The Future of Porn on the Net
 

I am opening Pandoras box with good intentions.

I started in this business in 1996, after six years I want to make a few observations.

1. The adult industry is no more or less corrupt than any other industry and yes I have been in a quite a few. Check on Enron, Worldcom etc if you have a doubt.

2. The pioneering phase is over and we are in the competitive phase of the marketing model. The fast bucks are gone for most people. Those with good ideas and good work ethic will earn money. Scammers will have a short burn and flame out.

3. The government would love to make us disappear but lacking laws they will try to cut the cash flow using the credit card companies to do what they cannot; regulate content.

4. Most of the amateur (real amateur) sites are pretty upfront and honest. Most of the commercial sites recycle the same content and prey on people not contesting rebills. If rebilling disappears sites will need to provide quality to retain customers.

5. TGP's and other free sites are fueled through affliliate programs by sites that wish less was given away and more was sold. There is so much free content on the net that closing ratios are lower than they should be. If all the free stuff disappeared those who have content would earn a lot more.

6. Like the software industry content providers are the victims of continuous theft because people think if it is on the web it is free. Or I bought access to the site so I can do what I wish with the content. Intellectual property has value only if the copyrights and trademarks are enforced. I deal with copyright enforcment issues daily and usually need to threaten ISP's to get things resolved.

7. The future; my crystal ball.

a: Continuing tightening of credit card processing. More fees, more rules, etc. I think auto rebills will go away for high risk merchants this coming year.

b: The government is too busy making war to worry about us right now. After they declare peace that might change.
c: The IRS will be the first arm of the government to become involved, that is a cash producer and they need cash. Be sure if you live in the US that you declare and pay your taxes. From prior threads it is obvious the Canadian government is already auditing webmasters.

d: In a competitive market more sites will fail, processors will fail, sites will be acquired and the strong will survive. A new wave of startups with new ideas will emerge.

e: Marshall McCluhan was right, the world has become a global community and one country will have problems enforcing it's laws on the world. Someone please explain that to George W and John A.


In summary the business will change and evolve and will still be here next year but just a little different and maybe running out of Holland.

What do you think?

Lots of good points.......

Like any industry this one will have to continue to evolve and expand to move forward.

a little long

Look for size and consolidation to matter more in the next few years.

I fell asleep after point #3

Where do people get this recurring billing ending concept?

Still never heard anything about this from anyone...except a newbie?

Because mainstream is getting away from recurring billing - you can now buy a pre-paid AOL membership. The fact that other internet companies were doing recurring billing was our ace in the hole, it they back off, you can expect Visa/MC to put the screws to us soon :(

My source at Visa said adult recurring will probably end by Sept 2003.

In 2002 we paid MasterCard $1000.00 to be blacklisted as a "high risk" merchant, most of you paid Visa $750 for the same honor. I suspect they will use this new classification to regulate. One very easy thing to do to reduce chargebacks is eliminate recurring billing. Just good business on their part.

i have a ton of stuff outside of adult coming off my visa each month. if they dropped that it would be a pain in the ass

They can do what ever they want including just dropping recurring for "high risk" merchants. We have no clout with MasterCard or Visa only thier member banks even get to see theyr rules and regulations.

I welcome an end to old-fashioned recurring billing. Billings will still recur in a way, but after reminders: "Your membership with XYZsex.com will end at the end of the day on January 22. May we have your permission to rebill you at that time? If so, please please click HERE and resubmit your card number."

Why do I welcome this change? Because it will make it much harder for the hucksters and con artists to make a buck and will reward the sites which work the way a site should, by being so good the customer WANTS to stay enrolled.

Before I even opened up my own pay site, I knew two guys who didn't have recurring billing. Their customers signed up again every 30 days after an e-mail reminder! Now, what it takes to do that is to define a market, get content that appeals to it, refresh it frequently, price it right, and be responsive to customer service issues.

Might the antitrust suit against Visa and Mastercard give us at least a temporary reprieve on the recurring billing issue?

I don't know much about the situation to be honest, but it seems like they will be much more careful about taking actions that could be viewed as monopolistic if this suit is found to have merit.

1. The industry is at the crossroad and
it's having a tough time trying to figure
out how to go forward. I think about
all the men and women that came from
ever walk of life bringing with them a
unique and great talent and together
they did what no one thought could be
done. These folks have to be feeling
a little pissed off right now.

2. Affiliation brought about great
innovation, but when you compare the
recievers of money to the senders of
traffic it doesn't take a genuis to figure
out that the senders are getting
fucked (not shaved /cut deep).

3. Somewhere in the quest of it all the
industry took a wrong turn and here
you sit. Do you really think you are any
thing other than what you are; an
extension of mainstream porn. Is this
really where you want to be and how
you want be. If it is you sure fooled me
because I think you are some of
brightest people that have ever built
an industry out of thin air.

