The to much free stuff debate

[Bake]

I see this thread on every BBS out. There are to many newbies post way to much content on free host etc etc blah blah blah.
Well I think the part of the promblem mite be that Paysites just arn't good enough if they where heaps better than galleries and offerd something galleries cant maybe there would be more money for all of us.
I have looked at a few paysites and most are the same stuff they buy all the same feeds and half of them use the same content.I think its about time they lift there game a little higher.
Recuring money is getting to joke levels I have been selling 1 site with great ratios but it's all trail stuff and its like 10% recuring ,I done the hard thing of getting the surfer to sign up he's in the door but they dont hold on to them.
So all the people who say galleries are to good, offer to much ,maybe it time to look at the other side I think theres alot more surfer out there because of the good galleries I'm just going to find something fresh to sell them.

[tmknight]

I read this too, and this is my opinion:

Too much free shit is given out, but that's because it's very competitive in this business. Many webmasters don't realize a little can go a long way.

But also, these jokers just ripping shit they find on the net learn a quick lesson: this business is hard and finding used up content is the EASY PART. Paying your legal fees when you get sued is the HARD PART.

That said, adult industry producers need to step up in my opinion. Some of them make great porn, but are terrible webmasters. The problem is, most of them think they can be great webmasters no problem.

It doesn't work that way.

If I own a free site, or traffic-portal as I like to call it, I am moving surfers around. Getting traffic, offering them shit and pushing them on. It's the content producers and adult industry that hold the content. I am tapping into the European porn market because State-side porn makers are too busy choking their own chickens to make any money on the internet.

Need an example? Try Vivid Video. The hottest porn actresses in the US and some abroad, peaking the most interest among web surfers.

Think they know what they're doing on the internet? Sign up for their program and send for a month. Good luck!

Paysites mostly suck because the good ones are over-staurates with its. I remember pulling down almost $10k/month from Karas XXX a little over a year ago. (at $42/signup with old bonus structure).

Now I wouldn't touch Kara's with your traffic. It's that bad.

When the American porn industry decides to play on the internet for real, some real money will be made. Until then, most paysites will suck, their paysites will suck worse and free site webmasters will scratch and claw for the best sponsors.

[matte]

Bake if you have 10% retention with your sponsor i think you need to change asap thats must be a bogus site you are promoting
But however i agree with you that its a lot of shitty membersections out there.
I lease all my content for my paysites which means i am offering 26 membersections on all of them and my retention percentage is pretty good, 60%, its tough to get higher than that.

[xApster]

As said on the go fuck your self message board it is good to offer some high quality content becuase on a pay site (a good paysite) they should offer much more than just pictures! They would have suer high quality pics, stories, movies , live feeds and more to keep the visitor in the site.

I think the problem is (also said on GFY) is that people do not relize they can get so much more on paysites. They belive that its all free when it really is not.

Also there are a ton of pay sites that are pecies of shit that ruin it for surfers, just like dialers the sign up find out its shit and don't trust another pay site http://bbs.adultwebmasterinfo.com/ubb/smile.gif

[Rod]

The big porn magazines already got their own paysites...

Have a look at: http://www.hustler.com http://bbs.adultwebmasterinfo.com/ubb/smile.gif

Thanks,
Steve

[donger]

IMHO TGPs are what's killing us, as far as paysite signups go. Why sign up for a paysite when you know that you can get a daily smorgasboard of free pics from one of the thousands of tgps that exist now? I'm guilty as the rest of you guys, i got my start like 4 years ago posting to tgps, but they exist much greater abundance now.

TGP webmasters are by far the most guilty for destroying signup ratios overall. As more and more people started posting, tgp webmasters began demanding "higher quality" galleries, which meant less revenue from the gallery posters, and more and more free pics with less banner/blind link intrusion for the tgp surfers.

Once you start posting quality shit on a daily basis, you can't possibly hope to charge people to access the same type of stuff.

