Sales are great, every once in a while. But it seems that we have trained surfers to expect them. I have a whole family of sites from one program that I can no longer sell at regular rates because they’re constantly pushing a sale or they’ve given webmasters special price links in the NATS console.
Gay Hoopla had a sale a while ago that I sold like gang busters, but a sale over there is a very rare event.
Colby Knox just announced a sale and it should do well because their last one was in February.
But there are a whole lot of sites out there that are perpetually on sale. Dollar per click is down which means we all have to work harder to make what we used to.
I don’t think sales have anything to do with it. Great changes came after the advent of fan platforms. I have said it before-for $10 users get low-quality content in unlimited quantity.
Some actors are like rabbits and literally publish dozens of updates monthly. Not a single studio is able to publish so much – the customer simply is reluctant to pay too much for a few scenes a month, porn is porn and most people are not interested in things like scenarios and decors.
So, in my opinion, the criteria were understated because of these platforms, and this is irreversible. The studios simply adapt to the new prices, underestimating the essence of change.
I really like your platform but the commission we get is abysmal compared to a normal paysite. I really have tried and it simply does not add up to much at all. The same amount of traffic and sales sent to a normal paysite earns me a huge amount more, the difference is just too great. Its not possible to survive as an affiliate promoting your sites unfortunately.
I believe you are right. It works the same in every branch. Some (mostly luxury) brands never or very rarely put their products on sale. Examples: Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Cartier, Apple and Sonos. Those companies believe in the value of their products and their customers know that prices will not change, so they will not postpone their purchase.
Everyone knows that companies like H&M, Zara and IKEA will put their products on sale, sooner or later (often at certain times). Plenty of people will wait till Sale starts before they purchase whatever they want, cause it never takes long before they can get it cheaper.
On the other hand, I also think that some porn sites are too expensive (compared to a Netflix or Disney+ membership for example). Those sites may never sell many memberships if it wasn’t for all those discounts.
I do think there are far too many sales now, most programs runes them… some even end up having constant permanent sales.
It’s reflected in my stats:
Sending more traffic this year than last year
Earn less for each hit I send: from $0.11 in 2018 to $0.09 in 2019… that’s nearly a 20% loss.
It simply means that for some reason I get less money for the sales I have, either the memberships have been lowered in price or its the sales that causes this.
YEARS ago now I remember Jake Cruise had a sale where you got all three (or four?) of his sites for the price of just one site. I pushed the sale pretty hard, got a lot of sales and then they rebilled forever. Why? Because sales were rare back then. If they canceled they lost the good price. Now if they cancel they can count on there being another sale in the next month or two.
So yeah, I agree with Michael. Too many sales these days.
We have talked about it a lot in house lately. We are very likely going to nix the monthly discounts except on maybe a Black Friday and Memorial Day limited offering. For review/discount sites we will likely let them offer a yearly discount price point still as a compromise.
If sites out there are reading this, if you’re going to put your sites on sale it would be great if the sale applied to the first month then regular-price rebills kicked in after that. That would certainly help us all make money. Peter Fever has done this and I continue to get rebills off those sales.
I use to offer my JFF site for just 6 bucks a month but recently raised the price to 25 bucks a month as I post three new updates a week. I’m making sales and people are rebilling for 25 a month. Our consumers have gotten use to paying 10 or 15 bucks a month for the content.
For us when we did that, it just created the serial join and immediate cancel members even more. So if you only put your sites on sale for RARE occasions, then yes it makes sense and works well. But if you are like most and have discounts for the review sites and discounts sites all the time, its impossible to do that, or it makes the cancel rate rise.
We have an option available for anyone to use in PuppyCash.com where the first month is $23.95 and then goes up to $29.95 thereafter. I just went and looked at the stats in NATS and was blown away with how many of our affiliates are using it and I was surprised at the number of them that are rebilling.
No, I don’t want to slam you, but you really don’t. I think our biggest weekly payout with almost daily promotion was $60. We can’t make enough to justify the space.
I do feel like some of our studios are “always on sale” which makes special promotions a non-starter. We’ve not promoted a lot of “specials” lately because they were too repetitive.
We are celebrating our 15th and wanted to do a special anniversary promotion series, but it was difficult to find studios to ask us who weren’t already on sale.
Retail, which adult content is, is conditioning. If you tell people your site is worth $12 a month, then they’ll never pay $25.
I think this is so true, in fact I regularly get comments from visitors about pricing and how they will just wait until there is a discount because they wont pay full price.
“Sales” “Specials” “Promos” whatever you call it will always be fruitful, your giving people that maybe on been on the fence a time-sensitive opportunity to subscribe and enter your ecosystem, these are “cheaper” individuals, but they obviously pay for porn! its up to paysites cater to their “needs” but also focus on how and what you do to retain these “low paying” subscribers and also give them an opportunity to pay more at some point, like extra content or a special site feature, etc. OR if they are leaving you anyways offer them a way out with selling a partner site where you’ll get paid out
but if you don’t offer a sale, will these people ever join? I think it’s really hard to strike the right balance, our discounted initial month offer don’t rebill as well as regular price sales, but at least they are paying something instead of watching it for free on the tubes… We try and segregate our mailing lists and mail the offers to those who only join on a discount, and use mailers without offers, but related to special content to the rest.