It is like in every mainstream industry now: If you expect the fast buck, you will fail. If you can manage some projects and know what you are doing, you can earn some money.

I'm no expert but here is my full opinion. Just be aware that it does repeat a bit of whats said above.

More entrants into the industry means its harder to get a peice of the table scraps. Right now it takes one of two things to become successfull in the industry as far as I can tell.

First off there are contacts. Knowing the right people, getting the right partner accounts, getting the right link swaps and the right traffic for nothing more than a pat on the back. This isnt easy.

The second way is generating traffic by spending money, then taking that money and spending it again to make more traffic, repeating this until you've created a solid traffic flow.

So, the more webmasters there are, the more competition for traffic, the more people have to fight for their traffic.

Supply VS Demand means prices on sold traffic rise, TGP listings become more expensive, and the number of pages the big guys list becomes a smaller percentage.

It all reaches a point where it becomes difficult or impossible for a new person to break in and still make a profit, as long as payouts remain relatively the same.

All the while the people who already had the traffic all along or their close contacts are the ones that make the real money, because their outgoing cash is much lower than that of newbie webmaster and they continue to kick ass and take names.

Using GG as an example:

So, 1million new people starting monday or whatever? That's 1 million more submitters a day to his site?

First he'd have to require access for signups, via the Dangerdave model (he was the first I saw using it). Then he'd probably give away accounts to his current contacts. Then he'd start charging newbie webmasters for accounts to hire more people to review.

Then he'd ban ad naseum and only list the most rediculously 'best' sites, leaving those who arent creating perfection out in the street.

And this happens everywhere, tommy's, the hun, you name it.

Eventually the industry CAN reach this boiling point. I say its not too far off.

gallery submitters = free advertising

if all a site has to offer a customer
is the pics they can see by visiting enough tgps,
then the site doesnt have enough to offer.

if a site is jam-packed with features
then flooding the world with sample galleries
is like mcdonalds running ads in every country -
it draws people into their restaurants.

so, doesnt matter how many "webmasters" enter,
they are just helping provide free advertising.

|violin|

It seems to me all we need to do is get the 1 million new webmasters to spend most of their time on boards like this one, and they'll have very little time to actually work and succeed in the biz |jester|

Does actually anybody has reliable figures if the overall money spend on porn went up or down in recent years?

I did some stuff today which was interesting to this thread:
as many of you know I had to shut down my TGPs late last year for family reasons - today I went and cleaned out my emails (long overdue!) and cross-checked all the mails where people had approached me for a trade:
· about 70% of the sites were down
· almost ½ of the domains actually didn't exist anymore
· none of the remainders had any decent traffic!
= there's a good number of your newbies gone again!

Since I checked traffic for some sites (I am still looking for trades...) I also looked at Alexa's figures for established sites:
· almost every established site I can think of is down on traffic, either compared to 2002, or to late 2003!
= no wonder that TGPs are now charging for listings - I guess it's an important decision to substitute falling advertising revenue!

The other interesting thing: many TGPs actually went down in traffic right after they introduced paid submission spots! Question: lack of variety making them less attractive to surfers?

So where do the surfers go now?


edit: I have to go back to boring bookkeeping - just any excuse to get away from it would have done it - LOL!

i end up telling the guys on my team this non-stop. they'll work hard for a week and then go, well where's my cut for that site? haha

i say, building the site is the easy part..

these are the best stats i've ever found on porn
surfers. of course they were compiled by some idiot
trying to ban porn, but still they are good stats:

http://www.nationalcoalition.org/stat.html
EDIT: they took down that link. here's another:
http://www.webtech4.com/stats.htm


- 40 million people in the US are sexually involved
with the internet

- 25% of search engine requests are porn related

- 72 million internet users visit porn sites per year


etc etc...

Odd.....

-94 percent of Americans believe a ban on Internet pornography should be legal
Statistics on Internet Pornography.

yet....

-72 million Internet users visit pornography web sites per year
Pornography Statistics 2003.

yet the US population is only 294,932,376


Im gunna have to cry bullshit on some of those stats

haha true.

well i believe the positive stats
like % of search requests,
total surfers etc

they wouldnt inflate those
cuz theyre trying to make it look bad.

nevertheless,
theers a lot of porn surfers out there
and more log on every day

My survey shows that there are no more than 5 000 free sites with traffic over 1k daily in the whole internet. They roll more than 140 million daily traffic. So if the population of the eart is 5 000 million and half of them are male I think there is a potential :D

I also think more people will try to make a buck but as usual the newbie will see its not as easy as he thinks and leave.. then a new one will come along and maybe he will make bank ... I guess it will all even out in the end.

But, I also think that its getting harder and harder to even make a cent, without first spending your life savings... a huge risk that I tell all newbies not to take. Paid spots, partner accounts, 2257, etc etc etc.

Hats off to a newbie that can make it coming in today.. without connections ;-)

Terry

Id like to see this survey - if you are basing it on your sites numbers Id say thats way off - as I can see a huge amount of sites I know have more than 50k daily that arent listed - and I only looked at one smaller niche

I also would have to say that there are more on the order of 30-40k sites that have more than 1k traffic a day - and thats just on the adult side of things not counting things like sextoys, video sales and pills.

I will agree with you Linkster that there are more free sites out there. My survey include only TGPs and I can ashure you 95% of them are listed in my database. Yes sites like yours are not listed there but you must agree that there are no many sites of this type. TGPs are the major players on the free market or I am wrong? A can say also with 90% assurance that all the free sites no mather how much traffic they have are no more than 20 000.

I can tell you that there are a good number of gallery posters who are much larger than most TGPs ever dream of; some groups employ a decent number of submitters to get niche galleries into every conceivable link list and TGP site... Many gallery posters make it into the top 20,000 on Alexa; yes, they might be people who have a TGP running on the side (who wouldn't with sponsor hosted galleries and hugh 404 traffic from galleries?), but their main biz is galleries...

Well - I was talking about TGPs - I can see that mine is not listed as well as 10 others in my niche and I know for a fact that some of the ones Im talking about do over 100k a day - TGPs that is.
I also know that there are many linklists that do over 20k a day - as well as link dumps, SE free sites, AVS hubs etc.
But I was just commenting on the TGPs you have listed - you are definitely missing quite a few big ones in one niche - and a quick look at some other niches showed the same thing

Thats right. I missed a few about (5-10%) but I have all the other :D