So back to the series and what we can get from it.
What was very evident was the companies who have survived and made the big bucks online are few, compared to those who crashed and burned and the small ones. The bosses largely understood and respected their users, delivered the product demanded and kept innovating. They weren't in it to "get rich quick" even though some got immensely wealth, Craig who runs Craiglist.com and the owner of Wikipedia aren't driven by money. Listening to the bosses of Ebay, Amazon, etc it became clear they were surprised to shocked at how it took off.
How we set up online porn is largely a contrast. People thinking it was easy to make money in porn with a "get rich quick" attitude. Little knowledge of the customers, his needs and a lot less respect. The belief was "If we drive enough traffic, someone will buy something." The idea of having something the customer really wanted wasn't that important. Except for the exceptions.
Bangbus, Alsscan, Perfect Gonzo, Sapphic Erotica, Met-Art, etc. All had a product the customer wanted to buy. No sniping at the list, if you don't get what I mean. Get out of the business.
Affiliates only need to look at how much traffic it took to get a sale on site
A compared to a similar style/niche site
B to know one site had something the other didn't. What that was, was a "hook" reeling in the customer. The samples, tour, etc made the customer want to buy more than a site that was just another cloned site thrown together and put up.
The day the price level of BW and hosting crashed below what made giving content away and selling ad space to sites that had the little extra or were not based on pre-recorded porn more profitable or easier than paysites. We were doomed to years of dwindling returns. Because a Tube site meets the needs of the consumer more than a paysite does.
Years of scamming, stealing, cheating, lying and simply disappointing customers with sites that don't meet their needs. Have made Tubes better for so many of them today that people are leaving and closing by the day.
So I will tell you what's king in business most of the time. CONTENT. The whole thing, the complete site that the customers are buying. And getting that spot on, is far harder than submitting galleries to The Hun.
Which shows you the truth of what I say. What made The Hun list a gallery? The content.
What made people look at it crating traffic? A line of text so not hard.
What made people click on the banner? The content.
What made a surfer buy after looking at the tour? The content.
What made him stay a member or come back to the site later down the line? The content.
The content met the customers needs and provided a good user experience. Like Google, Ebay and FB. And if FB try to monetise the site to meet the share price, the customer will go elsewhere. He or she isn't a click or traffic, they are people and no one controls them. Pornhub might have 20 million surfers a day on their site, but it doesn't control them. The surfers will go elsewhere the moment PH disappoints them or a better site lures them away.
Even piracy delivers a better user experience than buying, the "free" part is a small part.
The moral of this post is;
If you want to survive the customer is the best person to please.