Ok. So I'm curious what everybody's perception is of the "playas" in the industry. What kind of yearly revenue do they generate each?

For example, here are my thoughts.

Top 5 playas - $30,000,000USD yearly gross
Next 5 playas - $10,000,000USD yearly gross
Next 10 playas - $3,000,000USD yearly gross
Next 20 playas - $500,000USD yearly gross

Am I way off? Totally on target? Just curious cause usually these conversations are about what the %'s are across the board.. i'm just wondering about what it takes to be "playa" status.

Tough question....

There are a lot of people who are making a lot of money behind the scenes. People who are not public, but yet have been making mint for a long time.

Never ask a playa how much he makes
What is he gonna tell you ?? I'm losing money, biz sucks!
Ask a playa hater, he knows everything


:D

:okthumb:

I'm not a player, I just cash a lot B)

I dunno about the top 10 Hooper.. but I am sure there is a lot more people earning 500k+ than you realise.. 1000's of nobody freesite webmasters would see 50k/month as a milestone.. kind of a mark of having made it I think.. and a lot have "made it"

Opti, no way do 1000 webmasters make 500k or more
thats 500 million $$ combined


Hooper, didnt you ask this Q before on this board or gfy ??

I must have met a damn high proportion of the unkown playas then.. I didnt think it was that abnormal for smaller people to do quite a bit more.. maybe I believe more bullshit than most or something.

Maybe you've been in Brisbane too often... with all those guys who nobody's ever heard of but who make more money in a day than most people do in their entire life ;-))

Maybe you've been in Brisbane too often... with all those guys who nobody's ever heard of but who make more money in a day than most people do in their entire life ;-))[/b][/quote]
You can NEVER be in brisvegas too often Timon ;-)))

That depends on who you hang out with ;-)
Most non-aussies I know who went to Brisbane too often all ended up with a stamp in their passport that says:
ENTRY DENIED - NOT PERMITTED TO ENTER AUSTRALIA UNTIL 2010 ;-))

I think the numbers are generally higher than that. I think there are a lot more than 40 people in the business making more than $500k/year gross.

What kind of freesite guys make $50k/month anymore? A few of the top TGPs and link lists. You mean SE guys and spammers? Let me know if I'm missing something .. I want to buy their traffic ;-)

Yeah $500k a year isn't that much... not really a player of the top40 elite...
I think if you add a zero to that it still wouldn't make the top40.

So the real question is.. how many people/companies do you think GROSS 500K/yr or more in this business...

I would guess between 750-1000 people and or companies.

I dunno.. it's an interesting question.. It'll be interesting to see what other people post as guesses..

I'm sure there are more than 40 adult web hosting providers that gross more than 500k/yr.



Last edited by KC at Jul 9 2003, 06:31 AM

I'm sure there are more than 40 adult web hosting providers that gross more than 500k/yr.[/b][/quote]

My guess would be about 200 or so adult online companies over $500k/year if you count the web hosts.



Last edited by Colin at Jul 9 2003, 07:20 AM

web hosts are outside the scope of this discussion. I'm talking about people/companies makingmoney by selling porn.

yeah slav, i've kinda posted this before... but it was more like "what % of people are earning what?" which seemed to generate a lot of chatter about the lowere 99% of the spectrum..

What i'm curious about is the top 1% now.

Is it only US companies... or are we counting world wide?

Hooper - I think your numbers are somewhat close but on the low side. I think the number of people in the 500k-3 mil is a lot higher than you suspect.

I love threads like this - its fun to read what people think others are making and what goals they can set for themselves based upon realistic achievable numbers :)

Hooper - BTW, where do you fall in this list? Top 5, 10 ?

Then I'll take 150-200.

Me too. Want to venture a guess? What do you think?

We're high enough to feel self important but low enough to know our place ;-)

If you're buying i'd be happy to share some real numbers though. :D

Rolo, i think you gotta talk worldwide.. afterall, the net is global.. but in the end it all has to get translated into us dollars just to have a standard of measurement (ok. or fuckin euro's if you're french and just need to feel self important ;-)

So Marc, you think there are more or less companies doing 30mil+ a year



Last edited by Hooper at Jul 9 2003, 08:48 AM

that sounds like show n tell MarcDe.. you cant ask without telling first ;-)

I am surprised your estimate is so low Colin.. you would have helped a bunch of people on their way to the 500k level imho. A few of the people I was thinking of you would know directly from years back.

I wasn't thinking about spammers at all actually (well maybe one or two).. I dont know a hell of a lot and most I do know are more like GFYers who do it becasue they can make 4 or 5k a month with no thinking, just regular burger flippin work to most imho.

I cant believe there is less than 1000 individuals (not companies) doing 500k right now.. in the middle of summer and in a bad year.. I am not sure what our industry gross turnover is, so maybe Slavick may be right that it cant be true. I've been wrong before but if you are talking about realistic expectations.. I got bad news for some poor bastards with big staff numbers and daily headaches that are grossing under 500k pa... a hardworking sit at home in his jocks freesite webmaster with no overheads and very few headaches has been able to realisticly expect to do that for years. Must admit I also know a few who were doing better than that are no longer are too.

What about all the people that spend 20-30k a month on Ink/Adwords/PPC traffic? they appear to be a dime a dozen at the moment it seems.. surely they must gross about 500k. Every few weeks I seem to hear of some other cashed up bastard wanting to hire a webmaster to run this or that scheme... lots of people trying to buy a last piece of the action right now imho

I would have guessed a person or company would have to be grossing 50mil to be on the top ten last year. But that is pure guess work.. wouldnt be surprised if that drops to 30mill this year though!



