How in the world is the porn industry staying in business?

Advertising. How else?

Human nature makes the industry have an ongoing existence

I'm sure they are getting more customers for online sales than they were when they were selling VHS copies of their videos.

It’s all those people who sign up for the cheap initial offer then forget to cancel their subscription.

Porn films are business cards for the porn actor's escorting work these days OP. Porn studios don't make money from the films really now. Certainly not like the Falcon $50 time period you mention.

[quote]In the old days, we used to buy Falcon VHS tapes at $50 a pop.

For those prices, I hop[e you were getting more than one 'pop.'

r5 When was the last time you saw a porn 'film?'

Today R7.

Oh I see - you don't like the word "film" R7.

What would you prefer?

Older movies used to have a plot and actors with just a few sex scenes. They had actors who could carry a movie like Jack Wrangler and Jeff Stryker. Now, there is no plot just sex which is cheap to produce. I am not complaining cause six minutes of porn is enough to do me for awhile.

[quote]Unless they are paying the models only $50 per scene.

Ding ding ding.

Does Falcon even exist now R11?

R12 They do, but the scenes on their site look like every other porn site.

"And while I do pay for subscriptions, I’m sure I’m in the minority on this."

Any individual subscription porn site doesn't need a majority; it just needs "enough" and some have ads on top of that. I still pay for some porn, even though I get a lot of free stuff too. I do, you do. We can't be the only two.

I don't pay for porn and haven't for almost 15 years. There is plenty of free stuff to sift through to get my rocks off when needed.

I only pay for one site because (1) they have the content that I'm interested in, and (2) they do a better job than pretty much any other site at preventing their stuff from being available on torrenting or free sites.

I’ve never subscribed. What are the benefits? What are the best sites? There are some porn scenes that are five minutes long and I’d like to see an extended version if it exists. Is that why everyone subscribed?

[quote][R12] They do, but the scenes on their site look like every other porn site.

The real question is when they'll digitially remaster their classics into vibrant HD or even 4K resolution.

Like everything else on the Internet, revenue comes from advertising and data mining. Your information is the commodity.

[quote] Older movies used to have a plot and actors with just a few sex scenes. They had actors who could carry a movie like Jack Wrangler and Jeff Stryker. Now, there is no plot just sex which is cheap to produce.

We had FACES then!

[quote]Older movies used to have a plot and actors with just a few sex scenes. They had actors who could carry a movie like Jack Wrangler and Jeff Stryker. Now, there is no plot just sex which is cheap to produce.

I have to admit that I do enjoy the "story" that old timey pron had, as thin and contrived as it usually was. It also used to carry through a theme, like a sailor on shoreleave and such.

Pron today is all like Sean Cody where it's just two or more guys having sex. While they're often hot, it was fun there was a story.

They have to not only complete not only with all the free to view online porn out there but with individuals with an OnlyFans or giving it away for free on Chaturbate. Anyone can be a pornstar from the comfort of their home now.

As for subscribing I have a couple of favorite sites that I check to see if they have posted a “just got to have it” new scene. I’ll subscribe for a month to download it and whatever else is new that I like, and then unsubscribe. So, I usually end up subscribing to two or three sites a year for a month. Of course half the time I forget to cancel, so they get two months out of me before I turn it off. Also with a guy’s OnlyFans I usually subscribe for a month, look at all his content, then cancel before the second month and move on to someone else.

R16, what site?

I’m with you, r21.

Without a doubt.

[quote]We had FACES then!

We had PUBIC HAIR then! (And no tattoos.)

R10 R21 There are various studios that still release what would be considered " films" on occasion.

Old-school Raging Stallion Studios actually produced nine such titles in 2022, and they just released "Sweat Fuck Repeat" last week. .. Cockyboys, Icon Male, Dragon Media, Falcon, Lucas Entertainment etc. etc. have all produced some kind of film i(n the 2-hour range) within the near term. .. Naked Sword Originals often collaborates and markets these titles at their site as well. .. A couple that I actually enjoyed watching were "Painful Love" (Icon Male) and "A Murdered Heart" (Naked Sword). .. And while the videos produced by Disputive Films usually only feature one duo, these usually have a storyline and come in around 45 minutes long. A very entertaining and well-acted "short film" from them that I watched was "Guy Talk."

