Weird cause I am sure that in the beginning I could get a free smutserver/kinghost/terra.es (damn they rocked) account put some bullshit gallery on it with a simple banner or textlink, submit it for free (no submit passes back then) and make a shit load of sales on a single gallery. Good times!

Thing is even though it might look easier now, with all the info out there and cheap bw etc etc, making the actual sale is not that easy anymore. And yes this is also due to the loads of free content out there BUT there is a big diffrence in todays internet. Back in the day people would get an AOL account and first thing they did was search for porn. These days the majority of people go online and first thing they do is setup a Facebook account, register for twitter, talk to friends on MSN, and at the end of the day when they might have a little bit of time left they look at some porn.

There is simply so much more to do these days on the internet than there was 10 years ago, so blaming it all on the free content out there is just not making sense imo. There are still affiliates (not talking sponsors) out there doing 100s of sales a day, and thats not because they are lucky (most of the times lol). Its because they know what they are doing.

Years ago the big TGP guys where king. They made shitloads of money however most never changed a thing, so now they are dying. Is it because they were lucky and had no clue what they did or did they make enough and stopped caring about it? Point is they are going down, others came in and took over. Blame the tubes all you want but in the end of the day they have all the traffic and still make a load of money.

Some of the old school guys always said why change a winning team, well if you don't adapt (there it is I said it) and change the way you market you willl not make it in todays world.

So yes there is a lot of free porn out there but there is also still a lot to be made.

Damn, this must be my longest post ever lol!!!

You know...a lot of people always say that. It was "easy".

And yeah, around 2000 it was sort of easy I suppose.

But when I first started online in the mid '90's, it wasn't "easy" to get started. Yeah, once you understood how the whole thing worked...then you could make money much easier than now by far.

But it wasn't "easy" to get to that point. If it was, there would have been thousands and thousands of big tgp guys making the kind of money we did with AL4A and Ampland. But there weren't.

There were just a handful of us.

And then there were thousand of unsuccessful ones and mid-range ones.

Just like now.

There are only a handful of tube sites with real traffic. And thousands of unsuccessful ones.

It's kinda always been that way.

It's real easy right now to get in the business. But it's not easy for those unsuccessful ones to survive anymore for sure.

10 years ago I would have said that a guy running a free site and only making 4 figures a month was unsuccessful. If you weren't making high 5 figures a month and 6 to 7 figures a year you weren't in the game.

These days if a guy opens a free site...he's gonna be damn lucky to make 3 figures a month. lol

So they try all that SEO stuff and open 500 new sites and link 'em all around.

Bottom line is you still have to SELL something to somebody in the end. And that is tough to do when everything is being stolen and is free and the masses know it. At that point all the business sense in the world won't help you SELL porn. You might be able to use your business acumen to figure out ways to "monetize" the situation. But sell more porn to people getting it free? Now that's a more difficult problem.

the leaders in the biz right now are pirates and have more traffic than god.

Dreaming is not going to solve anything. :1orglaugh

dogfart ripped off pretty much all the interracial video that was available at that time putting it into its classic 4x4 picture scheme.

now it's the industry leader blacksonblondes, complete with service marks, trademarks, copyrights, etc.

Well said. There simply is no one single boogie man (free porn, tubes, CC, xsales, etc..). Right now you have a perfect storm of a changing industry, credit card processing changes, free porn, educated surfer, changing internet, etc..
:thumbsup

And that is the problem. Few people knew how to sell something or create something that was worth selling. That was why traffic was their king. They needed it because their selling/porn skills were low.

So today the problem is Tubes, so has anyone of our "leaders" thought of an alternative the customer will BUY?

