“Free XXX”, “no credit card needed”, “free passwords to hot XXX sites”; these are phrases that are now proliferating the online adult entertainment market.  Does it seem like everywhere that we look now there is free smut easily available for the masses to get off on?  So then, how does this become a problem for adult webmasters?

While there are many sources of free smut on the Internet including P2P file-sharing services, newsgroups, and password trading sites, the number one supplier of free porn is the thumbnail gallery post (TGP).  To quote our very own pornJester, “TGPs are popping up faster than Clinton’s cock in a room full of interns”.  In the beginning, the idea behind the TGP was an ingenious marketing technique.  They were meant as a sample of what the surfer “could” get if they purchased a membership to a pay site.  The free smut was there to entice the surfers to whip out their credit cards in order to “see more”.  It was enough just to wet their appetites without giving them enough to fully get off.  The galleries would consist of maybe 10 teaser pics and the banner for the paysite.  In the beginning, the galleries were mostly softcore and niche material was extremely difficult to find in large amounts. 

So, how have TGPs evolved into what we see today?  The market has been penetrated with more and more adult webmasters just trying to get a piece of the money pie that online smut provides.  In order to compete, webmasters started offering surfers more and more in terms of free porn including hardcore pics and movie clips, in turn causing widespread market saturation.  Now the TGPs are full of galleries that contain enough hardcore and niche porn to get the surfers off quickly and painlessly.  So, while the TGP traffic is extremely large in volume, its quality has increasingly diminished.

How do we get back on track?  How do we bring these TGPs back to the glory days where traffic generated from them was worth something more and paysites were being pumped full of horny visitors ready to charge their perversions to their credit cards?  We saw the emergence and subsequent failure of the TGP2.  The idea behind TGP2 was that if the galleries just offered less pictures, the surfers would not be satisfied and would in turn pay to see more.  This really was not the solution as while the galleries contained less pictures or movie clips, what they did feature was hardcore and still pleasing enough to give the surfers their “fix”.  What will be next?  TGP3? 

The solution could possibly be as simple as going back to the basics.  Instead of giving the surfers everything they need to get off, lets just tease them.  In this instance, the weight of change rests on the shoulders of the gallery makers.  Instead of just offering fewer pictures, the gallery makers should offer less hardcore material.  If a gallery contained mostly softcore teasing non-nude pictures and then a few nude pictures, there would be something left to the imagination of the surfer and they would either have to pay for more or move on.  Now, if every gallery were like this, then the surfer would have no choice but to pay.  If all the TGPs conformed to this standard then the quality of traffic would improve as conversion ratios and click-throughs increased.

How can this theory of change become a reality?  What needs to be done to make these softer and less graphic galleries the norm?  First of all, the TGP owners need to accept these types of galleries.  Some TGPs will reject galleries that do not provide enough hardcore material.  If TGPs start accepting these “teaser” galleries and start restricting the number of hardcore galleries then the road of change would be paved for the gallery makers.  Next, it is up to the sponsor programs to offer their webmasters the content that they need to make the softcore galleries, and less of the hardcore content that is infiltrating the TGPs as we see today.  Also content providers could place tighter restrictions on their content licenses in order to keep their hardcore sets behind password protected member areas and in turn increasing the value of their content and models. However, the most important thing that needs to be done for the whole concept to be successful is that everyone needs to conform to a new standard.  If this is done then it will force more surfers to pay for hardcore material.

Could this vision of softcore galleries be the solution to the abundance of free hardcore porn available today?  While it may not be an overnight success, if done properly, it will most likely in the long run be the more profitable route to take.  What we all know is that changes need to be made in this industry before we are left with very little to profit on.  The smart webmasters will prevail and I am sure that we will be witness to some revolutionary changes in the industry in the next couple of years.  What we have suggested here could possibly be one of them.