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Originally Posted by SecondFloor
A lot of this rings true to my (limited) experience in adult so far. While other industries have been more nimble, adult online properties (both content sites and their marketing affiliates) have fallen way behind the curve in their web tech, design, and quality of content. There is so much stuff out there that looks like it was made in 2003, and looks like a scam to any discerning customer.
I think this is where the opportunity is in adult now - modernizing the experience for a more savvy consumer. Someone who's going to drop money on a paysite in 2018 knows it's a luxury product - they can stream 1080p porn for free! This person is looking for quality above all else. They have disposable income they're willing to drop. They're probably a professional person looking for a unique experience. A low-effort wordpress blog or free cam clone will NOT convince them to hand over their cash.
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These are my experiences in over 50 years of being in porn.
It started with 8mm films that had to get to the action very fast and finish very fast. Then adult cinema got involved. Then video, now digital and online. The deciding factor before online was persuading an editor or distributor that it was good enough to publish. Then when in the shops buyers had to respond positively to a brand they liked.
Today it's very different. Anybody can pick up a camera and shoot porn then publish it online. They may not make a profit but the bar has never been so low. Also the money put aside for content is measly compared to offline prices. The result was simple, with some very exceptional sites ignored we had an abundance of sites that were very weak on the actual product.
Content producers didn't have the experience, skills, talent and money to find good models, instruct them in what they was required of them to get paid a week to a months wages for 6-8 hours work. they let models get away with weak performances, cloned pseudo porn model performances and little regard for the end user. Also producers often overworked models so a good performance wasn't possible.
Then the bad angles and poses were legendary. Often showing way too much genitalia so if the model did have anything to give it was lost because the cameraman was obsessed by genitalia.
Then the endless repetition of scenes in a site. There are just so many times you can talk a girl into a van in 2 minutes and persuade her to fuck strangers in another two before it becomes boring. That was an example and Bang Bus was pretty good but it got very boring after a while. People didn't want to pay $30 for membership to a site that had the same scene in repeated multiple times, that gets very boring after a few days.
However in the early days sites were able to convert 1-300 to 600 clicks. Taking into account that the audience was much wider that still meant 100s were not signing up. With the advent of a far lower hosting and bandwidth cost Tubes and piracy offered the user an alternative that was free. No longer was he forced to buy a low grade product, he could look at it on a Tube/Torrent, assess its value and whether he needed to pay $30 for a months supply of that scene and sign up or not. With cams it was even easier, he could see the model free and assess if he wanted her.
What hid conversion rates was the huge business that porn was. Getting 1-300 didn't concern people because they were getting, 6,000 to 30,000 and up clicks a day. Those numbers are to illustrate the situation. Very few sites stopped and thought :What can we do to improve conversions". The endless cry was "Throw more traffic at a site that leaks like a bucket".
So more of the same for free was given to affiliates, more tools, hosting, support, marketing, etc. Rarely did a site owner ask, advice, pay for a better product. They haggled on price saying they could get a better price elsewhere or shot it themselves. Some even boasted how much content they could turn out in a day.
Today it's too late for most but the very good and usually rich. Pornhub is getting 50, 40, 30 million hits on some videos. That shows you the size of the audience, but how many have signed up to a site which only changes the girl in the scene?
But don't worry a secret business plan is all that's needed!!!!