opinion

The Race Goes On

'What's New With You?' It's a cliche opening phrase in many conversations, but as 2010 draws to a close, the answer from most webmasters seems to be 'not much.' While a sluggish economy, glut of free content and several other factors outside your direct control may be weighing you down and causing you to ease off the gas pedal - some of your competitors are moving forward faster than ever before. Cautionary laps during a race still leave plenty of room for wise teams to jockey for better position when the green flag comes out and the chase for the checkered flag resumes.

Holiday Seasons past brought posts about huge gifts, special seasonal content for fans, discount promotional pricing and a number of other marketing moves aimed at finishing the year with a bang and getting the new year off to the best possible start. While slacking sales and a reduced number of meaningful traffic providers have gutted most of the gift-giving among affiliate programs, the dearth of new worthwhile promotional materials and a complete lack of innovative marketing tools from many programs is allowing a few to step forward inexpensively and quickly.

VideosZ recently announced a new set of video banner ads that custom-tailor their content based on member viewing selection trends, the result is a much higher CTR and simple point-and-click quality content that virtually any webmaster can embed into their own traffic sites. Along with their Video Wall, White Labels and massive amount of marketing content available for affiliates VideosZ is quickly positioning itself as one of the easiest sponsors to work with - and one that is continuing to evolve its enterprise for webmasters looking to progress in the new year.

DukeDollars has taken significant steps to amp up their brand recently and they appear to be cultivating a very loyal group of marketers and traffic providers by fiercely protecting the exclusivity of their content. Aggressively pursuing illegal providers of their videos and getting their content removed, generating their own SEO network of sites to relegate content traders of their vids into obscurity and producing fresh new scenes unlike any that have been posted previously helps keep their new updates some of the freshest anywhere on the net. While this does create a bit of a marketing material shortage because they are averse to having even small amounts of their content used for free online, it does give webmasters one of the more 'kinky' brands to promote with a much lower barrier to bring in sales from free sites and tubes. At the very least, it shows the folks at DukeDollars are awake and alive, rather than asleep at the wheel like so many of their competitors.

PIMPROLL made perhaps the biggest moves of 2010 when they reduced the monthly purchase price for Porn.com below $10.00 per month and then followed that up with one dollar trials on all PIMPROLL sites that convert to monthly memberships priced at just $14.95! Even the most 'thrifty' consumer would have to admit that the quality of content, exclusive videos, interface innovations and media player upgrades found on their sites makes them worthy of a few bucks more than what the tubes are presenting. Positioning their content as the 'next step up' from free to quality content is already generating increased sales and exceptional retention numbers according to the company and several affiliates in the know.

TotemCash has added new downloadable executable file based sites to go along with the wildly popular VirtuaGirl site to expand their brand. Gammae continues to hire new marketing professionals while expanding their mainstream interests. AEBN and others are gradually getting deeper into manufacturing products like the Blu electronic cigarette and RealTouch device.

If you aren't thinking of new ideas and pushing new products into your own pipeline, it isn't because 'porn is dead' or because 'the tubes suck' or because 'nobody is making any money.' The fact is, complacency is a lot easier than innovating and it takes even more self-motivation to roll up your sleeves and push the rock up hill than it used to take when every slope was in your favor. Consolidation has been the hallmark of recent years but the feeding frenzy also seems to be slowing. Those who allow their brands to stagnate may not even be able to find willing buyers for them in the new year. It's time to get moving again.

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