Those $500-$800 average per money shot payouts of yesteryear are long gone. From what I've read the average per scene now is somewhere between $100-$200, unless you're one of the tiny minority of what they now consider real stars.

Not everyone is a free loader as you thought. If you have a decent job, you won't spend time on searching internet for free videos. You simply pay the membership instead. It saves time.

"I’ve never subscribed. What are the benefits? What are the best sites? There are some porn scenes that are five minutes long and I’d like to see an extended version if it exists. Is that why everyone subscribed?"

If you're content with free porn, of which there's tons, there are no benefits. Best sites? It's porn; that's highly personal depending on what you like. There's sites from individual studios/producers (e.g., Hothouse, Tim Tales, Sean Cody) , and then there's sites like Malepayperview/AEBN.net that has thousands of films from myriad studios and allows you to pay per minute - i.e., you purchase minutes - for example, $19.99 for 200 minutes of viewing - and you can pull up videos and watch the whole thing or just 3 minutes.

Why subscribe? Reliability, convenience, lack of ads, video quality (on average, not always better than free), you REALLY like the content of a certain site and want full access to it - without having to hunt it down on free sites (often easy, sometimes not).

I'm by no means telling people to buy porn. We all know there's a shit ton of free porn out there. Yet, people still do buy porn for a variety of reasons.

yes you are, r29.

I am, R30?

I installed a porn blocker yesterday. Thew away the password.

Little to nothing I've seen in the last 10 years or more is worth spending one penny on.

I’m guessing the real money is in the specialty stuff.

How we consume porn has changed dramatically over the years too. If you wanted to view porn 25 years ago you'd have to head down to a porn shop, browse the shelves, select your VHS/DVD, pay for it, take it home, then pop it into your player and settle in for some fun.

That VHS/DVD would last you years, hell some of you probably still have a collection of them. We used to follow a particular porn star and eagerly await their next release, which usually were in the 2 or 3 trailers at the end.

Nowadays, we have our mobile phones to hand and at the click of a button we have millions of scenes available to us. Sadly, and I really loved the corny stories that Falcon used to make, those days of sitting down to a 90 minute, 3 scene feature are over.

One of my old friends used to watch those porn feature length VHSs, as if they were a film, following the story line. It was very funny.

I really enjoyed those days and yer they were real porn stars back then.

The two websites that I came this.close to subscribing to were Sean Cody and Fratmen. In both cases, it was to get access to their archives. I was missing some of the old Sean Cody stuff from when the site was good, but then right before I was about to subscribe, MindGeek came in and deleted about 1800 videos from the website's library, basically what I was interested in, so that became a no-go.

And I was also thinking about subscribing to the bygone Fratmen. In that case, I hesitated because the customer service seemed sketchy, plus they didn't allow downloading (and the best resolution they had was 480p). Bananaguide only gave them a score of 66. Now,, the entire Fratmen website appears to have been shutdown. You'd think they'd at least try to license or sell this old content to someone else that could do it right.

I've noticed that the people who run SayUncle have begun licensing some material from a few former porn studios that have content relating to their focus (e.g. Hot Lads Hot Dads, Randy Blue, Cocksure Men, etc.). Seems like a good strategy to extend what they make available to subscribers.

I think the last porn I actually bought direct via online purchases was about 15 years ago. Some of these DVDs were from the guy who ran the old BukBuddies studio as well as several others from Pink Bird Media, the old Dink Flamingo Active Duty material.

[quote]I installed a porn blocker yesterday. Thew away the password.

Because self-restraint wasn't an option?

Which site R16?

[quote]MindGeek came in and deleted about 1800 videos from the website's library,

[quote] Bananaguide only gave them a score of 66.

Yeah, I don’t understand any of this.

I don't know OP, but it keeps me awake nights wondering

Yer.

R39 Bananaguide is an independent website that gives reviews of gay subscription porn sites, categorizes them by type of content, ranks them based on pros-cons (viewer experience), and gives info on some of their policies and how they operate. (See link.)

In 2020, Sean Cody's new owner, MindGeek, just up and removed 1800+ videos from the website's library without any explanation. This totally gutted what they had to offer, and most everything from their "classic era" 2001-14 was no longer available. Work done by several well-known models who'd helped define the site completely disappeared. .. Eventually people surmised that it must have something to do with record keeping to comply with with mandatory federal government reporting. MindGeek-Pornhub had been dealing with that issue, and people thought Sean Cody was being affected by this.

