opinion

Content is King, Once Again

This rant isn't meant to salt anyone's game or discourage competition; it's just practical advice. Every time I log into StatsRemote.com, 10 new programs pop up. It seems as if every monkey with $600 for NATS and some hosting is trying to make it in the program game.

Can you see the problem yet?

Pretty soon there are only going to be programs and nobody with traffic. It will be like a giant sausage party on the Internet. First, let me clear up a few myths about program owners: We don't all drive Bentleys, buy $10,000 watches and live in the hills.

Truth be told, your return on investment is much higher sending traffic than receiving it. If you run a traffic-generating source, you only have a few fixed expenses — domains, hosting and that's about it. If you're smart, you'll profit $32.50 from a $35 join! As soon as the same $35 comes into PimpCashMoneyBlingBucksPayDollars.com, there are a lot of people with their hands out. Your hosting company, your processors, your employees, your affiliates and your content providers all want to get paid too. I still make more money from Jay's XXX than OCCash, and that's a fact.

Back in 2000, it was easy to rip off surfers while paying the webmasters what they thought was fat money because the guys running paysites made fat bucks banging credit cards, spamming and bludgeoning surfers with endless consoles. In those days, the programs shaved more than Gillette — even the webmasters were getting hosed.

That's a big problem with the history of our business. It has no history. We are about to enter our first full decade of slinging smut online, and we are calling 2000 "the good old days." Does anyone remember Prohibition? It was around longer than this not-so-noble experiment.

The days of the Wild West are over, and the backlash is that half the Internet won't join a porn site because they've been burned. It's such a big step for a guy roughing up free pictures on a TGP to actually putting a credit card down. Why make him feel cheated after he did?

Today, much has changed.

Do you really want to move forward with PimpCashMoneyBlingBucksPayDollars? If you do, you'd better have some great exclusive content or a reserve of cash that you plan on losing for at least two years while offering a high PPS to stay competitive. Between Visa regulations, Can-Spam and smarter surfers — trying to make that $35 back on every trial join is like selling fire in hell.

Even the dinosaurs offering $50 payouts for access to a bunch of feeds have seen their day. Content is king, once again. If you don't have one of those two ingredients, you are probably better off promoting programs that offer high-quality content.

Finally, you need a good face man — preferably someone who is established or you will have a hard time getting traffic. If you really insist on starting PimpCashMoneyBlingBucksPayDollars, I suggest you develop your own traffic source before you even start a program.

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