It would be nice to have some sort of network of traffic that did not in the least involve any sort of TGP style galleries.. at worst, maybe galleries with 1-2 sample pictures, etc. Just to let the surfer know that they ARE samples, and definitely not enough to jack off to. The more surfers that learn about and bookmark your TGPs, the less signups are generated overall, and the more the bottom falls out of our industry.

just my $0.02

donger

[xApster]

But pay sites have much mroe to offer than tgps offer we just need to make people know about them!

[Bake]

I think We have to talk up How much better Paysites are to the surfer. But most wont give you a pass to look inside ,how can you desripe the pay site if you dont know whats in there and then make your mind if you think you can sell it or not.
Why are paysites so unwilling to let you have a quick look so you dont waste each others time.Are there site so bad they dont wont you to see inside or are they that hard up they need you to buy a membership.
Bake

[quotealex]

If you to see what's inside a paysite and if it's worth it to promote, use the free three day trials or trials for $3.99 offered by these sites. Just don't forget to cancel your subscription before the trhee day is up.

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Bake:
I think We have to talk up How much better Paysites are to the surfer. But most wont give you a pass to look inside ,how can you desripe the pay site if you dont know whats in there and then make your mind if you think you can sell it or not.
Why are paysites so unwilling to let you have a quick look so you dont waste each others time.Are there site so bad they dont wont you to see inside or are they that hard up they need you to buy a membership.
Bake </font>

[*Kimmykim*]

Bake,
I'll beg to disagree with you. When I did marketing and webmaster promo at Cashquest, we did not hesitate to issue temp user passes to any of our members areas to legitimate webmasters and I don't know a single site owner that won't do the same. If there's one you are talking about particularly, email me and I'll ask them for you if need be.

This is a business with so many interdependencies and co-dependencies if we were a real family a battery of psychologists could spend years trying to untangle the threads and label the psyches.

That said, now my answer to your original question.

FREE FREE FREE FREE.

From the webmaster using freehosting and free content to the surfer looking for more and more free pics and movies and vids and chats and whateverthehellelsetherecanbeforfree , this industry is choking on a glut of its own freedom.

No one buys a cow when they can get the milk for free and even pick whether they want whole milk, lowfat or skim.

Sales is an art, tmknight is on the money. Resellers are advertisers, they are not selling porn. And hopefully not giving it away.

In the fact that we process for about 2000 paysites, I see all kinds of stuff. Add the number of resellers sending traffic to all these sites and I see even more stuff.

Most of it makes me want to scream.

While its not a good idea for me to tell our customers that their tours suck and their traffic is worse, that is the case in more than not. The surfer isn't going to just jump up and give you his money, you have to earn it.

The key to the business is recurring. Sponsors can't afford to pay big per join if their sites don't keep members long enough for them to recoup the cost. Recurring programs won't keep resellers if their sites don't retain so the resellers make money on the backend.

Traffic is not a limitless source, there are soooo many people fighting for the same surfer that creativity and innovation are going to be the things that make the difference in the coming months. Not same old same old.

Sorry to run so long, I could keep going with the things I think will make for good business but you'd probably get tired of reading http://bbs.adultwebmasterinfo.com/ubb/smile.gif

[matte]

Kimmykim
"The key to the business is recurring. Sponsors can't afford to pay big per join if their sites don't keep members long enough for them to recoup the cost. Recurring programs won't keep resellers if their sites don't retain so the resellers make money on the backend".

I agree with you completely but you as a processor has a big part in how long we can keep the webmasters, my question to you, what legal demands do you have to obey regarding telling the customer how to cancel their subscription and also that they will be rebilled after the trialperiod.
Cause my experience is that many of the active customers doesent have a clue that they are still being billed!!
Bad content or not on the membersection does matter but the information that the billing processors give to the customers on how to cancel their subscription matters equally much i would say, the less info to the customer the more money for us paysiteowners and the processors

[*Kimmykim*]

"what legal demands do you have to obey regarding telling the customer how to cancel their subscription and also that they will be rebilled after the trialperiod."
----------------------
Mastercard and Visa are the front line of disclosure. Followed by the FTC and the DOJ. If the cc companies say we have to tell them when they'll be billed and how much that is what we do. Our particular case is on the site they are joining and in the confirmation email. CCBill doesn't notify the customer any further than that, unless they cancel in which case they get a confirm on the cancel if they do it through the forms.

