What were the "olden" days like?

[Xstr8guy]

What was it like for you old-timers in the early days of internet porn. TheHun, GayCom, AdultCheck, UGAS... those are my first memories of internet porn.

Funny... it seems sooooo long ago!

[MiamiB]

The olden days...very easy...easy money.

Register a name...throw in some pics and watch the signups!!

Those WERE the days...

[Dawgy]

hehe i remember my 1st paysite... i went thru some company that did hosting, billing, evertyhing... was lame, and i was getting ripped off... but i had a yahoo listing within 24 hours, and 50 joins a day within 48.... then that company went south and i decided to try design.... silly me...

those were the days... *sigh*

[basschick]

ah, the olden days...

we threw up a banner on our free site and started making $600 every two weeks. it went up and up - and the sponsors were paying for raw clicks! our phone sex lines were so easy to market - all you did was put up 4 free pics and some text. not great text, either.

this was when our host, who had never hosted adult, let us know they didn't have the bandwidth to accomodate us. so i had to find a host, and i did. they charged $100 for 33 gig, which was actually reasonable back then. so we got moved in, and turned to creating more free sites.

then we tried avs - adultcheck. we started making $1500 per period on top of our $600 per period plus around $1500 a month on phone sex.

after a year or so, our little empire was bringing in about $12,000 a month, and we still weren't sure what we were doing. ah, how i miss those days :-)

[basschick]

oh, i forgot our first paysite!

in 1996, we got a phone number that billed guys $25 per call. it gave them a pin number to write down - a different one was given out each day. we had a member area of 125 pics and updated by adding several pics per month. no video at all. i had to input all the pin numbers manually into the phone sex line, one at a time *LOL*

ah, who remembers the old sponsors? amateurhardcore - dirtybirdsnest - assmeat. we didn't use xpics, but a lot of folks did. and cybererotica paid by the click - like 12 cents, i think - and they made money. i loved assmeat - their banners cracked me up, and at the time were so raunchy. and they counted hits by putting a counter on the landing page. and you know what? we never cheated :-)

[Dzinerbear]

Geez ... sounds unbelievable.

And basschick, you have the patience now to do all of those TGP submissions.

Funny how things change.

Thanks for sharing guys.

Dzinerbear

[jIgG]

i remember even on a free host you could rake in some nice signups.

oh and per click traffic, loved that. didn't even need to submit to a jizilion link lists. i remember putting up a site on web1000 and in an hour or so I made $50 talk about adrenaline rush

[Lee]

Well i can remember back to the days when i promoted Maxcash and their sites and can honestly say, there literally were days when i had to email / icq my sales rep and ask if the stats were correct because the sales figures just looked crazy (in a good way).

Used to be you could throw up a free site, clear 2-3k a month consistently and still make money from TGP posting too.

Ah the good days of porn

Then we started to see an influx of noobs and board whores and it just kinda went to shit

Regards,

Lee

[Gary-Alan]

Originally posted by MiamiB
The olden days...very easy...easy money.

Register a name...throw in some pics and watch the signups!!

Those WERE the days...

Oh yes those were the days! I made more money with two free sites, per month, than I made at my previous job.

The trade show were enormous. With so much money flowing it wasn't funny. Huge displays, free drinks, fast business and all we right with the world.

this was when our host, who had never hosted adult, let us know they didn't have the bandwidth to accomodate us. so i had to find a host, and i did. they charged $100 for 33 gig, which was actually reasonable back then. so we got moved in, and turned to creating more free sites.

Damn I remember that! And I remember the birth of Nat Net, when Sweet T bought the company he was working with with everything he could get his hands on. I kinda remember him talking about asking AMEX to let him make a big cash advance.

I ran a click thru program that was one of the few with gay sites and could pay out 20 cents per click without shaving.

I put up 10 free sites and in less than 6 months made enough to replenish all of the 401K money I took when I left Wall Street.

I remember when a new niche (gay or straight) would make really good money on any type of traffic.

I remember when UGAS and Gay.com launched. And I confused UGAS with a company called UAS and thought they were trying to fuck with me after the told me they weren't going to do a gay ad program LOL

I remember Grimm launching what seemed to be the first free host, if not one of the first.

But the one thing I truly remember, only feel it here now a days, is the sense of cooperation between webmasters - which is what pushed me into this business to begin with.

My best,
Gary-Alan

[basschick]

g-a - sounds like you were lucky. the spirit of cooperation was no more then than now. cyberthrill not paying people, ultracash being sold and obviously shaving 75% of our clicks - and not sending checks.

almost from day one, IEG was taking our hits and sending us checks for 3 cents for one click. we still have one of ours. the problem there is that we had been sending $500 - $600 worth of clicks from that spot the period before.... IEG became the first notorious shavers - in 1997. unfortunately at the time, they had THE best bannres. of course, we removed them. oldtimers still talk about them, and how much money they lost.

or servint - they were an adult host who was choking bandwidth so severely that sites started springing up with "No Servint" on them. our host had servers there, and it was a disaster. all servint cared about was squeezing every dollar they could out fast, they were surely not in it for the long run at that time. they forced sites out of business with unbelievable slow loading.

maybe you were very lucky :-)

[Xstr8guy]

Wow, it sounds like I missed a lot of fun... and money. Why the hell didn't I start back in the late 90's?!!

[Xstr8guy]

Originally posted by Xstr8guy
Wow, it sounds like I missed a lot of fun... and money. Why the hell didn't I start back in the late 90's?!!

Oh, I know why... I was too busy jacking off to all that lousy porn on those cheesy-ass websites.

[Gary-Alan]

Originally posted by basschick
g-a - sounds like you were lucky. the spirit of cooperation was no more then than now. cyberthrill not paying people, ultracash being sold and obviously shaving 75% of our clicks - and not sending checks.

almost from day one, IEG was taking our hits and sending us checks for 3 cents for one click. we still have one of ours. the problem there is that we had been sending $500 - $600 worth of clicks from that spot the period before.... IEG became the first notorious shavers - in 1997. unfortunately at the time, they had THE best bannres. of course, we removed them. oldtimers still talk about them, and how much money they lost.

or servint - they were an adult host who was choking bandwidth so severely that sites started springing up with "No Servint" on them. our host had servers there, and it was a disaster. all servint cared about was squeezing every dollar they could out fast, they were surely not in it for the long run at that time. they forced sites out of business with unbelievable slow loading.

maybe you were very lucky :-)

Patti,

I was extremely lucky when I look back at things. I met Seth and IEG at my first convention and immediately disliked him so I wouldn't send one hit his way. When I found a company that paid I stuck with them - to date there were only two companies that fucked me and both are gone. And in hindsight I knew it was going to happen but that was in the 2000's.

Back then, I surrounded myself with people who were veteran's then and they led me in the right direction. I served off of people's personal servers, who had had the issues with servint. Then, they all became part of new companies so I was with them as they grew. I was lcuky... as others went through the tough time, I missed a lot of that in my world.

GA

[RainGurl]

speaking of the good old days, for those of you who were around when my former illustrious employer websidestory was in the adult market, they went public this week. glad to see they finally made it out on the market after so many years of turning away adult revenue to try and make it....

[jIgG]

servint are still around and from what i've read on webhostingtalk people love them. i almost signed up for a VPS with them earlier this year