You're right. Many of us put things on auto-pilot years ago. But those days are over. That doesn't work much any more.

Problem are not tubes... they represent the 5% of the free content.

Do you know what torrents are?

Do you know what pornbb and extreme-board are?

Do you know sharingmatrix, hotfile and the dozen rapid clones available right now?

Those have 80% of the free content rigth now, and I'm talking about downloadable SITE RIPS in HD available for free right now.

Take a look at those and you will be surprised... 15,000 active users at all times... every single post with content get too many thanks to list... Those forums move so fast that you refresh it every 5 seconds and you see new threads and post with FREE MEMBERS areas popping up... every single second.
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I'm sorry-when i say "illegal tubes" I'm referring to torrents.

Also-are you aware of how recent rulings by multiple international courts are setting new precedents for anti piracy laws? The pendulum always swings the other way, as it is now, and the major torrents are being shut down.

As a business owner I've learned that the a ceo's job description should be "problem solver". If you don't like finding solutions for problems every day you go to work, and instead have a tendency to get stuck and focus on the problem, then you shouldn't be a business owner. .

I think that even legal tubes hurt us.

I've been trying to say this for years now. If everyone gave away up to 3 minute clips on tube sites, then even upgrading them in their own tube site for a Fucking 1.99, that would make a big difference.

Anyone that gives away more than 3 Minutes for free should go to JAIL. :Oh crap

Definitely not referring to what hahaha did. I'd call that consolidation.

I just went to google and searched Content Aggregation so I don't describe it the wrong way. Here is an article to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2008/04...gation-king%3F

It's not a new idea but I believe it's becoming more and more valuable. Twitter is a great example. There is so much valuable real time information on Twitter (I can't think of another place with more). The problem is the noise. There is even more garbage than quality. The key is aggregating the right content and doing something with it. There is HUGE opportunity.

Dave we know that. We all get it. I just don't know what saying it over and over again will solve. That ship has sailed and isn't coming back. Why keep calling for it? The ship is 5000 from shore and can't hear you.

Brother you just described GFY. lol

As far as what you're talking about...I think that executing it properly would be key to that kind of thing being successful. I'm just not sure if it really would apply in the porn world (unless you call torrents and illegit tubes "content aggregators").

I have a hunch you've already given it some thought though and have some kind of plan to implement it for porn. Good luck with it and let me know if affiliates will have some sort of place in the structure so I can try it out.

You have the power to try it on your tubes. You are the captain, you can hear us. Back the ship up and set a new trend. You will make more money then everyone else. Then you can come here and tell us how my idea has put an extra million dollars a month in your bank account and every other tube site will follow.

Especially on your Gay Tube. You know if a guy is Jerking off to a video with his Dick in one hand and his three minutes runs out and it says, join to see the rest of the video in HD, he is going to use his other hand to get the credit card out.

IT'S A NO BRAINER!

That was a captin obvious statement 5+ years ago but there wasn't a lot of captins back then. Hell even today there is a lot of picture and video type membership sites that haven't gotten their own cam site, or at the very least a white label built into their members area.

Just a matter of time and there will be a tube site for it and it their content will be stolen. :2 cents:

That would be correct.
:2 cents:

Shap, when you see a complete members AREA of Twisties, given away for free at sites like sharingmatrix, hotfile, pornbb or extreme-board, torrents, do you send a DMCA??

And do you get any response?? Do they take your stuff down??

and if they don't, what do you do?

Lenght of time of the video is really irrelevant, it is the content on the video that is what really matters. I could put together a 10 min video that would basically be a strip tease for 9.5 mins and the last .5 she gets naked and just starts to do something right when it ends. And here is a tip for you, THAT is what will convert the best. Sure most people will bail and not stay to the end but if she does a good job of keeping them close, and getting them to hang on just a little more, and before they know it they invested 10 mins and now they really want to see what happens next. The KEY TO EVERYTHING IS capturing their time, the longer they spend on your site, watching your video, on your blog, chatting with the chathost, etc etc etc the more attached they become and the better chance you have of making a sale. For each of those things are slightly different actions/reactions for the surfer, but its the same basic concept and logic.

