Firstly don't believe all your read on boards. I've spoke to a lot of the so called big guys and it was amazing how little they were. There's a lot of PR on here to put on a front for affiliates. Go knock on their office door and see what's real.
Like Manwin. What exactly do we know for concrete proof about them? They own a lot of sites, some major Tubes, sell traffic and little else. They list addresses, which I have yet to meet anyone who has seen the place. Fabian didn't have a clue at how much office space he was paying for to house the employees he was saying he had in Montreal. In fact he told me I was wrong in my estimate.
Until I found online proof of how much he needs.
He turned up to give a seminar dressed like a hobo. Yet told everyone he had received a 9 figure sum to invest. Anyone seen what he's done with it yet?
Just one example of the smoke and mirrors, some take as fact.
So to the original question.
Doing something 1,000s of others can't do is paramount. Being First doesn't help much if the following month 100 copy you. I could shoot film and sell to magazines. Didn't matter that 1,000 could shoot with a digital camera when magazines were buying film.
Doing something better than the 1,000s copying you can do.
Having money to back a good idea, invest, spread around and fund growth. We can guess somewhere some money came into play with the Manwin deal. Where no one has a clue.
Having good people around you.
Being in the right place at the right time is only useful if you have the right skills.
Having real skills and abilities that people will pay good money for. Many in online porn lack this. They're just foot soldiers. They can copy a niche, copy a site, read info online and that's it. They don't have that little extra to rise above the rest of the foot soldiers. So never will.
Being able in your field to move as the markets moved. If I had stayed shooting photographs of amateurs as I was doing in 1977, I would never of grown.
All the above helped me and then us.
Luck is the excuse used for those who didn't make it. The harder and cleverer I worked, the luckier I got.
Hard work isn't as good as clever work.