MarkTiarra

There is quite a fair amount of intelligent commentary in this thread and it's nice to see. I just wanted to add a couple of my own observations as someone who has been in and around the business since 1996.

1) The doom and gloom scenario has been professed every time a significant change came over the industry: Top Lists, TGPs/MGPs, When AMEX shied away and now tube sites. While I agree that numbers are at an all time low, the demise of the industry is not something I see as possible. What I do see is what was professed above that many will go away, leaving chunks of market share for those who can survive. As for all the tube sites, they have to survive too so the cycle they've helped create whereby getting commission from a sale is less and less likely, will cut into their own revenues and kill some of them off as well. They may also see it become increasingly more difficult to have content to steal if the amount being produced goes down because of the state of things. Of course, all that will cycle people back into the game as problems correct themselves and then reappear. It's like a pulsating lung.

2) Someone up there mentioned how all surfers now are smarter and know where to get free content. While I do agree that the average surfer is much more informed and connected to content than ever before, I can't agree entirely because if this was true we would not see a difference in conversion from tube site traffic vs. other forms of traffic. If the guy coming from some link list site also visited XYZ tube site than he should be 1:30,000 likely to buy as well as the traffic from XYZ tube site. This doesn't happen.

3) Another topic often mentioned in this thread is the need to innovate. I'm not sure I agree in so much as it's about coming up with some crazy porn theme concept anyway. All the "reality" ideas long ago jumped the shark and I think a porn gimmick is about as viable for increasing sales as is any lame TV show for getting ratings. The vast majority of people buy porn quite simply to masturbate. They get plenty of free content to do that to these days but they will still pay to get it delivered to them in better ways or to get it more conveniently without the need to search all over the place to cater to their tastes. I've seen just about everything, I know where every freaking site out there more than I care to and I will still spend a few bucks here and there at HotMovies.com just because they flat out organize it better and I get what I want right when I want it.

So other than just those additional thoughts above I think that the people who will thrive are the ones who realize the real motivations behind money being spent on porn and go out of their way to cater to those. A VAST majority of the businesses online try to guess at what people want or just throw a ton of shit against the cyberwall to see what sticks. The sites that are built on the real psychology of their target market always do well (which is why it's usually best to build a site based on your own content tastes). To figure out what that psychology is, I suggest you simply take a look at your own habits with regard to being a consumer in this industry.

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