Free Porn: Can you say, "Cause and Effect?"
By Kath Blackwell
The subject of free porn and how it affects the adult Internet industry is something that is a concern to many veteran webmasters - those who have "gone before us," who have seen the different evolutionary processes of our business first-hand. Some describe the power of free porn as unstoppable - others feel that only the government can step in to eradicate it. But no matter how you slice it, "free porn" is something we all have to deal with, overcome and move beyond, if we're to find continued success in the future.
The Internext-Expo roundtable sessions at the August 2002 show were dedicated to the "basics" of the industry, and provided ideas, solutions and advice on how to find success and overcome specific obstacles that we all face. The most powerful of these sessions - in this writer's opinion - was the one titled "Porn Yearns to Be Free." On this particular session panel was Aly Drummond from Python.com, Colin Rowntree of Wasteland.com, "Oz" from TrueCash.com and Stephen Yagielowicz from XBiz.com. The first question posed to this diverse group of industry professionals was: "What is free porn doing to the industry as a whole?" As you will soon see - this question was akin to the "shot heard 'round the world," with a few of the panelists.
Straight Talk
Colin Rowntree spoke up first, and described the situation in his own words. "Right now," he said, "I think it's just a clusterfuck." He gave the attendees a little historical background on the growth of the adult Internet, setting up the history of how things got started, so they could understand the evolutionary process it has undergone. "It used to be that webmasters would start out by building a pay site. Then they would build hundreds of free-sites to feed those pay sites with traffic and sales." However, Colin went on to explain, things changed in the late 1990's after the birth of the "affiliate program," and the typical adult webmaster began to build free-sites as a primary source of income.
"There was this flood of free porn," explained Colin, who also attributed those changes happening in the industry to the dawning of third-party processing solutions that gave pay site opportunities to "just about anyone." So - according to Colin - rather than the industry being built up by large and established companies, it was soon being built upon the shoulders of the mom-and-pop organizations, webmasters who were - as Colin colorfully described it - "working in their underwear in the basement." Unfortunately, the free porn and free-sites have ultimately flooded the Internet market, causing a drop in overall conversions throughout the industry. "Soon," says Colin prophetically, "the free market will just have to go away."
However, not everyone agreed that the free site webmasters are to blame. Python.com's Aly Drummond, explained it in her own words, "There's a difference between the webmaster who drives traffic through an affiliate program - and the people who just put the free porn out there with no intention of making money." Some folks in the industry do lay the blame on the market flood of free porn on non-industry webmasters - just folks who find free pictures or videos and put them up for friends to see. Then those sites get picked up by the engines and instead of building up a business that uses minimal free content as "samples" to entice surfers into buying memberships, these guys just keep putting more and more free porn out there as a "hobby." A lot of people feel that it's these weekend webmasters who put the porn on display simply for the purpose of getting it 'out there' that are the ones we should really be targeting.
But what can we DO about free porn? How can we stop adding to the problem? Instead of just shrugging our shoulders and saying "everyone else is doing it," how can we help reduce or eliminate the amount of free porn that is available to the surfing public?
Peer Pressure Be Damned
Some of the big pay site owners have begun to take matters into their own hands. "We decided the legal issue wasn't worth it," explained Oz from TrueCash.com, one of the longest running affiliate program sites on the 'Net. "Even though people made fun of us," says Oz, the team behind True Cash decided to censor their tours, as opposed to creating freely accessible explicit photos and tours. They started censoring their tours LONG before the other big boys began censoring theirs, and were faced a lot of flack from their colleagues. Oz went on to say that he feels that the extreme fetish, violence with sex and other super hardcore type images and videos that are widely available for free - and without an age verification protection system in place - are what will cause the government to come in and moderate things. He also stated that he hopes that the government would eventually "clean things up and reduce free sites, free porn, and force webmasters to offer better quality - yet not as explicit - free-sites and better quality pay sites." Unfortunately, once the government comes in, there is no telling where they will stop in their 'moderation,' and who or what will be left when they are finished 'moderating.' The solution would best be brought before the point that government intervention commences, and the sooner the industry faces this realization and grapples with it the better.
There are always many sides to an issue - and many voices on such a diverse panel - and XBiz's editor-in-chief had his opinion to voice as well. "The problem is not too much free porn," Stephen explained to his colleagues on the panel, "It's altering your business model, figuring out what you want to do in the future." In Stephen's opinion, "it's too late to stop free porn." He says that just with the TGPs (thumbnail gallery programs) that are out there, there's already way too much available for free. He said, "You need to focus on 'what do we do with traffic sucking free porn' not 'what do we do about free porn,' if you want to survive."
So what do we do about it? How do we change it? What should the average free-site and traffic generating webmaster do to help on an individual level? "You can whack TGPs all day long," laughed Colin, "but if it's not converting then you can't pay the rent and that's it. Anyone who works mainly with free-sites needs to look at a different model if they want to survive."
