The Spicy BUSINESS - Error 420 - Error Code Show

0:00 But what are we gonna talk about we're gonna talk about the business side of porn and shit Okay, cuz that really what we don't want to get demonetized Like I was looking some stuff up for research before this and I was like I cannot do side long like Screen in stuff on this topic because we would get freaking Community slammed so fast I'm going to come back to this. It reminds me of something that happened at the store. Jay provided us with a wonderful report last week on the business of the adult entertainment industry.

0:40 And combining that with some research with some great links from our viewers who put that into our Discord, we're going to talk about the business of the adult industry, what we know now and where we think it's going. So top line of the report that you sent over. And then we're going to get into some like caveats here. They tack the adult and pornographic website industry, the websites, right? At 1 .3 billion in revenue a year. Right? And you and I, when we first looked at this last week, when we were looking at the report, both of you and I were like, that seems low. Would you not agree? No, yeah, I think it's at least like sixty -nine point sixty -nine percent or like sorry sixty -nine point sixty -nine billion dollars It has to be it has to be So the report does address that in again you've got to kind of get into the You've got to kind of get into like the little the details one of the things that they talk about in this report is one of the things that excluded from that 1 .3 billion is Cam sites right for example, right? They're like we have a hard time tracking them because there's so many of them They're private companies.

2:10 They don't report revenue. We have no idea how much Chatterbait or cam soda or what's the other one? I see ads for all the crowd live jasmine All those nobody knows how much those things are making Right There's live jazz people jasmine live jasmine, I think he has the one I've seen the ads for Also, that number does not include only fans Boom, there is a hundred billion dollars gone. Actually, that's a good question. Do we have do we have revenue numbers for them? 2023.

2:59 We do have money, we do have numbers. I can't get the full thing in there. Six point six billion. In twenty, twenty three. Is how much they that's how much revenue they dropped. And let's say again, to be fair to only fans, it's not just porn. OK. But it's like 90 percent porn. If you if you are like, if you're on only fans and you're like, go in there. They were trying for a minute to get like to advertise the non adult industry stuff. Yeah. And there was actually one moment where, because I do have a few like full -time adult content creator friends. Yeah. There was one point, like OnlyFans was like, we're thinking about like banning adult content from our platform, and they were like, Oh, it was a huge deal. Yeah.

4:01 Yeah. Yeah. They, They make a buttload of money um An anal amount of money. Yes And again, this is just those two segments and again cam sites. We have no idea right See if I could find anything on here Two billion globally is the best estimate Right No one knows no one so again, but let's take it a face value 1 .9 for the mainstream porn industry online 2 billion for campsites that means that that initial one that's only that's not even half and it's 6 .6 billion in rev for only fans Right like That's you know, it is a big big industry It's huge. It's massive.

5:12 And it's growing all the time and innovating. Again, porn built the internet and now there's lots of talk because CES just happened and they just had a big conference in Asia. VR porn. VR porn. What are your thoughts? I mean, VR has had a hard time taking hold in the mainstream. It's still kind of a niche product. Right most households don't own a VR set, right? Do you think porn changes that Jay? So I would say the the issue with the VR industry is the 1990 1992 Kind of issue that came up. Do I do I have to say I think we all know it right? What kind of hindered the VR? Expansion in 1992 Lawnmower man mmm. Yeah that freaked people out, you know Lawnmower man No, I'm just kidding. Um God, I don't know why I can't ever forget that movie.

6:36 I really do not know why but It's like seared into my mind. Um, so to answer your question, will like porn change the VR landscape? I think porn will always push things forward. Um, and now like we're seeing porn in her and I know you're going to cover it later, but like, you know, sex robots. Um, but yeah, you're going to, there's There's going to be a lot of people that are going to buy VR headsets just for VR porn. So right now, the estimate is 13 percent of U .S. households has a VR headset. Right. And 14 percent of U .S. households are using VR headset for porn. But I mean. I guess my question from an innovation, and this actually goes to your engineering and business side, right? And here's the parallel I will draw, right? Because something can't just be better. It's got to be better to the amount more you've got to put into it, right? The best example I have for this is this. The Army uses the M250 caliber machine gun. We have been using the same machine gun since the end of World War One. That was when that machine gun came out. Yeah. And it's not that there's not better versions ish of that

8:08 machine gun. It's that how much better they are compared to what it would cost us to change out and get something new. They're just not that much better. You know what I mean? And so to me, it's not just about innovation. It's. Does that innovation serve, you know, to be is the experience of VR porn better than just sitting at your computer by enough to make it something that's going to get more sales in the US? So I think the. Does my question make sense? There's a long question, Alex. Oh my God. No kidding.

