Are tube sites a threat to affiliates sales?
 

The ones that run 20 -30 min clips might hurt indeed...
As far as i know the other Tube sites are a Great way to send traffic to differents affiliate programs.

If you think viral marketing harms our ROI then YES. As well it woudl depend on the length of clips being offered.

It would be interesting to get the input of Orgasm.com. I believe they have relaunched a site that has been around forever as a tube site. If they changed there business model I suspect they found a means to cultivate more traffic and revenue from that.

Tubes site = Free sites from 5 years ago?

One of our affiliates has asked if he can submit video clips to the tube sites. We are being very controlled as far as what we are offering him for those campaigns. I can't wait to see what the results are one way or another.

It all depends on length. To be honest most of the people going to these tube sites are under age, which is exactly why they won't convert well even if you do put 3 minute clips on them. 25% are people looking genuinely for amateur stuff (ie. girls masturbating on webcam, homemade videos etc), then the rest is looking for the full 30 minute videos that they would normally have to pay for.

You could make that last 25% of the people going to the site convert only if you are heavily policing what content of yours is up. Maybe give a full 15 minute video up there, & the rest 3 minute clips or so that leave the guy wanting more. When he keeps coming back to see nothing new is up from that model or site then he will want to buy a membership to the real thing.

You have proof of that claim? I find it very hard to believe. If someone who frequents thehun finds a tube site with full length videos, why would he go back to thehun? Is everyone who looks at thehun underage too?

I'd be curious to see proof on that statistic as well.

Oh, to answer the initial question, of course they're a threat to affiliate sales. It's a no-brainer. The affiliate program will suffer some losses as well, but there will STILL be people who pay for the site. How can someone with 3 30 second clips on an advertising page compete with a site that offers full length movies? They can't. So the only people "Honest" affiliates will be making sales from will be internet novices who aren't yet aware of the tube sites or those with GREAT SE placements.

I posted this elsewhere a while back. Affiliate programs use affiliates to generate traffic. If they could replace affiliate traffic with their OWN traffic, does anyone think they wouldn't do that? Who's to say affiliate programs aren't now, or will be in the future, behind the tube sites? Program generated sales eliminate the middle man in the affiliate. It's not too wild a concept to believe that affiliate programs want to reduce their payouts. An affiliate program could, in theory, pay a tube site to run advertisements OR start their OWN network of tube sites.

Excellent post Panky I was thinking about this just the other day after having spent almost an hour on youtube. Time will tell if we lose business. Personally I don't think it should affect our income too dramatically. I am curious however to see other peoples perspective on the matter.

Terrence

Here's a thought. The bigger the magnet the stronger the pull. We had this debate over TGP's 10 years ago. Things are better than ever. Let more people look for porn. Make the magnet stronger. I bet some of those Tube Sites will by pay sites. And vice versa.

Now, if we could just fix the dollar...

I dont know how you can compare a tgp to a tube site like redtube. tube sites with hundreds of full length movies like red fucking tube are a huge threat to the industry. I have never known anyone to be able to generate a site with 5x the traffic of thehun in a few months.

Were you not apart of the great TGP debates of old and how they should all convert to TGP 2 formats to save the industry??? The passion and the anger raged just as hard my friend and oh my GOD didn't MGP's start killing the industry with Hi speed and BW getting cheaper and more prevalent and longer clips being introduced.