I wasn't in the biz five years ago as an independent webmaster, but my impression is that low expectations probably made it pretty easy to make lots of money.

I remember when AVS started, you could literally put up a picture and say, "Buy This!" And they did in droves. There was very little out there to see or buy, so when surfers stumbled across something that looked promising, they bought it. It didn't have to be good, it just had to have a cock. We couldn't believe we were seeing naked men on the Web. We didn't have expectations to see good quality pictures of naked men, we just wanted skin.

Now, everyone's giving it away just to get people's attention. There's so much free porn out there and there are so many sponsors competing for the surfer's shrinking willingness to buy. I think the only way you'll ever get "it" back is to get every sponsor to start giving out very little content and for that content to be censored. If the surfers can only see pictures with big yellow stars over dicks, and that's all they can see, they'll have to buy.

But you'll never get most of the sponsors to agree to do this, you'll always have some who will see that as an opportunity to make more money, get more traffic, or whatever, and they'll lure webmasters with uncensored content. And as soon as a few break the ranks, the whole thing will fall apart.

If I weren't in porn, I would probably just buy a few memberships because I can't stand all the endless hunting through crap to get to the good stuff. But there are many millions out there who are titilating by sifting through the endless parade of free sites, TGPs, and the like.

Michael