On the flip side if you show a 1 minute clip of hardcore fucking with a hot looking chick that fits their fetish perfectly, then they will be gone in about 45 second because they would have came, close out your site and never remember what the name was muchless come back or sign up.

Ugh, you know I hate to agree with you ... :winkwink:

But damn, you're right here man.

The people you're talking about... some of them got picked up by MAJOR adult companies because it LOOKED like they really knew what they were doing. But, it was really right place at the right time. They had connections, lots of friends, sway in industry circles... precisely because of that money they made early on when it was easy.

And yup, not easy anymore. It takes work and patience, and more importantly, more money than ever before to stay in the game long enough, and produce something good enough, to start turning good profits.

Here's the thing though... I think we're kind of in a transition stage right now in the sense that companies are adjusting. Which ones will adjust in time, or adjust in relevant ways, we'll see.

One of the most important things we can do right now as an industry, IMHO, is stop screwing over the paying consumers. I credit Tom Hymes for putting this thought in my head: It's just insane for companies to find people who are STILL willing to pay for adult services, and then screw them. Charge them for stuff they didn't want, double bill, place all kinds of traps in the fine print. Wall Street can get away with that kind of behavior because they hold serious leverage over their customers. We have no such leverage and, in fact, customers have leverage over US. It needs to be about finding out what the real adult fans are looking for, and giving it to them -- and going above and beyond in the process.

That's not cheap to do... so we'll see how many companies can do that. Like I said, we're in transition, we'll know more in a year, maybe two.

Two things.

#1 Anybody who takes that stand LOSES. It's that simple. There is so much competition in the tube space. It's very very difficult to continually grow a tube that doesn't have full length ripped clips. VERY DIFFICULT. Cutting back to 2/3 minute clips means you are not interested in being competitive in that space. If you aren't going to be competitive what's the point?

#2 GayTube is an entirely different market. Gay Surfers are still buying. We've had many videos that were 5 to 10 minutes in length result in 20 to 60 signups in one day to that sponsor. GayTube is growing every month in traffic, revenue and profit. It will be our company's biggest money maker. Why blow up a successful business model with a bright future?

I understand what you are saying. But at the same time I have to look at the reality. Stephan from XVideos is NEVER going back. YouPorn, RedTube, PornHub, XTube are all never going to drop back to <5 min clips. It's not going to happen. I have to look at Twistys and GayTube as two seperate businesses and make business decisions that set up each of them for the best long term outlook. Taking a strong stand on GayTube for the future of paysites is a backwards move imo. The short term and long term outlook for paysites is grim imo. No matter who you are it isn't pretty. The long term outlook for GayTube is very promising. I can't sacrifice that.

NOTE: Btw I'm just being 100% honest with you. I know I'll probably get ripped for what I just wrote.

I don't think they are really attacking the problem at all. There could be some cases against thepiratebay and others like mininova... and they stopped hosting adult content..

But Free Adult content is now being offered at dozens of rapid clones... Via forums... And those sites have every possible MEMBERS AREA in High Definition, available for free... And thousands of users are downloading those members areas every second... those guys are never ever going to pay for that content, if they can get it for free....

A friend of mine told me the other day: "I stopped paying for porn many years ago, I can get anything I want for free now"
.

The difference is that the people on the torrents are the more experienced surfers who are past the point of likely ever buying porn online.

The tube sites rank well in the SE's and get a lot of word of mouth from the not so knowledgable surfers either new to the net or have no idea where to find free porn so they type in free porn etc... Those are the surfers we want to land on a membership site first vs a tube site.

They do. We work with RemoveYourContent and all day everyday they do that. It's and endless job. They look for links and we send them links. We can't catch them as fast as they go up but once we find them they are usually down in 24 hours, only to re-pop up the next day.

I think you're not taking into account that he spoke of sites like pornbb which are HUGE in traffic and have all the torrent links all categorized and waiting for the millions of surfers who go there. :(

The "dumb money" they made and some good connections gave them instant credibility and more connections which made it easier to continue to make money because they were getting good deals. Its a snowball effect. When in reality they guy probably doesn't know much about anything other than being a good talker/ party er / drink buyer.