8:57 I think I'm going to push back a little bit. I think true innovation is going to push things forward. And when I say true innovation, I don't mean a like what the iPhone's doing. Every single new iPhone is pretty much the same iPhone as a previous one. There's not really much difference there. Um, but true innovation is like when Apple launched the iPhone, like the very first iPhone or the, um, actually the very first of Apple computer, like that was innovation. Um, the iPad, that was innovation. Um, that's what makes everything like kind of go crazy. Um, and yeah, I think, I think you have to have true innovation. That's what my like business side, like what we're learning is for a company to truly add value to the market, you have to have real innovation, which is hard to do. However. And to kind of answer your question, like is VR headsets enough innovation? Is it good enough? I would say in the adult entertainment space, right, in the adult entertainment space.

10:19 Not yet, but what I'm starting to see that's very interesting to me is These like remote controlled sex toys very popular on cam sites very popular in campsites where How to like explain this where we don't get demonetized huh, so essentially it's going to you connect it to yourself and then You don't have to do anything and then you're like if you have a VR headset You're fully immersed in and then it feels like things are actually happening to you. It's fully immersive I think that is going to be enough to kind of like innovate and push forward however currently that kind of stuff is well outside of everyone's price range, so It's going to have to you're gonna have to have like more competitors enter in the market bring the prices of everything down Maybe in the next 10 years, I would say, yeah, 10 years.

11:22 Corn in general, sorry, corn in general is going to be fucking crazy. We're going to be fucking there's no there's not going to be any more cobs. You know, there's not going to be corn on the cob anymore. Now is going to be this perfect corn. Well, and again, kind of going down that innovation route, you know, one of our viewers on the discord decided to send me a link to a adult entertainment Now, here's the thing. The technology and the innovation on these has increased greatly in the last few years. Holy smokes, right? I went down a rabbit hole and I was like, no, because here's my thing with these. And this is again comes down to the cost benefit analysis that I applied a V .R. I apply to here. It looks like kind of your your let's call them top of the line models. Right. Of these. Figures. Right.

12:26 They range between two and four thousand dollars. Right. And they come with a variety of features. Right. They're internally heated. Right. They've now got them to do like. basic motions like a hip and waist motion. Right. They've got a head bobbing motion. Oh, God. OK. Is it like the. Oh, is it like what is that TV show The Big Bang Theory where the road he programmed the robot? Yes. But but again, more more realistically now, my personal feeling is they still look a little too uncanny valley to me. Right. where they're they're too perfect. Yeah, right. They still have a very like Barbie doll kind of like plasticky aesthetic to them. And I think that that's one of the things that that makes it difficult for those products. Also, the cost, the cost is they're extra. And like I went on one of the websites where you can customize, like you can add like the internal heating and the movement and, you know. Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba that is

14:11 there, right? Again, for me, I think it's a little too uncanny valley. And again, for the cost, I would be like, just hire an escort every so often. That's my opinion. Now, wait, I want to address a comment in chat though. Needs to be more socially acceptable. So two things. much like details about your sex life I don't think like if you if somebody I knew purchased one of these and had one I'd be like good for you if you feel that that's the best use of your funds for what you're trying to get out of it I'm not gonna yuck your yum I'm really not right like that's that's on you right I absolutely wouldn't yuck your yum about that right But again, much like sharing details about your sex life, I don't think you need to go around broadcasting the fact that you've got one of these bots hanging out in your house. You know what I mean? Like I don't need to know. Right. OK. That's that's my thing. And if you tell me, like, good for you. But I'm saying, like, again, it's it's it kind of follows that same kind of ethical line in my head. Right, we're like again You know if that's if that's how you want to spend your money I'm not gonna yuck your yum. Go nuts dude

