Is It Really Harder To Make Money In The Industry For New Webmasters?

[Lee]

Or, do you think that it is no more difficult now than it was say 5 or 6 years ago?

Personally, im of the beleif it is no harder to make money today than it was years ago in the industry however, i would say that a lot of the webmasters we have in the industry today are lacking one thing that many of us who have been around for a while have and understand... Marketing skills.

I truly think the problem isnt that it is harder to make money but that the tools being provided by affiliate programs arent sufficient for affiliates to use. Free hosted galleries, hosted free sites, hosted blogs, rss feeds, you name it, they are handed to affiliates without a second thought and lots of affiliates use these tools, without a second thought.

Do you think that could be the problem right there?

I mean, how many times do you think a surfer gets to see the same FHG or hosted free site before deciding to join? Perhaps, it isnt harder to make money but, harder to come up with originality in marketing because everyone wants to save time to make the next sale that is the problem?

Your thoughts?

Regards,

Lee

[maxpower]

I don’t know where you have been, but its 10X harder now to make sales, I used to do numbers of I in 150 to 200 off of just raw traffic now on most programs do about 1 in 800 and sometimes worse. I think even allot of affiliate programs are only counting people that end up on the final join page even with that they will never again reach the number you could 5 years ago. We are in a declining industry. Hell coke is the #1 selling drink in the world, but if you give it away for free on every street corner how long do you think it will take before it becomes worthless. The beginning of the end was the AVS disaster after that nothing was ever the same. No mater how many tools you give your affiliates it is not going to stop the downward spiral into the sewer.

[maxpower]

The only thing that will turn things around in my option is a complete ban on any non password protected adult content, and I really don’t see that happening. Its just going to get worse and worse as more and more people give away more and more just to keep people coming to their sites. In the short of it we are FUCKED, I predicate in 10 years in the current atmosphere the web will be filled with so much free content, and amateur webmasters you will be lucky to sell anything but your traffic. :cry:

[gaybucks_chip]

Maxpower, I guess you STILL didn't get anything that anyone on the other thread said to you.

It is not 10x harder to make sales. Maybe it is for you, but your experience doesn't at all generalize to the industry, and problems you are having relate to the fact that the industry is constantly evolving and you apparently are not, not that it's any more difficult to be successful if you pay attention to trends.

Many people are reporting record sales and constant growth. We haven't changed where we count clicks and conversions, and our newly launched tour is converting quite well, thank you. We expect we'll do even better when we launch the new tour and member area for our foot site and our straight guy site.

And... if you know how to use them, AVS sites actually GENERATE sales rather than taking them away.

And... contrary to your idea, if there were a complete ban on non-password protected content, that most likely *would* kill the industry, as there would be nothing to entice surfers to join sites.

Once again, you've done a fabulous job of demonstrating that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. I don't intend to be mean, but I've rarely encountered someone who manages to completely stick his foot in his mouth with practically every single post he makes. I would have thought it would be hard to lower others opinions of you any further after your brilliant performance on the thread where we were trying to help you, but I think you've succeded.

On the topic of Lee's post, what I think we're seeing is just as he suggested... a lot of people coming into an industry with little or no understanding of marketing, demographics, metrics, and other elements that are crucial to success.

While there's a proliferation of amateurs throwing up galleries all over creation, this simply provides greater visibility for the sponsor programs. The smart affiliates are taking the materials offered to them and tweaking and modifying them with a unique twist to provide stronger appeal to the surfer; make it stand out from the same pics in a different gallery template, identify your traffic and tailor the text specifically to them, or whatever else it takes.

[maxpower]

You could entice many more people with PG content rather than letting them all get off for free. If you think things are getting better then you need a reality check man, AVS is doing less than 1/3 of what it was it's a very well exempted fact. Also I am sure some people may be doing record sales, but I am sure they are new and its going to be a shot term thing. I am also sure that you could do some short term things to help out with sales like more free videos for affiliates like they are using pics now, and after that longer videos, as bandwidth is goes down. But in the end we are going to slowly choke are selves to death will all this crap.

[hdkbill]

Lee,

It's possible that it is harder to make money today than it was 5 or 6 years ago. Back when we started their wasn't as much competition. Today their seems to be a LOT of it. Search engines didn't charge to be listed, today they do.

But, what you said about marketing is the key to it all. You can have the best website in the world but if you don't tell people about it, you will fail.

In Business 101 we were told: "build a better mousetrap and they will beat a path to you door". They were only half right....what they should have said is: "build a better mousetrap and THEN show them where the path is and they will beat a path to your door".

