Is adult entertainment losing its edge?

[DannyCox]

There won't be a thinning. 99.99% of the people that have Adult websites do it for fun or for beer money. It isn't a career for them, and they could really care less about it, or us. With the price of bandwidth so low, if not free in many cases, the ease of getting billing, and the proliferation of "content plug-ins", we will still have to put up with more and more.

We are getting 2 or 3 people contacting us every day now about starting their own websites, or looking for work in the industry (not as performers, but as photographers, designers, and erotic writers).

I remember way back when, when the US government was talking about licensing websites, I was all for it. I was praying for something like a $100,000. a year, yearly fee to operate. That would have been great! (but not at all practical in the real world)

[Hell Puppy]

Innovation in adult has at the very least slowed since 2000 or so.

Meanwhile, "mainstream" is full of innovation on the web. Why? It's economic. In adult, you either do it for fun, thus the beer money crowd, or you do it for profit. Back in the day, anything that could drum up traffic also meant money would fall from the sky. Now, it's more about lowest common denominator with cookie cutter tours and traffic swaps or cross sells. The innovation you DO see all involves creative liberties with billing to try to extract every possible dollar from the surfer who gives up his credit card number.

Back on the mainstream side, the game is VC and hope for the google buy out. Meanwhile you live in the office with your business partners and buy pizza with what you get from AdSense.

Now, one other thing about adult...there are some theiving mofo's in the industry. So if you do innovate, it is in your best interest to keep it below the radar for as long as you possibly can.

My dumb ass learned that lesson circa 1997, and I dont usually make same mistake twice. Thought I was clever, wanted to get over with the Ynot crew, showed off one of my creations. By the end of the next week, the shit was everywhere and half of the lazy mother fuckers didn't even change the damned colors of the page designs.

Since then, I've had "one of the first..." of many things, and it generally takes at the very least some truth serum, a big steak and a blow job to get a url out of me.

[softball]

Now, it's more about lowest common denominator

Always was. That has not changed. I agree with you on innovation. Fortunately, I have been in the entertainment business forever and learned that lesson years and years ago and entertainment is way more cutthroat than porn will ever be. If you guys don't believe this, try it. I will guarantee you will be swallowed up, spit out, and stomped on before you spend your first 100K. Porn is a walk in the park in the real world. Sometimes we just feel important.

[EmporerEJ]

Originally Posted by Hell Puppy

Now, one other thing about adult...there are some theiving mofo's in the industry. So if you do innovate, it is in your best interest to keep it below the radar for as long as you possibly can.

My dumb ass learned that lesson circa 1997, and I dont usually make same mistake twice. Thought I was clever, wanted to get over with the Ynot crew, showed off one of my creations. By the end of the next week, the shit was everywhere and half of the lazy mother fuckers didn't even change the damned colors of the page designs.

Since then, I've had "one of the first..." of many things, and it generally takes at the very least some truth serum, a big steak and a blow job to get a url out of me.

Boy, I couldn't agree with this more........