It's funny post sale i've done nothing but enjoy myself and mostly enjoy time with my family. We've traveled so much and my boys who are 7 and 4 have really got to enjoy the best of me. When i was still running things I wasn't able to separate work and life. I really am an all in guy and if something pisses me off at work I can't just magically forget about it at home. So it's been really nice to have the past 4 years of being the super duper nice guy.

I have to say, this thread is the best thread on this forum for at least the last few years. Tons of great info and brainstorming.

One thing that surprises me with my new business is how hard it is to give people my money. Its frustrating when you are slowed down by lazy people who aren't as driven as you are. The shitty thing is I need these people to do the work before I can move forward with my project, but everyone seems content with their shit incomes and apparently making a few grand for 1 days work isn't that high of a priority for them. Labour workers.... Just a headache in general.

If you do not have a good right hand person who can help you build your empire, you will find yourself building a miserable 16 hour/7 day a week prison you can't get out of. You could be making mad money, as I was doing, but if you never get to actually ENJOY IT! So what is the point?

My ambitions are much less now for juggling projects and investing my time and resources. I have now scaled back and invested in a lot of automation to where you retool things back into a manageable situation where you can enjoy the spoils of war and labor.

Additionally, I feel I am getting up there in age that I simply do not want to invest my time/money into 5-10 year projects any longer trying to be the next big (fill in the blank). I would much rather invest in a rich memorable life experience, like wandering around Europe for 3 months, or something like that. That is what I had gotten into all of this for in the first place. Being able to have the freedom to enjoy my life, make my own schedule, and travel the world.

Very well said.

For some reason the first thing to come to mind was Lensman + Eric

Budget is wonky. Time is an X. I'm aware of the other issues you mention, but I'm no expert on the matter. My list is fairly easy to gather.

Thankfully, I learned a that there is much more to life than money (I should be on the wrong side of the sod, so every day that I'm not is a bonus), and I only need to have a modicum of success with this project to live life on my terms. :)

Thanks for the :thumbsup...far to many people out there that say you can't do this and you can't do that.

I hear ya man. Once my weed-addled brain figured out the Internet is anywhere and everywhere and I could just connect to it and work....well then it was like being letting out of a self-imposed prison. Some guilt went along with that, too. I felt guilty at times working on a beach with a laptop until I remembered how hard I worked and sacrificed in order to do just that.

So come to the Amsterdam and Prague shows this year woohoo!! :)

Struggling with what which topic I want to go with in mainstream. I have about 15 mainstream websites I've made covering all different topics from Bankruptcy help to Acne to kitchen remodeling etc, and none of the niches jump out and scream "I'm the one!" to me like porn did.

Porn was easy to figure out; I focused on a microniche I liked and built an audience. But my porn income has been going down down down the past few years and none of the old tricks is getting me the money I used to make. Customers aren't as motivated to buy as they used to be and it's demotivated me from working.

Mainstream I'm making my way over to you.
Part of me is dreading it but part of me is relieved.

Hey Shap,

I sent you a PM. Don't worry, it's not asking anything from you or asking you to partner with me on anything like I'm sure your inbox is filled with because of your last thread :1orglaugh

Thanks. I didn't expect it to turn out like this but it worked out great :thumbsup

Your best bet is to go after what you are most passionate about. That way you understand the market and the customers needs/wants.

Willing to give any specifics? Maybe we can offer some advice :)

Get me on skype or elsewhere and I'd love to pick your brain. Mpahlca has all my contact info and knows a bit about the projects already :thumbsup

Will do!

I am focused on building my business in China and Korea. Currently we only market in China and it is well received. However not growing fast enough. Lots of people are interested, and the competition has a huge customer base, however we are not growing revenue fast enough.

Frustrating.

getting high off my own supply :helpme:helpme:helpme :Oh crap

Did you put a stamp on it ? :Graucho

Finding something new that I want to spend my time and money on, biggest struggle by a long shot. Always on the look out...

I might be able to help on this one only because we came out of the brick and mortar offline era into online.

DVD is a great example.

The cost to produce a dvd is fairly steep, especially against the comparable rate of return and the time and energy expended to bring that money back in. The volume of product has continued to deflate the price as companies try to "own" the last shreds of shelf space. So the investment of time and cash to earn that smaller and smaller bit of market is something many companies fail to calculate, especially if they relied on that bit of income at all. Most of the companies in the dvd space have folded or are selling out their catalog for pennies at this point, yet they still spend for the staff to produce and sell, collect, etc.

Many mainstream companies make this mistake too. Think Kodak and Polaroid.