4. The biggest mistake you ever made
was thinking that the millions of adult
surfers were nothing more than
raincoaters and treating them just like
mainstream porn does. But in your
defense the affiliates gave you a lot
of incentive to think that way. I
wonder why!

5. The market for porn is very small. If
this were not the case it would take a
city the size of Los Angeles to
accommodate the porn capital of the
world which by way doesn't even put
a dent in the small suburban city of
Chatsworth, Ca.

6. The tremendous volume of adult
surfers on the internet however,
suggest that the market for adult
entertainment is one of epic
proportion. Ever hear the term "penny
wise and dollar foolish"

7. This crossroad your at offers
immense opportunity for those brave
enough to take the road less traveled.
The one's willing to expand their porn
offering to include adult product that
offers quality in entertainment for the
sophisticated surfer will become the
billionaires of tommorrow. Those that
don't will be the online version of a
city called Chatsworth a place infested
with rats that spend all their time
fighting eachother over a little piece
of cheese.



Happy New Year to All!

Probono: Good and well thought out points. I agree with most, except recurring will stay.

Labret: Your "source at Visa"? I'll bet you whatever you want that does not happen, per your "source". How much?


Chris
CEO EPOCH

The sky is falling, get the fuck out now.

If you want to sell out let me know.

"will probably" and then putting a date after it doesnt make much sense ... and if a time frame was already in place wouldnt it be announced? well maybe not,guess they want to rape us for the little bit of money as long as they can but still "will probably" doesnt do much for me :glugglug

I'm looking for Labret to bet.... come on.
C

Let me tell you why its harder to sell porn these days on the web - Surfers arent as stupid (ok, ignorant) as they were before. You wonder why amateur sites fair better then the others with the big bright splash and tour pages? If you dont know, your in the wrong biz...

We have P2P, Usenet, IRC, etc, etc... So so SO many mediums that a surfer can get FREE quality porn without paying $30 a month for membership to some splashy site that says the same thing all the other splashy sites say, "1000's of pics, movies, etc"

Many surfers have at one time or another bought porn - if you are an adult webmaster and have never bought porn (for yourself, not to sell), then you are lying. ---- Now with that said, everytime I see a thread here exposing a URL thats has a list of PW's to pay sites... what I often hear in these threads is how much the sites in the list suck (inside)- Exactly. So when a surfer pays for something and gets shitted on with lousy content, they are less inclined to risk a purchase like that again with some other sites that has the same splashy designed pages and so forth.

Amateur sites however, do something that EVERY webmaster should do to their site. Simply, a site for porn lovers, by porn lovers. Surfers will appreciate the attention and honesty in sites like this. Amateur sites are more genuine, and they hardly ever have that splashy tour designed shit. And what do most amateur sites lack? They lack a thousand exit pages that put you in a race to either close the window before it executes code to pop up another, or to be fast with the start of their popup stopper program.


If you want to be successful in this industry and get more conversions, setup sites that YOU yourself would buy a membership to. Dont design it too splashy - if you think that gets more sales then you really dont know much. If you design a site with only one thing in mind, making sales, your site will make fewer sales as opposed to designing a site that will SATISFY the surfers you are targettting.

Besides, people are more comfortable buying porn from someone they feel 'closer' too (as in, amateur sites) as opposed to some splashy site that looks like every other splashy porn site they seen.

Just my :2 cents:

porn is here to stay rebills are here to stay, maybe new rules but they are here to stay.

you forgot one other point, and the most important one

"The rich will get richer and the poor poorer"

Or get smart think ahead of the pack and earn even more in the future. Much more my motto than the sell out offer.

I am not a harbinger of doom, I don't believe that there is a problem with the future. I do believe that growth, change and being aware of trends makes for a smart approach.

As for me, I like this industry. I beats a real job and certainly is less stress than my former life.

One more note. You can do fine with no popups, no auto rebilling, no spam and no exit consoles. If you provide a better mousetrap the world will still beat a path to your door. It is harder work but it does work.

You guys got the bad shit figured out. So who's doing something about it?

http://www.simplyjimmyd.com
HOME OF THE THREE-DAY OLD JIZZ BIZZ MESSAGE BOARD

Well triple6 and others. Dont think you should declare the death of scam porn just yet.


They are making tours that are close copies of amateur and quality sites and bypassing the old splashpage. The net is scamartist heaven and the 40$ per signup programs will rule for some time to come...

It will be a long time before we see a rarity of splash page tour-type porn sites. It takes a real knowledge of marketing to survive in this business, and theres too many adult webmasters that dont know that - they think they can slap a few pics together on some eye candy page, maybe with a few samples, and think they have a winner.

The only people stupid enuff to buy into that shit are noobs that just got on the net, or some lonely 12 year olds that stole Daddy's CC (and wahlah! chargeback!).