I agree 100%

I agree. It will be interesting to see if there is a phase where the strong survive. I think it's going to happen but you never know.

not familiar with that one but when i got to pornbb.com it redirects to sexbook

And yes, many affiliate webmasters are hurting the business.

People who used to submit galleries, and stopped doing money with it, are now working for rapid clones. They join a program, then ask the account manager to give member access to the paysites.

Then they download the complete members area and upload it a rapid clone.

Then they post it on illegal forums, like extreme-board or pornbb. ((( One of the SPONSORS that support extreme-board is AWEMPIRE.... With LiveJasmin... and nobody cares... So, what can we really expect from this business when you see that kind of situation? )))

So, finally they get paid 10 or 20 bucks for every 1000 downloads.

We, webmasters and sponsors, are our worst enemy, that's for sure. And we are ruining this business, we can't blame anybody else, but ourselves...

.

pornbb dot ORG

not .com it's .org It's one of thousands of sites that do it. It's a nightmare

Here is an idea that I thought of a while back. (i'm sure i'm not the first to think of it though) Maybe some are already doing it, I don't know:

Instead of taking regular scenes and editing them down or splitting them up for tubes.

How about shooting scenes made just for tubes where as the idea would be similar to a infomercial.

Similar to the Girls Gone Wild infomercials we have all seen. 10 - 15 - 30 minutes of teasing and branding teasing and branding over and over and over.

Hell, you wouldn't even have to watermark them. Have the watermarking/ branding built into the scene via props on the set, models lines, etc etc.

Do this instead of the lazy way of taking regular full membership scenes, or editing them down or splitting them up into segments and serving them up.

Try to capture your audience for longer periods of time without letting them bust a nut and drill your brand into their head.

This is something we are working on to sell Twistys better on Tubes. But you'll never see tubes become that. #1 Tube owners are lazy and won't do it. #2 paysites owners are lazy and won't do it :/

I think most of the people here know what the exact problems are and everyone has it's own thoughts and opinions about it.

Since a 6 weeks or so (after a long absence because of too much work and getting my thing online) I'm reading and sometimes posting a bit on GFY but I see the same type of discussions as 12 months ago.

We should focus on solutions instead of repeating ourselves about problems what will not be easy (atleast for me).

1. How to stop decreasing revenues and get them back in balance (improvement of ratios, most tricky part)?
2. How and what does it take to improve your business model and to make it attractive again for consumers to join?
3. Who of colleague entrepreneurs might be interesting to join forces / collaborate?
4. In what kind of way can we have an innovating role compared with mainstream (also tricky part)?
5. What can we learn from mainstream and all these social/communicative exploitations (very important one)?
6. How to protect your valuable content?

Tubes and Torrents will stay and never disappear, even when some legal court somewhere in the world will give a ruling that it's illegal. I think with the type of extreme content you now-a-days can find on tubes the the imago of the online adult industry will be more worse.

Maybe there is some way to strike back in a collective way.

so the reason is theres too many unqualified people in the biz? :disgust

Sorry Shap, gotta disagree with you on this point. I know for a 100% absolute fact that the tubes you mentioned - ALL of them my biggest affiliates by far - are asking content partners for 4-5 minute clips because they convert better. Many BROgrams, however, are giving away tons and tons and tons of full scenes - 20+ minutes sometimes - and they have endless content. So some of the tubes DO request longer clips BUT admit that it's the 4-5 clips that convert best.

So why are the tubes asking Brazzers, Bangbros, et al to give them 20+ minute scenes? To fill out their sites! Because they can, because it ties in to some other aspect of their business model, etc etc. And let's not forget how these tubes purchase their own content, too.

I understand it's a balancing act - shorter clips vs. the strength/competitiveness of your tubes - and the bigger money-bringer is going to win. But that's exactly how we find ourselves here: people chasing short-term profit and letting the slow decline in other areas creep in.

