How The Porn Guys Do Things

February 1, 2009

I've noticed that you read my blog a lot, THANKS! Lemme know if there's ever anything I can do for you email me, twitter me, or facebook me

Earlier this week while I was out to lunch with Russell Brunson I made a faux pas that had us nearly in tears laughing. Here’s how it went down…

So we’re trading marketing tips back and forth, me with tips for improving his affiliate program, him with tips for my new coaching program coming out this month. When I bring up the topic of “how the porn guys do things.”

I asked Russell, “have you ever taken a look at how the porn sites market their membership sites?” Russell being the clean & polite mormon man that he is of course said no. Then I said “well I’ve been watching them a lot lately.”

Before I even had the chance to realize what I had just said Russell starts bursting with laughter. Which then made me realize the way my words had come out of my mouth. What came out was “I’ve been watching a lot of porn lately” but what I meant was “I’ve been studying their marketing methods a lot lately.”

After turning 4 shades of red and i’m assuming a few other colors, we had a big laugh and I explained myself. We both agreed on one thing, the porn industry has been making money online and more specifically running highly profitable, MASSIVE, monthly membership sites longer then most of us have even owned an email address.

Which is exactly what got me started researching some of the techniques they are using. After all, if I want to run a membership site who better to learn from then the guys who have been testing and perfecting this business model for more then a decade now.

Are you curious to find out what I’ve learned in my research? Good, then keep reading and I’ll give you a few of the big things I noticed that they all have in common.

Teaser Content

EVERY major porn membership site is using teaser content to lure their visitors into becoming subscribers. This means that when you get to their sites instead of a long and very obvious sales letter, you get to actually experience on a small level what the content inside will be like through pictures and video clips.

Low Priced Trial Periods

All of the more popular porn sites are allowing you to become a full fledged member of their site for just $1, you can download as much as you want, cancel anytime you want, but after 3 days you’re going to start getting billed monthly.

Multiple Site Access

Many of the bigger more popular sites offer multiple other thematic sites along with your membership as a bonus. Kind of like if you were running a membership site about dog training you might also offer them access to others on the topics of dog care, dog food recipes, breeding dogs, etc etc

$29.99 Per month

There is no price more common then $29.99 per month when it comes to porn membership. I don’t know the reasoning behind this but the commonality of that price is so overwhelming that I have to believe its the best converting price point. I would also assume that this price point has a high retention rate.

What Do We Learn From This?

These guys are smart as hell, they have their own conferences, they test this stuff relentlessly and share their results with each other. I would feel very safe betting a large sum of money that these things each site has in common is the way it is for a very specific reason.

I am currently seeking out a few site owners for an interview so I can solidify these findings from being just observations to learning the lessons behind them.

How Can We Apply This To Our Sites?

  • Replace your salesletter with abbreviated versions of your articles, audios, and videos
  • Make it obvious that you are just giving them a small taste of whats inside
  • When they try to access more of or the full versions of your free content send them your order page
  • Offer them a three day $1 trial that rebills at $29.99 per month when they get to your order page
  • Build additional “nichified” versions of your site to give away as a bonus for becoming a member

Now that’s just on the outer layer. We haven’t even gotten into how they get people to their sites, how they run their affiliate program, or what they are doing in the members area.

Again, I’m still in the process of researching all this stuff and landing an interview with one of these site owners. So I can really get inside their heads as to why and if there are specific reasons for what they do. However, I have joined a few to see for myself what they are doing and to try get ideas for improving my own sites.

The three sites that I became a member of were the top 3 sites in the industry according to Compete.com traffic rankings. I would assume that because they are the top 3 sites then they probably know what they are doing.

What I found inside was that there was no page inside the members area that did not have prominent affiliate ads.

You try to watch one of the videos and on the side of the video is an attractive affiliate banner sometimes more then one for other sites. Same with every other area inside the site… There was always easily visible affiliate ads every where you went.

After canceling my accounts right away (to avoid charges and long conversations with my wife) I joined their affiliate programs to see if anything was different in there.

WAY DIFFERENT!!!

