Chatroulette parlays "50,000 Naked Men" into $100,000/month income stream

[Fuller.CM]

Chatroulette CEO turns a liability into an income stream, great move!

fastcompany.com/1716690/chatroulette-andrey-ternovskiy-video-chat

Snippet from the article

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Chatroulette Founder Andrey Ternovskiy Raises New Funding: "50,000 Naked Men"

Since peaking in usership in the spring and early summer, Chatroulette has been hemorrhaging traffic, with visits plummeting close to 60% in the US, according to Quantcast. After a brief down period in late August, the site relaunched with improved saftey features, and traffic appears to have bottomed out.

Ternovskiy now shares a one-bedroom apartment with two engineers that doubles as Chatroulette's headquarters. They all sleep and work there--that's why he's whispering and slipping outside to answer his phone.

The million-dollar offers have dried up, and critics have labeled the service a passing craze. Others have blamed the site's decline on its pornographic content--it's estimated one in every eight chats yielded R-rated material.

Ternovskiy still believes he can reclaim Chatroulette's prominence and VC interest. To do so, he's worked tirelessly to sanitize its image. "Since we've implemented the content-control system, the site has become cleaner, and more people are starting to use it," the founder tells Fast Company--traffic did begin to rise in October and November. "Now it's my job to shape the business into something more sustainable."

But Chatroulette can't fully ween itself off nudity yet. "You'll still see some naked men, about one every hour," Ternovskiy says. Of the roughly 500,000 visitors Chatroulette receives daily, about 10% are males itching to show their business. So Ternovskiy parlays that business into profit.

"Everyday, about 50,000 new men are trying to get naked," he says. "What we're doing is selling the naked men to a couple of websites--it's an investment for us."
When users flag someone enough times for indecent behavior (by clicking a button), the offender is automatically transferred to a partner site. Thanks to deals with adult dating services like FriendFinder.com, Chatroulette is earning cash hand over fist from the referral traffic.

"Basically, once we detect a person is naked, he'll be kicked from our service to another website," Ternovskiy says. "So, we're actually getting revenue from naked men right now."

These exhibitionists were a major headache for Ternovskiy before becoming a major source of income. Though helping to create buzz on the site initially (for better or worse), they were also a bandwidth drain, often nexting through as many as 800 users in just 15 minutes. According to Ternovskiy, Chatroulette is now earning $100,000 per month due to its refined business model and content-control system--all from "naked men." That's triple the site's monthly "mainstream" or "normal" revenue, as Ternovskiy refers to it.
It's also Ternovskiy's answer to whether he'd finally accepted outside investments. "50,000 naked men" has become "our investment," he says.
"I just didn't want to take investments--I feared that if I did the deals, my ideas would get pushed away. There are still offers, but they're valued proportionally less than offers back then, in terms of our traffic. So I think at this point, it's better for me to go on by myself."

[Agent 488]

adapt or die.

[Angry Jew Cat - Banned for Life]

Was the obvious move, no?

[DWB]

How do they know the guys are not minors before passing them on to an adult site?

[seeandsee]

interesting, they get members helping them to make money on naked bastards

[Angry Jew Cat - Banned for Life]

Originally Posted by DirtyWhiteBoy

How do they know the guys are not minors before passing them on to an adult site?

How does any porn site know? They don't. There is absolutely zero stopping a minor from landing on a porn signup page, so why should ChatRoulette be held to any higher standard than anyone else? If they are an adult with a credit card, and can signup and pass on a commission, that's all that matters to anyone here...

[DWB]

Originally Posted by Angry Jew Cat

How does any porn site know? They don't. There is absolutely zero stopping a minor from landing on a porn signup page, so why should ChatRoulette be held to any higher standard than anyone else? If they are an adult with a credit card, and can signup and pass on a commission, that's all that matters to anyone here...

Maybe I didn't read the story correctly.

From what I understand, if they get a naked male stroker on their cam network, they SELL it along to an adult cam or date site. Right?

OK, so if I have webcam content and I SELL it to you, shouldn't it come with 2257?

All webcam girls (for pay) have to provide the network with IDs to show proof of age.

[Angry Jew Cat - Banned for Life]

Originally Posted by DirtyWhiteBoy

Maybe I didn't read the story correctly.

