What Are Some Things Surfers Dont Like?

When it comes to paysites and the 'advances' in technology used in them?

The thing that immediately comes to mind is DRM, at one time it was touted as a great tool for paysites, these days it seems we are hearing less and less good things about the effects of DRM.

Also, cross-sells on the join page, again they used to be talked about as a great tool to help program owners make more money from their traffic but again, these days, it seems they are frowned upon by most.

What other tools are being used on paysites that are meant to help site owners but actually end up having an adverse effect on sales and retention that you folks can think of?

Regards,

Lee

Sites with one page tours :frog:

Cheezy animated gifs.

any content that's been seen before.

a too-small tour.

limited trials - where a surfer joins they get three days access for three bucks, and all they get access to is ten sets of photos and two movies . if they want the full access, they have to upgrade for another thirty. i find that pas cool.


Xo,

Duggy

On the subject of pricing, im seeing more and more review sites mentioning that paysites dont have single billing options - as a negative these days to.

Im sure its not going to be much longer before we have to start charging surfers for access once a month - without automated rebilling :(

Regards,

Lee

DRM was definetly not a hot item with surfers because it was tricky to use.

Trial members areas might not be the best thing but it sure does weed out the guys that were just there for the trial and gets the real buyers into your site for full price


Nowadays with all these tube sites I think surfers just don't like paying for their memberships as they can find so many full scenes for free

I'll tell you what really bugs me is a site that does not give full access to all content when you join. William Higgins used to do that and so did Bel Ami I think. They would rotate out content forcing you to be a member for several months before you see everything. I haven't checked them lately because when I found that out I deleted their bookmarks. They have nice content but not so nice that I'd put up with that BS.

I also don't like sites that make it a scavenger hunt to find videos. Buk Buddies is guilty of that right now... they could use a drastic site overhaul. You have to click through several pages to see if your favorite model has done a video, and then some video links are just previews for DVD's, not the full video. Sean Cody is one of the best right now I think. You're no more than two or three clicks away from a video you want there.

And since Jasun from Fratmen is here, do you guys let members download videos? Last time I was a member I seem to recall the answer was no, or you only made them available in Quicktime. I prefer WMV files myself.

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Originally Posted by sc32803

And since Jasun from Fratmen is here, do you guys let members download videos? Last time I was a member I seem to recall the answer was no, or you only made them available in Quicktime. I prefer WMV files myself.

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Yes.

We recently re-designed the whole site and re-encoded the entire catalogue to have both streaming in WMV and a downloadable WMV movie in an even higher resolution.

Pictures are larger and there's LOTS of behind-the-scenes video in the blog along with location reports, candid shots of up-coming models and of course the 5 LIVE! shows every week.

We finally came to our senses and ditched DRM altogether.

I've been kinda writing a very long post about the two biggest mistakes that site operators make and those are listening to the opinions of people who aren't paying customers (past or present) and straying from the formula of your site. The other side of the coin of course is that you have to listen to what your members want and members wanted downloadable movies and no DRM.

I'm going to add to my list that if your landing page is kinda hard to figure out.. if you can't figure out where to click to preview content or where to go or the site seems to just want money and not really offer much, surfers are just going to close the window.


I recently talked to a webmaster who was trying to find ways to boost his sales. I told him that more text and banners next to the videos and better descriptions that would tie the video into reasons why the surfer should join the site. He said that he got few clicks on banners and LOTS from clicking on the video.

I pointed out that the video had "Click here for full screen" across the top but when you clicked on it, it just went to my tour. Not a good idea.. people want to see a full screen video and you're baiting and switching them.. They're going to close the window and not click on anything else.

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Originally Posted by Lee

Im sure its not going to be much longer before we have to start charging surfers for access once a month - without automated rebilling :(

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Why is that?

I think localized pricing will come up as a nasty, eg, just because you are in europe you get charged more than a surfer from the usa because it was determined by some unknown factor that the higher price is acceptable to europeans.

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Originally Posted by Chilihost

I think localized pricing will come up as a nasty, eg, just because you are in europe you get charged more than a surfer from the usa because it was determined by some unknown factor that the higher price is acceptable to europeans.

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That maybe true in the surfer's eyes. But, look at the US dollar. In some European countries a monthly porn membership is about the same price as a pack of cigs.

I think one things surfers don't like is this embedded video. Download is in as far as membership sites go. To force a surfer to watch a video in a player that they have to visit the site to see just doesn't cut it. Add to that offering "smaller" downloadable videos.

But DRM is yesterday's news.

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Originally Posted by Squirt

Why is that?

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Surfers want it. We keep increasing the difference between recurring and non recurring. Surfers still pick the one month. Though we have gotten more into the recurring model with our new pricing.

Some surfers will not join a site unless there is a non recur option. This is more true in the European market.