
Why pornographers no longer love the web - gamble
http://www.economist.com/node/17046637
======
jarin
I used to work at a large porn company, and the porn industry has been hurting
for a long time. They're completely reliant on affiliate traffic (usually
paying 60-70% revenue share), because the online porn industry is so
competitive that it's extremely difficult or impossible to generate your own
traffic.

It's gotten so bad that porn sites are now giving content to the tube sites
with affiliate links, in hopes of mitigating losses.

When I worked at that company, I made an "iTunes Store for porn" that did very
well on launch, selling full non-DRM scenes for $1.99 each [1]. We even had
companies like Hustler, Vivid, and Playboy desperately wanting to get their
content into it (they're great at selling DVDs but never quite got the hang of
online porn). Unfortunately, I never got the marketing support or budget I
needed to keep it going, and the management wanted to keep it exclusive to our
brand, so it died off pretty quickly.

It's a shame, I think it could have completely revitalized a struggling
industry ("The only way to control your content is to be the best provider of
it"). I would love to build something like it again, but unfortunately it
would be pretty difficult without the resources or industry connections I had
while working there.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2008/10/08/come-and-get-it-naughty-
ame...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/10/08/come-and-get-it-naughty-america-is-
building-an-itunes-for-porn/)

~~~
kmfrk
> _I used to work at a large porn company, and the porn industry has been
> hurting for a long time._

That had to be intentional.

On another note, what insight did your market research yield with regards to
the store? I would assume that a lot of people would be turned away at the
prospect of porn-related services showing up in their credit card statement,
just to name one assumption.

The online porn business actually makes for an interesting study, come to
think of it.

~~~
jdietrich
For the record, almost every business of a sensitive nature uses a bland,
nondescript name for the credit card statement and mentions it in big print in
their checkout. This obviously increases chargebacks substantially, but it's
standard practice so I would imagine is well worth the cost.

~~~
jarin
It actually decreases chargebacks from what I've seen, because most
chargebacks (aside from stolen credit cards) come from significant others
discovering the charges. The purchaser says "huh, no idea what that is", and
the significant other saya "well call the credit card company and charge it
back". Then the purchaser is forced to lie to their credit card company and
say that they never authorized those purchases.

~~~
kiba
That's what digital cash money are good for. Unfortunately, there are no porn
provider who would willingly accept an unknown cryptocurrency called bitcoin.

------
waitingforgodel
The reporter seems confused.

1\. Craigslist is NOT a pornographer, so talking about the voluntary (and not
for lack of users) removal of their adult section doesn't make sense.

2\. I think we all understand that at any time some websites will be
shrinking, if we're going to talk about pornographers as a whole let's see
some statistics about pornographers as a whole.

3\. I would be very interested to know which sites are growing and which are
shrinking. My guess is that themed sites are loving all the piracy, because
some percentage of customers will want to see more of the same. Random porn
scrapyards are probably getting it the worst, because that's exactly what's
being offered for free.

-wfg

~~~
sliverstorm
In regards to #1, I think you read the article wrong.

These are tough times _for peddlers of e-sex_. Craigslist, a huge online
marketplace, closed the “adult services” area of its website last week, under
pressure from the attorney-general of Connecticut, a crusader against
prostitution. That will mildly inconvenience internet pimps, but they will
soon move to new websites. _Pornographers are in bigger trouble_ , thanks to
technology

~~~
waitingforgodel
Fair enough. Craigslist posters aren't pornographers either (even according to
the article they're engaged in prostitution, not pornography).

The writer shouldn't have spent 87 out of 312 words talking about an only
tangentially related topic (do we really think that Pornographers No Longer
Love The Web because craigslist stopped letting local prostitutes post ads?)

~~~
eds
Do you know the etymology of the word "pornography?"

~~~
waitingforgodel
It's like seeing an article titled "Online Music Sales Drop" only to have 1/3
of it be about online movie sales. Yes they're related, no that doesn't mean
it was a good title.

------
jrockway
I think the problem is that it's too difficult to pay for the porn compared to
torrenting it. Nobody wants their credit card company to know they're looking
at porn (as though they care), and nobody wants to deal with the shady auto-
renew-every-month business model.

99c-per-video paid for with some generic account (paypal or google checkout
-like) would make everyone's lives much easier. No strange charges for your
bank to see, no remembering-to-cancel hassle, and cheap enough that you don't
worry too much about the price. (And, nobody will pay the $30 for a one-month
subscription, rip all 10 years of archives from your site, and post it to
Usenet. If you want all 8000 back episodes, you pay $8000.)

