My weekend History Lesson
 

Don't know why but ...

http://www.bntnews.com/opranoflat/oprano_flat_500.htm

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

Yeah flat boards really sucked. They were hard as fuck to follow. Even a BBS was threaded on dialup.

Im not sure why community tools so long to get to the same place we were in DOS 13 years ago.

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

the only lesson I can see from this is that a flat board was the worst idea in the history of forums on the internet....so much unorganization to it, i don't know how you all dealt with it

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

I actually liked the flat boards. It did make it harder to keep up but I still enjoyed it. Like the threaded boards better now but have fond memories of the old flat boards.

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

Any of us would piss off 99 surfers to convert 1 in 100 ;-)


Vick Thong, tha tha tha thong...
Tue, 10 Jul - 11:10:40 24.180.171.175 Post #: 436


Alex, Nick is right....
KK is right....
Webdad is right.....
I am right.....
Cohen was right.....

and the present crew is a bunch of amateurish morons, that's all
;-)))
Serge
Tue, 10 Jul - 12:14:16 12.89.183.195 Post #: 488


Well my next question was going to be how many bookmarkers porno.com has...
******************************

Here is the more important stat....

When I bought porno.com it got 6500 daily Type ins....

Now it gets in excess of 25,000 daily Type Ins

I want FRESH eyes EVERY day. Me and sponsor will always make more money that way.

If all 25,000 came back EVERY day.......how much would that translate to in business??

Fresh eyes are the KEY.

Webfather Evidence-Eraser.com - $40/sale and $10 2nd tier payouts!


It is the message that matters, not the delivery system http://www.oprano.com/msgboard/images/smilies/ok.gif

Many folks found gold just laying in the riverbeds of California but the ones who made it really rich dug deep down into the side of the mountain...

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

How many do you piss off now to convert one?

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

I would love to know who the moron was that decided selling a cookie eraser was a good thing for adult webmasters to do

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

I don't convert http://www.oprano.com/msgboard/images/smilies/blink.gif

Although I have been known to tell off a client here and there every now and again, sometimes they remain clients, sometimes they don't, but there is only so much I am going to take from a customer and even less I am going to take from a "potential customer".

But Jen has been known to piss off a few here and there and when I ask her why she ended up being rude she says "What do I care, they weren't gonna buy anything, they just wanted to be bitchy" http://www.oprano.com/msgboard/images/smilies/ok.gif

The customer is always right, except when he's not.

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

Then what do you base this supposed lesson on? If you dont convert then I dont understand. "Us" meant everyone else?

Help me understand...I hear a lot of "glittering generalisms" like that dickhead over on the Zoo talking about newsgroups having TOS agreement.

Are you talking out your ass too?

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

That was a quote from Vick back in 2001 and back then I was learning the biz and how to convert a surfer to a sale, so back then it was an "us".

It wasn't my quote, it was Vick's. I believe it was meant to be funny and reflected the attitude of the webmasters on the board back in 2001, as did the quote from Serge and webfather, although I find webmasters "fresh faces" to ring very true.

And, a 1:100 conversion would still be a decent conversion today for many folks.

All I was saying was just because it was a flat board does not mean there wasn't a shitload of good reading there, whether you agree with it or not.

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

Just out of curiosity, has Serge always bitched about the same thing, even way back then?

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

And I believe the main lesson from Vick's quote is that the ones that are important are the one's that buy.

You can waste a shitload of time trying to cater to everyone under the sun. The only ones that matter are the ones that buy.

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

True dat!!

Desperation gets you nowhere.

If you are going to be a whore... for fuck sakes... at least be a good one!!


Sabby:flash:

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

"The worm that destroys you is the temptation to agree with your critics,
to get their approval. " - Dialog from Clarice Starling written by Thomas Harris in the novel "Hannibal"


Thanks NC State ;-)

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

Only 1:100 or less conversions Ive seen in the past 2 years have been from SE traffic.

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

hell, with the amount of spam in the SE's these days, 1:100 is fucking great for SE

i remember 2-3 years ago when I would get 1:20 off SE traffic, now I am lucky if I get 1:200

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

Traffic is only one element of conversions. AI can still convert better then 1 in 100 with the right site. It not only takes a great site, with a hot girl, but solid processing.

Quality traffic has all been bastardized, and the large SEs are squeezing pennies out of the industry every day.

How many free site webmasters make good livings in 2006 compared to 3 years ago, or even 5.

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

Those that have learned to research and adapt. Its a lot tougher than it ever used to be.

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

spoken like someone who wasn't there!!
I'm surprised at you saying something so ignorant! Millions was made through relationships made at ynot then condom then oprano ... so it doesn't work like that now, but back then it was the best solution for the people involved.