Our affiliate programs aren’t even a fraction of what they could be after see how the porn guys are doing things. Normally, in our world a good affiliate program will have some banners, emails, keywords, maybe a video or two that you can use to market the site.

In the porn world they practically give you a whole business to promote their site with. They have videos galore, whole galleries of banners to choose from, pre-built websites, and even scripts you can use to setup your own free access mini-membership site with all their video clips.

The biggest affiliate program is called NastyDollars.com and they run the affiliate marketing for like 30 different sites. I would say that of all the research I’ve done so far just seeing how much they help their affiliates has opened my eyes the most.

I mean they even offer their affiliates FREE HOSTING!

Anyhow, I thought you’d like to know what I found in my research. It’s given me tons of ideas for improving my own membership sites. I hope I’ve given you a few ideas now too.

P.S. If you don’t have a membership site of your own yet I’d like to know what’s stopping you. Chaunna got BizAwake.com and DailyAffiliateArticles.com built for $30 each. From there we just had to add content to them and drive traffic. We use either Joomla or wordpress to run our membership sites. And in our opinion WPWishlist by Stu McLaren is the best membership site software on the market.

As usual comments and complients go down below. For complaints please press ALT + FX

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  • Dude I dunno how you got ripped at ABEstWeb for this whole porn thing. Sometimes I feel the biggest jerks are all grouped nicely in those forums.. I think it's pretty great that you thought of researching in the oldest and most experienced internet marketing block there is... (the porn industry) ... tell those ABestWeb to stick it where the sun don't shine.
    .-= Stefan Suarez´s last blog ..Your Online Success = Hustle. =-.
  • Hey Justin
    Only just found this post after you posted part 2 - but that would be one of the reasons that you put links to old posts in your new posts right!!
    So much to learn and so big a risk getting caught doing market research. LOL!!

    Seriously, thanks for the great post. Still debating about whether I go over and check out the affiliate programs or not.

    Steve
  • Bill
    Great info. I would like to know about how to do a membership site for $30.00?
  • You might also want to check out some of the webmaster forums specifically about the porn industry. The marketing methods can be used across the spectrum, are highly effective, & pretty brilliant imo. I've noticed this for awhile since I'm an avid reader but it's not ummm politically correct for a chick to talk about it :)

    follow @show on twitter
  • Hello Justin !
    I really enjoyed reading your article.
    A very good friend of mine living in Las Vegas
    has been in the adult industry for years and last
    time we talked was running 800 porn sites altogether!
    These people have certainly mastered Internet
    Marketing and we all have a lot of things to learn
    from them.
    These days I'm working on my first Membership
    Website and there are a few issues I'd need
    help with. Could you please let me know when I
    should contact you?
    Kind Regards
    Sofia
  • Hey Justin, great post, lots to think about!

    I also use WPWishList and love it! Full featured, multi-functional, and easy to setup.

    Cheers, Laura
  • [riffly_video]41B8BEA002C911DE9F60EBF3ABAAD276[/riffly_video]
  • There is one other thing to keep in mind - those sites are spending a LOT of time, effort, and money on creating a constant stream of new, high production value content. And they have been just as thorough in their refining of their content models as they have in their marketing techniques.

    And never you mind how this little old lady knows such things. Let's just say that I have a husband and an adult son.

    The point is that if your content doesn't have the sheen of consummate professionalism and a strong flow of new titles, some of those marketing techniques could do you more harm than good.
  • I agree 100% - I have been studying the porn sites and their marketing for a while. As internet marketers we have a lot to learn, these guys know their stuff.

    I have a couple of points to add to your observations...

    Aside from studying their marketing I have found it very useful to study their affiliate programs. Some of the bigger programs have some awesome stuff and make it super easy for their affiliates - again something we can learn from.

    I even dabble a bit in promoting some of these sites as an affiliate. Because the market is so extremely competitive and hard to break into - I know what if I find a method that makes me a few affiliate sales - I can take that an apply to my own business for even better results.

