Skim bypass fee?

[iwillbenumber1]

Happy Friday;

Has anyone here ever toyed with the idea of charging a small fee on your site, specifically a TGP, or similar script trading site, that would bypass all skim. I think there are many surfers that would pay $5/month to there favorite TGP, without having to be worried about being jerked around and always to get what they click.

Just a thought;
Jason

[Greenguy]

Seeing as I don't run a site that skim's, I don't have any problems with annoyed surfers

[iwillbenumber1]

Greenguy;

I first logged on to the internet circa 1997 and the first porn site i found was......[drumroll here].....Greenguy's link-o-rama. I have much respect for you. You deal with high quality traffic. Your clientel are ones who will pay for porn. I am interested in running a TGP, which happens to be very low in conversions. I think this "unconvertable" traffic can be converted with a skim bypass fee. There are countless people who visit TGP's every day and get all the free porn the need, get off, and they sign off. Suppose you run a thumb TGP 100K stable and trade traffic is 50% and bookmarker/se is 50%. If you could get 1% of your "bookmarkers" to subscribe at $5 per month that would eqate to $2500/month. They know they can get all the porn they want for free, but do not want the frustration of getting jerked around. They are not going to pony up cash for a paysite, but if you run a very high quality TGP they might pay that "nominal" fee just to avoid the hassle and get mostly what they want.

My 2 cents;
Jason

[Greenguy]

Think about what you said - why do TGP's, in general, convert so poorly?

Maybe the skim is the reason?

Plus, I have no idea how you'd market that to surfers?

This is my site & 1/2 the links don't send you where you think they do, but for $5 they will

[iwillbenumber1]

Consider that most of these sites are "fed" initially, but then become stable. Then consider in order to remain at stable traffic levels, traffic productivity (clicks) must be inversely proportional to the skim rate. Suppose you had no feeder traffic, and no SE traffic or type-ins. If you wanted to subsist entirely on trades, you could have the following: trade productivity at 200%, skim 50%. That means on average you get two clicks per surfer and one goes to a gallery and one to a trade. You should remain stable and grow slightly because most scripts will return higher that 100% if you traffics internal productivity is 200% then it should do well on trades.

The thing about this is most "BIG" tgps skim less than 50% and their productivity is not much above 200%. How can they get up to 300-400K uniques per day? BOOKMARKERS, yes people do like these sites and they do bookmark, There you get "free" clicks to send to trades, without having to have very high skim.

There are thumb TGP's that become HUGE within very short amounts of time, when they are intelligently directed by intelligent webmasters. All that is required is top rate design, sponsors, scripts, and trades.

The key to this is the whole purpose of skimming. PROMOTION. I would have never known about some of my favorite TGP"s if I wasn't jerked there. I wouldn't have clicked "click here", but I was sent there against my will and I liked it and I came back. PROMOTION through skimming is how these big sites grow very quick. Sites like bunnyteens.com and teeniesxxx.com are doing well because they did all of these things.

I am in the process of obtaining all the best tools, and I will through trial and error, become capable of managing this towards growth.

Jason

[BigJohn]

I don't enjoy my galleries getting skimmed.... I tolorate it because I have a somewhat open mind and am curious to find out if galleries on skimmed sites produce better because of volume or do worse because of the skim...

As for selling memberships to view my galleries.... Ummmm, NO!

How is that any different than taking images from usenet and opening a paysite with them? I realize you're talking about paying to not be skimmed, but the end result is the same, you are charging to see my (and others) copyrighted images.

Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Oh... btw.... POST 100 (finally)

[Surfn]

Being old school I know how to grow traffic without CJ bullshit. I only charge advertisers, not surfers.

[Kinky]

why would anybody pay $5 to get free porn? they are just gonna move on to the next TGP that doesn't charge money... with that idea you are basically telling surfers hey we are jerking you around but if you gimme some money i'll stop... why do you think TGPs like the hun are the biggest and the best? i know everybody says "because they have been around forever" but the only way they have stayed on top is that they don't jerk their surfers around in any way... just my 2 cents

[DangerDave]

charging a small fee on your site, specifically a TGP, or similar script trading site, that would bypass all skim

Thats the funniest thing I have heard in years.. Next they will charging for viruses

DD

[BigJohn]

Originally posted by DangerDave
Thats the funniest thing I have heard in years.. Next they will charging for viruses

DD

ROFLMAO! I can see it now.....

The requested spyware toolbars and viruses are ready for download into your computer. Please enter your credit card number in the space provided so we may bill your accordingly. NOTE: All spywares and viruses have been scanned and are certified safe!

[GeorgeTH]

There are/were several sites who have tried this in the past, and all failed! Some still have a paypal button on their page asking for donations (until their account is closed...), but I never heard of any where it has really worked.
There's so much free porn on the net that you'll drive people elsewhere - and that'll be the end of it. The savy surfer goes to incredible lengths, like opening the source code of some high skimming TGPs to get straight to the links that way...

