Are TGPs on the way out?

[Dzinerbear]

Hey guys,

I'm noticing a startling number of posts on other boards asking about AVS sites and if they're still in business and can a webmaster still make money using them. Board Tracker picks up at least one of these posts every day on a board somewhere. I'm just wondering what all the interest is about suddenly and the only thing I can come up with is the love affair with TGP free porn is waning.

TGPs have always had a reputation of lots of traffic and few sales, but I'm wondering if the sales are getting even smaller and all the prep and submitting work isn't worth it.

So what do you think, are TGPs dying? If so, what's going to replace them as the next big trend?

Will you miss TGPs if they're disappearing?

Cheers
Dzinerbear

[jIgG]

I don't think they are, and if they are then good. It's about time.

If sales are winding down I don't see why anyone should even be surprised. They give the farm away and then wonder why nobody's buying? :boo:

And what's with all the free content sponsors are giving away? Which a lot of times even includes cumshots!!!! :nerd:

[Jasun]

I've seen stuff on TGPs that just make my head shake.

once, I saw a complete full length scene, broken down into 20-1 minnute clips and posted in four consecutive galleries.

Just plain dumb.

Going to a TGP will generally give out all the jackoff material the average surfer needs, and why bother to buy after that?

I tried in vain for months to make TGP galleries turn any kind of useful sales, but for the most part, the traffic to the galleries was huge, the traffic to my sponsor was tepid and the sales were abysmal. And rebills were much lower than for free and AVS sites.

so... I won't cry to see them go.

[basschick]

psting galleries to tgps can make fine sales - it's just a different type of marketing. a lot of people have trouble understanding that gallery content and text are more guerrilla marketing than free or avs sites marketing. you need to give 'em good pics, not too many, and the text has to feel immediate - brief, to the point, keyword rich. also the text should be very easy to see, and accurate.

of course, the guys who put up 20 minutes of video or 35 pics on one gallery are not exactly knowledgeable professional posters. they are people who are gonna have a big bandwidth bill

[DigitalJay]

At one point, TGP's were the shit for people looking for specific niche sites that weren't in abundance on the internet. As far as vanilla porn, I've never looked at any non-fetish/non-niche TGP for more than a minute, ever.
With really unique content, it didn't matter if your surfer jerked off to the TGP pics. He'd go "finally i found what gets me hot" and if he didn't buy a membership right away, he would bookmark the tgp, and eventually give in.

As a preview to something hot that the surfer has been looking for and not finding, TGP works great. So of course TGP will be less popular and make less sales as it becomes easier and easier for people to find the wierd shit that turns them on without digging up a paysite or a credit card.

[dalimili]

One needs to wonder.... Does Randy Blue have gazillions of sales daily altough I've seen over 30 of his models and I'm not slightly interested in becoming a member....

I never understood what was the whole point of TGP. I mean ... any TGP surfer/visitor is mostly looking for free porn and there's lots of free porn on all those TGP's... so I wonder... why even join any paysite... Or if they join.. how long do they stay? 3 day trial? Month?

Anyway... I sure would be glad to see them gone... you know... porn should not be free... I mean previews ok, but giving out half of your exclusive set is just plain stupid (but could actually work)...

Traffic is such a funny thing.... you can get ten thousand of hits one day and make 2 sales, while the next day you might get only 3 thousand visits to a site and make 20 sales...

[DigitalJay]

One needs to wonder.... Does Randy Blue have gazillions of sales daily altough I've seen over 30 of his models and I'm not slightly interested in becoming a member....

Hey don't pick on Randy, I've seen over 30 of his models too, and I'm interested in becoming his pool boy You can't tell me he dosn't have some really good taste in eye candy. I think the only thing he's guilty of is trying to appeal to everyone. I don't think most people could pull off a site that vanilla, but he does, and extremely well. Supposedly his niche is "hot jocks" but i'd say it's more like just "hot."

His photography skills and taste make all the Randy Blue content speak for itself, and I'll take that over half-assed "reality" concept sites any day.

[basschick]

i post for several sites with wonderful exclusive content. i let the surfer know that they can see the video from these pics, plus all the rest of the pics - and lots more content like the pics on the gallery. also i might let them know the FULL sized pics are inside the member area. it all depends on the gallery.

sure, i phrase it a lot better, but that's the message that makes them pull out their credit cards - if you want more than 15 pics and you love the model and the niche, click here to get tons more of it.

on the other hand, i'm not half as successful with general stuff like randyblue. i know people who do well with it on gallery traffic, but i can't find the hook - and in a world of niche content, i am just as happy selling a niche or fetish rather than just a site.

[jIgG]

right but how many surfers actually buy a password?

50 out of 100,000? That's like a store selling flashlights sgiving away small versions of a flashlight to 100,000 customers and only 50 of them buy the bigger version. Because they're just fine and happy with the big.


I've surfed so many chat boards porn and non-porn, and there seems to be one prevailing attitude - dude you can just go to TGPs and get free porn.


At one place a while back surfers were talking how you can find some of the paysite's content for free without having to pay for it, they were talking about sponsor content

Conversions are going to fall and keep falling.

