Quote of the year by Paul Markham:

[will76]

Originally Posted by MrMaxwell

No.. my logic isn't flawed, I did not mention but I am aware of trials- but that is what they all cost- mostly all of them- $30/mo.

I was replying to Paul, I don't remember what you posted to have an opinion either way.

[will76]

Originally Posted by MrMaxwell

Mr. Will- you seem to know what you're talking about,
It is good to have you in this thread.

I'd like to thank all of you for your posts as there have been some very good ones.

thanks sorry if i get a little hot headed and have little patience with some ( looks around for Paul....) lol.

[RawAlex]

Originally Posted by MrMaxwell

THIS is EXACTLY what I've been trying to explain from the beginning.. refer to post #12 where I had said:
"Customer acquisition as you refer to it is 95% of the ballgame..
If you can acquire a paying customer, even if the initial revenue is very small, you've acquired a paying customer.. to me it makes more sense to acquire more paying customers even if you don't make alot on them right away and then figure out exactly how to milk them."

There is a problem with that. Most porn surfers are motivated by their penises and their horniness at a given moment. If they weren't into it, they wouldn't be surfing for it, and certainly not paying for it.

You may never get a chance to make a second or third sale. You may only ever get a single shot at the client. Getting him (or her) signed up to a site the will recur bill them and earn you money over and over again without any effort on your behalf is a great way to make money.

A dollar now and a chance to sell something in the future, unless you have a solid way to get the guy to come back to you isn't going to add up to $30 any time soon.

[pam]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

There is a problem with that. Most porn surfers are motivated by their penises and their horniness at a given moment. If they weren't into it, they wouldn't be surfing for it, and certainly not paying for it.

You may never get a chance to make a second or third sale. You may only ever get a single shot at the client. Getting him (or her) signed up to a site the will recur bill them and earn you money over and over again without any effort on your behalf is a great way to make money.

A dollar now and a chance to sell something in the future, unless you have a solid way to get the guy to come back to you isn't going to add up to $30 any time soon.

Mmmm .... While I agree with you, I'd rather focus on getting them to come back. So, this means I put up some sites that are for the hit-and-run surfer, the guy who will sign up once, may rebill, but that's it. Or will buy one product and be happy with it.

The others are geared toward the customer who will keep coming back again and again, visiting my sites all the time, calling to ask what's new ("If you want to know what's new, check my website!" is always the answer) and asking for advice on other products. They will post, comment or call and ask me for toy recommendations for themself or their partner/wife. They will ask where they can buy something I may not sell, but I can give them a link and hopefully it will be one that has an affiliate program.

But, it also depends on the niche, the fetish, the surfer and the age of the surfer as well. My steadiest base of known customers averages age 45. They buy differently than the 21-30 base, and differently than the 55+ base. It's knowing how to sell to each group that makes the difference.

I'm seeing a big trend shift in my niche, but that's for another thread -- someday.

[MrMaxwell]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

There is a problem with that. Most porn surfers are motivated by their penises and their horniness at a given moment. If they weren't into it, they wouldn't be surfing for it, and certainly not paying for it.

You may never get a chance to make a second or third sale. You may only ever get a single shot at the client. Getting him (or her) signed up to a site the will recur bill them and earn you money over and over again without any effort on your behalf is a great way to make money.

A dollar now and a chance to sell something in the future, unless you have a solid way to get the guy to come back to you isn't going to add up to $30 any time soon.

Surely one could sell a good lead for some dough, somewhere, though, yea?
I don't know where in the hell you'd sell adult site leads for the $30, though..

Don't get me wrong folks. I LOVE the idea of recurring income. Alot. What I do not love is this cookie cutter $30/mo make them buy it all to get what they want model.

Chasing $30 memberships seems kind of dumb to me, too, unless it's on a larger scale.

[Varzi Network]

Megarotic.com is actually very smart on how they sell it. They give 6 videos per day free and you have no idea if they are 10 seconds or 10 hours. They let you browse and see how much they have and then get you hooked like cooked crack. I actually see much better quality video shot in real dorm rooms then what some content providers offer. There is another smart thing Megarotic does which is sell hosting and exchange traffic like a perm link TGP with site owners in order to get free traffic.

Many will not see it as buying hosting but that's exactly what they are selling even though they word it as storage. The income they make from the hosting is minimal because they make much more selling access to the content. If they made it costly for the hosting side less people would want to pay. But they only sell the hosting in order to be protected by laws that are intended to protect hosts who have no control over content.

Paul and many others have a few more years left and that's the end of the road. The future of porn will require lots of technical understanding that low priced overseas employees will not be able to offer. Very few sites out there can drop $20-80k on a billing system even Paul took the cheap route rather then coughing up for NATS. I wonder why he does not offer cascading billing or alternate processing choices for affiliates. The king of the porn industry should know that CCbill scrubs harder then everyone else.