[iwillbenumber1]

Originally posted by GeorgeTH
There are/were several sites who have tried this in the past, and all failed! Some still have a paypal button on their page asking for donations (until their account is closed...), but I never heard of any where it has really worked.
There's so much free porn on the net that you'll drive people elsewhere - and that'll be the end of it. The savy surfer goes to incredible lengths, like opening the source code of some high skimming TGPs to get straight to the links that way...

many tgp scripts like comus can be configured to hide the destination url......

[Alphawolf]

iwillbenumber1,

I think the general thing is that surfers will simply use other TGP's that don't charge them anything.

[Stouch]

There are sites that offer skim-free to bookmarkers now.

As an experiment I have just gone skim-free on freemilfs.com. Its slowed it down a little but I am convinced it will kick ass in the longrun. Especially with some good SE placement & the fact that its more niche than your average thumbsite.

[Linkster]

You'll find that some of the biggest TGPs are skim free - and got big by being that way - especially in the niche TGPs. I agree that there are some that are big that do skim and they tend to last a year or two - but then someone else comes along with a better site and they fall by the wayside. Over the long haul, it may not satisfy your urge to have instant huge counter numbers, but the conversions of a non-skim TGP outweigh the that false sense of "bigness" by a long shot. If you could run a TGP and know that you are going to get better than 1:500, vs running a skim site where you "might" get 1:5000 - Ill take the first - and run to the bank

[Sean416]

yeah, I agree this wouldnt work. It's been tried before and failed miserably.|goodnight

[Surfn]

Skim sites suk

[Tommy]

I think its doable

the tgp is providing a service by putting the list of gallery links together. it isnt completly unreasonable to ask for a small fee

no offence but as far as copyrighted gallerys
I doubt anyone has ever filed a copyright for a gallery
and the tgp isnt stealing your gallery

you put your gallery on the web open to the public. really anyone can link to it

I think webmasters would jump thru hoops for that credit card carrying traffic

if I wrote a tourist book about the best beaches on long island
and all the beaches in the book were free and open to the public
it doesnt mean i cant charge for the book

[Greenguy]

Originally posted by Tommy
if I wrote a tourist book about the best beaches on long island
and all the beaches in the book were free and open to the public
it doesnt mean i cant charge for the book

This is true, but if every other tourist book about beaches on the rack was free.....

[Tommy]

thats true to but............

if we look at newspapers
there are those newspapers that charge 50 cents

and there are news papers that are free

just cause one is free doesnt mean they all have to be

nothing Ventured nothing gained

[Greenguy]

I'm not knocking the idea, just saying that it'd be a hard sell.

It'd be like offering a free version of the NY Times, but 1/2 headlines don't match the stories

[Tommy]

and I'm not endorsing the idea :-)

I am just saying that it could work.

hey 20 - 25 years ago if i told you i was gonna run a cable to everyone house and charge them for tv..... what would you have said

if you just keep doing what everyone else does ............

I think the next generation of players will be the ones with fresh ideas.... and the balls to chase them

[KCat]

Give it a shot & see what happens. You can always make changes if it doesn't work for you.

I do think you'd have to have a really good, probably niche TGP to make it work. Another site filled with the same old FHGs isn't going to generate a lot of bookmarkers period, let alone ones who will pay to turn off the skim.

But the idea itself doesn't seem that different than paying a blog site to get the ads removed. You can use it for free & it works great, but a lot of people don't like the ads & are happy to pay the nominal fee.

[Wazza]

An example of a mainstream site which does something of the same flavour.

http://www.howstuffworks.com/speedy-reg.htm

There's a tgp out there which does charge a membership fee - I recall some guy getting his tits in a tangle over it... obviously he hadn't thought it through...

[BigJohn]

Originally posted by Tommy
I think its doable

the tgp is providing a service by putting the list of gallery links together. it isnt completly unreasonable to ask for a small fee

no offence but as far as copyrighted gallerys
I doubt anyone has ever filed a copyright for a gallery
and the tgp isnt stealing your gallery

you put your gallery on the web open to the public. really anyone can link to it

I think webmasters would jump thru hoops for that credit card carrying traffic

if I wrote a tourist book about the best beaches on long island
and all the beaches in the book were free and open to the public
it doesnt mean i cant charge for the book

If the book you wrote about public beaches included pictures that are copyrighted, then no... you can't sell it. But that's niether here nor there, your example isn't the same... A closer example would be shareware... you can use it and give it away, but you can't sell it.

If you start allowing TGP's to charge surfers in order to view a paysite's copyrighted pictures just because they're available for free, where does the line get drawn? Can someone then use my "free" images to start a paysite without using the gallery? The images have my URL, so would that be the same? What about images found on usenet, those are free too aren't they?

How about if someone uses the graphics from your TGP and builds their own? The images were shown in public, for free.... is that okay? Of course it isn't.

Yes, as a paysite owner, I would LOVE to have surfers come to my site who have credit cards and are known to have purchased. At the same time, I want to be able to control MY copyrighted materials.

There was a lot of controversy about TGP's skimming thumbnails (using copyrighted images for purposes other than intended), so selling my images without my permissions is okay, but skimming my thumbnail is not?