You can throw enough traffic at anything and some of it will stick. My problem with password site traffic is that it is near the bottom of the barrel in quality. Not quite as bad as Asian Message Board traffic, but pretty darned close.

Can you tell you've pushed one of my Hot Buttons? LOL

One day back in July of 2001 (I think) I had 3 or 4 passwords show up on a big password site. That day alone, nearly 11,000 unique visitors hit the site after the passes were disabled. I redirected to the tour for a few hours, to the main site page for a few hours, and eventually sent them to a 401 page with a join button and a link back to the main site. No increase in signups at all.

Fast forward to 2002, I had started using a 5 day trial. Some bonehead joined with the username: open password: sesame Well, that didn't take long to show up on the password sites either. It was cut off after just a few logins, and the resulting traffic was around 4 to 5,000. I did get signups from that one. BUT... those lovely customers downloaded every video they could get, and of the 8 that I could attribute to password traffic, 4 of them refunded, and the remaining 4 cancelled before the trial was over. One of the logins even showed up on another password site.

I really don't need that kind of crap. If you are wanting to throw your TGP/MGP traffic at a password site you operate and then send it to a PPS program, it might work for you. You can attract the 16 year old kid in Germany who is learning to hack paysites and encourage him. You can make the 21 year old college kid with no credit card or checking account happy. You can teach your traffic that there are things like password sites out there and they truly can get into pay sites for free if they're fast. TopBucks won't even accept "non-english" traffic, they'd shit little green apples if you sent crappy password traffic to their PPS program.

Have you ever had 20 or more HEAD calls per second for hours on end by some hacker in Asia? Its like sitting at home watching a crack head try to pry open your front door with a wooden spoon. You know he won't get in, but it pisses you off that he would even try.

While I know those sites will always be out there, I still think its wrong to give them any life at all. Why should we learn or even try to market to them? They're not customers I would want to join my site.

It really is an ethical issue for me. Password sites are near the top of my "things I hate about the internet" list, and at the bottom of the barrel in terms of traffic quality.

Time is much better spent with good honest marketing and site development than chasing every two bit sleazy surfer out there. Just because its possible, doesn't make it right.