They're still doing a lot better than Hollywood, though; at least there is no
DRM.

~~~
barrkel
I think paying for porn is easier than torrenting it if you have any
discrimination at all in what you're after.

How would a generic account be any better than a credit card? How about a pre-
paid credit card? Unless the account is usable for purchases other than porn,
it will look just as odd on a credit card statement / bank transfer etc.
Paypal is a mess as it is, and even still Checkout is doing a poor job of
competing with it.

I also suspect 99c videos wouldn't be competitive with current products. If
we're talking impulse purchases here, such that free porn clip sites aren't
doing it, I think there's something else going on. Porn vendors have to walk a
tightrope: show enough of what's available to encourage the purchase, but not
so much that the customer gets satisfaction too early. I think the way they
prod the customer over the line is by promising a lot in return for the
commitment. And of course, they're betting that the commitment lasts longer
than is in the customer's best interests.

~~~
jarin
Most porn companies are registered (and listed on credit card statements)
under innocuous-sounding names anyway, partly to prevent wives/girlfriends
from finding out and partly so you don't remember to cancel your subscription.

~~~
e40
I barely recognize most of the companies I purchase from on my CC statement,
and they're non-porn. I always wondered if that was intentional, but it's
definitely annoying. Of course companies like Amazon don't obfuscate their
name, but many others do.

------
jakevoytko
This reminded me of the pre-Google days, when pornographers really loved the
web. Porn sites were extremely effective at gaming search engines, so several
of the top-10 results for most search engines were usually porn. That sounds
harmless, but popup blockers didn't exist yet (or they were unknown), and IE4
and IE5 had no problems letting popups spawn. Landing on one of these pages
led to a potentially irreversible sea of porn popups, and a chance that your
computer would be infected with a virus. Since this was pre-Google, odds are
good that every popup window was profitable via ad platforms that paid per
impression. Those were the days.

~~~
joe_the_user
Just because there are lots of ads for Viagra in your in-box doesn't mean the
pharmaceutical industry loves the Internet.

------
ShabbyDoo
This Levitt/Dubner article about prostitution argues that the increased
availability of premarital sex hurt the prostitution "industry":

[http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertai...](http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article6879237.ece)

Perhaps societal changes are decreasing the stigmatization associated with on-
camera participation in the porn industry, and the result is increased
availability of actresses? Supply up, price down? Is Reddit's Gonewild the
equivalent of the Levitt/Dubner "premarital sex as a substitute good"
argument? What about Girls Gone Wild? Aren't the "actresses" trading their
time for free publicity?

Hasn't the porn industry relied for years on the illicit nature of its product
as a means of avoiding consumer price comparison and the free exchange of
information? Are online porn reviews preventing second-rate products from
being profitable? I recall reading that, as an experiment, one city made on-
site ticket scalping legal as long as it happened in some particular place (a
roped-off area in a park across from the stadium or something similar), and
the free flow of information led to lower prices. As porn actresses achieve
mainstream fame (Sasha Grey, etc.), is it becoming more socially acceptable
for men to talk to each other about porn and give recommendations? As with car
prices, are better educated consumers becoming more powerful relative to the
producers?

Fundamentally, if there were no social repercussions from participation in the
porn industry, wouldn't more women choose to "go on cam" between classes or
after the kids go to bed as a means of income? What if a short-lived "career"
as a porn actress or stripper no longer carried a lifelong stigma? I believe
we are seeing the economic impact on the porn industry as these societal
barriers to industry participation begin to decrease.

Yes, the OP's linked article is about piracy, but this problem seems like the
tip of the iceberg for an industry which is likely experiencing more
fundamental structural change.

[Note that I've entirely ignored male participation in the porn industry as
I've read that the availability of men is not a rate-limiting factor for
straight porn. And, I've ignored gay porn entirely.]

------
pigbucket
I see a big national campaign here.

On blogs and t-shirts and billboards. And in the movies themselves: Tattooed
onto the butt of every pornstar. Worked elegantly into the already finely
wrought dialogue. Exclaimed with uncontainable despair on the brink of orgasm:

"Home Uploading is Killing Porn! And it's Illegal!"

(In less colorful times:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music> )

Wicked funny last line by the way, not so much for the silly pun as for the
jaded supercilious tone of the delivery.

------
p01nd3xt3r
I have and currently work for adult companies (AFF / Stockroom / AEBN etc...)
and this problem is even bigger then this article explains. Several companies
have closed their doors. One interesting thing I have found is that niche /
fetish sites are immune to this because their content is so unique (and
sometimes disturbing) that tube sites wont run it and cam sites are doing
better than ever. The sites bitching about their content being pirated need to
innovate and do so in a way that can not be stolen. AEBN attempted to do this
w/ the real-touch but failed miserably because the thought of having sex w/ a
machine does not appeal to men and it was far to expensive ($299.00 a unit & 1
dollar a minute).