15:43 like that's on you. I'm cool right Same as I don't bust anybody's chops about either being an only fans creator or somebody who pays for it, right? I give that's where you want to spend your money You know, I buy comic books and all kinds of dumb shit Buy more alcohol than I probably should Right the amount of money I've spent on cigarettes in my entire life is probably You know, you can say a lot of shit about where I've spent my money, you know, so take that for what it's worth I Don't know Jay, what do you think?

16:24 Um, so touching on that Comment about you know be more socially acceptable I will say, I think we are starting to get there. And I would say, look at Japan, Japan, China, too. We heavily moving away from like traditional relationships. Um, it's very common, um, for people not to date. It's very common for people to go to these, um, uh, they're not considered escorts or anything, but like go to clubs where you actually just. Pay for a girl just to go out on a date It's not sexual but just go out on a date and talk to her and hang out with her so like a girlfriend for like five hours and then you go back home and You're on your own and they're happy on their own. Um So there's a huge like movement in Japan We're like dating is becoming like less and less popular and people are kind of like taking things into their own hands, I guess. No pun intended there. But there is an argument to be made for it. Yeah. I want to address one to chat, and it's it's actually ironic that this chat message came through because there is something on the rundown that we had not decided whether we're going to do. And I still don't think we're going to. Right. But this kind of gets me there. Somebody

17:55 in the chat said, I agree with that broadcast here, but society looks down on people who are into non vanilla sex stuff. They make it a joke in the media all the time. And one of the things in our rundown is talking about non vanilla sex things. Right. I think we're going to do that as a topic at some point. We're running pretty late tonight, so I don't think and Jane I talked about I said I don't want to do this is like an eight or nine minute segment Like what we've got planned right like that's a longer topic But please know It's actually come up. It's in our rundown And we agree with you Right I am for decriminalization of sex work. I think it is detrimental to society to criminalize sex work. It pushes it underground. Prohibition only breeds organized crime. And especially in areas like this, it also breeds human trafficking.

19:00 Right. It makes it a lot easier to do those kinds of things than. If you just decriminalized it. You know what I mean? Yeah, I agree. Um, and I'll say, you know, dog, dad, um, there's a quote that I really like, um, people are going to talk about you no matter what you do. So you might as well do what makes you happy and not give a fuck. Um, so yeah, and I, I'm very much not vanilla at all. And I struggled with that like growing up because I realized in middle school, I was not vanilla, but I did not know the word for it. And I thought something was wrong with me. And I suppressed it for a really long time.

20:10 And I even went to a therapist and was like, fix me. And luckily in Florida, I guess I went to the only therapist. I was like, Oh yeah, there's nothing wrong with you. Let me help you accept you for who you are. There's nothing wrong with it. You have to live your own life, not give a fuck. People are going to bitch. People are going to complain. No matter what you do, you could live a fake vanilla life and still not make people happy. So yeah. Life's too short to be vanilla. Don't be vanilla. Do what you got to do. Kind of swinging it back to our original time, which the business of the adult entertainment industry. Another interesting thing in this report is, and I think it's the most key thing, and I actually think. I think that that. It's it's one of the difficult parts is monetizing consumers remains the largest hurdle. Right. Which, again, actually used to amaze me. It's like, why pay for only fans? Why pay for adult entertainment?