Rumor is even the Hun was linking straight into member areas back in the days ;)))

For us Live Cams are killing it right now, in a good way that is. Besides cams there is this program we push which is also credits based and people seem to LOVE it. Buying credits left and right all the time, and its not gambling lol

just as people used to look at the hun to see what was selling you can take a look at the ads on the traffic junky network to see what is selling in the age of free porn and social networking.

well, just to clarify, i hope my comment isn't interpreted as a jab at the current operation's legitimacy.

just speaking to how it was started, i thought it to be relevant to the topic.

wow who would of guess a legitimate intelligent thread would be transformed into cry baby anti tube thread again.

who would have guest it would have been you to do it.

Surprise suprise surprise

Not so. The problem with that is those are all prepaid spots. And even those spots are probably being "monetized" for the traffic instead of actually selling a product.

What sells today is the same thing that sold yesterday...targeting an audience precisely and then delivering exactly what they want. The prepaid spots on the Brazzers network of tubes is all about traffic and monetizing it. Not actually selling anything.

And that's why we're seeing the bottom fall out of the business as a whole. In the end...nobody is selling anything. It's like when somebody buys a x-sell and then they monetize that x-sell 3 ways to Sunday and pass the buck on to the next person down the line. And it goes on and on. But in the end...nobodies really making anything or selling anything.

Yeah, it makes a shit load of money. But it's no different than the Pop Up Hell days of pay per click on pop ups. You just had a bunch of companies writing each other checks back and forth. But eventually it can't sustain itself.

Eventually you have to actually do real sales and make something worth buying.

it is as it shows that even back in the day people were stealing left and right to make a buck ;)))

well, a great thread about to go off track thanks to gg.

Nooooooooo don't take away the dream :1orglaugh

I just said that to illustrate just how far the cat got out of the bag.

I remember clicking a text link or banner and going to a solo girl's site which had a short tour that blocked out all the parts I wanted to see and it made me want to buy a membership to get inside and see the good stuff. That's a great sales tactic.

Now the solo girls have the " money " shot included in their tour and so much explicit promotional material out floating around it's kind of silly to pay for a membership anymore.

That's just the way they conducted their business as everyone pushed the envelope of good business sense to the point where it's at today. Not so good.

Robbie understands the value of exclusive material. It's too bad others didn't follow his lead.

yes however you would not want to touch most of them if you want to keep your visitors happy and buying ;)))

100% agree.

This rests squarely on the operators. They decide what goes on the tours. Someone somewhere wanted an edge, and so including money shots became standard as everyone was trying to out-do each other. But yeah, today.... there's nothing left to give away. The whole burrito is right on the front pages now. I don't see it going backwards.

Times change in every business. Sink or swim. No hustle? You starve :2 cents:

j. stephen hicks/ www.digitaldesire.com blocks the poon pics in their gals/tours. although i wonder how well this works since a quick trip elsewhere will show ya the girl's tonsils via vag shots.

but hat's off to them nonetheless.

True words, Shap.

Another thing that got out of hand, for the same reason, was updating the site.

Once a month to twice a month to once a week to three times a week to daily.

As you say the operators tried to one-up the competitors to the point members now EXPECT a daily production. It's just an unnecessary burden on the operator that still would have made sales if there was an industry standard of say once a week updates.

I couldn't agree more. I'm actually making good money today.

This is why there are no true "leaders" in the strictest sense of the word, because we will all cut each others throat, as well as our own, just to gain an edge over the competition. I don't mean fucking someone over... I mean, just gaining that business edge, which is totally understandable and expected.

There are "role models", but no "leaders". Any one of us will look at what a particular "leader" is doing, and instantly attempt to one-up them. As it should be. No one strives to be at the bottom of the food chain.

The major reason this industry is hurting now, in my opinion, more than it has ever in the past has little to do with Tubes, Credit Cards, or the Economy.....in a word, COMPETITION.

Ask most programs who their biggest competitor is and they will name some other program.........AND THEY ARE WRONG! Twisty's (for example) biggest competitor is Facebook. Yes, Facebook....and Twitter, and now even Chat Roulette. It is the sites that are taking surfing time away from our potential customers. Now, when someone wants to go online and be "entertained" they can check out their friends on FB, or they can find something cool to Tweet about, or they can whip out their cock, fire up the cam, and hit Chat Roulette for a while until then find something that interests them.

