AMA - Steven Grooby (Ask Me Anything)

[serial138]

There are a number of ways. Xhamster and Pornhub both have a premium service (Pornhubs now disabled) in which they charge a fee to view the content without ads. When (like these two tubes) they share that income with the production houses, then it's actually a nice bit gravy for us all. We upload some older full length scenes from 2-4 years ago, and get a check each month.

The main income is from advertising. Anyone (yes you can do it!) can signup to get affiliate accounts to promote adult sites (eg, Groobybucks.com). The problem is, that for companies like ours who don't discount, or bang cards (see below) we only offer 50% of the sale, so a $35 sale, they get about $15 from (minus banking fees). So they end up promoting companies like Mindgeek or Gamma who pay them $40+ a sale. We promote them also, as they offer big discounts, and it's worth people joining - and we get paid. The reason they pay so much, is they both have so many sites to offer, they feel they can convert that customer into other sites, over months and years so their income is substantially more. They can offer cheap memberships for new buyers, as they will get them down the line (a different business model to Grooby who rarely discount, and when we do, we only do direct to customers and not via an affiliate).

However, the consumer going to a free porn site, doesn't convert very well. So while our usual conversions rates are under 1:150 (for every 150 people who come to the front door, 1 joins) when the traffic comes from a tube site it's more like 1:3000, so the tube sites don't make great money from us. The best money for them is dating, cam sites and pills. Both dating and cams have no production costs, and don't cost a lot to run - but take big sales. They also can't be pirated. Pills have a huge mark up and the companies who run them, often 'bang cards'. So what does 'banging cards' mean? When you join most adult sites, you will almost always see a pre-checked box offering a second site at a discount. We do that - and it's common internet marketing (not only adult, but cable subscriptions, travel companies, etc.). We are pretty upfront, and if there is a complaint as someone forgot to uncheck, we'll take care of them. The pill sites (or less legit sites) will offer a pre-checked 'free' site, or $1 site. Only after 3 days it rebills at $49.99. This doesn't show on the billing for the site, as the sneaky fuckers use a different processor. When you want to cancel, they make it as hard as possible. They can also 'bang' your card by adding purchases on it. So your tube site link to pills, may look like you are spending $30 but you get billed $150, and then the same the next month. So they pay the tube sites, for those links/banners as they can afford to pay $50-$100 a sale.

The losers are the producers who get their content stolen.

You are seeing a lot less pirated content now. Even tho our stuff can still be found, almost none of it is new, and we've software to track this. We've sued a lot of people over the past few years and won most, so got some income back that way. The days of the tube sites are very numbered, and I don't expect free porn to be around like it has been within the coming years, given the political profile it's had recently.

Premium services pay based on the videos watched or a flat fee to host your videos?

From your end, is it better to go after the tube sites themselves, or the people downloading from them? Like how the MPAA/RIAA went after the downloaders on Napster, Limewire, Pirate Bay, etc.

Can people not pirate a cam site? Dating obviously doesn't pirate well, but I would think it wouldn't be too hard to just mirror your screen in some form to copy a cam, but I'm not a tech guy. And I'm totally guessing, but I don't see a cam site trying to fight piracy as hard since they don't necessarily care about individual performers performances like you would.

[GroobySteven]

Premium services pay based on the videos watched or a flat fee to host your videos?

From your end, is it better to go after the tube sites themselves, or the people downloading from them? Like how the MPAA/RIAA went after the downloaders on Napster, Limewire, Pirate Bay, etc.

Can people not pirate a cam site? Dating obviously doesn't pirate well, but I would think it wouldn't be too hard to just mirror your screen in some form to copy a cam, but I'm not a tech guy. And I'm totally guessing, but I don't see a cam site trying to fight piracy as hard since they don't necessarily care about individual performers performances like you would.

Xhamster and Pornhub Premium both offered a share of their premium income based on how much time people spent on a companies videos. This works because those who are too closeted to join a trans site, can join a site that shows everything, and view trans content, yet if caught, can claim they were looking at ... cheerleaders, or MILFS or whatever.

The tube sites operate just within the law. The DMCA laws were put in with good intentions (to stop Youtube for example, being sued when a user uploads copyrighted content, once informed (via a DMCA notice) they have to delete it. The tube sites abused this law, and took a long time to delete the content even when told. Most tube sites now delete the same day. Of course, the real issue here is also it puts the onus of getting your content removed on the copyright holder, and not on the site for accepting the content and not doing due diligence on it, in the first place. This is what is changing quite rapidly now, and you are going to see a lot less pirated content on legit tube sites. Of course, there are sites in places harder to reach (Russia especially) that wilfully ignore it, so you have to go after their hosts and advertisers.

