The Triannual Report - A Catman Rant

[Hell Puppy]

Originally posted by Catman@Apr 1 2004, 01:24 PM
Yes its me. I'll answer the other thread in a minute. : )

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Here's some thoughts on todays state of things from my perspective. Your views may of course differ. Feel free to leave any comments if you like. I know I'm preaching to my teachers here and guys that have done better than me but I feel inclined today to rap like the old Catman : ) for the fun of it. It's April fools day.. So hey, ; ) Thanks for your indulgence.

Things are pretty bad now days. The money making paysites are few if any. A lot of sinking vessels. Looking for fools to come on board and help bail water. Many old school ones died around the fall of 2002. Memberships stopped converting. Recurrings went to hell. Members found TGPs and Kazaa and bailed. Probably a Kazaa - File Sharing, Visa, MC, Scrubbing, Shaving, Saturation kind of thing. I don't know for sure. But things started to slide in the spring of 2001 and went fully to hell in the fall of 2002.

During that major Visa MC debacle in Oct. 2002. Things just stopped converting and recurring. I couldn't do shit. In Oct 2002 I had twenty trial signups with a CC Bill recurring sponsor that always converted well. I got one recurring out of 20 that lasted one month. My recurrings also dropped like a rock all around. Now I have never been a big player but that is some pretty bad conversions.

BTW, anyone know when Dean is having another contest. Hehe. ; ))

Everybody sing: "Those were the days my friends, I thought they'ed never end, I singed and danced forever and a day, lalaladeda, lalaladeda, lalala forever and a day"

Aah Yes 1999... It was a very good year. It was the last really easy year. 2000 wasn't too bad but a change was in the wind. Domains were still bought with optimism and abundence. We had big developmental plans. We were gonna develope them all. Now I've sold a few, let a lot go, and really only kept those with type ins. The crash of 2000 killed the domain market.

Yes Bob Dylan, "Things have changed"

Today, memberships are becoming very hell to sell. Recurings are dieing or short lived. Free porn is all over hell. Lots of quality free porn. I see free tgp sites now days that are better than some paysites. I seen one TGP whose front page was over 1M in size in graphics with like 100+ clear large thumbs to free pics all leading to a ton of easily navigitable free content. I dont know how the guy makes a buck with BW overhead like that. Yet he had tons of raving letters from surfers who of course love it.

Sites like that are killing us all. I guess this is the new "loss-leader" mentality. You now have to lose money for a while in order to build a traffic base. You have to give the surfer one hundred large thumbs up front, offer them a beer, suck their dick and then hope that maybe, just maybe they stop back so you can build a traffic base and someday jack their butts for a buck again. Why should they. I wouldn't either.

Thanks a lot TGP founding father guys. Thanks a lot. You paved the way for yourself but all your rules spoiled the surfer. Now there are 12,962 TGPs at last count. And 3,656 lame paysites. ; (

The only thing worth a damn anymore is type in hits. But I see many type in barons have given up selling memberships and instead sell them to these SE sites that in essence then sell to other WMs! Selling to newbie WMs rather than newbie surfers. That's not a good sign folks. They can't sell type ins. You can still sell type ins but you got to know how and to who. A type in at best today is worth what a basic jacked around unique was a couple years back.

Now days one has to sell to those WMs who still think they can sell memberships or think they can. AHUM [clearing throat] yes to WMs, not to surfers. Thankfully some WMs still can sell memberships. Or at least some think they can. [newbies buying traffic for a while] Weve gone from selling to surfers to selling to newbies who buy traffic and a dream. In a round a bout way.

And SEs. Hahahahahahaah what a sad joke. They are about dead for us too. They are now all pay per listing. Google charges 5 cents a hit. Hehe what a deal. Type in traffic isn't even worth that! And type in traffic kicks any SE traffic's ass any day. Still, I'm giving that SE PPL stuff a whirl lately but like every other aspect of this biz the margins are very slim. Filter too much with your adds and your kicked out for too low a CTR. Jack too many surfers and you surely lose money at 5 cents a pop. Why didnt we all start SEs. back in 1996-1997-1998?

And file sharing, doesn't help the cause. That may have hurt the worst. It continues to hurt a lot. It's all free. Surfers are smarter. Pitches are getting old and tired. They have all been to sponsor X 365 times each on ave. Some programs give the surfer all their sites for the price of one and they still they don't buy. Why should they it's all out there free. And Newsgroups hell I won't even go there.

And the Paris Hilton Video. I'm sorry but that didn't sell for beans. Hell I was the FIRST one to buy her type in domains. I could of bought em all in the summer of 2003 when I was the only one who seen potential in her long before the scandal. The ONLY one taken at that point was parishilton.com. I bought a few in July. Things exploded with her video scandal. But you know what, I made more off selling some of her type in domains to other WMs than I did selling her to surfers! Even though she was number one in the engines and got mega type in hits. Celebrity domains are dying. Celebrity sites. Used to do well. Now, the few remaining are almost conversion dead. Its sad to see. I had high hopes and some pretty good typein shit. But, it did ok for a while anyhow.

And chatboards.. yeah chatboards are just for shits and giggles now days and maybe to share a "toast" to the old days. That is fine. I gave up chatboards completely about 30 months back. I had to get some work done. Boards for some reason really suck up my time when I get involved in them. Besides I am STILL mad at myself I was blabbing on Netpond/YNot when I should of been spamming them SE's in the 90's. : )

Anyhow nice board here at Oprano. I aint sucking up but this is one of the fastest loading, tightest chat board scripts I have seen. Good to see all the old WMs. I think I'll hang out here a bit. : )) Ahh we have all matured a bit. We're all old friends. That's what I see on this board.

Feels nice to bang out a post again. Hopefully I'm not too long winded. If so just skip my posts. Deep down I still get a kick out of posting : )

Anyhow just some honest thoughts in retrospect. : )

I edited the heck out of this. Else it would of been twice as long.

Serge, The "annual report" from the trenches was a little longer in coming this time. ; ))) It's a full time job paying the gas bill now days. ; (((

Have a PROFITABLE day! : )

Can someone tell me what this says in 3 lines or less? I dont have time to read it.

I did quote the whole thing only because I know GonZo is dying to do some quotes from hell...