I think it is more of a challenge today than it was back when we started in 1999, but we started two websites just two years ago and they are both very profitable. Anyone can make it in adult if they are willing to work hard and smart. It may be a bit tougher, but it can be done.

Bill

[Dzinerbear]

The problem is that a lot of webmasters are doing the same things they did five years ago and expecting the same results. I think it's actually easier to make a sale these days, all you need to do is create a stand out product.

Michael

[Lee]

The problem is that a lot of webmasters are doing the same things they did five years ago and expecting the same results.

See i dont see any problem there, i still build and market free sites the way i did 6-7 years ago, i still build and submit galleries, the same way i did 6-7 years ago and, occasionally, ill build and submit AEN sites, just as i did 6-7 years ago. Im not seeing any correlation between doing what i did back then and my figures being down, in fact, they are growing steadily.

The only things that have really changed when it comes to my site building efforts are some of the 'rules' of the places i submit to but, thats no biggie, i just add a couple more pics or make them a bit clearer.

On the other hand, im not using FHG's provided to me and every other affiliate out there, im not using the same hosted free sites provided to me and every other affiliate out there and, im not submitting to the same sites as every other webmaster out there.

There has to be a direct correlation between the sudden rise in 'free' promo tools the sponsors have provided affiliates in the last 2-3 years and the amount of affiliates saying they arent making what they used to make or, that it is becoming harder for them to make money because, quite honestly, other than that, i dont see how anything else in the industry has changed from what it is today, to what it was like when i first started out.

I mean, if an affiliate builds a TGP seeded with the same galleries the surfer has already seen on hundreds, if not thousands of other TGPs would that not be the primary place for webmasters to start looking if they arent making money like they should be?

Regards,

Lee

[gaybucks_chip]

YIf you think things are getting better then you need a reality check man, AVS is doing less than 1/3 of what it was it's a very well exempted fact. Also I am sure some people may be doing record sales, but I am sure they are new and its going to be a shot term thing. I am also sure that you could do some short term things to help out with sales like more free videos for affiliates like they are using pics now, and after that longer videos, as bandwidth is goes down. But in the end we are going to slowly choke are selves to death will all this crap.

Well, gosh! I guess then that all of us here on GWW should take the fantastic sales numbers we have had and cash everything in, since you, with your voluminous expertise and brilliance, obviously know far more than the collective wisdom of all of the members here... nearly all of whom seem to be doing much, much better than you are.

Obviously Badpuppy (online since 1995) must be newbies to the business, since I recently spoke to them and found out that they had a record year last year... and same with us and quite a few others.

Competition isn't a bad thing... a greater quantity of product means greater overall awareness for the industry as a whole, a more mainstream acceptance of adult entertainment, and greater willingness on the part of the public to buy adult products. As Michael said, it's simply a matter of differentiating your product well, knowing your audience, and giving them what they want. If you provide a great product, people will pay for it. If you provide a shitty site with a bunch of plugins everyone else has, then of course you aren't going to be doing very well.

[Rictor]

Well, I've been in this decade for about a decade now so I have a littler perspective on this. Five or 6 years ago, in my opinion, it was harder to make money in the business than it was 10 years ago. Today, it's harder to make money than it was 5 or 6 years ago. This is due to a lot of things but it will never be as easy to make money again on the web as it was in 1996. In 1996, you could put up an Adult Check AVS site with minimal html skills and the next day you'd have made $50 in sales just from the Adult Check link list. It required no marketing skills whatsoever. You could buy a domain, throw up a site, and Yahoo would list it in their directory for free, as would all the other search engines. There wasn't anywhere near as much competition as their is now, so you'd get thousands of free visitors from the search engines from day one of opening your site.

It just took very, very little effort to make money in this business. What kept the business from getting saturated back then is that it took money to get into the business. Domains were $100 a pop from Network Solutions. Hosting was $3.00 per gig. Then there were the technical issues. There weren't all these programs that allowed people with no computer skills to build websites. You actually had to be a computer geek, learn html, and have a basic understanding of how the Internet worked.

Now, 5 or 6 years ago, it was a little harder to make money in the business but still easy. This was the golden age of tgp galleries, where any newbie could build a gallery, submit it to 100 tgps and make good money every week. Then as the years went on, cheaters caused TGPs to close submit forms and partner accounts and paid listings made it harder and harder for a newbie to make a buck. Add in the fact that there is now 1,000 times as many webmasters as there were even a few years ago (but not 1,000 times more paying porn customers) and it's a little harder to make a buck.