It's not worth it to go after the downloader, it's a lot of work and honestly, who hasn't downloaded a tune, a scene or a TV show at some point. We go after the uploaders, and we've had a lot of success with that, with most uploaders when caught and presented with the evidence willing to settle. As long as it's not a business for them, we usually settle for a mid-4 digit number depending on how much content they uploaded, which stops them doing it again.

Cam sites don't protect their models like they should - but they're beginning to and realizing they need to protect their models, so models either hire DMCA companies or do it themselves. I think within the very near future, we'll see stolen cam content from all the big companies start to get less pirated.

[ed_jaxon]

Hey Steven.

I did a search but did not find anything regarding the TEA Awards in 2022. Any info that you can share regarding whether it will happen and if so, dates, locations, etc.?

Hope you are able to pull it off and I most definitely will be there.

EJ

[serial138]

Xhamster and Pornhub Premium both offered a share of their premium income based on how much time people spent on a companies videos. This works because those who are too closeted to join a trans site, can join a site that shows everything, and view trans content, yet if caught, can claim they were looking at ... cheerleaders, or MILFS or whatever.

The tube sites operate just within the law. The DMCA laws were put in with good intentions (to stop Youtube for example, being sued when a user uploads copyrighted content, once informed (via a DMCA notice) they have to delete it. The tube sites abused this law, and took a long time to delete the content even when told. Most tube sites now delete the same day. Of course, the real issue here is also it puts the onus of getting your content removed on the copyright holder, and not on the site for accepting the content and not doing due diligence on it, in the first place. This is what is changing quite rapidly now, and you are going to see a lot less pirated content on legit tube sites. Of course, there are sites in places harder to reach (Russia especially) that wilfully ignore it, so you have to go after their hosts and advertisers.

It's not worth it to go after the downloader, it's a lot of work and honestly, who hasn't downloaded a tune, a scene or a TV show at some point. We go after the uploaders, and we've had a lot of success with that, with most uploaders when caught and presented with the evidence willing to settle. As long as it's not a business for them, we usually settle for a mid-4 digit number depending on how much content they uploaded, which stops them doing it again.

Cam sites don't protect their models like they should - but they're beginning to and realizing they need to protect their models, so models either hire DMCA companies or do it themselves. I think within the very near future, we'll see stolen cam content from all the big companies start to get less pirated.

Thanks for the little peek into the business side of things. I've always been curious about the back of house details of how you run the business. Appreciate the insight.

[Fitzcarraldo]

Lame question, but here goes anyway: Why doesn't the current "Model of the Week" show the pictures? The image links are all bad.
http://www.grooby.com/modelofweek/current/index.php

[shella77]

will there be more scenes with kendall?
https://www.femout.xxx/tour/models/kendall.html

[GroobySteven]

will there be more scenes with kendall?
https://www.femout.xxx/tour/models/kendall.html

Never say never, but unlikely at this point.

[GroobySteven]

Lame question, but here goes anyway: Why doesn't the current "Model of the Week" show the pictures? The image links are all bad.
http://www.grooby.com/modelofweek/current/index.php

Fixed

[GroobySteven]

Hey Steven.

I did a search but did not find anything regarding the TEA Awards in 2022. Any info that you can share regarding whether it will happen and if so, dates, locations, etc.?

Hope you are able to pull it off and I most definitely will be there.

EJ

It's planned to go ahead on the usual date (will have exacts later in Aug) but we're very much expecting to do a live show if it's legally and feasibly possible. We'll be looking into what we can do to keep everyone safe, in terms of vaccinationed/distanced/etc.

[praetorian]

Hi Steven,
This might be an obvious question for some but not me. How come when I google a Tgirl pornstars name, all the search results are for xhamster & other tube sites, why don't any links to grooby sites come up. For instance I am currently very into watching Nyxi Leons scenes and I periodically have to trawl through all the Grooby sites individually to see if she has any new stuff on there and then join to get the scene etc. Is there any way to do some kind of notification where a favourite porn star appears on one of your sites where you could sign up for an alert or is that not possible? Thanks in advance for the answer.