What's gone wrong with porn?
 

I'm looking around on all these boards where it use to be so crowded, so many people saying this is the magic, or no that is the magic. But now no one? Just a scattered few?

Ok times are hard, but they're hard everywhere. Big Deal. You go on, life goes on, you don't quit. Quitting is a guaranteed loss, and at least this is enjoyable.

Yet here I am sit taking in numbers like I never dreamed of, quarter million a day. No, I'm not making money off of it, but I never have; however I'm sure somebody could. And it's proof the Customers are still here looking.

I just don't understand giving up.

If it does not make enough money to pay the bills, you move onto something that does.

Although I still do porn, the majority of my money comes from non-porn websites. However I think the main problem with porn is that people are too set in their ways and doing the same thing that worked for them five years ago. Things change, I used to make most of my money selling website memberships, nowadays the majority of my adult money comes from selling porn eBooks. However despite the fact that I mention this often (and have had my affiliate program as my signature for ages) I rarely see other adult webmasters using this revenue stream. They all believe that the old model will continue to work, and that the 1990's are still with us.

I think the best comparison I can come up with is this: When I moved into the area I now live in, there was a video rental store around the corner from me. DVDs were just beginning to become very popular, but had not overtaken videos. So the guy who ran this shop decided to stick with videos, and not start stocking these "new fangled" DVDs. He went out of business years ago. And that is what most adult webmasters are doing, selling video tapes in a DVD/Blue Ray world. Those that innovate, those that realise it is now 2012, and you cannot even do things the way you did them in 2011, let alone the way you did them in the 1990s, they will survive. But those sticking to old models (sadly the majority) have either given up already or are moaning and whining that there is no longer any money to be made in porn - those WMs, although they don't realise it, are dead men walking.

Times are tough & I'll never stop doing this, but fuck me, I gotta blow something up & create a new source of income before I go under in a bad way :(

I'm having a low sales month (~$5300), but I can't tell how much of that is from summer and how much from Penguin smashing a lot of rankings.

I dipped into a little mainstream and sold a cleaning brush or two and some Google AdSense but nothing to get excited over. I guess I don't have the knack for it.

I'm making a big fat zero right now, no address to get checks, and bank account stolen by bankers changing the rules. But I'm still here.

My point is nothing is making any money. We can't go get jobs, they don't exist. We can't open a store, no one has any money to buy. Even the drug dealers are going out of business. Nothing is going to make money as long as the rich keep hording the money and charging us more. The end result of that formula is not pretty especially if we all give up in everything. We have to continue trying something if we are not to just shrivel up and blow away. So why not stick with something that is at least profitable as fun, as entertaining. Something that can even give us hope in a recovery, as the economy has to come back, well I certainly don't want to see the alternative. Fact is, when the economy does come back guys are going to blow that first paycheck on food, because soup kitchens and food lines are appreciated, but... That second paycheck, it's on, self reward time, and that means porn, but they cant buy from what is not there.

Maj. Stress. Move on to what? Rob a Bank, even they're going out of business. What are you going to do, pull a gun on a teller and get an IOU? Porn is a "Basic Need" it will be back.

ecchi I agree technology changes and we have to adapt. Zango comes along and steals our affiliate money and we have to adapt. Cool on the eBooks, glad their working. Mine was to change to PPV with the payment processor splitting the revenue on gallery trades.

Greenie, things already went that bad, living in the desert running off my solar panels. And fuck them, I will survive!

HowlingWulf, I didn't make that much last year in total. That might not seem like much right now, but treasure it, and keep on trying. Things have to get better.

I'm staying at my model (free sites, galleries and blogs), but I'd like to divert about 50% of all my clicks to something other than "standart adult memberships" (I still don't know where) ...

I'm not hearing webmasters openly discussing current sales trends or innovative techniques that are in use. I thought mobile delivery would be the next wave, but I'm not yet seeing that fully blossom. Watching sex being performed on film has not changed a whole lot in my view, the delivery methods certainly have. I started watching porn on 16mm loops using my fathers Bell & Howell projector, so whatever the re-invention of the wheel is, I'm all ears.

Mainstream is very different from what I can see. I am creating my own "thing". I've been told in the past that to survive in mainstream you need to push your own product or service to survive. hth

My income in this biz had fallen to the point of no longer becoming something that could sustain me before I drastically increase how much I work each day.

I'm now working for three to four or maybe even more times as much as I did a year ago and doing more of a variety of things and niches.

