
EVERYBODY'S A CHEAP ASS MOTHER F*CKER !

Plus combine this with the economy crisis oufffffffffff:disgust

i just googled my cock on twitter

thanks for the update

Great :) :)

I have read this thread so my sales should go up now :)

Just kidding... you have some good points there but tubes sites are reality now and we can't avoid that, but we need to seek a solution how to close them or work/live with them. Since tube sites are probably making lot of money content owners should hire lawyers on percent of won trials (no cost to them to start the whole thing) and take all that to the court and take a piece of cash of illegal tube sites. On the other hand if user wants to see full length videos maybe solution is in censoring "action" scenes and forcing user to pay to see the whole thing same as on pay tv channels (free ones have no action visible).

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

use 800x600 thumbs :2 cents:

MIS, hit me up i remember you from the starbucks.biz:winkwink: icq:147106110
l8

i agree, this is the only way to fly

Great this fucker gets up early to troll on here.

Not true at all, as i always said, if You support censorship as a weapon, someone may knock Your door with the same weapon.

***

a specially as adult webmasters we should ask our selfs what we want?

if the answer is money, we should do anything possible going that direction, if not, some of us can keep play the game with ordinary redneck methods, but please never cry if someone steps on Your plate though.

btw. my "statement" which is after stars to the unrelated to Your post, it's something to the community, not to You personally.