Who would like to start one? I figure if they are still online they are still making money…maybe we can capture a niche market. I’ve got monies.

Trev runs one or two of these. I have no idea if he makes any money off of them though.

Number 1, I’d imagine you’d be pirating content… so you’re no better than a torrent site. In terms of legaility, expect DMCA take down notices etc.

Number 2, you’re going to need a ridiculous amount of bandwidth. If you haven’t already got access to cheap bandwidth (e.g. gbit cogent at $1.5/mbit 95th) then you’re going to struggle to profit.

How many times do you click an ad when wacking it on one of these sites? I would imagine if anything they are hobby sites or ways of upselling people to pay sites. Perhaps you can make money in that way?

Elaborate on this please

I think it might be fun as a pet project, but I don’t know how many people are truly making money on these things (other than if you can upsell to pay porn sites)

I would imagine the largest sites are owned by porn companies themselves… this way they have access to a massive range of content, they already have lots of network and server infrastructure, and they can provide the free service subsidised by those they upsell to the pay services

I’m not in the industry so i could be way of the mark though

In certain on-net Cogent locations, Cogent were doing $1.50 mbit 95th percentile on a gigabit port (probably needed a substantial commit though). By comparison, we pay $20/mbit for Level 3 but that’s just an example of the difference in bandwidth prices between cheap providers and better quality providers. Just saying, there’s no room for expensive transit if you’re going to be doing this kind of thing – you’ll want lots of Cogent, lots of peering.

They can make money.

Brazzers owns most of the big tube sites, but not all of them.

The few which are independently owned do make money. The big ones anyway.

Bandwidth isn’t much of an issue when you’re good buddies with adult hosting companies.

As far as #1.. there’s currently a class-action suit being compiled by a lot of webmasters.. so, I wouldn’t recommend that route. To OP, even if we don’t work together, still PM me/hit me up and I’ll advise you in the right direction.

#3.. the dating ads/webcam ads on those sites make bank, and so do the penis enlargement things. Also, CTR is a bit lower, but still relatively high. Just like any other site, if the ad is good, people will click.

Tube sites are mostly seen as a traffic feeder. Pornhub/tube8/keezmovies and a couple others mostly feed traffic to something owned by Brazzers, until recently when they allowed traffic/clicks to be purchased by the adult webmaster community. But those things all make $.

For example, with webcam ads.. they mostly use rev-share. All it takes is for 3-4 guys to spend 2-3k(which happens frequently) and they’ve made a pretty decent coin. Multiply that by 100.. and you have a good chunk of change.

I can’t really discuss how much redtube(the only site where I’m 100% in the know) spends on BW, but it’s not as much as you’d think. They’re on 87 machines with a 1gbit uplink unmetered to each as of a few months ago.

For comparison, tube traffic converts about the same as TGP traffic did/does. Usually around 1:700-1k on typical pay sites. And about 1:200-300 on webcam/dating stuff. Sometimes, much much better.. but that’s about the average. A good adult blog will convert around 1:100 or so for a good sponsor(something not overly saturated like Brazzers, but still quality content).

But there are more ways to monetize tube traffic. Like selling your traffic/ad space.

Awesome, thanks for some "proper" information – my advice/pointers was entirely guess work