The Cobra Photo Implosion

Hey folks,

I was wondering if anyone knows what's up with Cobra Photos and its websites. (Not to be confused with Cobra Video whose owner/producer was murdered a while back.)

As some of you long-time vets of the Internet may remember, they've been working with twink porn for many years now. They used to have over 20 sites. They purged them years ago and came out with a series of "Original Boys" sites. Original Cock Boys, Original Splashy Boys, Original Latin Boys, etc.

It was a great attempt at branding (and the boys were cute), but they had a horrible signup system that required traffic to leave the site, head over to some umbrella site, and choose from various "packages" of the sites when signing up. Even worse, affiliates couldn't even link to the sites themselves. We had to link to the horrible umbrella site.

Needless to say their sales plummeted. Eventually they converted their Original sites into archive sites that were no longer updated, and opened a line of Latin sites with various names. The most famous among them was Teen Boy Cum Party, reknown for their bareback sex and cum eating as well as their promise of two cumshots per boy per scene. Their other sites included Tino Boys, Solid Gold Boys, XXXtreme Twinks, Adams Boys, Twink Sex Instructors, Bareback Friends, and a few others.

About a month ago notices appeared on their websites saying that they would no longer accept memberships after July 23 and they would be closed on July 30. Oddly, they're still updating many of their websites with new content every few days.

Is Cobra Photo really imploding their business? Are they restructuring? Are they releasing a new series of sites? Their affiliate site hasn't been updated since last December and makes no mention of their changes.

Some of their websites (Teen Boy Cum Party especially) have converted extremely well for me over the years. I am sorry to see it go, and am wondering what they are doing with their vast library of content. It's got to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and I can't imagine why they are imploding their business like this.

Anyone know anything more?

--Aaron

Have you asked them directly? They are probably the best source of information and if they are planning to work with affiliates in any kind in the future, I'm sure you will receive some answers. If not, well, no one will really know and it all will be rumours that might pop up.

I did ask them, yes. I posted this on here before I asked them. Since no one replied, I kinda let the thread drop on here figuring no one was very interested.

One of the staff at Cobra wrote back to say that their sales have been declining over time and they are experiencing a lot of "low-loyalty" members. (Ie; those that sign up for recurring memberships to save a few bucks, cancel immediately, and spend the next month downloading everything on the site. Then come back a year later and do the same thing again).

They have come to believe that the membership model of adult website design is not sustainable. Accordingly, they are shutting down their membership sites so they can focus on a redesign of their content into a pay-to-download-to-own model of content. They have a trial site up already using that model, but it does not currently have an affiliate program. A more comprehensive site will be available this fall with an affiliate program and assorted trimmings.

--Aaron

Thanks for the update. I was on vacation for a few weeks and didn't read the board for a while.