Why is this business harder these days?
 

I'm a relative newcomer, but one thing I read here over and over is how this business used to be much more lucrative. Why is that? More people have computers now, memberships are less than the cost of a few trips to Starbucks, people still like to have sex...perhaps it's a matter of keeping up with what people want, which can be dynamic and ever changing.

I keep reading that porn is a gazillion billion dollar industry or something like that...yet it seems harder to make money now than say 8-10 years ago. Is it too much free stuff? Perhaps the supply has outgrown the demand (seeing all the adult websites out there, I do wonder...). Type in "fuck, sex" in Google, and you've got 100's of pages of porn to choose from. You can have the best porn in the universe, but people gotta find you...things seem very Google driven...how long can that last?

Like a lot of people, I always reflect this time of year, and I guess the bigger question I have on my mind is how can we better adapt to changes that are inevitable?

Going into 2008, I want to try to focus a little better on what it takes to succeed. Yes, I know you have to work hard and bust your ass...but it you work hard and bust your ass and lose your ass, then what have you accomplished?

More than likely competing with the amount of spam and shit on the net would be half of it.
Too much free porn, scam sites or anything else that's typically associated with porn now that drives people away.

No one will give a fuck untill it all ends and then they'll blame everyone but themselves.

It's not so much the amount of the business, it's also the number of people you have to split it with.
The number of programs and affiliates has exploded, so competition has increased a ton.

I think the Internet surfer has become more savvy. 6-8 years ago, porn was put together but not like today. The average surfer can find free porn today where as years ago, you had to sift through, in my opinion more BS than today. I remember when I found the Hun as a new Internet user I was like ahhhh Heaven..I think there are more legitimate directories these days. Therefore, more bookmarkers of free smut.

Four golden words: Too Much Free Porn.

The money is there, but you need to be more savvy to make it. You need to be able to convince the surfer that the grass is greener on the other side of the join page.

That's it. Period.

thanks UW i coulndt write that in 5 words or less...

Most of those "Porn makes X Billions a Year" articles are bullshit, by the way.

Porn makes significantly less than those articles suggest. Those headlines are used to attracty readers and incite envy.

If you do the research yourself, you'll see that those headlines are all basically lies.

When I started it was easier, some say no, but they are full of shit. I remember making avs sites and every one I created, made money, every one. Was just a matter of making enough. I remember getting search engine traffic without even trying.

As already mentioned, I think the biggest problem is the competition. Seems every body and their brother is trying to sling porn, not to mention the bathroom gangs. And now with free blog hosting and blog automation, rss, ect, people are cranking out massive scale crap, crap thats clogging up everything including the search engines. And with all these people, more free porn.

The sponsors don't help because they give so much to the webmasters, which is another problem, as the content is all marked with sponsors url's, easy for the surfer to bypass the webmaster. Zango and the likes stealing sales.

Too much crap.

Like bob said, they will just blame every one else.

To me, there is no other industry online that gives away so much content.

How to adapt? In my opinion, be different and interesting, even unusual. It's very possible without needing to give away the cow. Most every one is doing the same thing (myself included). Doesn't work like it use to.

Solution: work SMART. Working hard is okay but becomes overrated after a while, whereas working smart requires that one think ahead and consider the larger picture and long-term goals at all times.... and be adaptable.

I find that it is the short-term thinkers who are in it for the quick buck that are the ones who MOST come to the boards to complain that things are too tough nowadays. It's all how you look at it. Yes, 10 years ago you could put up even a crappy free picture site and make a living whereas now that just doesn't cut it unless you have mad traffic and a keen sense for converting it.

Nowadays one can for example sell ad spots on their sites to other webmasters and make up some of the difference. Or offer up your few skills you do have to others as a resource service, such as writing, design, coding, etc. Since there are more webmasters out there trying to make a go of it there are a lot more ways for the long-term thinker to legitimately and fairly make money even though the competition for signups is more cluttered than ever before.

One simply has to be in tune with how the industry is evolving in order to tap into new opportunities. And there are a lot of them. New ones coming every week it seems. I see nothing but good things down the road.

While it is true you can still make a good living if you adapt and evolve 2008 is going to be an interesting year for the industry.

Too Much Free Porn?

Bullshit.

Ok, not totally bullshit but exaggerated. Most of the people here on Greenguy and Jim make their money by providing FREE PORN in the form of building free sites or submitting galleries and running tgps and link lists. Well that is free porn, and you all do that right? You guys all provide free porn to make money.

So Too Much Free Porn?
Yes you are correct but I think more on the form of so many more webmasters now to compete with. And not only webmasters but 1 webmaster running 10 sites now instead of 1. Look at Greenguy, he does not only run Link-O-Rama. Look at Kit, he does not only run PenisBot. More competition in the free porn biz.

