Making money off the iPhone revolution isn't easy. But if you've got patience and creativity, you can turn this new market into a profitable new opportunity.
Here are a few things you should know:
There are tons of potential customers. Pornography on cell phones - including ordinary phones, iPhones, and their rivals - is expected to become a $3.5 billion market by 2010, according to the British firm Juniper Research.
Google Trends, which measures online search activity, reports that searches for "iPhone porn" skyrocketed throughout 2008. The most hits came in the U.S., followed by Norway (!), the U.K., and Canada.
At the moment, however, iPhones are a small part of the big picture. While Apple has sold more than 13 million iPhones, that's a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions of cell phones in the world.
But there are some very good reasons for porn purveyors to focus on the iPhone and the iPod Touch (which has similar capabilities, just without phone service).
For one, an iPhone isn't cheap. That means people who have one are likely to have money to spare - and spend on porn.
For another, the iPhone's larger screen offers a much better viewing experience than ordinary cell phones. "The playback is superior to most other phones on the market," said Jay Quinlan of OCCash. "I think it will be the preferred device for a mobile porn user."
An iPhone is not a laptop. The iPhone allows users to surf porn sites without a laptop. Think about all the potential customers: Frequent travelers. Roommates who share a computer. Teenagers whose parents monitor their Internet use. And anyone who's ever bored on the subway and doesn't mind who looks over their shoulder.
Good deal. But think of what iPhone users see when they visit your website. Is your site specifically geared toward mobile devices? Or will users have to deal with several minutes of annoying navigation before they can get a glimpse of a single boob?
Navigation on a small screen isn't the only problem. Free porn sites - including thumbnail galleries and video sites - often fail to work, said Bobby Gonzalez of National Pornographic. "Even paysite tours and members areas don't load fast or correctly on iPhones," he said.
What to do? Consider creating a site geared specifically for cell phones with appropriate-sized images and video.
You can add the .mobi extension to your existing domain name or add the word "mobile." OCCash, for example, created its own mobile site www.FilthFreaksMobile.com, which charges a recurring fee of $8.99 a month.
In an online posting, Quinlan said 68 percent of customers were staying on past the first month, with 60 percent rebilling after that.
"It's a small change that people will keep on their cards and forget about," Quinlan told AVN Online. "You can bill in Europe via SMS. If that becomes legal in the States, that is where the market is poised to explode."
Watch and learn from the masters. Xgoes.mobi offers a wide variety of live X-rated webcam content. SkinVideo and OneTapPorn have also geared up for iPhones. And several leading porn purveyors - including Digital Playground, Vivid, and Penthouse - are embracing iPhones and the mobile revolution.
Before you jump into the space, check out these sites to see what they do right - and wrong.
The best is yet to come. The iPhone knows when you tilt it and when you touch it. Just think of the possibilities! Damon Brown sure has.
Brown, a columnist and author of Porn & Pong: How Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider and other Sexy Games Changed Our Culture, said the iPhone has amazing potential for interactivity. But much of it is unexplored.
It's been several years since DVDs allowed porn viewers to watch the action from different angles. Why not do that with an iPhone?
"If you tilt it a certain way, you might get a different kind of camera angle," Brown said. "There are lots of places we could go with the touch feature too, like teledildonics, being able to have a digital capture of your lover and be able to touch them and have a reaction on the other side."
The challenge is that Apple has an iron grip on applications for the iPhone, he said, and the company doesn't think it's nice to be naughty.
"It's like putting porn on YouTube," he said. "You might be able to get away with it for a while, but when you get to a certain point, it'll get yanked off."
With all the limitations, should porn webmasters even jump into the iPhone world? Absolutely, Brown said. "I say go ahead and take advantage of it."
This article originally appeared in the April 2009 issue of AVN Online. To subscribe, visit AVNMediaNetwork.com/subscribe.