I've started to see my income start going back up, but still anemic to what it was around 2007, but at least it has started going in the right direction.

I think I've made enough in mainstream to buy a few pizzas. Really the only mainstream thing I'm doing these days is my outdoors blog and it's more of a hobby project.

What is still making me the most money in this biz is free sites, TGPs, blogs and an occasion sale off of my LL.

Free sites are an odd thing. Not much traffic and often no sales off of new stuff but then when it has aged three or four or more months I start seeing sales.

TGPs or hit or miss. Hun still sends insane amount of traffic but sales are hit or miss. I only have one paid TGP account and again sales are hit or miss. I also submit to some of the smaller TGPs. TGPs convert so crappy these days for me that paid accounts are no longer profitable.

I see sales here and there off of my blogs.

Basically nothing is making killer sales but I've got so much stuff out there and produce so much each day that it adds up.

I really do believe that the economy is the number one factor hurting sales and once the economy picks back up so will our sales.

Paying for porn has become like paying for long distance phone service. Nobody does it anymore...:(

Look at Alexa, tubes are now the most popular sites on the Internet. Why pay to rub one out when you can get it for free. The economy is bad but I think that is a lesser reason. Anyhow, I read recently that some economists think it might be 2020 - 2023 before the credit excesses are worked out of the world economy. (The Great Depression started in 1929 and didn't end until after WWII in 1945. Do the math from 2008.)

So what might work with porn? I think to succeed you have a better chance if you create a community that people want to come back to again and again. Niche news, porn interviews -- personal porn if you will.

File lockers may be an even bigger problem.

Entire member's areas including all new releases are uploaded daily to them.

But water is free yet it still sells well.

I also realized that "pay-per-view model" is something that can still convert over 0,02 per click ... I'm still looking for some "side products", maybe Totem would be a good thing ... Another I found is Say No To Porn. :)

Now that is probably the most useful comment in this thread. Both in the US and UK the laws governing the purity of water are stricter for tap water than they are for bottled water. This means that on average, tap water is better for you than bottled water! Yet every year billions is paid by the public in the belief that it is the other way round. We need to find a way to convince the hilmans that paid porn is better than free porn, even if it isn't!

It's yellow and tastes nasty here but that is a south Florida thing of trying to keep 85˚F degree water safe to drink.

Organic food is another example of people paying way more for perceived better.

You can get lots of TV channels over the air for free but people pay for cable and satellite.

FM and AM radio is free but people pay for satellite radio.

But everything goes for cheaper and free when they aren't making enough money to make ends meet.

Quality is important, but with porn and water, I think it's more about convenience than perceived quality. Buying memberships isn't exactly convenient. You key in credit card info, you get yet another login to keep up with, you get rebilled every 30 days unless you cancel. Even if you've got plenty of money, it's a pia compared to pulling up a tube and hitting the play button.

I think quality is very important.

I've been having good luck sales wise by advertising that Foxy's site is all hand crafted like a fine Ferrari car without using scripts like cookie cutter sites are.

Here there is so much calcium in the water, you drink it, you get kidney stones and no way to filter it out, so all we and the cats drink is bottled water.

One thing I do is look at historical trends in Stats Remote. For us, Feb, June and July are always our 3 worst months of the year, so although it is painful to have it dip when we are already about 1/2 of our best income (last year before Panda), I know that August will be better. I also track on my weekly desk calender what I have made each day for at least the last 5 months, so I can see the trends daily.

Yea, I lost a lot of sales from the Google updates, Panda and Penguin. (animals are out to get me). But we have just tried this month a new source of revenue, selling our 3D work in PDF form from an online store that has traffic for this, and sales are doing good, and we are unknowns. Once we build up a following, sales will be much better as I know their top artists are making bank, and our quality is up there with them.

We have had more sales (as far as volume) for our magazines? comics? in the last 5 days since we started then for our 3D paysites all month. $ wise still lower, be we are incredibly optimistic that will change over time.

We are one of the few people I know that both of us are still doing just porn for our income, and income is tight, but like ecchi said, sticking to the same thing isn't working. I still do tgp's and free sites, but I've added social media posts, blogs, and online virtual words, and stores as other sources of places to find customers. You have to change with the times.

Water, I use a Reverse Osmosis system, Love it! Best water I've had in years. I may be broke, but I still have some nice toys :)

ecchi, Paying for porn is better. Why do you think I pay you girls to get behind my camera.