Last edited by Opti at Jul 10 2003, 01:08 AM

HAHAHA Classic line!!

Opti, our industry is worth 2.5 billion dollars annually according to this website...

http://www.internetfilterreview.com/intern...statistics.html

that should just about work using simple 80-20

2.5billion = 5000 x 500k

top 20% or 1000 people should be earning over the 500k and 4000 under it.. Does that work Colin? maybe I didnt engage the brain and have over simplified

Should we break out the bell curve?

Hi Opti,

I just think it starts to fall off real fast.

You said:

"that should just about work using simple 80-20
2.5billion = 5000 x 500k
top 20% or 1000 people should be earning over the 500k and 4000 under it.."

From what I've seen, it is net worth that follows the 80/20 rule more than
income. I happen to know that general income in the US, for example, is distributed such that 50% of the income goes to the top 20% of the people. Quite different than 80%. Net worth probably looks very close to 80/20 because of investment, interest, etc.

Anyway, I assumed that income falls off as a power law [see Zipf's Law for reference] and also assumed that the top guy was making $6 million/month. The $6million figure I got from someone around Marc's stature. It's a few years old and I assume it was accurate then but that's an assumption. One never knows with information. Maybe Marc could comment on that guess. Using Zipf's Law with exponent set to 1 (who knows?), the 100th guy would be making about $700,000/year. I just sort of worked form there.

hey it's 1.15am, I am under influence of fine greek food and 97 Hunter Valley cab sav.. trying to think about 80-20 made me have to close one eye and concentrate hard.. bell curves are day things ;)

One thing I have always loved about Marc, is that he genuinely wants people to do better.

Marc you should become a motivational speaker!!

:rokk:

My $1 is on that as close to truth!

I figured top 10 would be doing equivalent of around 8-10k signups a month mark.. that was where I got the 50mil from.

My guess is that the $30mil figure is about right, but alot more people do 5-10million a year gross than you think.

Using the typical business model for this industry, for a program to gross 5 million, it is really not that much....

I would be interested to compare profit margins over past 3-5 years, more than incomes. Profit margins a shrinking.

Brad,

To what degree have profit margins shrunk, say, from 2000?

Also, for relatively the same traffic, what would you venture as a guess for how conversions have changed in that same time period?

People making $35k/ month+ or $500k-750k a year MAX (not counting the big boys who make millions)

either has to be
1) Search engine spammers with X hundreds of domains
Should be around 150-200 se spammers
2) Legacy paysite owners
Should be a lot, maybe 500-1000 paysite owners
3) Legacy freesite owners with hundreds of domains
Should be around 500 freesite owners+
4) medium sized Affiliate program runners
Should be around 50 of them making just $500k, rest makes more.
5) Big TGP owners
around 200 on sextracker

So you add that up
around 2500 people make $500k+ a year

doesn't seem like a lot when theres around 50,000 adult webmasters though :)



Last edited by mrbling at Jul 9 2003, 07:55 AM

profit margins shrink for the paysite owners/affliate programs, but they don't shrink for the freesite owners or people who send hits to sponsors mainly because theres very little expenses, its more like you need to send more hits for the same amount of money
conversions have gone down, but getting more hits have become a little more easier, so it balances out.

how much does the average guy that uses "bling" or "pimp" in his nickname make?

average guy who has a bling the name should be able to retire tomorrow and not give a shit.

people with pimp in their names usually make money but spend big too , paycheck to paycheck while on a $50k month income:)



Last edited by mrbling at Jul 9 2003, 08:03 AM

what about "playa" or a "$" sign?

you have to use your brain for that...
hope its working these days :)

If 2500 people made at least $500,000 then everyone in the top 2500 would average more than $500,000. Spread over 2500 people the average would have to be in the millions. $2 million x 250,000 is $5 billion which is more than the annual number given by Timon above.

But realistically, the #1 on an income list will have to be MUCH higher than 4x higher than the 2500th. Just look at the Forbes 400. The top person makes about 20x more than just the 100th person.

I bet you're high by a factor of 10.

How much will the average guy be grossing come Oct 1?

;)

you have to use your brain for that...
hope its working these days :)[/b][/quote]

my brain is not working. i was using my brain all weekend trying to think of
the perfect nickname to best communicate my success in life... but
"mrbling" is now taken.

all you have left me with
is "pimpbling", "blingplaya", "$blingpimp", "pimp$playerbling",
"bigcockplayerpimp" and "pootis".

:(

It's all about da bling bling cha ching.

mrbling, what you just described by it's very definition is a shrinking margin for freesite owners :)

conversions take a shit, you still have exactly the same fixed costs per click. thus, margins have shrunk. that is unless your sponsors have increased your pay per signup to counteract that conversion drop.

but Colin, wouldn't you agree that a safe bet is that 80% of the revenue is controlled by 20% of the people/companies? if we knew the value of the business, it would be probably the safest guess to just use Paretos law as a general guide.

There's no way there are 200 TGP owners making $35,000 /month. The 200th TGP is at 30k visitors/day which is nowhere near enough TGP traffic to make $35,000 in a month. Probably not even enough to make $3500 in a month.

Ok.. now I am scared :ph34r:



And.. stop dissin the bling word please people! ;-)

:lol: :lol: :yowsa: :biglaugh: :D

That is funny!!!

The difference between driving an expensive car, and living in a run down apartment.... and having 1 car, and owning 3 houses.