"the information that the billing processors give to the customers on how to cancel their subscription matters equally much i would say, the less info to the customer the more money for us paysiteowners and the processors"
---------------------
support and cancel links are in the initial email and we require them on the paysite in prominent places, once again to satisfy Visa and Mastercard.

I'm sure that you are aware that the FTC has begun taking action against adult sites who fail to disclose, deceptively market, bill without notification or otherwise monkey with the customers cc's or phone bills.

The average FTC suit probably costs the defendant upwards of a million dollars to settle -- and the FTC doesn't bother going to court for the case, they go to the judge and get recieverships and freeze your assets and make companies post large bonds to operate, making it an even more expensive mistake. And they do this kind of thing BEFORE the site owner even knows they're under investigation in some cases, it's called ex parte.

I'm all for making sales, after all, our income as a company and my paycheck pretty much depends on sales lol, but we're not up for losing our merchant accounts or having the FTC or the DOJ chasing us down over our practices so we fly the straight and narrow.

Our customers that trust their money to us and expect a check on time each week deserve better than that.

[basschick]

almost every paysite i use as a sponsor has given me a pass. in fact, i believe only one ever said no.

it shocked me how crappy-looking and full of old, tired content and low quality pics a lot of paysites are. also several niche gay sites i saw had very little content within their niche. it was no surprise that their members didn't convert well.

also the front ends are ridiculous. there are several sites that say they are big tit, and yet the girls on the front are average breasted. every class in college tells you that green and related colors are non-sexual, yet how many green and muted green-blue sites do you see? how many sites with tiny pics that talk about their niche content very little do you see?

maybe better paysites would also help us all convert better. every time a really good site comes up, we burn it out 'cause there aren't enough good promos.

[flyboy]

TGP's must die, I've been saying that for years.

This industry is definately suffering from a glutt of free porn. I have just become obsessed with bukkake and have jerked off every day for the past month to different pictures and movies from free galleries. Its too easy, i type "free bukkake" into Google and I'm off to the races. I reach galleries that lead me to massive free TGP's. So far I've collected about 4,000 bukkake pictures onto my hard drive this way! Also about 50 movies - All from free sites.

But the other real killer is the media causing panic amongst credit card holders with reports of mass amounts of cc numbers being stolen from insecure web sites. Imagine if a major silicon valley company doesn't have the ability to securely store credit cards, how many people will trust pornographers??? Not many.

The answer will come with 3 developments;

1) new billing mechanisms that are safer and easier to use.
2) more broadband users, hence higher quality video streaming
3) ideally for the industry but not personal freedoms, a law making free porn illegal in the usa


really i feel another big problem lies in webmasters' obsession of pushing pictures as their main content and not videos.

[*Kimmykim*]

One of the biggest things that happens I think, is the incongruity of the sites to the sales pitches for them. Just like basschick mentioned in the case of some paysites, resellers often have the bad habit of not accurately describing the sites they are promoting, or not putting any pizzazz into their descriptions and text links --

As the industry matures, regardless of the glut of free free free (that only makes it harder) resellers are going to have to learn to choose sponsors that will convert and or retain their traffic and then they are going to have to learn how to sell the surfer on that sponsor.

The most important part of making a sale is closing it, and for the reseller, who's selling traffic in essence (not porn), closing the surfer on the idea that he wants to take a tour and will love the tour so much he'll pay, well , thats going to become tantamount to success long term

[Mr Exotic]

My dad is always telling me that the goverment is going to outlaw free porn on the internet and he is worried that I wont be able to make a living if that happens. I told him the day they outlaw free porn would be the best day of my life.

