My weekend History Lesson

[Hell Puppy]

Originally Posted by Peaches

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

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.

[Jace]

Originally Posted by Hell Puppy

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.

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....

[Toby]

Originally Posted by Jace

...I could not imagine having 120,000 people coming to my site a day and only making $900 a month from it....

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.

[Jace]

Originally Posted by Toby

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.

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

[gonzo]

Originally Posted by Jace

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

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

[Peaches]

Originally Posted by Hell Puppy

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.

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.

[Hell Puppy]

Originally Posted by Peaches

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.

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.