Yeah man, I miss those days too

Same here! Miss the good old days.

Got it. Sometimes you just need to lay your thoughts out to get things rolling.

Thanks for starting this thread Shap.

bluepixelsprofits.com - it's always been our bread and butter program, it still is, we do alot more traffic generation inhouse now which is working, would be nice to have that go hand in hand with some great affiliates again too!

Thanks for an excellent tip! I will get on to that and get pics and description included

We did speak before, lets chat again and get it sorted

Same here.

Actually, just finding anything where I can see an opening to profitability and scale in mainstream.

I may be wrong but this is what I would do.

- I would provide the tools the affiliates want (ie like the feedback you got in this thread). I would visit the sites that you want traffic from and see what the affiliates and programs are doing and try to get in on that. But I wouldn't focus much on getting new affiliates. i would focus on maximizing what you have but not spend much on growing the affiliate base.

- Instead of searching out new affiliates I would try to get a few guys (either affiliates or otherwise) to work closely with you. Ie create a partnership where you work together to make more money. I imagine you have limited time for growing your in house traffic. Find a way to get a few guys to work REALLY closely with you beyond an affiliate relationship. Offer them way more than your regular affiliates. I've always said paysites can offer affiliates 100% of the revenue because the type in and brand growth benefits from traffic are huge. So maybe find a few guys and offer them a big piece of the revenue they bring in and work closely with them.

- Work on that in house traffic. Get more and more of it. Go after tubes be the tube king.

I've just got newsletter from femme fatale flims. That is fine, but it can be even better. Bigger photos with description would make me instantly publish at least one post on some of my blogs. You need to talk to affiliates , not all but some with potential for your traffic. For example, I have review site for femdom and I don't have time to update it. I've just noticed that none of your sites is reviewed there. Prepare reviews and I will publish it (coordinate this with me). Stuff like that....there are many things to improve, always. Check this out: Femdom site reviews

Shap must be psychic! This is what I am doing at the moment, too. :)

Basically Shap the question with paysite sales (these days) is how to scale. I think the days of creating a single mega-brand like Twistys are over unless you invest a LOT of money on exclusive shoots. And we know how expensive those are, add in piracy, and it's tough to invest 100k+ on shoots and updates.

So (for me) the only real solution is this: continue to maximize 'existing traffic' (tubes, TGPs, all the traditional ways) by creating more paysites and affiliate programs. Then, on top of that, creating my own traffic sources (tubes, TGPs, etc). The amount of traffic you can get from tubes today is limited and shrinking.

Between the two I think it's possible to 'scale'. But we're talking 1000 paysites vs. a few. LOL

Too many projects not enough time.
Applying main steam tactics and tools in adult requiring mainstream staffing cost or using staff not familiar with the tactics and or tools.
Not being able to cost effectively use mainstream tools (do to them not wanting any one in adult using them or pricing) resulting in needing to build from scratch...

All of this causing delays or other issues.

I think there are a lot of solid points made but I think the 100% payout strategy is highly risky unless you are 100% on top of the metrics, and most are not.

Just sift through the ashes of so many programs that offered those sort of payouts to affiliates over the years to see what I mean. Yes, there is an increase in revenue through an increase in brand/type in traffic as long as the affiliates are keeping the branding, and there are increases in things like cams or other upsells/leaks in the site, but it better be enough to cover the cost of those high payouts.

And the cost is higher than the 100% payout when you factor in the expense of maintaining those 100% payout affiliates, especially for those that have staff, office, etc. type overhead.

I get the strategy of adding sites. You get a site that earns even just $1000 net per month and try to replicate that into 100 sites doing the same and the sky gets a deeper shade of blue. However, I think the user habits and way that people consume porn is different today than the years where that strategy was the way to go.

Today I think being a lifestyle brand is the way to go. I also think that there is room to build a recognizable brand like a Twisty's etc, although I think the type of brand and the way the community interacts with the content will be far different. Xhamster is a good example. Also, look at ProAdult/voyeurweb - they pretty much blew off affiliates years ahead of many other programs and they are doing better than ever.

Awesome. I am out for a couple of days, but I'll hit you up Friday :thumbsup

Guys who are worried about their focus. I had trouble with this for years as nothing seemed exciting in adault. And I know why. You had to be one step away from illegal to really make money at the moment. Tubes, massive upsales etc. Yes people do ok without all of that but how many? Then a rule change can take away any advantage you have built up at any moment. It was fun but the easy days are over.

