"When I go to hell, I mean to carry a bribe: for look you, good gifts evermore make way for the worst persons."
- John Webster

Free stuff. Who doesn't love it? From the quote above, John Webster believes the devil himself is fan of schwag. There are plenty of people who think Internet pornographers are going to hell so I guess we better start purchasing our payoffs now. Maybe we can enter hell, bearing gifts we won from adult sponsors and message boards. Re-gifting as bribery. Satan would be so proud.

"The adult Internet has a Giveaway Obsession. Don't expect that obsession to wane anytime soon. Incentive programs, contests, freebies are a time-honored method for increasing sales and attention."

It's been going on so long, I can barely remember when it started, this Giveaway Obsession. I want to say it began with the message boards. Frequent posters were rewarded with t-shirts - the classic freebie. Sometimes the gifts were banal like a logo-emblazoned sticker. The more money made, the fancier the gift. I still have a fondness for the free Palm Pilot I won from GFY, even though it doesn't work anymore. After a time, adult sponsors got into the giveaway game. The more money an affiliate made, the more expensive the reward. Actually, that's one of the names they attach to this bounty: Rewards.

Today, adult webmaster message boards and sponsor programs rarely shun the Giveaway Obsession. One of the highlights of a big convention like Internext is when the sponsors starting calling out the names of the hard-working webmasters that won a free car. Yes, it's gotten that crazy. Boats, computers, iPods, game consoles, trips to paradise, you name it, somebody is going to give it away to a productive webmaster.

Why do they do it?

Why do sponsors, hosts, content providers, designers and message boards give stuff away? Payoff, baby! They give away goods for the same reason fast food restaurants put toys in kid's meals. People buy more product when they are offered a bonus in every box. When the adult sponsor promises a free X-Box to every affiliate that racks up 100 new memberships by a certain date, that sponsor knows that the return on their investment will shoot through the roof. When that message board promises a free t-shirt to the first twenty posters who respond in a thread, they know that people will join the board, traffic will jump and in return, advertisers will buy ads.

Think of it this way. You build free sites. You build free galleries. You don't do it out of generosity. You give away samples of porn in order to drive traffic to your site. The more traffic you get, the better the chance you have to sell to your surfers. The same goes for those sponsors who offer rewards to affiliate webmasters. Sponsors, adult resources and message boards aren't trying to lose money. They hold contests and implement points programs as incentive. When they've got ten thousand webmasters working like mad to garner enough sales for a free Gameboy, the gains outweigh an investment in one geeky gadget.

As for those goodies, I promise, your sponsor - or whoever is doing the giveaway - is getting the gear for far less than cost. A palette of laptops is a minimal expense compared to a single notebook, bought at a retail store. When that content provider promises a bonus CD of images to the next 20 webmasters that buy from them, they're only out the cost of burning the disk and postage.

So, yes. The adult Internet has a Giveaway Obsession. Don't expect that obsession to wane anytime soon. Incentive programs, contests, freebies are a time-honored method for increasing sales and attention.

Be glad. It's a great time to be an adult webmasters. Everybody wants you. They want your efforts. They want your business. They want your hits. They want you so much, they are willing to give you a prize. Granted, that prize comes attached with strings but then that's the nature of prizes.

Call them freebies. Call them rewards. Call them bribes. Call them whatever you want, they're not going to stop and you might as well take advantage. We're all going to hell anyway. We might as well go dressed as Santas for Satan. We'll still be in hell but maybe we'll get sit near the pool.