21:20 Because there's so much out there for free. Right. It is not hard to find free entertainment. Very true. You know what I mean? And I think they're saying this to like, they're like, man, we but people still pay for it. But yeah, I mean, you know, what percentage are of the what percentage of the consumer base are actually willing to pay for it? And I actually think that that number is low. I think of the total number of people who consume adult entertainment, the amount who are willing to put money into it is probably the minority. Wouldn't you agree? Yeah, I mean, like. You have free websites like pornhub where you can find anything reddit reddit Twitter Yeah, I mean yes, you could have like better quality or maybe the complete video if you paid for it, but You can kind of just find it free on One of those platforms, so. And I would say that's the majority of people, that's what they're doing, like they're not they're not actually paying for it. So, yeah. The other thing that's interesting

22:53 to note about their thing, and again, we're talking about the mainstream adult entertainment, the margins are surprisingly low. The profit margin is only five point nine percent. Yeah, that which again to me feeds into the how many people aren't paying for it. Yeah. Right. And also, dang, your operating costs for this business are high. So I will say. So. The the people that I know that are in the adult industry. the issue with only fans is that it's actually kind of like a perfect business model issue so whenever someone makes a lot of money in a market or industry that's that's a signal for others to come in and drive the price down to also make profits so that's how everything works in the world so if someone's making a shit ton of money because they're like an innovator It's not going to last forever They're going to get dragged down with like competitors in her entering the market the issue with only fans is you'll have thousands of girls doing these insanely low membership only fans of like 375 like three dollars and seventy five cents or whatever with with a low PPV content threshold

24:25 so it In the beginning, like people were making a lot of money, I feel like, on only fans. But now the market's flooded. Yeah, the market is flooded and it's dragging the price down of of adult content. But then also on the other side of things, what my friends kind of tell me and like kind of complain about is. D .F .M .E .A.'s. I'm not sure if that's the right acronym. But like a service that they have to pay to get their content pulled down. Oh, DMCA. Yes. There you go. There's a one in Copyright Act. Yeah. Yeah.

25:09 You have to pay that to keep your content from being just uploaded for free to various sites. Yep. I will say like traditional porn, where you actually because my friends also do that as well. Where like you get flown out to a location and they have a whole setup and like a makeup artist and film crew and all of that kind of stuff and they pay for your hotel and all of that like that seems like that's really expensive, but then they make an insane amount of money off of that like So I don't know I think you have one extreme in the other you have the high production traditional porn aspect that's able to have a higher profit margin than your five point whatever percent you stated. And then you have the very low end market where like people are trying to get their content to be bought.

26:04 But it's so such a low price. If that makes sense. Yeah. Kind of coming back to also the taboo stuff, right? The taboo part of it makes us a difficult thing to do business wise. because it's taboo. Right. Like. It just is, you know, right, wrong or indifferent. That's the world we live in right now. You know, so it's it's hard to get good data because a lot of it's hidden, you know.

26:53 It's tough it's super tough to figure this all out I do like this report. I think it's an interesting report again looking at it. You can see and I Think from their challenges point. It's something that I don't think Yeah, it's something they don't They kind of they kind of touch on right which is for traditional adult entertainment. They really are they're competing with only fans Right. And again, is that a more genuine feeling experience, right, to watch two amateurs on OnlyFans versus a traditional produced high production value adult video? You know what I mean? And I think that's why the success for those more low production amateur That stuff. But again, it also drives the pricing points down because now the market's flooded enough to make. The commodity drop in value. Yeah. You know, and then there's the constant legalization thing, you know, and it's it's where is it legal? And what's interesting and I'm curious, I need to get with like a lawyer. Because I would love to do a follow up on this one, because one of the things they point out is California and Delaware are two of the only states where it's legal to film hardcore adult entertainment stuff. Right.

28:27 But you know, it's being filmed by only fans, creators and stuff like that in other locations. So is that like a legal loophole? So we'd like to follow up. something I have heard is kind of the loophole of Only fans is so it's easy for if you're a traditional porn Company for that to get shut down in these kind of states and again, this is just what I heard everywhere, but California and Delaware yeah, but If you are a content creator, which most content creators, and I do not agree with this, this is a bad business model, just FYI, because you're going to lose a lot of money in taxes. They don't have an LLC set up and I'm talking about very amateur people.

29:17 They're just content creators. Um, that then if you're not a legal entity, then it's like a freedom of speech. Huh? Very interesting. That's just what I've heard I would love to get it like a lawyer on here and kind of like verify that but yeah, I Don't know if you guys are interested in this topic and us continuing to talk about topics like these Let us know we'll keep going down this rabbit hole Just a side funny story again, and you were talking about Japan Jay remembers we did before we shut down the store one of the last big events We did was we did our first gamers heaven after dark where we had adult content creators, right? What do we have a ten? There that night And the ten or twelve, right? Okay, we had ten or twelve adult content creators to include the people that Jay does his podcast with Unnatural to some so you guys can can go look at that podcast as well. So they were there.

