I don’t know about you but my last year was pretty damned lousy. Actually, I do know about you because you and I are in the same business and business has not been good.
I suppose I could go pointing out scapegoats like the terrible economy, tube sites and the oft-cited glut of Internet pornographers. But really, how we got here isn’t nearly as important as what we do about it. We have a new year, a new decade to turn this thing around. A lot of us are down but we are far from out and as long as there are adult human beings, they’re going to want porn. We just have to figure out how to make them want to pay for what we got.
| "We have a future but we’re going to have to forge it from fresh metal because the old tools are rusting to dust. [...] In other words, it’s time to go back to the drawing board. We built it. They came. Now they’re hungry for something more." |
The truth is, the average pervert can fill a couple of hard drives with porn and never pay a penny. That’s how prevalent free smut is on the Internet. It’s not the TGPs and MGPs bringing us down anymore. It’s the tubes, the bitorrent sites, the P2P networks and all those fucking idiots out there sharing passwords and stealing our shit.
It’s the crappy economy that’s got average people so poor they can barely keep their PCs connected to the web, much less afford to shell out some extra money for a paysite membership. It’s a generation that’s no longer in awe of the World Wide Web and would rather download ringtones and songs to their cell phones. It’s scores of people who found each other, building their own little portals with social networking software, blogs and microblogs. It’s people having more fun sending dirty texts to each other than they used to have looking for nasty pics of strangers.
It’s a whole lot of end users fearlessly handling technology that no longer intimidates them. For almost two solid decades the adult Internet operated as if it held the secret keys to the kingdom.
Untitled Page
Porn is everywhere and any goober can find a bunch of it with a few clicks and no credit card.
The Solution is Very Simple.
We have to offer something the surfers want that only we can provide. Arriving at that solution is the hard part.
Cam sites have the right idea - live interaction is pretty hard to steal and impossible to copy. Porn bloggers have learned the value of building a site with a personality that’s worth revisiting. Content providers are working their asses off creating unique products like in-house toons, games and movies with plots. The sex toy-makers have upped the technology with robotics, life dolls and gadgets that react to software commands. Paysites are starting to see the value in selling customers adult content that can be viewed on smart phones and handheld wireless devices. Multiple billing platforms are opening our audience to countries where credit cards aren’t the prevailing currency for the web.
We have a future but we’re going to have to forge it from fresh metal because the old tools are rusting to dust. We’ve got to see ahead to a tomorrow where streams are as constant and true as if they were television signals. We must envision an Internet that moves like lightning on machines as fast as thought. We have to make content that can be viewed in the palm of the hand. We should strive to interact in real time with our customers and give them experiences that they cannot obtain from anyone but us. We need to stop seeing our potential customers as gullible newbs and accept the fact that were facing a world of tech-savvy adults who aren’t impressed with mere naked pictures on their computing machines.
In other words, it’s time to go back to the drawing board. We built it. They came. Now they’re hungry for something more.
The economy hell will pass but our problems go deeper than that. Our industry was sliding downhill before the financial downturn and tubes and bitorrents. This new decade will see more bankruptcies and doors shuttered despite economic recovery. If you want to survive we’re going to have to adapt to the changing tastes of our audience. There are no easy answers. There is no magic single solution. We’ve been standing still for too long. The only way to go from here is forward.