    And it it feels better I have made the faux pas too - got a bit excited about my findings and started telling Jeff Dedrick and his girlfriend about my test sites and domain names - some of them definitely should not be mentioned in public - gave us a good laugh though ;-)
  • Hey Justin,

    What can one say except YOUR SO FANTASTIC! With you as our mentor how can one not succeed!

    Take Care,

    Love and Light

    Maggie
  • susla
    I guess this legal to promote in the US?
    Do you know if they would do the technical stuff for you, like rebranding videos etc? best way to promote for good ttraffic if you dont have much money? Do they pay monthly or would they pay weekly if you generate a certain amount of traffic?
  • Dan In Boise
    Justin -
    Need a junior research assistant? -:0)

    As always you help us move forward - THX
  • Justin,
    All I can say is what the characters in the Gunnies stout commercial say; "Brilliant." This is one of those I idea's that we all think, now why didn't I think of that. I love it, these folks have done most of the leg work for us, all we have to do is model their marketing ides.
  • Hi Justin,

    Great info, I have always wondered how those guys were doing it.
    They do get massive traffic to those sites. They have this marketing thing down to a science.Not sure, If could have past the research thing
    off on my wife.Justin, great job, I 'm sure your post will have a lot of people thinking !

    Michael
  • Who better to learn from than the masters. Like it or not the porn industry is a multi billion dollar business. Great call if you are starting a membership site to vue there business model and the content is great too. My wife will not let me do that kind of research. LMAO
  • Jules,
    Which industry do you think makes more money? Geneology or porn?

    I think that the most profitable porn site might make more money than all of the geneology sites combined. I have no data to back that up purely an uneducated guess.

    Rick
  • Jules Allred
    Hi Justin:

    This is a great article! Being of the same faith as Russell, I haven't checked out the porn sites to compare marketing techniques either :-) But I'm surprised that Russell did not mention that GENEALOGY - (something that members of the Mormon church are heavily involved in), is also one of the largest online pastimes. I did a Google search on "free porn" and came up with 70,800,000 pages. By comparison, I searched "genealogy" and came up with 85,700,000. Just wondering if you have checked out their marketing methods as well.

    Thanks for all the great info!
    Jules
  • good thing you don't have adsense on this page.

    glad you were brave enough to enter that world. thanks for the tips! be careful!!!
  • Jon
    The adult industry basically started affiliate marketing and really were the pioneers of online marketing in general.

    Recently however, the porn sites have been seeing declining revenues due to piracy and all the "tube sites" hosting free porn (just Google "free porn" and view all the free sites available)

    It will be interesting to see how the porn industry will adapt to these new challenges and if they can sustain the monthly re-bill model.
  • C.
    I haven't bookmarked a blog post in a very long time... until now

    This is a great article Justin! I don't think I knew about you until now. I must say that I am impressed with what you are doing and I really think you are onto something here!
    Are you going to be releasing a product based on this research? If so, please keep me updated
    I am always impressed by seeing how the people in the adult industry manage and build their marketing strategies. Then you can see how others copy what they are doing. It is not secret that a lot of the technology developments in the internet have been driven by the innovative and forward thinking minds on the folks in Adult.
    Contrary to what a lot of people might believe, all the successful adult people are REAL business people that take very seriously what they are doing and this is...the BIG bucks!
    We should not be critizicing them or even less ignoring them, like Justin is doing....we should be learning and modeling from what they are doing.
    Justin...I'll be coming back to this post to see more updates and insights from your research.

    Fantastic job Justin and congrats for thinking outside of the box!
  • I have the same question as Kelly...how did she get those sites built for only $30? I'm having a Joomla membership site built for $200...would love ot save money on the next one!
  • Hi Justin,

    Very interesting post, I've never thought about things that way.....

    You really gave me some wonderful ideas.

    Can ask where Chaunna got BizAwake.com and DailyAffiliateArticles.com built for $30 each.....

    Just wondering.....

    Thanks for everything!

    Kelly
  • Great Post, now that you have studied the worlds oldest profession it is time to move on to the next two, motherhood and priesthood. Both use persuasion techniques and both have stood the test of time. I am looking forward to your insights. I so have one question for you the ponder: How come it is more fun below the belt than above?
  • Joe
    "Yes honey, it's business research. I'm doing this for US......"

