An analysis by mainstream news site Ecommerce Journal cites high revenues of the online adult industry as the result of meeting consumers’ demand. With a quarter of total search engine requests being porn-related, the report states that accessing adult material online is the fastest and most anonymous way to consume porn.
Its popularity has earned the adult industry more than $2 billion of its estimated $10 billion yearly revenue. Ecommerce Journal points out that the adult industry’s worth surpasses the profits of the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball combined.
The article notes that an estimated 10-30 percent of all websites are adult-related and garner 68 million hits a day with an average visit lasting 11.6 minutes.
The beginning of online distribution of pornography consisted of Internet users uploading scanned images and sharing online via file transfer protocols and bulletin board systems such as Rusty n Edie’s, which charged users an $89 annual membership fee for its repository of contributed image.
Ecommerce Journal reports that with the Internet and the boom of Internet advertising, by 1999, a Forrester Research study reported that users were spending about $1.3 billion on online adult — thus representing about 8 percent of all e-commerce during that year.
Online adult continued to grow with the introduction of broadband connections and high-quality streaming videos. The article cites an October 2000 report by the New York Times that said 20 percent of AT&T broadband customers were watching Internet porn at an average rate of $10 per movie.
Ecommerce Journal describes how more commercial adult sites are fighting against tube sites, torrents and other forms of peer-to-peer file sharing with innovations including higher-quality content that is often times better than DVD quality. More adult sites also are finding success with niche sites catering to specific tastes, interactivity such as real-time chatting and offering lower fees such as a monthly charge for unlimited access to a site or network.