Over the past four or five years I have seen a number of things affect the bottom line of the adult industry. Different sectors of the industry felt these developments at different points in time. When I entered the industry as a content provider, licensing content was still a pretty good way to make money in this business.Over the past four or five years I have seen a number of things affect the bottom line of the adult industry. Different sectors of the industry felt these developments at different points in time. When I entered the industry as a content provider, licensing content was still a pretty good way to make money in this business. Then there was an influx of people wanting to shoot content. Then the price wars began, driving prices lower and lower as everyone tried to get their piece of the shrinking market.
I’m not saying that there is no money in licensing content today, but I can point out the fact that some of the bigger content brokers of yesterday are no longer here today. So licensing content today and making a living doing it is a challenge.
Then, to add fuel to the content fire, pay site programs began offering free content to affiliates. This further softened the market, only to be followed by the “free hosted galleries” development. It seems that the strong and committed content producers evolved and survived.
Free content, free hosted galleries, and in some cases even free hosting, all provided opportunities for webmasters looking for fast and easy money through TGP site marketing. But this gold rush of sorts started eating away at the traffic pool, and at the bottom line of the established TGP sites… and it continues to eat away at these things today.
All these new TGP site owners needed to grab their share of the market, but since their TGP sites were free sites they could not follow the content brokers’ approach and lower prices to gain market share. So what did they do, you ask? Well, the established TGP site owners started selling gallery spots, advertising packages and partner accounts to the established old-school gallery builders. Many of the new webmasters who were looking for riches with their new TGP sites looked to grab market share by providing harder content… with the hope of either more pay site sales or the chance to sell advertising too. Some were successful, and some just treaded water. More and more, though, I’m seeing TGP sites for sale on webmaster chat boards. The old school webmasters evolved and adapted, and will survive.
The next wave of riches that I’m seeing is the explosion of new pay sites and affiliate programs. Whether it is the single girl sites or what have you… this explosion is now affecting the bottom line of established pay sites. It is affecting them on many fronts.
First off, all these little sites are nibbling away at member sign-ups. They are chopping up the affiliate pie. These newer sites need affiliates and traffic in order to pay all the expenses of running a pay site; many are giving the house away in an attempt to attract affiliates and traffic. You’re seeing $50.00, $60.00 and even $100.00 pay-outs per sign-up; and rev-share programs are giving larger percentages too. So basically what we have is a price war. The consumers don’t benefit from this price war though. It’s the consumer that loses out in the end, along with the pay sites that offer a truly good product. I’ll explain.
Many of the new pay sites that are popping up don’t have a backend to justify them. Many are opening sites with 2000 to 3000 photos and a couple of videos. This type of site hurts the entire industry. Surfers don’t like joining and feeling ripped off, so they are less willing to try another site in the future. Some of the more established sites may feel they need to give up more of their bottom line to keep their affiliates and/or customers in place, leaving them even less money to continue producing a quality product – which could become a real problem.
It will be interesting to see how this phase of the adult internet evolution will shake out after the dust settles. Will the big programs fall or survive? Which new sites will succeed, which will perish? My prediction is that the established quality pay sites that stand tough will survive… if they don’t give the farm away. Which I don’t think they will. They invented the affiliate program and understand they need dollars to do it right. The new sites that are truly providing a good product will find a place and make a living. Those sites looking to make a quick buck will screw things up for a while, then quickly perish. So the question is… will you survive?
An established adult photographer, Dennis Payne is owner of PineappleCash.com, an adult website affiliate program.
