Originally Posted by Nathan (Post 17494381)

What most people completely disregard is that without all the free content, there would be virtually no traffic, people would have never gotten used to porn online as much as they have and would have never looked for it this much.

So, sure, kill off the free content, conversions will rise. BUT traffic will drop like a rock too. You will end up at the same amount of $$ in porn each year as the last years... People will not suddenly spend for more porn online.

I'm sure very few people here agree, and I am also sure we will never find out since free content will never go away...

Porn has blown up in general, the internet created more content in a year than was available over a decade before. DVDs also made it even bigger than it was.

The other problem which this industry has with understanding what is going on, is that it is full and full of private companies. All public numbers in terms of sales, revenue, profit, traffic and so on are extrapolated out of thin air. Everyone in this industry loves bragging, virtually nobody tells the truth when it comes to their cashflow or related things.

You just have to look and see what people call the "big players" on the various message boards and then do some digging to notice that its all talk and noone really has any idea. You can not imagine to how many "big players" I talked to who ended up making 50 sales a day.

Then there is other companies which are very vocal and public in the press, which are talked about always, which are called "leaders" of the industry... and again, all numbers are just based on claims the owners make but if you dig around you notice that it does not add up at all.

There are only very very few companies that you know the size of and they are:
1) Private
2) Playboy
3) Penthouse/FFN
4) NOOF
5) Dreamnex (french)
6) Fundorado (german)

I might have missed one, but those are the main ones.
Revenue wise, only 2, 3, 4, 5 are decent. Profit wise only 4 and 5 are, 2 is ok but not great, 3 is horrible.
Private is not bad, but for what they have they could be much much better I think.