Spark A Revolution
So we need to come up with a different business model - how do we do that? How could a "lowly free-site webmaster" come up with something that could revolutionize the industry and bring the cash cow back home? Take a look at the "grass roots" of our industry, how things got started - and you'll see that it was the "little guy" that got the ball rolling in many areas. Sure, it was the big guys that brought out the affiliate programs and the big traffic sites, but the little guys started the first link lists, the first TGPs, the first pay sites and the first top lists. Back then they were just getting started; folks like Tommy of Tommys-Bookmarks.com, Greenguy of Link-o-Rama.com and the infamous Hun of TheHun.com. They all started somewhere, and they all started small. Who's to say you couldn't be the next webmaster to launch the next adult e-commerce generation, with the coolest thing since sliced bread?
But it's not just the "little guy" or the webmaster that needs to get busy. Colin also stated that he feels that the affiliate programs need to look at the webmaster affiliates within their programs to regulate the amount of explicit content that their webmasters are using to promote their programs. The industry needs to somehow set its own checks and balances - a global TOS of sorts - if we hope to reduce the amount of explicit free porn that continues to be made available on the Internet. "Regulate that," says Colin, "and you'll regulate the industry."
How can affiliate programs reach out to their webmasters and teach them to be more responsible with free pornography? They can set rules, limits on the amount of porn allowed on each site - and the level of hardcore materials that are used as well. Or, they can require a system that prevents underage access to the free material. They can set these rules just like the traffic sites do - webmasters have learned to live within the rules of the link lists, why not the rules of the affiliate programs that send their paychecks? Many affiliate programs now have consulting staff members on the payroll that are there to educate affiliates in how to make more money, increase conversion ratios and better target their traffic. These same staff members could most definitely help to influence the webmaster community through encouragement of the better webmaster, and discouragement of the use of open access extreme hardcore images. This issue affects all of us, we should start at the top and let the new movement trickle down through the community. It would benefit the big companies as well as the little guy - so it's in all of our best interests to initiate a movement, see it through and improve our situation from within!
So whom do we need to be wary of? Who stands in the way of the continued success of the adult Internet industry? AVN moderator Fred Lane, author of "Obscene Profits," a book on our industry, said, "It's not Attorney General Ashcroft that the industry has to worry about. It's the FTC and the IRS." Again - things that WE can control, laws that WE can determine not to violate, and regulations that WE should and MUST follow - these are the things that could most definitely bring about government involvement and spark increased interest in our industry.
Just Start Already
It starts at the bottom. It starts at the top. It affects everyone in between. The choices WE make today affect the business and profits that we can hope to enjoy in the future.
An analogy that was shared by some of the panelists during this conference seems to illustrate our situation best. Think about a restaurant. There are customers who go into the restaurant and pay for their dinner, but there are still people who go behind the restaurants and eat out of the garbage cans in the alley. Sure the food isn't as good, there are maggots, flies, half-eaten things and worse, but it's all free for the taking. We can't control the guys who are eating out of the garbage cans, no matter how hard we try to lock them up and make them inaccessible. But what we can do is make the food on the inside all that more tasty, delicious and pleasant to encourage more paying customers to come in and dine. We can set the pace for the restaurant eaters. It's all about improving the quality of our members' areas - better promotion of the quality and exclusive nature of the content that our sites have to offer. Educate those garbage can eaters on what they could be getting on the inside, and they may clean up their acts and start paying for their meals. At the same time, show the world how delicious your food is and how exquisite your chefs are, and you'll be getting more paying customers as they discover what you have to offer and your business - and your revenues - will increase. In addition, and perhaps more important in the long run, in this future time when all the best customers and programs are in the best restaurants, and the government allocates enforcement resources, they can start with the elimination of all the garbage can eaters clearly visible in the cyber-alleyways.
It's all in how you view the problem, how you confront it, and how you present it. Our job as webmasters and as industry professionals is to sell those memberships and get those surfers to pull out those credit cards. Get them into the mindset that you have to pay in order to get quality content, and the battle is half won - get them to accept that monthly fee, as they accept any other entertainment fee, and you're not only making sales but educating a new breed of surfer. They said that the motion picture industry was dying...now it's more successful than ever, and look at movie prices. Don't give it away. The early mainstream e-commerce business model did not charge for online services, and look what happened. When online advertising revenues declined the early dotcoms imploded. It is very difficult to get people to pay for something once you have established the precedent of giving it away for free.
Let The Games Begin
We all need to play our parts in finding a solution that will put our industry back on course. It's all about hard work, sacrifice and creative thinking. Aly from Python.com said it best: "Innovation is the foundation of the industry." That's something we all seem to have lost sight of in the past year or so, and something we need to renew within ourselves and work hard at once again. There is no miracle in a can- no solution in a simple package- and the only blueprint for success will be the one we create. We are the pioneers, the foundation of this industry.
It's time for us all to get back to work. Let's get back to work...
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