Haven't actually done any real updates to my sight in over a year yet my hits have gone from between 1 to 4 million a month to a quarter million a day. You know that old, age = rank with Google, but Bing and Yahoo both tossed me to the top too. Honestly wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't gone over quota, and found my logs were insane in size. Not that it matters, it's just people grabbing the free. Certainly not the normal Summer dedness.

Anyhow, what I'm talking about isn't working three times as hard or anything, it's just not throwing away what will come back eventually.

I do agree, new Ideals can't hurt. Thought of moving to a social network myself, well have actually tried a few, just failed so far, that is failed to get the code working, or didn't like how sloppy the pages were in others. Like to find one that is easy to implement but builds small pages, or even pages from code that I supply.

Congrats to those still making it, Awesome.

Oh but I disagree with when this Depression hit. It began with 911 and the rise of the oil prices. Our industry just wasn't hit that hard yet. I think it was Zango and the pick posts that hurt us the most. But hey with so many gone, at least they are running out of stuff to steal.

Visa/MC gift cards have become a problem also because they generally can't be rebilled and some sponsors are discounting them!

If ALL the file lockers and illegal tubes were taken down completely, and the only way adult content was viewable was either by paysites, VOD, or DVD's, everyone here would see a dramatic increase in sales. Unfortunately it's not a perfect world...
Huh?

In theory you have to be over 18 to own a credit card, but any damn fool at any age can use a gift card type credit card. So they can be (and are) used by kids to buy stuff they are not old enough to buy. This is the main reason that most responsible sponsors won't accept them.

The thieving technologies are here and their not going to go away, well maybe if we sink to their level and flat out attack them, but I'm sure two heads will pop up where you cut one off... and eBooks, pdfs and content trades are all different technologies, as different is a help in overcoming the problem; but what about upping the anti? Add quality or material that dates quickly. You know anybody can get naked and take pix, or screw and shoot video, but add talent and it becomes unique, what is special about you besides naked or sex, the more special / unique the more likely people are going to find you even through stolen content. Up the anti even more, invite friends and make Plays around sex, even if their corny, you'll attract an audience and a following. Or how about a sex Soap Opera, how many people get addicted to Soaps, again something that it doesn't matter if it is stolen, the stolen is only advertisement, as people what to see what is happening "NOW" more so then yesterdays news.

Hey on that, anyone interested, I can write, and a Soap might be fun, care to put one together? Actors. Writers, and Locations; we can work around anything and string multiple plots together.

Hadn't intended in taking this thread here, but why not?

Not true.

Problem with porn today? File download sites, torrents and tubes somewhat are a problem for sure. Free has been and always will be a problem.

But what has happened to porn is what use to be a shared experience among 100's and 1000's of webmasters has been isolated to the few. Once upon a time TGPs, MGPs, Link Lists, Blogs and all the sorts shared traffic. Sure you had the big guys but the little guys still had traffic.

Now the traffic goes very much to the tubes. They dominate the search terms, pick one and they're tops. Some of the free site guys still get some traffic but it's is so low now it's almost non-existent. You have tubes sites getting 20 million visitors a day, 20 MILLION. And not just the top tube, several hover around there for daily traffic.

Tons of people enjoy the free content out there but keep in mind there are 10x the people online now than there was in 2007 so it's all relevant.

Problem is simple, traffic is king and so few control the traffic.

This is sometimes referred to in the main media sectors as "the HBO solution" - make better content, that people WILL seek out and pay premium prices to get before it gets shopped out to the "free" (advertisement supported) suppliers.


It should work, but, the porn production companies have been slow to adopt the principle.

It does not necessarily solve the problem of the small independent sellers like us.

OK, here is where I make myself unpopular again:

The problem with porn today is simple: Most (not all) webmasters are too busy blaming someone/something else for the problem to do anything about it.

Things like tube sites eat traffic and spew out free porn, but they are not the problem. The economic downturn means that there is less money on the table, but that is not the problem. The problem is that webmasters moan about them rather than change their ways to avoid them, they just say "it is impossible" and hide their little heads in the sand.

Bottom line: if it is not working, change things, if it is still not working change things some more, then keep changing things until it works. Just moaning about the economy, tube sites, etc and doing nothing to fix things for yourself is the first sign that you are truly incompetent.

There are four types of adult webmaster:
1) The hobbyist who is just here to have fun, and any money he/she makes is a bonus.
2) The webmaster who has found his/her way through their downturn and is making good money.
3) The webmaster who has not yet found his/her way through the downturn, but is actively working on it.
4) The webmaster who accepts that the downturn is irreversible and that he/she will never make as much money as they used to make in the "good old days".