All it would take is a few of the big players to cut back to four minute clips and it would work, over time. This is the same issue/problem mainstream media is facing. How to charge for the NY Times after they've been giving it away for free online for years? But either they do or NO MORE JOURNALISTS. So: either WE do or NO MORE ADULT BUSINESS.

You said you wanted to be excited again, Shap. Well, think of a way to make YOUR Empire one of the Leaders/Captains who will steer this ship back on course. if the fucking NY Times has to bite the bullet then, eventually, we all will, too. (Of course, we know you're doing this already, Captain.)

I think the problem that's always existed with that idea (and the idea of any large scale collaboration) is it requires someone to step up as official Poster Boy for porn. If not, then we all just go on doing our own things because you know, we've all got shit to do. But who wants to be Poster Boy?

Compared to industries like, being an actor or a writer or even blue collar workers, we are wild fucking animals. Actors have all kinds of shit to keep them connected and focused as a unit. Writer's Guild and various organizations they all belong to. Hell, plenty of industries have unions or interest groups or memberships that watch out for them or lobby for them or set guidelines that all the players must play by?. that kind of shit.

We, the porn biz.... are wild fucking animals. Nobody cooperates with anyone beyond the daily deals we do. If there's any kind of membership or organization to anything that represents "the adult industry", I've certainly never heard of it. I don't know that anyone has ever even tried to form such a thing for people in porn.

This is what I mean. It starts with a poster boy and an idea. So who's gonna step up? And how do you get anyone to actually join up?

And consider the adversary. Screen Writer's Guild may be a union that protects their wages or whatever the fuck it is they do, but our enemy is essentially, non-centralized global digital pirates. Not generally accepted upstanding work contracts. It's a faceless, locationless plague. That's not easy to kill. It would require a serious force to do anything, whether it's through some kind of legislation, or some sort of straight up digital pimp style retribution or whatever...

The other side of the coin is, ourselves. How do you get everyone to cooperate and play by the same rules and play nice together? If a member violates the rules, then what? Tell him he can't do business any more?

Either way, I see it as a highly unlikely thing that you would collect more than a handful of people.

Most of us prefer to stay anonymous. (well, as much as possible, like not ending up on the landing page feature module on CNN)

not according to the IQ thread!

:1orglaugh

Some of those sites may want 5 min clips. I'm guessing the smart ones. The other guys won't. And reality is the guys who won't are making it harder on the others to compete for those surfers. You have to find a balance.

One of the beauties of GayTube is how many TRUE amateur videos we have. We have a TON of long video clips but we don't have very many STUDIO long video clips. I think that is a key. We provide a good product that is competitive and still leaves the customer hungry (and willing to pay) for more. Straight tubes don't have that advantage because amateurs aren't uploading to most of the straight tube sites the way they upload to GayTube.

Btw I'm not interested in being the Captain. One of the downfalls of porn is many owners use it as a means to get money and once they hit their target they are GONE! It's not exactly the most socially rewarding industry and for many entrepreneurs I believe that is one of the problems. Many of the true entrepreneurs use porn to load up the bankroll and then make a run at mainstream where they can be proud and get the public stroking to satisfy the next level itch (the level after financial security is achieved).

BINGO! We prefer to stay anonymous and keep our wallets closed. If there is no immediate ROI nobody is interested. FarL is one guy who put his time and money on the line and went to bat against acacia for us. There aren't many like him.

SHIT just made my 6000th post. I'm glad it shows as posts and not time spent making them ;/

Yeah, I remember.

This was very well said, and I agree with you 100%. I'm just glad you are a better writer than I am. Thanks.

Maybe define a quality label as "no pirated content" and put one of the still living adult icons as poster boy / girl.

Define guidelines > rules in ways content providers, site owners and affiliates operate. Maybe work with some blacklists.

I know that no one wants to be with his full name / face in the publicity so a known 18+ icon could be a solution. Everyone is busy, have no time because of their daily workload to get involved.

Maybe it's an idea to initiate some "think tank"? (this idea is not mine, lol)

The issue is the people that join the group usually lose out. It's sad but true. Nobody is willing to give up a dollar today for a better tomorrow.