It's like advertising. You have to come up with new things or people are so overexposed to it they learn to ignore it.

There was a study in Bulgaria about advertising on TV. The people found out that compared to the European Union advertising in Bulgaria is more expensive per CPM and there's less competition with only 3 broadcast channels.

But

While in the EU one ad has to run over 300 times to make an impact with the audience, in Bulgaria it takes a 25-30 times run for the same result. Why?

Because in Bulgaria if anyone TV station wants to keep their license, they can only play so many commercials per one hour of broadcasting.

ie i hour news would have the first 25 minutes ad free, 3-4 minutes ad break (at most) from :30 past the next 15 minutes of content must be ad free with another 3-4 minute ad break. That's it.

In the US one hour of newscast runs about 42:09 the rest is :10 :15 :30 advertising. That's like watching ads for 20 minutes.

So with people being under-exposed, and even though advertisers have to shell more dough for CPM their ads run less times with more result.

Because people aren't over-exposed and decesitized to advertising.



If you applied a smiliar analogy to TGPs, underexposing people to all this free glut of porn I'm pretty sure they will buy more.

Of course that won't work with the shit sites and some of the stunts they pull so quality has to be there.


But no, surfers want more free porn, more movies more pics, bigger movies with bigger pics. Hardcore with cumshots, they hop from the TGP to TGP getting off.

Oasionally 1 out of a 2000 would buy a $4.95 trial, leach the content in however many days the trial is, and run before they charged.

That's like a chocolate store giving away free 16 piece of chocolate candy outside the store and only 1 out of 2000 shoppers buy more Godiva chocolate inside even though they have these huge banners telling them about all the delicious candy inside.


You just can't court the porn n00bs forever

[jIgG]

man that post was as long as my weiner

phew :spook:

[basschick]

really? i'll never think of you quite the same way again

man that post was as long as my weiner

my gallery conversions for the sites i consider my A sponsors are around 1:200 to 1:350 to the sponsor, which equals around 1:3500 - 1:4000 unique gallery traffic. my B sponsors are around 1:5000 gallery traffic, 1:400-1:800 first page sponsor traffic.

all else is my C sponsors UNLESS something about their niche makes more surfers click - lots more. then, as long as they hold 1:1100 or better, i'll keep sending traffic regularly.

see's candy doesn't give away a quarter of a chocolate - they give you a rich and filling chocolate OF YOUR CHOICE. often they'll give you two or three. then, if you want, you can buy a tiny box or nothing or a huge box. but they give you the good stuff and a lot of people do buy. and if you come by several times a week, they'll keep giving you chocolates. god bless see's candy **

something i've thought about for years - i used to watch star trek, and most of the ads were regular ads for detergent, mouthwash, food. now, as a lot of people know, star trek fans are intellegent, loyal, they're readers, they're collectors, and they buy stuff when it's relevant to them. but if you show them a bunch of general ads, you might actually make less people buy than on the average shows.

i always thought that if you tried to sell them things that they might appreciate - books, high tech toys, videos of scifi movies with meaning, etc (not to mention star trek merchandise), you'd probably make a lot of sales. but no one does that... not when the show was new, not in the reruns. they'd rather have an ad extolling the man-catching properties of a shampoo (did i mention that trekkers are more analytical? they KNOW that shampoo isn't going to make them catch more men) then actually make some fucking sales.

i feel a lot of galleries advertise similarly.

ok, this post grew quite large - almost as large as my breasts

[ponyboy]

Here is my two cents.

I tried the TGP’s for about a year and a half, and the amount of sales that came throw wasn’t enough to keep up doing them. After doing them I feel that the only people the make out from them is the TGP owners and also the surfers. The surfers get enough porn to get off on. Lets face it there is so much free hard-core floating around why pay for it.
JigG
They give the farm away and then wonder why nobody's buying?
He’s 100% right! Why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?

Myself I think tgp’s really could work if there was no heavy r-rated pictures or any x-rated pictures on them. Only G but to get everyone doing it, it’s not going to happen.

Along with the TGP’s don’t forget about the e-mail groups. I’ve seen hole photo sets be sent out. At lest when I do them it’s always g to r-rated pictures.

[basschick]

when i post full-time, with good content and the right tgp list, i can bring in at least $3000 per month posting, easily. in gear, and working at it, i can do much more, and so do others i know. maybe the problem isn't the tgp traffic - it's knowing the right sponsors for it, and the right advertising methods.

[Xstr8guy]

I'm noticing a startling number of posts on other boards asking about AVS sites and if they're still in business and can a webmaster still make money using them.

I think the more interesting part of your original post really is; Are AVS's on the way back?

[basschick]

the more people who create bulk avs sites in order to receive some traffic, the worse quality that traffic will be.

it's like any traffic source - if you have one million surfers and 100 advertisers, those advertisers are gonna make wonderful sales. but when you have 10,000 advertisers working that same group of one million surfers, there's going to be a lot less money spent per advertiser.

also most of the bulk avs sites i see aren't good quality, so they aren't helping the avs with retention. why would anyone pay to see them - experienced surfers know they can get better free stuff at link lists and tgps.

just my opinion...