Originally Posted by erots

I love how everyone is talking about selling porn so rationally and thats what it is really... talking about selling porn. As I have nothing better to do with my time I started educating myself by reading all sorts of books. This made me realize something. Netpond is an environment where people are exposed to selling & marketing tips but there is nothing here about creating a product or brand.

But this is actually exacly what people should be concentrating at. Yes there are people who make a killing with sales, but not all people are the sales type. They can get good at sales but it is really hard to get excellant at it... in a way that you can live off it alone anyways.

I'm not asking everyone to start a paysite, you don't have to. You can treat your free site like a paysite. This is where the creating a value comes in. When your free site/paysite is exacly like all the others on the net it really has no value.

Like when we look at Paul Markham's paysite it is really just a paysite with your general teen porn on it with nothing new. You can find such stuff everywhere and it is clear that such sites only idea is to sell. Well, there is only so much teen porn you can sell to people, this means that there is limited revenue and it all gets shared between the guys who sell teen porn. More guys you have selling it, less revenue they each make.

Yup it is economics I'm talking about if somebody already noticed. Anyway as anyone who has learned marketing & advertising knows the great "me-too" period, then they also know that there are two ways to stay alive in such situation - make/sell new products all the time or concentrate on building a brand.

There is this Epic Cash thread, dunno if I already wrote in there but it is one of the best things I have read from this board recently. From the posting in that thread that same theory finds proof. Everyone who has built a brand... something valuable that is not just selling something everyone else is selling to people... will survive and grow. Everyone who just concentrates on selling can face some really hard times or must be extremely good at it.

Somehow I get a feeling that only 20% of people in here could make a living with only selling, because they grasp the concept of how the business works(for example slaxxx is definately one of them). Maybe it is even less than 20%, I dunno. I somehow got a feeling that not many people like educating themselves.

So, story sites, review sites, personal blogs, paysites that concentrate on creating something valuable, evolving and listening to their members will survive. People who just sell their old crap will get poorer and poorer(Paul Markham). Your customers aren't stupid, they are human beings(I think Ogilvy said something like that very long time ago).

If you feel insecure about selling something, then build something valuable. Sure it doesn't work as well as your typical sales page at first, but it has potential to grow.