Industry expanding
 

it seems that this industry is growing and growing
many new webmasters join this industry day after day the numbers
are enormous compared to 3-4 years ago,
how do you think it's going to affect us all in the future?
will we get a smaller piece of the pie or does this mean more good compettion ending in more profit?

Hmmmm ... i dont know how true that statement necc. is. Having been in this industry for a number of years now (4) it seems like there is always a big influx of people every year.... and by the end of the year 90% of them are gone again. Add to that the webmasters who have been in the industry a while and have ... faded away , and i think you will find we are pretty steady numbers wise, with a huge turnover.

twinkley

I tend to agree mostly with that Twinkley... But on the other hand, there are A LOT of part-time webmasters out there. The ones that get involved just a couple days per month. Usually they aren't making much money (if any) and if they were, they'd put more time and effort into it.

(CTRL+V from my post on another board)

Adamneve, I think that there are some things going on that will slow the entrance of people in the biz from now on...

For instance, the advent of sponsor hosted galleries kill the zillions of gallery submitters out there, Bigger affiliate programs pay more in terms of % because they have more volume so smaller ones have a hard time to get going, Adult Design is thankfully getting more advanced and many companies won´t be able to keep the quality level required.... the industry is becoming more professional.

Even though more tons of people in the biz right now, less people will make quick and easy money, so they will end up leaving or becoming inexpressive. The size of the pie will get bigger (IF WE STOP GIVING SO MUCH FOR FREE) and the shares will be big enough for companies that know what they are doing.



Take care,

Bruno Dickman

True that webmasters come and go..and yes there is always a influx of newbs. BUT I know webmasters making good coin (100-200k a year) working for themselves..they don't post on boards and never hit shows. So for everything your not doing..someone is...for every company you think is the biggest...someone will be bigger...for every great idea you dont follow through on..someone will.

If you work for yourself you should compete for your own goals, diversify and plan for longevity and dont think but do do do!!

competition SUCKS!!!!

I think this is a useless statement.

People wonder why other people in the industry make decisions and take action that are detrimental to the industry as a whole.

There is an easy answer to that one: because to the people doing it, it PAYS to do so. No outfit that doesn't make profits stays in business for long. If they do it, it's because in their specific market, they make more money out of doing it.

The question is: why don't you ?

In a sense, free porn is what increases the strain on poor producers, whether they be poor because of poor operation or poor product. In the long run, it will most likely force an increase of quality of the goods sold.

Sorry, but I have a different view on this subjext Feynman.

IMHO this is predatory business - its like cutting out all trees of the planet to make furniture and paper instead of growing your own trees. Its like throwing toxic waste on a river, building industries without air filters. It is, in a more specific term, making money while destroying the environment. Its short term oriented and it sure can make them more money in THIS quarter, But... its not the way I would go for it.

I may be wrong, but I'll always think that there's too much free porn out there.

Take care,

Bruno

Growth in the porn industry is absolutely fabulous. It creates more avenues to make even more money while at the sametime reduce our expenses.

Not to long ago, hosting cost more than $6+/Gig and they wouldn't host multiple domains on the same account, a 30 picture set was going for $50+, a domain registration cost $75/year, a trading script cost $1,000+, ect. It is because of critical mass, we can get these for next to nothing and thereby increase our profit margin to almost the infinate.

Plus, we now have access to almost unlimited sources to promote our sites/services.

To be honest I have a problem with the people that say that this is a good thing for the industry. It has the potential to be a BAD thing I think.

There are a few million (at least) surfers out there looking for free porn. So there are 2 reasons I think that the hosted-galleries might not be the Holy Grail. First: As the hosted galleries become more and more common they start to become very repetitive, and in fact boring. Most of the galleries I have seen are cookie cutter clones of each other. There are exceptions, but not many. The key to actually getting signups is to get the surfer's interest not to bore them into buying porno vids from the local adult bookstore.
Second: The more that hosted galleries start to displace submitted galleries on tgps, etc. the harder it is for new programs and sites to break into the market. Anything that stifles competition is bad for ANY market. Bangbus was a phenomenally successful site that started on a shoestring and made Oxcash a player. I'm not saying that the guys that started it didn't have a decent amount of capital. BUT it's doubtful that that would have happened if they had to start up with a bunch of hosted galleries and start competing with the major programs right off the bat to get the tgps to start using those galleries.
Actually there is a third reason that it would be a bad thing. If hosted galleries are the only galleries used by the big tgps all it's going to do is cause all those submitters to start their own tgps in a market that is already saturated.