    ;-)
  • Saulius
    Hey, great stuff here, the part about you watching allot porn lately made me lought :)


    Will be applying some stuff to my secret link building site :)


    - Saulius
  • the one thing that immediately cropped up in my mind is that someone viewing/joining a porn site is likely yo be in a different headspace to someone viewing/joining an origami membership site.
    Eben pagan talks about the ultimate product being where pain and urgency interject to solve the problem. That may be worth bearing in mind when plannign a membership site.

    The adult industry drove VCRs into every home, and i heard it was same for dvd - there's no doubt in my mind that these guys know what they are doing when it comes to membership sites.

    well done justin.
  • Ha ha,

    I love it Justin risking his marriage to further his marketing knowledge, you have given me an excuse know to explain my "research" to my girlfriend. In all seriousness these guys do dominate their markets and do it well, I just assume a lot of marketers are afraid of being stigmatised by analysing their efforts. Great post.
  • Matt
    Cool that somebody is finally talking about this. Although, others have tried over the years and typically it's gone over deaf ears.

    What you see in affiliate marketing in the NON-adult side of the Internet, the adult side has been doing since the 90's. It's almost embarrassing signing up for a non-adult affiliate program and still seeing the archaic way in which they treat affiliates in regards to promo material and whatnot (and sometimes payouts, payout frequency - in fact, when I decided to no longer promote adult for family reasons - the differences were so shocking I quit marketing online for a number of years) .

    Although I haven't actively promoted adult since 2002, I still swing (no, not like that...c'mon now) through some of the message boards and keep some affiliate accounts active (just in case the kids grow up one day or I get an urge - no not like that :) ). If you decide to take the plunge, you'll quickly find that N.D. is one of the good ones but in no way are they the largest sponsor program out there...their stable of sites is small compared to some.

    Another of the important things that can be learned from the adult industry insomuch as learning marketing is the evolution of Niche Marketing online and digging down to the very basis of a niche - the very root of peoples desires. Some of the most successful standalone sites aren't the sites that cater to 'porn' exclusively...but sites that cater directly to the individual fetishes .

    Anyhow, cool you're talking about this Justin and thanks for sharing.
  • Great information thanks heaps
  • Hi Justin,

    You are absolutely correct , they have a great marketing strategy.

    I had a experience of making a Business plan for a Dating site
    which later was part of a Adult site plan.

    Infact for that purpose I had bought the Complete
    marketing strategy Report worth $100 . whcih gave
    exact details. It was mind blowing.

    The Money they earn is amazing. the only reason
    i did not do the Business myself was for obvious reasons.
    and also being banned in most countries and possible
    legal reasons.

    However, Teh strategy was great. a Complete Business
    was given , affiliate plans etc.

    Great things to learn.

    thanks for taking this topic , lots to learn.

    regards

    Jayant Hudar
    http://www.jayanthudar.com
  • Hey Justin,

    Good insights bro...

    SEX is the big seller here. It has a power over people that is just unfathomable, which is why it dominates the web.

    Information marketing is a much tougher sell, but definitely one can learn from the systems employed by the porn industry.

    An interesting question you may want to ask people to talk with is how they chop up that $29.95 fee when they partner with other porn sites which they also provide access to.

    I suppose it's like the iTunes model.

    .99 cent songs is not much to make a profit off of, but when you are selling millions upon millions of songs, it ads up and they can share revenue with affiliates, content authors and also pay themselves.

    How do the porn guys and gals do it on a $29.95 a month deal?

    What if some of the IM people came together this way...

    "When you join my coaching program, you'll also get access to Justin's Coaching program, Mike Filaime's coaching program AND Frank Kern's coaching program, all for the same low monthly price."

    How would you make the price points worth it to them, cause if you could, and you had volume... wow... that would be sweet eh?