Types 1, 2, and 3 are in the right business - but type 4 should give up running their own websites and hire themselves out as a contract webmaster. They do not have the mind set necessary to make money themselves and can save themselves a lot of hardship and heartache by quiting ASAP.

Sadly, reading this thread, there are a lot of people here in group 4.

I'm curious ecchi, who do you figure buys those ebook things?

I think of erotica as being mainly for a female buyer.

ecchi, awesome analogy. Although a hobbyist, agreed, I will chase the money when the money comes in; a benefit of being my own boss in everything I do, I can put my time to the most benefit. This job, the Adult Webmaster I keep open because I do enjoy it, and prefer it; so if I find the "honest" money I'll be here dedicated.

Bill, "the HBO solution", cool name. But that is a solution, because it IS something we can build from nothing, and with nothing. All's we need to do is team up and invest what we do have, our time. We already have the cameras and websights, that's production and distribution nipped in the bud, all we lack is the team.

Nowadays all the accounting is done for me by a third party (A1 Adult eBooks) and I have no buyer statics other than which books sell, quantity of sales and what website makes the sales (which, thinking about it, is a bad thing). But when I started out selling eBooks I was selling them on eBay so had better feedback. Back then the majority of customers were men, however I did also get a reasonable number of women customers and a few couples. I never took any age demographics.
Yeah, but eBooks don't have to just be "erotica", they can (and mostly are) hardcore porn. Most of the books I sell are bondage. This is because I discovered way back in the 1990's that bondage sells better than "vanilla" porn, a hell of a lot better. For example, I convinced one of the authors whose bondage work I publish to do a non-bondage teen porn book. He has never forgiven me for doing so. He makes good money from the bondage stuff but feels that the time he spent writing the teen porn book would have made him more money if he had got a part time job flipping burgers for McDonald's instead!

However that said, some women do like bondage too. When I was selling via eBay I had a reasonable number of regular women customers for the bondage stuff. And the writers whose bondage work I publish include two women and a group of co-authors who include one woman in their group. Also the most sadistic person I ever knew was a woman. She was a lesbian, and way back when I was younger and more innocent she shocked me by telling me that although she preferred women-on-women porn, she was also turned on by man-on-woman porn provided the woman was being raped.

a woman after my own tastes, lol.

I find myself wondering why surfers would buy ebooks rather than join a paysite with stories.

The recurring thing maybe, avoiding an unknown future cost, preferring a fixed cost for the expectation of a certain experience.

In bizop, ebooks were all the rage - probably still are.

Bill, I'd bet the eBooks sell for the same reason PPV sells: it gives people the ability to pick and choose, buy just what they want without a monthly subscription. I use B Bee-Tokens, where I can see what is selling at least, and everything seems to sell in ten dollar chunks.

Ecchi, Bee-Tokens parent sight is Bondage Tokens, let me highly recommend them to you. Highly Recommend! I do seriously think you would find another income with them.

EBooks sell in the same way real books sell. If you were after a particular Harry Potter or James Bond book, you would buy that book (either hard copy or Kindle), you would not go and join a website publishing Witchcraft or Spy stories. Same with eBooks. If someone sees an ad such as the one below and likes the book they buy that book, they don't go and join a website full of bondage fiction.

Thanks, but last time they looked they wanted 50% to process each payment and they did not have facilities for running an affiliate scheme. 50% is ridiculous and not having an affiliate option is also a deal breaker.

(Screen grab of an example of an eBook ad - reading it through reminds me what a hack I am!)

http://www.hardcore-porn-stories.com/fred.gif

Na, they're something like 10%, I forget exactly. And they will divide payments. But to work that with affiliates, don't know.

But I was thinking more about their customer links. As almost nobody spends that whole 20 on one page. I have heard those residuals are pretty good. I don't see them, for like your friends scenario, I am soft core, certainly not bondage, and not even teen. But hey I like naked girls, and I don't want to see the guy at all. Hard market to make money in.

Fans of domination, bondage, are loyal, sub niche categories do very well.

Is it safe to say the popularity of ebooks can be linked to the rise of tablets and smart phones?

I have not noticed any improvement, however that may be because the "economic downturn" is counteracting it, and in reality my sales both improved as tablets/smart phones became popular and at the same time decreased because people were economising on luxury items like porn books, so stayed about the same.