Being in the business of buying and selling domains, I have a responsibility to know what's going on around me. What trends are developing in the marketplace, what's hot, and what's not. Accordingly I am investing into domains and businesses specific to those trends. To gain that insight or that competitive edge I personally attend the B2B and B2C tradeshows like Internext, Xbiz, Webmaster Access, AEE, etc. I am engaged in conversations with the company representatives and with the very consumers that are buying into the products and services. On the mainstream side of online marketing and advertising, I also visit Adtech and OMMA.
We already know sales across the board are down 40 to 60 percent. Industry-wide, those looking to survive this recession are working harder and smarter, and finding ways to operate on leaner margins of profit. As I was writing this article, I scanned the industry boards and forums. The vast majority continue to report low sales figures on most product and services, except unique niche fetish sites. They may appear boring and weird, or disgustingly nasty, but they are doing extremely well. Consider developing such domains as ObeseWhores.com, CuntFunk.com or ShockTheCock.com. Just keep that electric probe away from me.
Dating sites are doing even better. Overall paid memberships and conversion rates have substantially increased. As most networks continue enticing affiliates with higher payouts, dating sites began to pull back on the incentives and payouts. Why the sudden change? There are several logical reasons. As more people become unemployed, they are missing the social interactions they once had at work. Faced with the extra free time, they are spending even more of it on the computer, engaged in different sites and looking for activity partners. Hence consumers have turned to dating sites. So what do you think of the names LikeMindedAdults.com or ISocials.com?
You want to know what's doing even better? Tube sites. In October 2006 Google acquired the hottest online video property on earth, YouTube. Founders of Kazaa and Skype were developing an Internet TV service, The Venice Project, later renamed Joost. This trend has already exploded on the Web, but you get the sense there's a lot more to come. The success of YouTube brought with it YouPorn, PornHub, RedTube, and many others. It's now 2009, and YouTube continues to dominate. Forbes magazine recently projected the 2008 ad revenues for YouTube at $200 million. Imagine what kind of money Brazzers, the people behind PornHub, are generating.
Instant Porn Community evolved to meet that demand for tubes. IPC is a white-label system that makes it easier for webmasters to have their own tube sites. The site reads "Create your own high-traffic tube site in just minutes. You can use your existing affiliate and ad networks or market and sell your pages ad slots however you want. The only thing you need is a domain name." Speaking of high traffic, IPC's main tube BangBull.com had an Alexa traffic ranking of 3184. Even better, PornHub has a ranking of 51. Clearly they are kicking some serious butt. What ranking does your best site have?
There has been and will continue to be much debate about the state of the industry with the proliferation of tube sites. We sympathize with those that are adversely affected by their existence, but ironically we are the same ones that subscribe to ThePirateBay. The average webmaster looking to protect their sites from being scraped, can and should use all tools available to them. Free scripts are available to help you detect and block a large chunk of the public proxies. As you know, the Internet is in a constant state of evolution. It's fair to say that in five years time we will have forgotten all the issues we had with them. Love them. Hate them. They are clearly here to stay for now. The question is, what will you do next?
Alex Richards is founder of Seize The Domain, Inc.
This article originally appeared in the May 2009 issue of AVN Online. To subscribe, visit AVNMediaNetwork.com/subscribe
