There are millions of personal sites and fan sites whose publishers have no intention of ever profiting. There are thousands of e-commerce sites that still exist despite never having made a profit. , which calls itself a men's magazine rather than an adult magazine, lost money last year, as did Certainly, there are a lot of porn sites and many assume that they wouldn't be there if they weren't profitable. It is often said that pornographers are the only ones making money on the Internet. Sources: Adams Media Research, Forrester Research, Veronis Suhler Communications Industry Report, IVD When was the last time you heard anyone talk about how greeting card sites dominate the Net? In any event, the number of visitors is less than the number who visited news sites (41.1 million), finance sites (34.2 million) or greeting card sites (25.5 million). This says nothing about how long each visitor stayed or whether they spent a dime. It says that in April 2001, there were 22.9 million unique visitors to porn sites.
, tracks the number of visitors to porn Web sites. In any event, Tom Rhinelander, a Forrester research director, says they have given up trying to put a price on porn-either on the Internet or otherwise. When a study admits that its initial result was off by at least 80%, it's hard to be confident in the new result. The 1998 Forrester report pegs the online adult content market at $750 million to $1 billion, which was an increase from its initial estimate of $150 million. Tossing in the Internet will add less than $1 billion to the total porn pie. From there, the numbers get even more obscure. This figure is baseless and wildly inflated. The $10 billion aggregate figure was unsourced and mentioned in passing.įor the $10 billion figure to be accurate, you have to add in adult video networks and pay-per-view movies on cable and satellite, Web sites, in-room hotel movies, phone sex, sex toys and magazines-and still you can't get there.Īccording to Adult Video News ( AVN), an industry trade magazine, Americans spent just over $4 billion to buy and rent adult videos last year. In 1998, Forrester did publish a report on the online "adult content" industry, which it pegged at $750 million to $1 billion in annual revenue. The only problem is that there is no such study. The idea that pornography is a $10 billion business is often credited to a study by Porn is "no longer a sideshow to the is the mainstream," he says. , suggests that pornography is bigger than any of the major league sports, perhaps bigger than Hollywood.
Take for instance the New York Times Magazine: It ran a cover story on May 18 called "Naked Capitalists: There's No Business Like Porn Business." Its thesis: Pornography is big business-with $10 billion to $14 billion in annual sales. Skepticism is in order, though, because as David Klatell, associate dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism notes, " is an industry where they exaggerate the size of everything." The fact is pornography, or "adult entertainment," is as marginal now as it ever was.