30:22 We had some adult content creators. We had Japanese adult arcade games. And then what was really interesting against me as a Japan is we are getting product to sell because we sell nerdy stuff. So let's go find the adult nerdy stuff. And boy, when I was getting ready to set the orders for that adult nerdy stuff, did I go down a rabbit hole of all the shit that they make in Japan. Right? Because some of it's very innocuous. It's like desk mats and banners and cutouts. But some of it is not so innocuous. And we had to have long discussions at the store about how far down did we want to go down this line for the first event? Right. And what ended up being the only one? We would have done more had the store stayed open because the event itself was a resounding success. We sold out of tickets in like a week.

31:17 If that like Jay, you were there that night. It was packed. It was and I was I was excited like we were talking about so much stuff. I remember at one point we were talking about because something that I'm like heavily into is Shabari. Yeah. Which is Japanese rope bondage, which I think is very artistic and very cool looking. Very cool looking. It's very beautiful. And we were talking about like the next one, maybe doing a Shabari show. And I was like. Yep. And then Alex just decided not to do it anymore. It was not my fault. We sadly we sadly had to shut the store down. Yes, it was much more male dominated.

32:08 I would say. There were there was more women there than I thought would be there. who bought tickets to go. Right. It was not like a 90 10 split. I would say it was closer to a 70 30. For that event. I can I'm ballparking. I can't remember. Again, it was a very popular event. People. People. People were excited about it. We were iffy about it at first. We were like, well, is this going to go off? And we were like, are we going to sell enough tickets to justify the event? And boy, howdy. We ended up having to extend out how many tickets we had done. Right.

32:57 We originally were going to sell 40, and I think we ended up selling 70 tickets to the event. And yet people had a good time. Come in, interact with adult content creators. You know hang out people played games Right. Yeah, you know Yeah, so it was it was definitely a thing We did our best to try and take the taboo out of it again keeping within the legal requirements that we have You know in that it has to be an 18 up event and things like that You know without having to get a full adult entertainment license, but Do you want to type in this last note here? You've got something about your your somebody who was at the event has now been approached to make a item. Oh. Yeah. So one of my friends, Nikki South, she's on the other podcast with me. We we were at the event at your store. but like this came up recently and like the past week and I just thought it was kind of like a funny like little thing because she reached out to me about it and she was like hey should I do this a toy company adult toy company reached out to her and said like hey are you interested in having your own adult toy like we'll send you like the plaster and everything like just like a tutorial on how to set it up You don't

34:30 have to pay for anything. It's completely free You essentially make a cast of yourself and then we will mass produce a toy of yourself and then yeah, you would get like a percentage of the Profits of all the toys and she was like is this legit and I was like, oh, yeah this fucking looks legit and you should do it but it was a It was kind of a kind of a little funny thing. And yeah, going back to kind of talking about that night at your at the game store. I just remembered.

35:12 So there was a very famous and he really came in under the radar. He did not tell people his adult adult name. He wanted just to be there just to enjoy. The party and yeah, yeah But he's a very famous male porn star And they even like name drop him on a TV show letter Kenny. I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with that Oh, yeah, but I we were sitting at a table playing games and there a girl came up and she goes Have we met before and he goes I don't think so and she's like you look so familiar And he just laughed.

35:54 It was like, I have a very familiar looking face. But is it who I'm thinking of? Maybe. Yeah, I think so. At the store. Yeah, I think it was. Yeah. Don't worry, folks. Let your freak flag fly. Yeah, so if you want us to talk, wow, that was a long segment. If you want us to talk more about these kind of segments in the future, let us know. We will add this stuff. I'd love to get a lawyer on here. I have a friend who used to work in the early days of the internet prawn industry. We'll see who else we can get on to chat about some of this. If the topic interests you, let us know down in the comments below.