[Stever]

A large site like the Hun and others would be foolish to go to a pay model. Their high traffic IS their money flow. PERIOD.
Sure they throw sponsor stuff up to collect their 50% here and there but their real money is the banner ad spots. Some are affiliates for a % of sale, but many others are a flat monthly fee for the priveledge of being there, seen by 3.5 million per day.

In my nievity I inquired about banner spots on the Hun. I forget what the prices were, over $1000/month for good spots.?. They rotate dozens of adds and they were fully booked for the next 4 months. That's money!

And there are the sites that charge big $$ to be able to post your galleries to the top 10 spots. Essentialy the same as paying for advertising spots. That's what we are all doing here is advertising to the masses. We are not realy in the porn business. We are in the advertising business.

Free porn is a great business model for the high traffic tgp sites. Traffic comes to see it cause we all want to see sex. They need new stuff every day to maintain a reason for traffic to come, but can't possibly supply that much themselves. So us little guys keep submitting galleries to feed the demand and pray we entice a few of the masses to whip out a Credit Card cause they like our free stuff enough to see what it is like to get the full monty instead of single photos and short vid clips. For a site like the Hun to switch to a pay model, no matter how cheap, would be suicide.

Its all about the traffic!!!

Sure a small TGP with a decent amount of SE traffic could do O.K. (like cover hosting) with a pay model of some sort. Yes some people will buy anything. But that TGP would stay small and never realize the potential of a free TGP.

And the sponsors have to love the free porn model too. Those that complain about it don't have a clue how their biz even works. They end up with the best marketing team anyone could ever ask for. Hundreds, even thousands of us gallery builders are promoting for them to every corner of the traffic stream. Some of us suck at it and others are great at it. And the sponsor only has to pay for performance. Not to mention the large leak in this system where surfers who see the adds over and over finaly go to the site by typing in the main URL cause they cant remeber where to find the gallery they saw it on last night. Or those that purposely avoid affiliate links cause they don't like the thought of someone else making money off them. Or the faulty tracking systems that dont report every sale...........

Free=Money

[EDIT] I did not read all (or even most) the posts in this thread. So I am not sure how much of what I said has already been said in one way or the other. Just some of my thoughts. [EDIT/]