So I got into an old school business deal. Why is this better? Because I knew it was going to succeed if I kept my head down and worked at it. Adult no longer offers that opportunity. I know anything can fail. There are no guarantees. In adult I can pretty much guarantee you won't be doing as well or the same deal in a few years. So the frustration level is much higher which leads to burn out.

I did very well before in bricks and mortar, then I killed it in adult (my standards) and am now doing very well in the real world. The best part is I am hopeful for better.

It's funny you should mention Proadult because that's how I started way back when. But is "Proadult" still around? I know Voyeurweb is. But remember, VW and PA are not 'paysites' in the traditional sense. They are like Watchersweb, free user-submitted pics and videos with an upsell to their Premium brand.

I still am not sure how a site grows (today) to the level of a Twistys or Brazzers. Maybe Blacked is the only one doing it in recent years. JT was but he sold to Mind Geek (smart move). But yes, it's pretty much net $1000 a month (or year) x however many sites and life is golden. Most people don't want to put that kind of work in tho.

But if there's another way to grow a paysite (other than throwing massive amounts of cash at it - and even then....) I'm all in. But organic traffic takes time to build and paid traffic is mostly a waste. So there ya go. LOL

Can't someone just make it like it's 2003 again? :D

Yeah, brainfart on the name of the premium site but the point is that they function off their own freemium traffic model, don't rely on tubes to grow their audience, and have a very loyal brand following.

You and I both agree that the tube traffic value is declining so continuing to chase that dollar will only prove more and more futile. If you have (x) number of sites that rely on that traffic then what next?

imho, Shap came out with a Penthouse style brand that successfully used online when Penthouse stumbled online, even though arguably Penthouse had a tremendous head start. His genius was to sell at the top too, but could he pull that off again given today's market? Maybe, but only because he is smart and adaptive, not because he tries to do what he did then.

JT, same thing, he had a massive advantage to seeing what worked on Youporn and he capitalized by creating content that took advantage of that inside knowledge, and he sold out too at the right time. He also created an identifiable brand. Brazzers, the same, Fabian knew exactly what kind of site would sell because he saw all the NATS stats and Brazzers created content that fit the bill.

Still, the user behavior has changed since then so all of them would have to re-think and adapt as well if they came into the market today. They are all very intelligent so I am sure they would figure it out but look at all the programs that died out because they couldn't figure out the flux and got flummoxed trying, crushed by the weight of their hubris...

I didn't sell anything ;)

Thanks for the kind words, and we are still launching new brands, next one up will be a winner ;)

My bad, I thought you posted a while back that you had sold it. Did you just do an exclusive or something?

Good luck with the new brand launch! I guess there still is money in porn... :winkwink:

Oh ok, sorry. I thought you were out of the business tho?

No worries :)
I'm out of the monetisation side of the business and the running of the sites. Simply no one better than MG at doing that. But my team and I are in full creative control of the content and editing. We also have a commitment to launch new sites, that's what get my whole team excited. And before you ask, I have not regretted a single second and wake up every day with the same feeling that if the contract was put in front of me again, I'd sign it every single time.

Oh that's cool! Can't wait to see the new brands. And I totally believe you would sign that contract again (so would I). LOL

At least you still get to do what you like to do, the creative side of things, so that's awesome. :)

Preselling/converting

Giving money to a government I do not trust , nor believe in....Taxes are eating me alive! And I do pay a CPA to handle it all.
Just insane what we pay here in the states compared.

Thanks Shap, which email?

Can you at least let us use cloud.xxx for our tube uploading? Or was that expressly forbidden in the contract?
When you were announcing the development of cloud.xxx you made it sound like it was your way of giving back to the content producers' community, and you were really not going to gain anything out of it personally. Yet when you signed the deal with mindgeek, you simply stated that cloud.xxx no longer made sense for your business and thus it would be shut down?!?

I returned after a 5 year break...

Hey Reggie, cloud.xxx and the tube distribution platform we built was just a small cog in the whole "cloud" play. When I signed the deal, unfortunately it made the rest of the platform not viable because of my non compete.

Good employees low cost. Regardless of how you feel about that, its hard to have business lines where you could grow them from 5k/m to something real if you had a dedicated FTC but be unable to pay someone to profitably start them.

Payment laws. How is there no lossless international exchange in 2015?

hahahahahaha :1orglaugh

Pornshap at gmail

No matter where you are you get what you pay for. I know where you are coming from but ultimately if you are always chasing the cheapest employable talent you will ultimately not get the best quality work.

I firmly believe in 2015 the best strategy is to acquire/attract the best talent rather than most affordable. One superstar is worth far more than 20 cheap hires.