------
RBr
1) Piracy is a very difficult problem to solve and like always, porn is on the
forefront of this emerging technology. If there is a solution to it, the
internet porn folks are going to find it soon. If they don't find the
solution, there is going to be a major change to the way that media is
distributed online.

2) The online porn industry is cannibalizing itself. Those tube sites must
cost _a lot_ of money (in bandwidth costs) to run. Other online porn companies
are buying ads on those sites and some content companies are paying to have
their content featured. Why? Seriously? Why would advertisers pay for
something they know will continue to degrade the industry as a whole? I
understand that organizing something like this would be tough, but if all of
the people stopped buying ads on the tube sites, they would be gone in a
month.

3) Advertising income is down all over the web and no one (porn or not) is
breaking new ground. We're looking at the same ads at the same times in the
same places. Traditionally, advertising has evolved and changed so that people
don't become desensitized to it. I don't think that we're being creative
enough with the way we create and place our advertising online. Naked or not,
refining the way that we present and consume ads will be an important
evolution of the web.

~~~
jasonlotito
1\. Piracy and free stuff are hurting. Do you know what we are doing to combat
it? The goal this year has been to offer increased quality and enhanced
services. We can't stop pirates or free content. We can, however, offer a
better service. This means catering to a wide variety of wants. You'd be
surprised, not everyone is looking for a quick fix. We have customers that
have been around for years.

2\. Advertising via this method brings in customers. There are things being
done this way. Don't assume all free content is "free."

3\. See 1. By building in new features, and giving existing customers better,
quality choices, and new ways to access that content, is helping. You'd be
surprised at the numerous things that are done to bring in the customers. All
legit, all above board, and all surprisingly effective.

It's what I love about this industry.

------
w1ntermute
The YouTube video referred to in the article (SFW):
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xNzsTHA1nI>

------
mkramlich
The biggest problem the online porn industry has was not specifically said in
the OA. It is the fact that once an image, video or story is released anywhere
on the net in non-DRM form, it can be saved and shared effectively forever out
in the bits-are-free ecosystem. And a good work of art (even where the art is
porn) is timeless. The world could stop producing any new porn/erotica today,
permanently, and the existing supply of free stuff out there should make the
vast majority of porn consumers satisfied for the rest of their lives.

------
sown
I think the industry is ripe for change.

Consider the price for a 2 hour video. It used to be the typical price can be
$20 - $40, even more for higher-end material and this was a quite a several
years ago. That's kind of steep.

People would rent videos, though, sometimes half a dozen at a time. They
didn't watch all 12 hours; they just fast-forwarded to the parts they wanted
to see.

So, it seems the price people are willing to pay is much, much lower and the
industry will have to adapt to it, I guess.

------
alexl
Well, tube sites have ads going to dating sites. Dump the porn, click here to
find someone and screw each other's brains out. Tube sites will always have
someone buying ad space. The solution, if you ask me, is interactivity. Wanna
know what it's like to do it with pornstar X? Buy the interactive DVD. That's
impossible to rip on tube sites. Even a dvdrip torrent is useless because it
destroys the interactivity.

Making sure everyone buys and does not pirate? Simple, offer some sort of
hardware enhancing interactivity. Without it it's not fun anymore. There you
go - torrents, tube sites, anything is down the toilet. Maybe there will be a
new problem, people who clone the equipments and sell them cheaper, but that's
already a different story.

~~~
jarin
Designing, manufacturing and selling computerized sex toys is the simple
solution?

~~~
alexl
Yes, simple as in "sureshot" :) Also, keep in mind that you only have to
design the hardware once and only the content you sell is different. Debugging
the hardware isn't something you do with every DVD/BluRay release.

------
tomjen3
I would love to (assuming it was any good, and the price reasonable) but I
don't want my credit company to this.

So no, I won't be paying for porn.

~~~
yason
This is interesting. Why do you think it matters? If I cared at all, I'd be
more concerned about all the other entries on the credit card bill that
probably personify myself better than some random xxx site. By now, I think
they already know that some non-marginal percentage (I would assume) of male
credit cards have been used to buy porn.

------
ryanpetrich
Don't copy that floppy!

------
Charuru
Porn is suffering from the same circumstances as other media, movie and music
industries, except they don't have the fall backs those other industries do,
concerts and theaters, so they're on the front lines.

But the solution is the same though, the industry will indubitably compress,
it's currently way oversized for what it is, there is such a plethora of porn
produced with very little difference in quality, it's a commodity product that
deserves commodity pricing.

The ones who'll survive this contraction are the ones focusing on niche or
high quality works that premium users will pay for. The low quality porn
market will probably just be completely swallowed up by amateurs... in other
words, power in that market will shift from content creators to aggregators.

------
c00p3r
Let me guess - free user-generated-content sites everyone knows and a ban from
an iPhone? ^_^