I must admit, when I see someone on the internet admit they actually pay for some porn subscription site I roll my eyes and think "this poor boy will die broke one day".

A sincere and heartfelt thank you, r42.

See, fellas, every once in a while these young ‘uns don’t mind helping out an Eldergay.

R43 Believe it or not, some of us actually applied ourselves in life, got an education, went back to get more education, have high salaries, and earn enough money to subscribe to 10 porn sites at once, take nice vacations, save money, and invest. We aren’t working at Walmart and paying for porn won’t bankrupt us.

Heyyyy, r45.

How YOU doin’?

R37 I wish it was that easy for me. Self restraint is easier said than done when you've been out of control for so long.

Most porn stars have pivoted to only fans and producing their own content.

Short answer, on a smaller scale level, is they can’t. I know two guys that used to produce & distribute porn in nyc - not one of the “big studios” more Latino Fan Club level (but not them).

They used to make a very good living shooting new scenes and repackaging old ones for VHS. Once vhs / dvd started to wane margins went way down, so production moved to Eastern Europe where all aspects were much cheaper (talent was almost never the most expensive component of a production). Their profit center shifted to of supplying pay-per-view content to hotels. Then laptops with fast internet killed that. They both basically got out of the business almost a decade ago.

^^ this was mostly, but not exclusively, straight porn.

He will be mist.

Those geniuses in the back office! They took the idols and smashed them! Stryker! Ryker! Branson! And who have we got now? A bunch of scrawny, tatted, fentanyl abdicated NOBODYS!

^ some of us find the trashy look hot.

R45, such great lengths you went to in the pursuit of knowledge, financial security, self betterment and....10 paid porn site subscriptions.

Onlyfans took over.

Who the fuck pays for subscriptions? No one under the age of fifty, surely.

I really like well done amateur stuff better. As soon as I see edited camera angles and lighting I am turned off. There is this one guy's just4 fans I pay for because the guys in it are nothing like you'd normally see in a porn video, which I find hot. To each his own, right? The guy himself is Irish I believe, middle aged and he fucks other younger to middle aged curious or closeted guys with their faces usually hidden. But they tend to be very passionate and rough at the same time. There is a lot of kissing which is hot to me - two men, not muscle queens or twinks, passionately kissing. And then he fucks them.

I really like well done amateur stuff better. As soon as I see edited camera angles and lighting I am turned off. There is this one guy's just4 fans I pay for because the guys in it are nothing like you'd normally see in a porn video, which I find hot. To each his own, right? The guy himself is Irish I believe, middle aged and he fucks other younger to middle aged curious or closeted guys with their faces usually hidden. But they tend to be very passionate and rough at the same time. There is a lot of kissing which is hot to me - two men, not muscle queens or twinks, passionately kissing. And then he fucks them.

We lose money on every video, but we make it up in volume.

For those of you worried about “forgetting to cancel”, there is usually an option to exchange a retail gift card for an anonymous subscription. That’s the only way I do it for precisely that reason. I just go buy say a $50 Target e-gift card and then flip it over for access. Their whole model seems to be designed around how top trick you into forgetting to cancel, and this solves the problem nicely. Also keeps your credit card number and personal info out of their hands.

R60 I have a premium credit card that I use for almost everything because I get tons of points and use it for travel. Then I have another backup credit card that I use for two reasons only: as a backup in case something happens to my main credit card, and for porn subscriptions. That way if one of those sites steals my number, it’s easy to get a replacement and not have to update my CC info on all my accounts.

[quote]fentanyl abdicated NOBODYS!

Oh, dear!

R60, I’m genuinely interested in hearing more about this. I tried with one of those Visa gift cards once and it didn’t work since my billing address didn’t match. (Obviously there isn’t a billing address on those.)

So I would love to know how that works with, say, an Amazon gift card or something.

TIA!

You could always pay with nature's credit card.

There's still a porn industry. e.g. OnlyFans is owned by Fenix International Ltd. with revenues approaching $1 billion.

I once looked into working for VS Media, which runs flirt4free, as the company was basically right in my backyard. They have a nice corporate office where 160 employees work. As I recall, they had other locations as well. There not even as big as Multi-Media LLC (chaturbate).

[quote]There not even as big as Multi-Media LLC (chaturbate).

Oh, DEAR!