Originally Posted by signupdamnit

It's sickening. I can see why so many people have left the industry. It's not just the money. Porn has never been an industry with the highest moral values but we're to the point where there really isn't much of an industry left. Just a bunch of gangsters and cartels looking to utilize scams, theft, racketeering, and fraud to make as much short term gains as possible with a few honest people here and there trying to make a living in spite of it.

We can say it isn't our fault but if every single person who disagreed with some of these tactics made a comment and took even some small action I guarantee you we wouldn't be where we are. Imagine a thread like this full of 10,000 pay site owners telling these scumbags to go to hell. The industry gets what it deserves for not speaking up or taking action.

Originally Posted by Far-L

You aren't wrong - just not informed. We have been online since 1997 when we were still just posting pictures and mail order ads on BBS like the General and GiffyGirls. Eventually we had about 3000 members paying close to $50 per month when we made a marketing deal with Cybererotica. We grew quickly to over 4 times that with CE's huge roster of affiliates. That did really well but unfortunately for reasons I am not allowed to elaborate under the terms of our settlement the deal ended in a long and painful arbitration. From there we had to start all over again. Starting literally from zero members... and that is the dark ages where Homegrown went sort of off the tracks.

We had to grow yet we trusted no one and had issues with people loyal to the old program; so, we had to learn how to market in a new environment, and had to restore, rebuild, re-invent. This all sucked but it forged us into a new company online where we didn't rely on affiliates, not because we didn't want them, but because we had such a hard time getting them. We used RevEx and affiliates hated it. So, we made missteps along the way but through trial and error we scraped our way out. While we still have a long way to go, now we have sought a balance of our own internal traffic, affiliates again because we switched to NATS, and paid managed traffic.

Now, in direct contradiction to what many here claim, we convert better from join page uniques than we did 4 years ago. Our retention has always been great but in the same time it has improved as well. So that is why I am not anti-tube and not because I have to suck up to Manwin.

Truth be told, I think of Manwin as a 400lb gorilla that could tear us all limb from limb. I am more like Jane Goodall sitting in the brush watching them and studying their habits to try and understand something about marketing in this jungle we call online adult. That they are friendly to us is only the result of them feeling zero threat from us. As they become more used to us being around they treat us with bored curiousity and indifferent acceptance just like most of the other programs they partner with.

Today, btw, we are one of the very few old school brick and mortar companies to actually still own its own library and run its own online rather than completely outsourcing everything.