The truth of the matter is that there is NO magic solution to make free porn go away. New things come out all the time and the market adjusts and compensates, but nothing really changes.

Mister X, I agree with you on that subject. Sponsor hosted galleries increase the barriers of entrance in the adult online business. All TGPs will end up offering the exact same free content to their surfers if they use the same sponsors. (and I didnt mean to say the advent of hosted galleries is a good thing - its just something that can be good for some and bad for others).

But then, if you think about it for a second, it could be good for the new blood. TGP owners would like to list sponsor hosted galleries that no one has, so new sponsors (with enough capital to be able to offer hosted galleries) could be able to start get some decent traffic since their day one.

Business today is complex, dynamic and ambiguous. An event doesn´t lead to a simple cause-effect answer. There are always good things and bad things about the same event (or fact) - some people will see the good side of it, some will see the bad side of it. Its always a matter of perspective.

I think this thread kicks major ass because people are disagreeing on many subjects - and this brings new brain food for everyone reading. It would suck if everyone was agreeing with what the other guy is saying wouldnt it? :)

I would love to hear everyone´s opinions and visions about the future of the industry and what we could do together to shape it the way WE want it. If there´s so much free porn out there, there could be two different reasons for it. 1) The industry is OK with it, or 2) The industry is too busy on everyday tasks and is letting this "problem" take over.

What do you guys and gals think?

Take care,

Bruno

I don't want to name names but the big TGPs that are listing only or a large percentage of sponsor hosted galleries have seen their traffic drop significantly. A better alternative for those big TGPs is the pay to list galleries route.

For years webmasters have being saying that the TGP and the adult market in general is saturated, yet every year it keeps growing, every year webmasters are making more money, every year we see new TGPs being ranked high on sextracker, every year we see new paysites becoming successful. Even the paysites that use to denigrate TGP are pre-paying TGPs to get their galleries listed on top.

And, even if the English speaking porn market was to be saturated, we still have the non-english speaking market to expand our business model...:)

I really do think the tgp segment of the biz is saturated. There are thousands of them. I don't mean to say that you can't make money at it becuz it's obvious that you can. But we don't have the huge influx of new surfers every year that used to happen. So most of the tgps are either marginal or even unprofitable. My point was basically that any large increase in the number of tgps would just make it harder to make a living for the tgp owners that cut out the submitters, by forcing a further dilution of their own market.

I'm not sure if you mean that the big guys should accept paid submitters only or not. If you're saying that they should do that, then I would have to disagree I think. Paid submitters only would be the same as only listing hosted-galleries I suspect. Effectively limiting the number of submitters to a small pool would surely increase the amount of similar boring galleries in the same fashion. Most likely the best strategy would be to use all 3 types of galleries in a ratio that suits your traffic. Hosted, paid and the regular submits. Personally I think that the most effective thing for tgps to do is to use the trusted submitter status. This in effect pre-screens their submissions for them and decreases their work load for approval/decline and raises the quality of their listings which makes their surfers happy which puts money in their pockets. I think happy surfers are probably worth at least as much as the cash from paid submits would be.

I think the best strategy for big TGPs is to work in collaboration/partnership with sponsors and share in the revenues. All other submitters should pre-pay to have their galleries (thumbs or/and texts) and banners listed. I think free galleries submissions should be left to the smaller size TGPs building up their traffic and bookmarks.

Would be interesting to hear what Shemp or one of the others thinks about this. I honestly don't think there is a big enough pool of guys willing to pay. Of course I could be wrong. :D

I would accept to pay monthly fee, but not to much tho, to have my galleries listed daily on a major TGP. However, they would have to let me place the pictures on a HTML page with a blind link to my sponsor.