Giving away free stuff on the internet is either the best thing ever or the worst from a business standpoint. In the next couple of posts I’m going to look at the good and bad of a price point so low it’s nonexistent for various types of digital media. Maybe next week, I’ll even delve into piracy and you, if I’ve still got the stomach for the topic.

If you’re in a ‘throw away’ industry (a business that revolves around a product that’s used once and then quickly discarded) then free is the worst thing for you. Look at the porn industry, even while I was working in it doing tons of in depth reviews on various titles I was always aware that for the most part – people watch porn to get off. Most of porn’s customers are people who only need/want a few minutes of hot and heavy naked action, the second they get off, they turn off the movie and put it away.

Porn is the throw away industry…

Unfortunately, as is often the case with porn, the adult industry was one of the first industries to adopt a ‘free sample’ approach on the internet and these little snatches of free fap material are all over the place, expected of every paid porn site as well. But porn is the throw away industry and these free samples and giveaways can strangle the life out of fledgling or small time studios.

It also makes the porn industry rabid about piracy. They spend so much giving away perfectly viable samples and watch their number of subscriptions dwindle because of it but the idea that people aren’t even stopping at these two and three minute samples but nabbing entire, expensive films; never returning for an eventual purchase – well it’s the hot breath of death on their necks.

Thursday I’ll switch sides and look at the benefits of giving away free content online and sum it all up with a nice little fetish bow for you!