[will76]

Originally Posted by pam

Mmmm .... While I agree with you, I'd rather focus on getting them to come back. So, this means I put up some sites that are for the hit-and-run surfer, the guy who will sign up once, may rebill, but that's it. Or will buy one product and be happy with it.

The others are geared toward the customer who will keep coming back again and again, visiting my sites all the time, calling to ask what's new ("If you want to know what's new, check my website!" is always the answer) and asking for advice on other products. They will post, comment or call and ask me for toy recommendations for themself or their partner/wife. They will ask where they can buy something I may not sell, but I can give them a link and hopefully it will be one that has an affiliate program.

But, it also depends on the niche, the fetish, the surfer and the age of the surfer as well. My steadiest base of known customers averages age 45. They buy differently than the 21-30 base, and differently than the 55+ base. It's knowing how to sell to each group that makes the difference.

I'm seeing a big trend shift in my niche, but that's for another thread -- someday.

the best " product" you can sell on these type of sites would be live cam sales. That is something that the customer could come back, find a new girl who is online through your site and go drop $50 - $100 etc.. on her. Other than that or trying to sell off the traffic to AVN Ads or something like that the " milking them in the future" is a hard thing to come up with. I know there are ways to do it I just never owned a site that focused on getting them to come back over and over to figure out what you could provide to them. Mainstream its easy, you can throw 20 different ads at them that is relivant to the type of the site, everything from stupid free gift cards to phone service, to free games, credit repair, etc. etc.

When I think about building value by getting people to come back it is mainly traffic stats. If you have a site with a forum and 10,000 repeate visitors a day that is value in itself. If you can't do anything with it to make money you have something of value you can sell.

[will76]

Originally Posted by Varzi Network

Megarotic.com is actually very smart on how they sell it. They give 6 videos per day free and you have no idea if they are 10 seconds or 10 hours. They let you browse and see how much they have and then get you hooked like cooked crack. I actually see much better quality video shot in real dorm rooms then what some content providers offer. There is another smart thing Megarotic does which is sell hosting and exchange traffic like a perm link TGP with site owners in order to get free traffic.

Many will not see it as buying hosting but that's exactly what they are selling even though they word it as storage. The income they make from the hosting is minimal because they make much more selling access to the content. If they made it costly for the hosting side less people would want to pay. But they only sell the hosting in order to be protected by laws that are intended to protect hosts who have no control over content.

Paul and many others have a few more years left and that's the end of the road. The future of porn will require lots of technical understanding that low priced overseas employees will not be able to offer. Very few sites out there can drop $20-80k on a billing system even Paul took the cheap route rather then coughing up for NATS. I wonder why he does not offer cascading billing or alternate processing choices for affiliates. The king of the porn industry should know that CCbill scrubs harder then everyone else.

too bad a lot of the videos on megarotic are from other site's members area and the users of megarotic uploaded it to the site for everyone else to see. I am fine with people doing whatever they want with their own content, it sucks when people have their content ripped off and displayed on torrent type sites.

[Varzi Network]

Originally Posted by will76

too bad a lot of the videos on megarotic are from other site's members area and the users of megarotic uploaded it to the site for everyone else to see.

Well thats the nature of the beast its just an upgraded model of the old Usenet. G U BA did the same thing and many webmasters promoted it because it was profitable. Most could care less what they promote as long as it makes them money. Hence the reason Megarotic has been so successful as many of webmasters are not interested in spending money for hosting. Some feel that customers deserve more and yes there are sites that are not even worth $10 a month. But the majority are here for short time easy money and could care less if the industry dies tomorrow.

[will76]

Originally Posted by Varzi Network

Well thats the nature of the beast its just an upgraded model of the old Usenet. G U BA did the same thing and many webmasters promoted it because it was profitable. Most could care less what they promote as long as it makes them money. Hence the reason Megarotic has been so successful as many of webmasters are not interested in spending money for hosting. Some feel that customers deserve more and yes there are sites that are not even worth $10 a month. But the majority are here for short time easy money and could care less if the industry dies tomorrow.

Megarotic is #34 in Alexa, how many signups you think they are getting a day ? I would love to know how well their traffic converts. They have to be getting several million hits a day. Finding out their bandwidth bill and how many memberships they sell would be interesting info.

[Head Boy]

The "one hit, milk the surfer" attitude of sponsors pisses me off. It's my traffic, and it's been sent to the sponsor for him to sell his pay site. If anyone is going to try to max on the income from that surfer, it should be me. It's not for some crappy site manager to fuck around with my customers, and give me vague promises of riches in the future.

[_LB_]

Originally Posted by Head Boy

The "one hit, milk the surfer" attitude of sponsors pisses me off. It's my traffic, and it's been sent to the sponsor for him to sell his pay site. If anyone is going to try to max on the income from that surfer, it should be me. It's not for some crappy site manager to fuck around with my customers, and give me vague promises of riches in the future.

If you are sending to a revshare program then you have the right to expect most of the income from that surfer, but if you are sending to a PPS program and getting $30 a pop for a trial you have no rights to make those demands. The pps program has paid you a huge sum in the hope they can make more than say $3 from the surfer. To expect to have your hands in every source of income AND pull a huge payout for a tiny sale is unreasonable.