Yes flat boards were technologically behind, but communities don't thrive on technology, they are fed by people.

Oprano's has a threaded board ... but the old flat board was busier.

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

The board is merely a tool for the community. There were communities in the 70's based on CB-radio.

By today's standards the flat board technology sucks. Just as 300 bps sucks, CGA sucks, 5.25" floppy disks suck, etc.

I guess there's some sort of retro appeal as it takes some people back to the "good ole days" in much the same way as people like to play Pacman and Asteroids still even though they're on machines capable of running Halo 3.

However, just as in those cases, it only takes a few minutes to scratch the retro itch and realize it sucks as bad as GonZo's polyester disco shirts.

Dont believe it? Switch the board back to flat and see how long before people scream. Oh, wait, someone already did that....I dont think it made it to lunchtime.

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

I would love to see some real numbers. My own observations suggest that less than 2% of those active in the business today make more than $50K without having their own paysite(s).

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

I couldnt stand to read a flat board no more than I could stand working with the Waffle BBS interface.

It was busier too...and it sucked.

Grey shades sucked for looking at pictures too but there were rabid fans of gifdot that were printing those fuckers out postersize!

The old dos bbses were as busy as GFY is now. The tools were robust. It was all done with dial up and netmail systems, automated transfers and offline mail readers.

Too many of us are creatures of habit and if you cant put things in front of us in an organized fashion...we just dont use them.

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

Those babes were hot on greenbar.

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

I still have a box of that shit around here along with a case of ribbons.

It sucks!

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

I think you're wrong. Let me think about it and I'll come up with a number that I think's closer, but it's at least 20X the 2% you think.

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

So you think 40% are making $50K or more?

I call bullshit.

My number may be low, but your's is WAY WAY WAY too high.

I'm defining "active" as anyone who is out there trying to figure out a way to rustle up a hit to send to a sponsor to make a buck. I'll guestimate there's around 15,000 of those at any given time....it could be much higher especially when college is in session.

And when I say $50K, I'm talking solely what they derive off of adult. No day jobbers.

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

Yes, I do think it's closer to 40% IF you take away those that have dayjobs. I know what *I* was making with free sites and even in the worst of times was making more than $50K and I'm not the sharpest pencil in the box ;)

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

Try it now.

It's a function of traffic.

"Back in the day", get a yahoo or dmoz listing while they were doing AOL and you see 10,000 primo hits a day to a tiny free site, fling traffic to appropriate paysite and watch the checks roll in.

After that, started taking a lot of work to build even a good looking site that was unique up to 3000 or so a day.

Now, on purely organic traffic, you can bust ass to get a true "free site" to even 100 or so hits a day. Wanna try to make $50K off a bunch of those? Look for long hours.

Everyone floods to TGP's because there's traffic there. But the content is more and more saturated and as we're discussing in other threads, the conversion rates are absolutely insane unless you OWN the TGP and can thus filter off the cream. Your margins get awfully small after you pay the hosting bill for a month's worth of feeding The Hun's surfers a bunch of movie galleries.

Search engines? You can pay your way in, tricky tricky margins there. The SE game is not for the meek these days. Gotta bust your ass to stay a move or two ahead of them.

Even spam, malware and other dark hat type stuff isn't doing what it used to. Not sure the juice is worth the squeeze there unless you're a principle in whatever you're sending it to.

There are some pockets out there, review sites, blogs, etc. And the big TGPs and linklists will always do just fine for themselves. Bottom line though is these days you actually have to produce something compelling to get that free traffic.

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

I will go on record and say that TGP traffic is some of the worst traffic that we get flowing to our site...the conversions are horrible and 99% of the time the surfer is just clicking on links looking for free shit

I have a good friend here in Atlanta that runs a 120k tgp, you know what he makes? about $900 a month....I could not imagine having 120,000 people coming to my site a day and only making $900 a month from it....

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

Which is why I stick to niche TGPs. My TGP's get a fraction of that in daily visitors and each do far better than $900 a month. Even TGP traffic can be filtered and targeted.

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

it is a porn star tgp, so it is a niche, but an extremely wide niche

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

Tabithas ass is anything but wide... buffed maybe but not wide!

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

Or you have to actually WORK at it, like you said. ;) I still think if I wanted to work the 15 hours a day I was working when I was bringing in 6 figures, I could EASILY bring in $50K a year.

Re: My weekend History Lesson
 

I agree.

You have the work ethic, know where to go to get what you need, have the right connections to network with and most improtantly experience.

There's a real honest to goodness perception still among a lot of newbies that porn on the web is a way to "sit on your ass and make money". Oh, and yes, that's a direct quote....I shit you not.