The 'Free Sample' Business Model Gone Berzerk: A Study

Sumrpal

Sin sells. Everyone should agree with that simple statement. Drinking, smoking, gambling, drugs. All are major cash-cows for business and government, while being major cash-drains for consumers. I know it's more complicated than that ... there are social cost issues ... but let's just follow the money for now.

And then there's sex. Is sex a sin? There are certainly some special-interest groups who say so. Organized religion immediately comes to mind, who in turn can control whole governments. But I won't get into that right now. Sex is power. Most women fully understand that concept! But is sex a sin?

I don't think so, but it sure does sell. Maybe that's what makes it a 'sin'. Sex sells in mainstream, that's for sure. In advertising, in television, in movies, in newspapers, in magazines. And when you factor in the "lower" mainstream strata of adult movie theatres and stores, adult sex toys and adult magazines, then you can really get a handle on how well sex sells. I know it. Mainstream knows it. You know it.

So why does the Online Adult Industry give so much of it away for free? This a very interesting question, one that deserves some serious study. I don't for a minute think that this single article will deserve to be called a 'serious study', but it will at least lay out the basic parameters of any future study that may take place.

Free samples. We all love them. Who doesn't want something for free? Nobody that I know. If you can get enough of anything for free, why pay for it? It's human nature.

What is also human nature is the fact that we like to see, touch, smell or hear anything that we want to buy. This has been true all through history and is most prevalent today. Newspaper classified advertising is the only major sales medium that I can think of where there isn't a picture of the product or a sample that you can see, touch, smell or hear. And would you PAY for something you saw advertised in the classifieds before you saw, touched, smelled or heard it? No, you wouldn't. And that is why we have supermarkets and department stores and car dealerships and model homes in a new subdivision. Humans need to use their sensory abilities before determining whether to buy a product, or in fact, whether they even want it for free, or not.

So, what has this human propensity to see, touch, smell and hear brought into being? The consumer society, of course, and all the infrastructure that is behind it. Do you not think that the supermarkets, department stores, car dealershps and housing developers could make more profit if they didn't have to display actual samples of product? They sure could! Or could they?

Would you look at a list of products posted on a wall (remember classified ads?), choose what you want, pay your money, go to a window or a door, have it handed to you and go home fully satisfied with your new purchase? If you had to, I guess. We here in the province of Ontario, Canada, used to buy our liquor in exactly that manner. No word of a lie. Sin sells, remember? No matter how you sell it. And liquor sold using that sales technique!

Today, though, our liquor stores are just like supermarkets. Every imaginable alcoholic product is fully displayed on shelves where you can see it, touch the containers, and carry your choices to the checkout. You can't smell it or taste it until you get to your destination, but we still buy it. Do we get free samples? Maybe a thimble-full taste/smell of a new wine or cooler, but that's all. If the liquor stores gave away unlimited free samples, their sales would drop, wouldn't they? Same goes for the other 'sin' industries, or in fact, any consumer product industry. It's just common sense.

Which brings us to the Adult Online Industry and the 'free sample' business model. There is, I will admit, a necessary use of pictorial samples to advertise the inside content of a sex site which requires payment up front before entering. This satisfies the human need to have sensory input before purchasing a product. But this necessary use of a few samples, actual real samples from the inside of that particular sex site, has evolved into a huge sub-industry inside the Online Adult Industry itself, with a whole infrastructure behind it.

What is this sub-industry? How did it happen? Why did it happen? Will it continue to grow? Important and interesting questions. They can't all be covered in one article, so I'll try to concentrate on the immediate subject at hand ... The Free Sample Business Model Gone Berzerk.

We should all now realize and accept that what started out as a simple marketing technique ... displaying a free sample or samples of the actual content (product) of a particular sex site .. .has turned into a situation where virtually more of the content (product) contained inside a sex site where payment is required for entry is now available for free on the Internet. In both quantity and quality. This fact has to be hurting sales. It has to be. It's only common sense.

So, will this practise of flooding the Internet with free samples of sex sites (and most samples aren't even from the sites any more) be stopped? If so, who will stop it? Or do 'we' even want it to be stopped? It has worked well for 'us' so far, hasn't it?

There are many special-interest groups who will not want it to be stopped. Powerful, established and wealthy special-interest groups within the industry itself. I have mentioned 'infrastructure' a couple of times already. It takes a huge infrastructure to support our consumer society. Just consider for a moment, will you, how many jobs would be lost if the practise of displaying consumer products was stopped (ie: no department stores). And if all those jobs were lost, then all those people wouldn't have money to purchase consumer items. Then more jobs would be lost. Mind-boggling, isn't it?

The same holds true for the free sample sub-industry within the Online Adult Industry. Think about the infrastructure, the special-interest groups, behind it all. Let's make a list of all those intimately involved in this free sample sub-industry:

• TGP & LinkList owners
  
• Hosting companies
  
• Content companies
  
• Webmaster Resource sites
  
• Software/Script Writers/Sellers
  
• Gallery and Freesite builders

That is an impressive lineup of infrastructure. It also illustrates why 'we', the participants in the industry itself, won't stop the free sample business model. Too many of our friends, aquaintances and business partners are involved in any one of the above. Hell, you, reading this right now, are probably an owner or employee or builder yourself. The list above probably represents the majority of people, numerically at least, in the entire industry. So it's a lock that 'we' won't voluntarily stop flooding the Internet with free samples.

So that only leaves government or sponsors with the ability and/or will to remove all free samples of sexually explicit product from the Internet. If enough governments from around the world could come to an agreement to do it, it would happen. But I can't see that happening. They would much prefer to come up with some form of direct 'sin tax' on the industry anyway, just as they do with the other 'sins'. I could see them all agreeing to that.

Sponsors. Now this is a very interesting situation. Sponsors (and I include AVS companies in this) would, generally speaking, benefit from increased revenues and net profits if all sexually explicit free samples were removed front the Net. This, again, is only common sense. The economic force of supply and demand. If the only way that consumers can access sexually explicit product onine is to pay for it, they will.

So why aren't sponsors leading the charge to stop the free sample flood? Especially given the fact that (and I have this on reliable authority), on average, sales from affiliates only account for 10% of total sales for a sponsor. And it's the 'affiliates', in the main, who keep pumping out the galleries and freesites. I can only surmise that they won't take any action because they, themselves, own and operate TGPs & LinkLists, Hosting Companies, Content Companies, Webmaster Resource sites, Software/Script companies and etc. A lot of them appear to be inextricably involved in the infrastructure, or are close personal friends and/or business partners of people in the infrastructure. So they seem to be willing to accept lower overall sales in exchange for not upsetting the apple cart, as the saying goes.

The sponsors could be right about the 'not upsetting the apple cart' bit. I already discussed what would happen if one infrastructure is wiped out. There would be a ripple effect that would affect other infrastructures. That is also an economic force that has to be respected.

I hope that this discourse, while not solving anything, has perhaps made you more aware of the overall picture. Writing it has done that for me. I still feel that the free sample glut is a problem and getting rid of it would be a net benefit to the entire industry. But there would be a cost, a large and very emotional, personal, cost. I don't think the industry is ready to swallow that cost yet. But some day in the future ...