From what I understand, if they get a naked male stroker on their cam network, they SELL it along to an adult cam or date site. Right?

OK, so if I have webcam content and I SELL it to you, shouldn't it come with 2257?

All webcam girls (for pay) have to provide the network with IDs to show proof of age.

Maybe I'm the one who interpreted it wrong, but the way I understood it, they were taking the flagged users and redirecting them to signup for cams/dating type stuff. Not selling them as content, but selling them as leads...

[tranza]

Originally Posted by DirtyWhiteBoy

Maybe I didn't read the story correctly.

From what I understand, if they get a naked male stroker on their cam network, they SELL it along to an adult cam or date site. Right?

OK, so if I have webcam content and I SELL it to you, shouldn't it come with 2257?

All webcam girls (for pay) have to provide the network with IDs to show proof of age.

You didn't read it right. They are not selling the content, they're selling the traffic. They are simply redirecting these surfers to dating sites.

[BlackCrayon]

he should of taken the first multi million offer that came along. i don't see how they even make money. i went there a couple months ago with the gf for a laugh and there were no ads and almost no people.

[MrBottomTooth]

If you sit on the site for 3 minutes you are almost guaranteed to get flagged by that time, since most of the people just sit there and flag people for no reason. I was making some good coin off of it for a while using manycam and a loop of a clothed female with a website address on the feed, but unfortunately they killed that method for me with these constant flaggings.

[CaptainHowdy]

I'm not reading something that uses the word "parlays" on its title...

[~Ray]

I tried that phase myself.. www.camswap.com

lost interest quickly when 12% of visitors had webcams.

[Paul Markham]

I lost interest after this.

Ternovskiy now shares a one-bedroom apartment with two engineers that doubles as Chatroulette's headquarters. They all sleep and work there--that's why he's whispering and slipping outside to answer his phone.

[DWB]

Originally Posted by tranza

You didn't read it right. They are not selling the content, they're selling the traffic. They are simply redirecting these surfers to dating sites.

Ah. OK, makes sense now.

Thanks.

[magicmike]

Not bad considering I doubt they make much money off the rest of the site.

[Sharky]

Thats funny. I tried to contact them during the initial craze about something like this and was told they didn't want to associate themselves with the adult industry.

My how times change...

[96ukssob]

not a bad idea, but I'm surprised hes getting that many signups on AFF

[GatorB]

Originally Posted by DirtyWhiteBoy

Maybe I didn't read the story correctly.

From what I understand, if they get a naked male stroker on their cam network, they SELL it along to an adult cam or date site. Right?

OK, so if I have webcam content and I SELL it to you, shouldn't it come with 2257?

All webcam girls (for pay) have to provide the network with IDs to show proof of age.

I wasn't aware RUSSIANS in RUSSIA had to comply with 2257.

[epitome]

Originally Posted by DirtyWhiteBoy

How do they know the guys are not minors before passing them on to an adult site?

If it is a minor sent to the adult site then two fails have happened. First, the adult site wasn't labeled RTA or similarly, and second, the parents did not install a parental filter (or do not monitor their child's Internet access). Either way, parental fail for sure.

I kind of doubt that $100k self-reported number by the 19 year old.

It'd be nice to see AFF verify those numbers, but of course, they won't.

[arock10]

so are they turning it into a gay cam site or just hinting at it

[SomeCreep]

When I used that site, instead of using the "next" button, i just "flagged" everyone. So does everyone else. Actually, that's why I started flagging everyone, because I'd constantly get booted for being flagged too many times, even though I wasnt breaking any rules.

At this point, Chatroulette functions on a premise which is beyond today's technology. It'll work at some point, once screening and filtering type technologies improve. However, with their current flagging system, it's not going to flourish like facebook and twitter did.

[AmeliaG]

That is genius.

[CamsMaster]

well they are monetizing all traffic, a fair thing from my point of view

[D Ghost]

ChatRoulette wasn't even the first to do this. Omegle.com was...

[Cyber Fucker]

Every money are good money.

[lazycash]

Originally Posted by arock10

so are they turning it into a gay cam site or just hinting at it

Neither, read it again.

[garce]

Originally Posted by Paul Markham

I lost interest after this.

No kidding. Making $100,000 a month off naked men and sharing a one bedroom apartment with two other guys? Doesn't smell right.