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Porn Free
How adopting a lateral revenue model can save the adult entertainment industry from penury
Although among the many pieces of paper upon which my name is inked is the inevitable MBA, I confess I do not understand the economic model of online pornography. As best as I can tell from my sporadic encounters with what Google earnestly informs me are the more popular vanilla websites, there is a plethora of content. In fact there’s a veritable tsunami of home-made and quasi-professional videos that probably amounts to hundreds of thousands of hours per year — more content than the most ardent devotee of solitary pleasures could possibly consume even if they were to dedicate themselves to the task every hour of the day without respite (but with plenty of lubricant).
And this content is free.
This is the part of the business model I do not understand. Even if much of the content is uploaded by people who are motivated by an irrepressible sense of public (or pubic) duty, there are considerable storage and bandwidth costs incurred by the website. There are thus expenses but very little in the way of obvious revenues.
Pondering this, I have come to realize that the solution for those impoverished porn-site owners is simple: adopt the model so successfully popularized by Formula One motorsport.
