Lift13, Innovation Drivers XXX: Garion Hall [en]

Here are my live notes of the Lift Conference session “Innovation Drivers: XXX”. Keep an eye open for mistakes, inaccuracies, and other flakiness due to live-blogging.
Garion Hall, abbywinters.com

Showing us photos of their very normal-looking office. Wholesome and natural approach, successful! Focus on social responsibility (staff and models, risks and benefits, supportive, make sure they know what they’re getting into! also regarding customers, industry, society — easy to unsubscribe).

Enormously profitable 2004-2009. Rise of the YouPorn sites. Always focused on having a community (models, staff, members).

Adult industry:

– platform (case-study, traditional pay-site; packaging; subscription-based; SKU-based)
– content (traditional content still sells; UCG is getting bigger and bigger, and also “fake UCG”; conversions are the key measure of success of a product, but retention is key; strong reliance on affiliates, up to 70% of sales, 50% cut *steph-note: huge!!!*; mini-case-study: life-selector.com, pay per scene)
– traffic (traffic is eyeballs; basic SEO matters; own the traffic, make the money; build networks of pay sites; social networks are ineffective — keep getting their accounts pulled)
– billing (credit card is king; alternate payment methods like EU, BRIC; mobile network billing)

There case studies

1. cams & dating

– women with webcams
– pay per minute
– more for 1:1, less for spying, free for group

dating:
– women paid to participate and flirt
– some are bots
– very nichified
– pay to join, and make contact attempts

2. youporn sites

– one company bought up majors
– mishmash of platforms
– “user” generated
– free to visitors
– no real billing but ad revenue

3. mobile (skipping this)

These concepts can be applied elsewhere, business models are driven hard and fast, quickly discarded if unsuccessful. Low-quality code, lack of completeness. Marketplace model rising in popularity: AirBnB.

Future? More personal interactions, less-piratable content (cams/dating), less fragmentation but boutique sites will flourish, micro payments, increase in free content, reduction in creative quality, increase in technical quality, less money for performers and producers.

Members self-identify as 98% male, 2% female (but that is self-identifying).

Why don’t they offer female-oriented content? Big problem in the industry. *steph-note: maybe because women aren’t that visually-oriented when it comes to sex?*