Until recently, this industry had a seemingly endless supply of potential customers with no entertainment options. Before, once you caught up on the news from CNN.COM and then caught up on your sports from ESPN.COM you were left with nothing but Porn....now there is a plethora of options for your entertainment time.

The companies who can either (1) figure out a way to entice those potential customers to come back to the porn side or (2) survive until these other options have run their course and hope there is not a "next generation" coming behind them, will enjoy the "good old days" once again in the future.

Of course, everything I have stated is just my opinion....I could be wrong.


--T

i second this

Too much free content = less sales... period!

Stop giving everything away for free, and maybe people will care to buy again.

Sales still exist, despite the industries best efforts to destroy itself from within, but as long as you are giving the milk away for free there is less and less reason for anyone to buy the cow.

This is a part time job for me, and I still do okay, but I sell exclusive content that is not all over the fucking place for free.

If you think tubes and piracy are not to blame for a good portion of lost sales, then I have a bridge for sale that you may be interested in...

Larry Flynt was a leader, a pioneer and a business warrior.

People of that character are slim these days.

Btw one point I'd like to add. I don't consider myself to be among the leaders and don't consider myself a very good businessman. I'm working on it. My problem is the money derailed my motivation to be a good businessman. I'm working to fix that but it's not easy.

That's exactly what I said in my first post :thumbsup

Same boat here. Working very hard on it.

Tony you are DEAD DEAD DEAD ON! I think we talked about this in your suite in Miami last august. Social Media started the industry decline not tubes. The 18 to 30 demographic can get WAAAAAY more out of social media than a porn site. Hell they may even REALLY score. On a personal level I spend so much time on social media I have no time left for porn and I know I'm not the only one.

I remember 5 years ago when I told someone I was in porn they'd flip out. They wanted access, passwords etc. I play in a few hockey leagues and most of the guys are 20 to 25 in age. I tell them I'm in porn and they turn down my offers for free memberships. They don't give a damn.

I say you're wrong :)

You've assumed porn is just a form of entertainment.

It's more of a way to satisfy a primal urge.

Go ask 100 people which one they would give up if they had to. Sex or Face-book.

There will always be a need for porn and it won't be replaced by anything.
The only thing that will change it it's content and method of delivery.

Btw another option (besides porn) is online gaming like WoW

i've seen some graphs in the past that show the correlation in the decline of traffic to adult sites and the increase in traffic to social network sites at the same time, does anyone have those handy?

Trust me you are wrong. My team and I have spent many hours researching our stats (as well as others). The downturn in tgp traffic (and other sources) started before tubes. It started when Myspace and Facebook blew up.

How old are you? Poll 20 to 25 year olds. It's not about sex because they don't have sex on our site. I can jerk off just as easily on facebook as I can to Twistys. The difference with facebook is there is potential real life interaction.

I love Stephen. We do a lot of business and he's a great guy. He's no pink is a personal choice rather than a business fueled decision. He has children and he feels kids should not be able to easily access explicit material. He knows he's not going to change the world but he's doing his part. I commend him for that. Not many people have the balls to do that in this biz (including myself).

If I am a single guy who does not do well with chicks, or I am a married guy who is not getting enough, or I am in a relationship but do not want to cheat - then I am looking for some exciting porn to jerk off to... I do not give a flying rat's ass what stupid shit you have to say on Twitter, not do I care who your lame ass Facebook friends are.... I am just looking for something to jack it to.

If I can't find it for free, then MAYBE I will pay for it. Nowadays, unless you are technologically retarded, or just fucking too lazy to spend 3 minutes searching, then I guess you pay for a membership or a download.

Strange demographic to base an entire livelihood on, but I guess we'll take it while it lasts. It won't last much longer however...

Really? WTF are you jerking off to on Facebook?