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Think Globally
Posted On 12 Jul 2001
Stuart Livesey is part of the global writing staff here at The ADULTWEBMASTER Magazine. He lives in Australia where he works as an adult webmaster. All other information about Stuart is classified at this time. Seriously. We mean it.The World Wide Web was designed to allow people from any country in the world almost instant access to all types of information. The ‘www’ in just about every url reminds us of the international nature of the Web, yet today we are just as confined by the square we live in as we have ever been. It is time to throw off our self-imposed shackles and start thinking globally, because out there is a vast, relatively untapped market for the adult industry on the Web.
Porn is International
Many in the industry feel that the porn market has reached saturation point. I want to suggest that we haven’t even begun to reach more than a very small percentage of the world market, because right now the industry is completely centered on just the market in the USA. In that market I agree that saturation point may have been reached, but the world is bigger than just the USA and it is time that everyone began looking out at the big world.
Some may argue that adult sites do have a world focus. Anyone can join and have access to the millions of images, videos etc. However there are a number of things that influence the market outside the US that do not come into play inside the US. Webmasters seem either unaware of the challenges or unwilling to meet the challenges that these things throw up. In these days of diminishing returns it is those adult businesses that are prepared to face these challenges that will grow, while those businesses who ignore them will stagnate.
Global Economics 101
While there are a number of things we could discuss, lets just look at two items. The first is economics; the US economy is undoubtedly the strongest in the world, and that means that there is just no currency that is stronger than the almighty US dollar. People, if you think that this is not a problem then I have news for you!
I live in Australia, and for the last 18 months or so our dollar has been very weak against the US dollar. If somebody from the US were to come over here for a holiday they could live like kings, for the exchange rate would give a US tourist two Aussie dollars for every US dollar that they brought over. That is very nice for adult webmasters based here in Australia when our checks roll in. However, it is not so nice when our hosting bills roll in because we are effectively paying twice what US webmasters are paying. That also means that any Aussie surfer who wants to join an adult site is going to think a lot more than twice about doing so.
“Some hardworking webmaster has busted his ass to provide a free site that is about to make a sale. Aussie John clicks on the text link to the sponsor and sees a site that just blows him away… he can’t help himself, he has to join. He gets his plastic out and clicks on the join link and… goes somewhere else.”
Are You Losing Sales?
Let me give you this scenario. Aussie John Citizen is sitting in front of his computer, knocking back a Cascade Draught, (real Aussies don’t drink Fosters – they send that horse piss overseas instead) surfing the net when he comes across a free site that really gets him turned on. Some hardworking webmaster has busted his ass to provide a free site that is about to make a sale. Aussie John clicks on the text link to the sponsor and sees a site that just blows him away… he can’t help himself, he has to join. He gets his plastic out and clicks on the join link and… goes somewhere else. The monthly membership was $34.\’5, not an unreasonable amount for someone living in the US, but for Aussie John at the exchange rate current as I write this it would be $67.47. Even a trial membership of $1.\’5 is going to cost our hapless Aussie surfer $3.76, and it is unlikely that he would allow his membership to go into rebilling.
That same example could apply to anyone living anywhere in the world outside the USA, only the amounts would vary. With that example there are no winners… the surfer doesn’t win, the free site webmaster doesn’t win because he doesn’t get any commission, and the paysite owners don’t win because they don’t get a sale.
Before I offer some suggestions about overcoming this problem, let me present you with the other item I wanted to discuss, for they are interrelated. Let’s use the same scenario with poor oversexed Aussie John Citizen. There he is reaching for his plastic as he clicks the join link and… goes somewhere else. The join page told him that he needed MasterCard, Visa, Amex, Diners or some other credit card that is available in the USA. Sure, those cards are available here in Australia, but the most common credit card in Australia is none of those cards. The most common credit card here is a little bit of plastic called Bankcard, and that card cannot be used outside of Australia.
If that scenario applies here in Australia, then it must apply in other parts of the world too.
Stiff Shit For Aussie John?
Well, you might say ‘stiff shit for Aussie John, we got plenty of customers who have cards we can accept,” but do we? We’re thinking the market is saturated, but here is a potential client that we can’t touch, so it is stiff shit for us too because there was a guy who wanted to give us his money and we couldn’t take it from him. There were good dollars that just went somewhere else instead of into our pockets.
OK, so those are just two of the problems and challenges that we must meet if we want to reach out to the global market? How do we improvise, adapt and overcome? We like to be smug and tell people that it is the adult industry that drives the Web, but we are not doing so well here. If an ordinary online business can have a local agent in various countries to take payments, why can adult sites not do the same? Obviously the quick response to the surfer’s need for instant gratification is not there – they might have to make a phone call – but many surfers who recognize a quality site are prepared to wait a little while to join the site. My partner’s amateur site bills through ccBill, but she also provides an Australian phone number for Aussies who might want to join. That way she can offer them the local credit card option, and they are more likely to sign up for a longer period. The sign-up options are slightly different… there is no rebilling and the rates are slightly different when they do it by phone, but Aussie surfers appear to be happy with the deal.
“Why not provide a light version of the pay site for overseas subscribers? Perhaps the access code that these subscribers would receive when they sign up could kick them straight into the light version of the site. “
Of course the paysite in our example would be losing money if they simply changed their US dollar charge to an Aussie dollar charge, for $A34.\’5 would mean that the most they would get at today’s exchange rate would be $US18.10 – hardly anything to get excited about. The solution? Why not provide a light version of the pay site for overseas subscribers? Perhaps the access code that these subscribers would receive when they sign up could kick them straight into the light version of the site. Subscribers would be happy because they would be getting access to the big overseas sites that they have probably drooled over for a long time, and site owners would be happy because they would be getting more return on the money that they have put into their site – without giving everything away for less return.
Think Long Term
Setting up this sort of deal may take a bit of time and it may take some investment in setup costs, but it would expose the big sites to people and their credit cards… people that they don’t currently have access to.
For the free site webmaster it means that he/she would be selling the sponsor to more places in the world than just the USA, and instead of losing bandwidth to freeloaders who are unable to join the sponsors’ sites there would be a real chance of making a sale. Of course, until something like that happens, the only option for the free site webmaster is to promote sponsors who don’t charge quite so much for their memberships. Obviously there would be a smaller return on each sale, but you just might make that up by increased sales.
Stuart Livesey is part of the global writing staff here at The ADULTWEBMASTER Magazine. He lives in Australia where he works as an adult webmaster. All other information about Stuart is classified at this time. Seriously. We mean it.