If you are so concerned about not being paid for every piece of income then stick to revshare programs built around that biz model.

[Head Boy]

Originally Posted by _LB_

If you are sending to a revshare program then you have the right to expect most of the income from that surfer, but if you are sending to a PPS program and getting $30 a pop for a trial you have no rights to make those demands. The pps program has paid you a huge sum in the hope they can make more than say $3 from the surfer. To expect to have your hands in every source of income AND pull a huge payout for a tiny sale is unreasonable.

If you are so concerned about not being paid for every piece of income then stick to revshare programs built around that biz model.

That's true if the sponsor has paid me for introducing a new member. My beef is with the sponsors who try to milk my traffic, and divert the surfer to other sites BEFORE they pay me anything.

[_LB_]

Originally Posted by Head Boy

That's true if the sponsor has paid me for introducing a new member. My beef is with the sponsors who try to milk my traffic, and divert the surfer to other sites BEFORE they pay me anything.

Its not that they try to divert the surfer, they just built that into their profit maximization model. A percentage of surfers will click on those email boxes, but they were probably never going to join anyway, so the sponsor is able to pay out a little extra for the ones who do join.

Eg a sponsor makes 100 from your traffic and you make 2 sales with 30pps each. Sponsor makes $40 you make $60. Tour is designed to totally maximise profit and the members area too .. plus there are healthy cross sales on the join page.

OR ... the sponsor is clean, only makes $60 from your traffic, you make 2 sales and only get $20 per sale. No tour leaks, no email boxes, no xsales or popups. You make $40 the sponsor makes $20.

I know which one i would choose.

The sponsor makes more, the affiliate makes more. The only issue is the affiliates who still believe that surfer is theirs and they are being ripped off. Its not the case. The surfer is the sponsors to use and make money from as soon as they hit the tour, and you agree to be paid if x, or y, or z happens.

[Head Boy]

Well I don't agree that the surfer belongs to the sponsor as soon as he hits the tour, but that's probably because I'm out of date. I thought the idea was to send the surfer to try to get joins to a paysite, and the sponsor would try to maximise the income from his members. That seems to have changed, and now the sponsor seems to feel he can make as much as possible from the affiliates traffic, and only pay out enough to ensure a continued flow.

It looks to me as if pps could be entering its period of final decay.

[_LB_]

Originally Posted by Head Boy

Well I don't agree that the surfer belongs to the sponsor as soon as he hits the tour, but that's probably because I'm out of date. I thought the idea was to send the surfer to try to get joins to a paysite, and the sponsor would try to maximise the income from his members. That seems to have changed, and now the sponsor seems to feel he can make as much as possible from the affiliates traffic, and only pay out enough to ensure a continued flow.

It looks to me as if pps could be entering its period of final decay.

Well headboy I hate to say it but you couldn't be more wrong about what sponsors 'think they can get away with'

For example do you realise the sheer number of medium-larger sponsors who are now awarding sales that were never made just to keep their larger affiliates happy. Call it reverse shaving if you will. You simply can't stay in this business anymore if you shave because you become uncompetitive and nobody will promote you. Many sponsors are doing the opposite and stacking sales. Bet you never realised that !

The big bad evil sponsors aren't out to get you. Many are desperate to keep you and will bend over backwards for you.

[Head Boy]

Originally Posted by _LB_

For example do you realise the sheer number of medium-larger sponsors who are now awarding sales that were never made just to keep their larger affiliates happy.

and that's paid for from the profits they make from my traffic that they divert away from the sales that I was hoping to get when I sent the traffic.

Unfortunately I'm not a medium to large affiliate, so I'll send my traffic somewhere else thank you.

[pam]

Originally Posted by will76

the best " product" you can sell on these type of sites would be live cam sales. That is something that the customer could come back, find a new girl who is online through your site and go drop $50 - $100 etc.. on her. Other than that or trying to sell off the traffic to AVN Ads or something like that the " milking them in the future" is a hard thing to come up with. I know there are ways to do it I just never owned a site that focused on getting them to come back over and over to figure out what you could provide to them. Mainstream its easy, you can throw 20 different ads at them that is relivant to the type of the site, everything from stupid free gift cards to phone service, to free games, credit repair, etc. etc.

Not for my traffic it's not. If you have highly targeted niche traffic with many years of it, they don't want to watch some anonymous young, shaved girl on cam. They want what they want and won't settle for less. It would be tantamount to putting on free twink cam signups on a mature bear site.

I'd never try to sell of the traffic to those crappy ads, either. None of those ads are niche oriented and it's simply a waste of my real estate and my surfers' time.

I do own a site that is focused on getting them to come back and it's been up for a quite a while, and works. I put on some links outside the niche like Fleshlight, toys, Viagra-type meds, etc, but don't overwhelm them .... the info is there for them to click on if they wish.

It's all about knowing your traffic and where they are from.