    Jeff Mills
    http://www.outsourcecoaching.com
  • Wow, Justin, thanks. I love the detailed research and the logical perspective that you use to analyse stuff. Keep up the good work.
  • Justin,

    I noticed another new thing the porn guys are doing: if there's a thumbnail of a video and you hover your mouse over it, you see a sequence of stills from the video. Did you notice that?
  • Jason,
    Thank you for doing this research for us. I have thought researching this industry but I was scared that once they got me in their grasp they might never let go... lol...

    The masters of the inter net--the porn sites. Sad but true.

    Rick
  • AD
    Hey the 'Auto Form Filler' screwed up the website field and put in my email address there instead (in the previous post). Can you please delete the post as I want it to be confidential.

    You may repost it again with my name, etc but with the URL field empty if you want to. Thanks.
  • Interesting info that I never would have discovered myself!

    As for the $1 trial, I'd guess that unless your teaser contest is as compelling as theirs (if there's too much question in their mind whether your site is worth paying full price for), you might get more signups if you give more than 3 days.
  • AD
    Here are a couple of my own observations:

    - various sites cater to a looot of different sub-niches (specific obsessions etc)

    - its relatively easier for them to distribute their content all over the net (just post them on the various major video sites, porn video sites, funny video sites, big name porn blogs etc) and you can get tens of millions of hits per month.

    So they don't need to do much to 'move their free line'. Because the customers are already looking for these. All they do is, distribute their material on various popular sites to get tens of millions of visitors per month (yes I said 10's of millions i.e 10,000,000).

    - The advantage they have is that they don't need to 'hard-sell' anything. Like you said the teaser videos, clips and pics are all 'pre-selling' material.

    And if they like the 'pre-sell' material, they don't need to do much else to 'make the sale'. So their conversions are also naturally higher too.
  • barney_bl
    OK, what's the excitement here?

    Porn has been driving the Web for years. You think all the video enhancements you've been using just happened? Porn drove the improvement of graphics presentation (still pictures) ever since the creation of WWW.

    Then porn sites drove development of online videos by creating and testing every format that their programmers could imagine. A lot of them were crappy, but some of 'em were pretty damned good.

    And many of you are using the results of their labor & testing. (Do you really think the current video giants didn't pay attention?)

    Marketing? Price points? Value? ROI? Pornography on the Web had that nailed before many of you even began to consider Internet marketing.

    'Course, they - the pornographers - did have something of value to sell - imagination and imagery - that few products on the market could match.

    You want their success, study their methods. Not the pics or the vids, but the ancillaries - affiliate links, links to other sites (not the same thing), ad placements ... there's a plethora of information available for study if you just look!

    Even if you strongly object to porn on religious, moral, or ethical grounds, study the methodology ... it's been working for twenty+ years.
  • Hey was all that porn espionage boring or did you actual have some fun doing it? Good Job, it make sense… GREG
  • Jay Leishman
    I can picture Russell busting out. Ryan Lee started his 100+ membership sites based on that model. But I'm sure you're already on that like Oprah in a buffet.
  • Justin Brooke
    @Erin aka NetKickStart - I'm not really sure what you are getting at but they pay $200 per new affiliate sign up. You bet your ass I'm going to make sure I drop my link when I mention them! LoL
  • Justin,

    The research you are performing is long overdue. The trick isn't to come up with "new ideas". It's to apply tried and true ideas in different environments.

    It's like putting Lego pieces together from different kits and coming up with something never seen before. Everyone can understand the Lego pieces and how they work in their "native environments" (kits). But mix 'em up and you've got something "new". That's why there will always be opportunity and always people saying, "Why didn't I think of that!", or, "Hey! That was MY idea! I thought of that!" (and didn't take action).

    And that's what the fruit of your research is going to be. You're going to apply everyday techniques used in the porn industry to the IM world of "how-to" digital products. And in the context of a universe of "niche markets", it will be "new and revolutionary".

    Remember though, many techniques will not successfully transfer because of the nature of the content. It's S-E-X we're talking about. A "marriage made in Heaven (or Hell)" with the Internet. "How to Build Your List" content is NOT in the same league, let alone Universe.

