When does a website update too much?

[tombarr]

I had a conversation earlier today about what constitutes too many updates for a paysite. My argument was that while giving surfers more updates should theorectically help retention, at some point, it just does not matter and no matter how much you update you aren't going to positively influence retention any more.

What do you think? Most sites update 1 or 2 times per week. Is 3 4, 5 or even updates every day of the week too much content to give the surfer?

[Lee]

I also had a conversation with someone about this a week or two back and imho, if you update more than 2 times a week, you really are doing yourself a dis-service.

My contention is that in order for a member to rebill, they need to know they can get updates however, updating a members area on an almost daily basis makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

To the surfer, if you update every day of the week, the 'updates' become expectations and not something to look forward to, like they should be.

Right now im updating twice a week, once on a Sunday, and once on a Wednesday, this splits the week up for members who joined over the weekend, who get to see an update happen and also members who join during the week, who get to see an update happen.

They know that 'since' they joined initially, the site was updated, so want to hang around for the 'next' update.

Apart from that aspect, there is also a cost involvement, updating for members on a daily basis is just bad business, imho, its a cost that you dont need to be paying (2 updates or even 1 update a week will work the same) and the member wont be able to cancel, and in a month, 2 months, 6 months time, join again and get ALL the content that they missed out on when they cancelled, plus regular daily updates to boot.

Regards,

Lee

[basschick]

there are sites that update daily.

imo you are updating too much if retention isn't increasing when you add another update. also you might notice an upswing of sales if you post the number of updates and there are a lot, so there is that to figure in, too.

[Xstr8guy]

This is a great question Tom!

I think we need to define what an update is, as it can be kind of subjective. Do other webmasters only consider a complete video scene (solo or hardcore) a legitimate update?

By my definition, UKNM updates 3 times a week...
- Monday is a top tier photo update (most desirable model)
- Wednesday is a 2nd tier photo update (less desirable models, smaller sets or HQ photos taken during a video shoot)
- Friday is a full scene video (3 solos and 1 hardcore feature per month)
- Plus, we randomly add screencap galleries and/or 3rd tier photo updates as bonus content.

Someone (Patti?) once mentioned to me, that they didn't consider photo updates a FULL update. That is one of the reasons why we double-up on the photo updates. Also, we tend to stock up on photo content... so why not use it?

I can see how too many updates can devalue the content and not increase retention. So indeed, how much is too much? I have always been under the impression that an actively updating member's area was a positive. And a frequently updating tour inspired confidence in prospective members.

I am very hesitant to reduce our number of updates because our retention did go up quite dramatically when we added the 3rd update. But at the same time, we made a number of other improvements that may have helped retention. So it's impossible to credit one improvement as the key.

[basschick]

yup, i was the one who said that a full update was an entire shoot - pics and vids. and why did i say that? for one thing, we tested adding our updates in 1 part (camcorder pics, hirez pics and vid), in 2 parts (both pic sets is one update, vids the other) and in 3 parts and guess what - we had no difference in retention.

second off, i have read surfers on boards who considered adding the pics and vids as 2 different updates or the vids in three parts as still being a single piece of content - not really a full update.

and my buddies, who are serious porn surfers, concurred. how often content was added wasn't as important to them as how much content was added.

videobox has great retention and they update 5 times per day with full DVDs. twistys and paul markham teens updates daily and that seems to work great for them without devaluing anything. where some sites - bfcollection and karups, for example, update less frequently but add several full videos once a week.

so again, my opinion, based on many paysites, is that as long as you can raise your retention by adding more updates, that's what it's all about. as long as more updates means more profit, it makes sense to add 'em. when more updates don't make more profit, it's not time to add more.