That's what the panelists at the Staying On Top Online seminar said. The XBIZ State of the Industry Conference assembled a panel of luminaries from the online world to discuss business tactics and strategies for forward-thinking webmasters and producers.
Wasteland.com's Colin Rowntree moderated the panel, which featured Dan Hogue of CamZ; Albert Lozario of CE Cash; Allison Vivas of TopBucks; and Ron Holiday of 12Clicks. Traffic Dude and Video Secrets were the sponsors.
The panelists discussed the tension between knowing your strengths versus knowing when to change. 12Click's Holiday said that in this day and age, industry professionals would be well served to stick with what works.
"People used to think, 'We've got have a gay program,' and if that's not your thing, don't do it, otherwise you'll be competing against people who are really good at it. If you've got a strong point stay with it."
At the same time, Holiday and the other panelists noted the need to stay flexible enough to provide — and anticipate — what consumers want. CECash's Lozario said that in some cases, "being flexible" can even mean collaborating with the enemy — in this case, tube sites.
"The tubes are here to stay," he said. "We've had to learn to work with different channels of traffic."
Lozario also suggested that some companies could find success from building their own internal tube sites to promote their own content. In addition, he said that affiliate companies might find success in providing short clips to webmasters to distribute on tube sites. Wasteland.com's Rowntree agreed.
But affiliate companies need affiliates. How can beginners amass a profitable army of freelance promoters for their products?
The panelists agreed that a hands-on, personal, one-on-one approach to finding and cultivating webmasters is the best way to build a loyal following. TopBucks' Vivas said that spending a lot of money to advertise a new company may bring in big numbers but not much loyalty.
Lozario suggested that interacting with webmasters on industry message boards isn't as important as simply keeping an eye on what the webmaster community is talking about.
One current trend that the panelists agreed on was the movement away from working with competitors to get more sales. For the most part, they agreed that the current harsh economy doesn't allow for such chumminess.
"Working with competitors was huge eight years ago," Vivas said. "They used to say that your competitors are your biggest webmasters. Not anymore."
One grim sign about the online industry's immediate future was the emergence of a new endangered species: the affiliate. The panelists agreed that the industry is seeing fewer and fewer really valuable affiliates. Where did they all go?
"They all had to go out and get jobs," Holiday said.
But the panelists did see some hope in the continued growth of user-generated online content. Vivas noted the advent of "blog" webmasters, who write a lot about a particular niche of adult, but not for money.
"They write about it because they like it," Vivas said. "We've found that if we work with those 'blog' webmasters, they react well, and they'll keep writing about your product, and not necessarily for money. They just really like it."