    It does make one wonder... You are no doubt not the first IM "how-to" entrepreneur who has done such research. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that othsrs have gone down the same path and wound up having "many lives" on the Internet, determining that the $$$ is just too damn irresistible, and easy for someone with the IM chops like you have.

    I wouldn't blame you, Justin. I'd just keep it quiet if I were you - no need to "confirm or deny". ;-)

    Thank you for a great post.

    -xearther
  • Great post. You always provide great and helpful information and gives me more determination to work on my sites and projects.
  • I've heard that referred to as "Moving the Free Line", of course those folks are moving more than just the free line... Does "Shake, shake, shake, Shake Your Booty", ring any bells? Or how about, "We're In The Money, We're in the Money"? Heck, you did hear about Larry Flynt petitioning the US Congress for a bail-out, didn't you? All the while, laughing all the way to the bank. Of course, his bank is one that's NOT failing, LOL!

    Be Well!
    ECS Dave
  • tom
    You would do well to interview the top 3 webmasters. Promise confidentiality - no names. Sell the audio.

    Who better to model than the mega successful porn kings. They are masters at baiting hungry customers , blogging and flogging , enjoying joint ventures , creating great videos , relationship building, and all of the long, hard tools that are so necessary to learn how to use to be a success.

    Please.....this is a dangerous subject to enter.....be safe....wear protection.
  • Jay
    Nice. You definitely picked the right dudes to follow.

    Nasty Dollars are also the same dudes who run Fling, Bang Bros, and Reality Kings, among others.

    There's definitely a ton to be learned from them. If you meant hosting as far as they host the affiliate content like viddys, banners, etc...that's very common.

    Looking forward to your "research results". lol

    Cheers man
    Jay
  • that's funny...

    they do do things differently.... they make a ton of money!

    it's good to take note!

    thanks for the info!


    DBK
  • Glad you took it the right way Justin.

    I say stuff like that on my blog all the time and people seem to like a bit of innuendo, so long as it is witty and not well... evil.

    Anyway, glad you were laughin' and not doing anything else.

    Gary
  • Good job doing the "research" for this. It's smart to learn from the big dogs. Porn has been the "unstated" driving force online since AOL's adult chat room's built AOL.

    Back in 1998 my software company was hired to fix the data structure for a payment processing company that was crashing 2-3 times a day for 15-20 minutes. They were losing $50,000 every time their system went down and they were processing those $29.99 a month payments.

    A whole coaching business could be built around WDPD (what does porn do) Though the gambling guys are just as good.

    Doug
  • Perhaps the most controversial part of this post is that you used your affiliate link to point us to their program. Is that a recommendation?! And, if it isn't,...
  • Justin Brooke
    @Normal Joe... Was hillarious when I sent her one of my affiliate links through skype! She nearly jumped out of her chair in shock from what showed up when she clicked hahahaha

    @Gary LMAO
  • Oh Justin...

    What a freakin' genius you are! You tell your missus you are watching porn so you can study the marketing techniques. Awesome dude! Why didn't the Gazz-Man think of that?

    Seriously, pretty good thinking. Study what the mercilessly, shameless ones do and implement their obviously successful "techniques."

    Back to being frivolous - and in keeping with the theme - I think maybe a $29.69 per month price point would be rather appropriate. *sigh*

    Another SIGH coming - did you not consider changing your name tag brand for this particular blogpost? Er ..."Go Bigger."

    Sorry bud... but I just put up one of those "25 weird, bizarre things about me" posts at my own blog and I am still in that silly mindset.

    Gary
  • Good stuff Boogie! Glad we got peeps like you to do the research so I don't have to...but there is no doubt them guys/gals know what they are doing when it comes to making money, uplselling, and all the other types of online marketing.

    It's no wonder they have so much of the internet market share.

    Anyway...I'd definitely like to hear more from you on this and how you plan to implement it

    Smart move on canceling quickly lol..even though I'm sure Chaunna already knew what you were up to lol.

    Thanks dude.
  • michael in venezuela
    your open mindedness contributes tomy success.
    gracias amigo!
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