Is it harder to make money now than it was 5 years ago? FOR SURE. But more web sites, more webmasters, smarter surfers definitely all contribute to this, not just free porn.

And for the record. I made more money last month than I have ever made in 1 month ever in this biz. ;)

Yes, exactly. Too many people publishing too much free porn. I doubt you would argue that you wouldn't see a sales increase if even half of the free shit was dumped tomorrow.

Ramster, thats a good omen for the year to come I hope it can rub off and continue.

Yes I totally agree. Paysite sales would SURELY go up and everyone would be happy if there was less free porn.

My only point was we all provide free porn samples to the masses in the hopes of up-selling them to the paysite. We all complain there is too much free porn yet we ALL provide more of it each and every day. Ironic really.

Actually, I don't have anywhere near enough pages of free porn out there. It's the rest of you that are the problem. :D

I wonder too if a more open society works against us. Porn used to have a more forbidden quality. While it's not exactly prime time now, it's a little more mainstream than it was say 15 years ago, and as someone mentioned, so accessible. When it's more out in the open, I think people will perceive it as being worth less. Back in the 60's, a good vhs tape could easliy cost $100US, and that's before inflation.

Of course UL is right about too much free stuff out there. If it were up to me, all freesites would contain only softcore, with hardcore being available through paid memberships only. If something like that could happen (doubtful...the genie's out of the bottle now), I think we'd all be better off. Shame there isn't some society or organization that would work to fight this in the pron industry.

Only problem with that is this society would be based out of the US (or some other country) and you'd always have people located outside of that society doing anything they wanted to. It's a good idea, just not feasible unless a company like VISA made it so by only processing for sites showing softcore keeping all the hardcore on the inside. Of course then the torrent sites would thrive even more. LOL

I agree that there is too much free porn.
But there are alot of sites now that offer very high quality, usually exclusive content, and lots of it, that just can't be gotten for free.
So like Useless Warrior said:

"The money is there, but you need to be more savvy to make it. You need to be able to convince the surfer that the grass is greener on the other side of the join page."

I think I'm going to start marketing the sites I promote in different ways to see if that helps since the sites that offer unique content seem to convert better sometimes, even with TGP's.

I think free porn is a small part of the big picture, things like Consumer online fears and fear of ID theft play a massive part.

Many people won't use ATM machines here anymore let alone buy online through all the hype on fraud.

Ok rant time.

1)Torrent sites being the first to sign-up to your program and sell your content for a few bucks.
2)The cocksucking double dipping content providers. oops did that come out.
3) Big Link List's that send an auto reply to you. Making you think you are in their cue. Which in actuality you are creating a major one way linking hub to that LL until you realize they just wont list you.

4) Oh Yah Free Porn. I'm guilty too. Gotta keep up with the times I guess.

I just had a few drinks so I'll shut up now :)

I can name a few things making it much harder:

1. Illegal Tube Sites
2.Torrent Sites
3. Unsaturation of Big Sponsors
4. Weak US Dollar
5. Lack of innovation

Everyone seems to agree that there is too much free porn. None-the-less those webmasters who got in early have a distinct advantage. They have market share [i.e. traffic = sales]. The newbies want it.

Economically speaking we have a mature market here -- at least in the English language porn world. Therefore sellers/distributors must do one of two things -- 1. Use financial resources go after the market share of others. 2. Innovate thereby creating new needs or fulfilling new needs (not already identified to date).

The problem with the 1. is that other porn sellers/distributors will use their financial resources to defend their market. Profits will be reduced until producers achieve just a minimum return on capital. The problem with 2. is it take research and imagination to come up with something new that the public wants or you can convince them that they want.

In layman's terms, doing the same shit doesn't cut it because there are a million people doing the same thing [unless you have deep pockets]. So the moral of the story is give the surfer something new and different that they can't get elsewhere or go get a job somewhere else.

My two cents.

---aw

One other thought. I've been around here for a number of years (though I've just started taking my work seriously in the last few months). In 2003-4, you could start a link list and the common thinking was that it would be profitable within a year. Now, everyone seems to agree that on average it takes 2-3 years to do that.

My question is will there be a point in the future that no one in their right mind will start a common link list because they are not willing to wait what might be 5, 7 or 10 years to make some money from it? Hobbyists might not care but not someone who treats this as a business won't wait that long. None-the-less, with the cost to get into this business being so low, that is what it might become.

Is it really a mature market? I was under the impression the market was still growing...it has changed for sure, but I would think there are more people viewing porn now than say 10 years ago, and I would think the market would expand as new technologies become available.