It's easier than ever for some one to get into this business. They need no technical knowledge and no money, but most of them will end up putting in a lot of time trying different things and making very little money for their efforts. I've seen newbies come and go for years, and it seems like each generation is giving up sooner and sooner but there's always twice as many newbies coming to take their place. In Internet terms, 1 year is a decade, and every year, we see major changes in this industry. It's not always easy to adapt, so no one's income is really secure. It doesn't really matter what part of the business you're in, it's all going to change and get harder as time goes on, mainly from increased competition in your field. It doesn't really matter if you're a paysite owner, tgp owner, photographer, free site owner, AVS guy, or whatever, the business is not going to get easier and it's not going to stay the same either.

[Rictor]

Bah, I can't edit my thread, so let me add a bit to what I said and correct a few errors here:

Well, I've been in this industry for about a decade now, so I have a little perspective on this. Five or 6 years ago, in my opinion, it was harder to make money in the business than it was 10 years ago. Today, it's harder to make money than it was 5 or 6 years ago. This is due to a lot of things but it will never be as easy to make money again on the web as it was in 1996. In 1996, you could put up an Adult Check AVS site with minimal html skills and the next day you'd have made $50 in sales just from the Adult Check link list. It required no marketing skills whatsoever. You could buy a domain, throw up a site, and Yahoo would list it in their directory for free, as would all the other search engines. There wasn't anywhere near as much competition as their is now, so you'd get thousands of free visitors from the search engines from day one of opening your site. You didn't need affiliates, every new domain you listed in the search engines brought in a whole new traffic stream.

It just took very, very little effort to make money in this business. What kept the business from getting saturated back then is that it took money to get into the business. Domains were $100 a pop from Network Solutions. Hosting was $3.00 per gig. Then there were the technical issues. There weren't all these programs that allowed people with no computer skills to build websites. You actually had to be a computer geek, learn html, and have a basic understanding of how the Internet worked.

Now, 5 or 6 years ago, it was a little harder to make money in the business but still easy. This was the golden age of tgp galleries, where any newbie could build a gallery, submit it to 100 tgps and make good money every week. Then as the years went on, cheaters caused TGPs to close submit forms and partner accounts and paid listings made it harder and harder for a newbie to make a buck. Add in the fact that there is now 1,000 times as many webmasters as there were even a few years ago (but not 1,000 times more paying porn customers) and it's a little harder to make a buck.

It's easier than ever for some one to get into this business. They need no technical knowledge and no money, but most of them will end up putting in a lot of time trying different things and making very little money for their efforts. I've seen newbies come and go for years, and it seems like each generation is giving up sooner and sooner but there's always twice as many newbies coming to take their place. In Internet terms, 1 year is a decade, and every year, we see major changes in this industry. It's not always easy to adapt, so no one's income is really secure. It doesn't really matter what part of the business you're in, it's all going to change and get harder as time goes on, mainly from increased competition in your field. It doesn't really matter if you're a paysite owner, tgp owner, photographer, free site owner, AVS guy, or whatever, the business is not going to get easier and it's not going to stay the same either.

Now, I'm still around, and I'm doing fine, but that doesn't mean I don't work at it and it's definitely not as easy for me now as it was in 1996. To be honest though, I am a decade older and I only put in a 3 hour work day usually, but then I have a lot of established sites and revenue streams. I'm thinking more about newbies to the industry when I make judgements about whether it's harder to make money in the industry than it used to be.

[Huskyhunks]

I think it would be about the same. Either you get it and make money or you don't. Sink or swim has always been in effect in this biz.

[gaystoryman]

Well I got into this business way too long ago myself. And while yes domains cost more and hosting was outrageous, I mean I know my host back then was charged $5 a gig over the allotted bandwidth, and that was a deal as most where at the $8 level. But yes it in some ways it was easier because fewere where into the business, but while prices have changed today and there are a lot more people in the business, so too has the number of customers drastically increased.

So really it is a fair trade off in my mind. And what sold or worked 10 years ago can work today, I mean considering some of the sites out there its amazing they make money when they have nothing but plugins or content that isnt always licensed to them. But they make money but I think many who suffer today when they didn't 5 years ago haven't changed with how the internet itself has changed.

As for new webmasters entering the fray, its no different than 10 years ago. Some are in it for the quick buck and find out to their dismay there is no such thing. Others who are willing to learn the tricks, the nuances of running an online business will succeed. They generally do. It is the one's who buy into the 'get rich quick' or 'feed em shit' schtick that wind up losing their shirts.