Think about, if all those bandwidth stealing bastards had to look at was blurred or censored pics on on the TGP's or to look at anything you had to get an AVS pass our business would be great. And come on lets face the facts we all know that a good part of our traffic comes from underage minors trying to look at porn when mom and dad are in the other room, all those bastards are just eating our bandwidth and there is really nothing we can do about it. Banning free porn would definitely make our business more respectfull just by simply keeping minors away from the stuff. Does your local adult video store have little private rooms with VCR's where you and minors can go watch what they are selling for free and jackoff, OFFCOURSE THEY FUCKING DONT!!!!

[xApster]

Well how you would suggest people get traffic around to paysite then if free porn is outlawed? It would be the end to free sites and then the end to a huge traffic base.

[Shovel]

It wouldn't be the end of free sites, just the end of explicit pics outside of membership areas. Erotica, censored pics and juicy text links would make be all the surfers could see without getting out a credit card...

We'd get lower bandwith bills, no need to buy content, and more sign ups.

(IMHO)

[Bake]

What I need to across is the need to work together Heres a add myself and the pay site owner worked on together I placed in between the main page and the archives page.
http://tgp.smutserver.com/db.html
This is what we need more of.TGP's are not the devil and can play a huge role in sales if used properly We need better things to sell. If was going to spend $30.00 a month on a paysite it would have to Really great but most are little better than a TGP so saying tgp are the problem is BS we need better paysites.

[The Badgurl]

I think I have the solution..

NO MORE FREE HOSTS FOR PORN!

That would end the problem..wham bam..lickety split..

Anyone with a pulse and a fake email address can start their own FREE PORN emporium..

Doens't matter if they are underage...sick and twisted..a fucking cheater..

They can get away with it ...

so, one big swooooop...no more free hosting of porn sites..

Ya wanna play, ya gotta pay..

*heh*heh*

"Running off to buy stocks in my local adult web host"

[quotealex]

Some webmaster don't know when too much is too much. Look at this url: http://www.lickerish.com/blue/115.html Now why in hell a surfer will want to join a sponsor after all this free content.

[Bake]

That gallery is a bit much but this is allways going to be there and there not much we can do about it.I like to see the whole porn thing to go behind an AVS type system.
But we still need Better things to sell I found something fresh and Ill push that for while and see ,but I like to see more paysites like that one where the content is fresh and the webmaster wants to work with you and dosent think you just out to cheat Him.

[*Kimmykim*]

Badgurl are you sure they need a pulse??? http://bbs.adultwebmasterinfo.com/ubb/wink.gif

Freehosts are a big problem. More stolen and illegal content than anywhere else (except maybe an avs or two) and people will do things on freehosted sites they wouldn't dream of doing with their own bandwidth or reputation at stake in the industry.

Personally I don't think freehosting is going to last forever, maybe not even that much longer. We do hosting as well as processing and we've looked at the numbers involved in running a freehost and there's just not any money in it, I don't care if you turn every page on the host into a 404 or if you make the surfer scroll three screens down to get past the banners.

Bandwidth isn't free and the hardware (routers, switches, load balancers, etc) that it takes to move that bandwidth efficiently add inumerably to the costs involved.

This is a constant and evolving industry, new ideas often don't seem like much to begin with but I know people laughed at RB when he said he had a new idea... pay per join instead of per click... the key to it all is figuring out how to squeeze the most out of every hit or member you have, since that's an easier process than finding new hits or members http://bbs.adultwebmasterinfo.com/ubb/smile.gif

[donger]

Man, i will dance a jig when every single porn freehost goes under. they writing is already on the wall.. the problem is, there's always another idiot waiting in the wings, thinking he can make money at it.. so a new freehost crops up every week :/

[Terrance]

Free hosting will be forever. Look at smutserver and all of them, do you think they're going under anytime soon???

Anyways, as long as people make money doing something, it's always going to be done........

[richard]

I have a potential solution, of the people i've talked with, there has only been positive feedback.

Bake, i'll hit you up on email or icq or something and see what you think.

I honestly feel there is not alot we can do about getting hardcore "off the net", but damn, we can cut all the crap out, and all make more money for sure.

Rich.

ps - nice to see some PC regulars/old timers on the board http://bbs.adultwebmasterinfo.com/ubb/smile.gif