Business question for all.

[2muchmark2]

Just wondering:

Is business slow for you? If so, what are you doing about it?

We have downsized since 2008 and in 2010 learned to sharpen my pencil and cut spending like crazy.

Would be curious to hear some stories if anyone has some..!

[Toby]

Sales have been erratic. March and April were poor but May was very good and so far Sept has been as well. I'll probably finish down slightly for 2010, unless I have huge months the rest of the year. That will be my first decline since getting back into the biz in '03

[RawAlex]

Sales are all over the place. It's been a tough year.

I think that the porn industry has ended up in a position where there is a shortage of processing, aggressive scrubbing, and Visa and Mastercard banks that are less and less likely to allow an online charge to go through. Too many people with maxed out cards, and too many financial institutions limiting what can be done with the remaining limits.

When you put all of those pieces together, sales tend to get very poor. Then all of a sudden, one thing changes (and there is only one that can change easily) and we get reasonably good sales for a while. Then boom, the switch gets turned back off and we are done.

I have noticed over the last 12 months that sales come in clusters from the same processors over multiple programs. I might see way more Epoch sales for a while over different programs, and then they go quiet. Then CCBill sales will pick up for a while, and then they go quiet. It is enough to make one wonder.

More than anything, keeping a sharp eye on the bottom line, keeps costs reasonable, and working smarter (and harder for a change) is key in this environment.

As a side note, cam programs seem to be having a harder time these days, mostly because MFC seems to have eaten up much of the market. If the girls are giving it away for free... who is going to pay?

[tony404]

this is the first year, we are really feeling it hard. its running extremely hot and cold.

[EmporerEJ]

Originally Posted by Toby

Sales have been erratic. March and April were poor but May was very good and so far Sept has been as well. I'll probably finish down slightly for 2010, unless I have huge months the rest of the year. That will be my first decline since getting back into the biz in '03

I'm thinking about moving into Toby's spare room.
(I'll bring donuts!)

[2muchmark2]

Interesting... sales slowed alot since 2008 for us but became stable for most of 2010, at least until late summer. August was ok but so far September has been really bad. We also stopped advertising which didn't help. We've been installing updates for our clients and will take advantage of the quiet time to write some more code. Fingers crossed for October..!

[sunfunbill]

I don't understand the past month. I've been slowly building up my network of sites and each month got better,,,,,, until a month ago.

Now, with even more traffic and targeted at that, sales are about half of what they were a month ago.

Funny thing is it was like in one day, not slowly. Just boom, half of sales each day for a month. As others said here, something strange is going on,,,,,

[RawAlex]

Bill, you have to remember that the adult online industry has a few choke points, and one of them is billing. Most companies are dependant on only a few different billing options, CCBill, Epoch, Netbilling, etc. These companies in one form or another process much of the adult industry.

So if one of them isn't processing as well as usual, your sales drop like a rock. The more dependent you are on one or the other, the more likely you are to feel the pain when the slow down.

Why do they slow down? Well, there are many theories. First and foremost, if their overall chargeback rate goes up, or fraudulent sales get too high, they are forced to scrub harder. While I haven't had it confirmed, some processors block out entire countries or regions at times to manage risk. They can also become extremely fussy about material on the submit page matching the cardholder information, leading to issues. It has also been suggested (but never proven) that some processors have limits to the transactions (dollars or number) that they can process in a period, and that the scrub is adjusted to keep them within these boundries.

Further, on the other side, many card issuers are hesitant to allow for online purchases at all, and often decline perfectly good cards with all valid information to "protect their clients". As banks become more concerned with credit limits and tighten things down, they are also looking to limit their risks. Online purchases (especially via known porn processors) is a risk.

You also have to remember that many people are pushing their card limits these days. Rebills are a little harder to get done.

There are plenty of reasons, but if you are depending much on one processor, don't be shocked if sometimes it goes very cold indeed.