[Hell Puppy]

Here's my take... Now keep in mind, I've been in a position to see the influence of the economy on porn sales thru a couple of these.

Now first off, let's state something we should all accept as fact. Sex drive does not change based on economy. People still get just as horny.

What changes is what outlet they can afford. Porn has generally been accepted as "recession proof" because whatever losses you experience due to the economy you gain back in people who cant afford to go out but still wanna get off....it's the cheaper alternative to going out and hooking up.

First big economy crunch I remember while in business was around 1990 or so as Iraq invaded Kuwait. Business boomed, we saw NO impact at all. But keep in mind this was a boom time for graphics and modems. We were all just discovering VGA and real looking pictures on our monitors and modems had stepped up to 9600 and 14400 reaching affordability, so we could download the larger pics. It was the days of McHenry and Giffy Girls, we boomed.

Second one was post-9/11. I personally felt nothing from it on the porn front. There was a general downturn but it was always accepted that it was due to TGPs and tighter processing. By this point the free trial boom period with Crescent, Xpics, etc was done. MaxCash had their business taken over by the FTC for a period and scared the hell out of everyone.

But traffic was still increasing and the sales were there, they just weren't as easy. For those of us who never relied on the free trial to being with, we really saw virtually no impact.

So here we are today....

It's easy to say we're in a recession and that's causing a downturn. But there isn't really enough data to state that as fact. We wont know until whenever the economy turns back around. If sales go back up, ok it was economy. If it doesn't, maybe it was something else.

I believe it's a combination. $4 a gallon gas in the U.S. means there's less free cash in the pocket of the average Joe on the street, that's for sure. He's putting it in the tank and it's rippling all over the economy making prices of the things we have to have go up.

Now I'm not one to jump on the "tube sites are killing us" bandwagon. They're no different than TGP's or any thing else where we've been greedy and given away free content in exchange for traffic. But is the glut of free porn a factor? You bet.

Ditto for bullshit like Deecash is doing. When your money is tight and you finally do hit a mouse trap that makes you give up the credit card and you get hit for $100+ only to find a piss poor members area that hasn't been updated in a year, how likely are you to be a repeat buyer?

Remember above when I said porn and masturbation is a fallback from the expense of going out and hooking up? Well there are more steps on that ladder. If you cant afford to pay for porn or believe it not worth the money, you settle for what you can get for free.

What I think is right now the pie is getting smaller but a handful of large companies are grabbing an ever increasing slice. For the rest of the world it's innovate and adapt or eat the crumbs.