VR Porn vs Traditional Porn: How Does It Convert?

VR Porn conversion rates

If you’ve been promoting porn sites for several years, you’ll be familiar with the typical conversion rates in the adult industry.

That is to say… they’re not exactly mindblowing.

The majority of users who watch porn are trained to expect content for free. If they don’t get it, they’ll head to the next tube site and keep searching.

Those who have more discerning tastes will often hit the torrent sites for high quality downloads instead.

What does this mean for us as affiliates?

The number of users who convert in to paying porn site subscribers is very low (<0.1%), and finding these magic customers can be somewhat inefficient compared to other markets where users are happier to pay.

The prevailing logic from porn marketers has thus been:

Get more visitors, get more clicks, get more more more… eventually you’ll catch a few fish.

Makes sense, right?

Faced with lowly conversion rates, porn affiliates have instead learned to focus on the sheer weight of traffic they are capable of delivering.

Improving Baseline Conversion Rates

Which site is going to convert better?

  • Super high quality mainstream porn site
  • Average quality niche fetish site

In most cases, it will be the niche site.

The reason boils down to intent and scarcity.

Users who have landed on a niche fetish site have (presumably) landed there for a reason: they enjoy X, Y or Z.

These users are much more likely to pay for premium content.

Why?

The specialised content (X, Y, Z) is harder to find on the mainstream tube sites, and these same users are susceptible to the marketing of a niche vendor that knows exactly what gets them going.

Those of you who have promoted niche porn sites with super laser-targeted markets will know that it’s much easier to sell when your fetish/angle isn’t exhausted by thousands of high quality free vids on PornTube.

What does this have to do with the conversion rates of VR porn sites?

The Mainstream ‘Niche’ Opportunity

There hasn’t been an opportunity like this in the adult industry for quite some time.

VR porn reaps a trifecta of benefits:

  • The convenient stuff is hard to find (scarcity)
  • It’s dramatically improved by high quality productions (restricting the number of viable free alternatives)
  • It’s supported by large and growing intrigue from just about everybody who watches porn (new experience).

The same users who scoff at the idea of paying a subscription to Premium Porn Site X for their daily kicks… are more than happy to shell out cash to try Premium Porn Site X: VR Edition.

As things stand, the experience of high quality VR porn is not easy to find outside of a premium subscription.

Sure, you can trawl Reddit, or download huge torrents, but the experience itself… is by no means ‘user friendly’ at this early stage in the VR life cycle.

Especially for non-tech minded folks.

E.g. Your largest audience.

What we have in effect is a massive audience exhibiting the same demand for specialised content as the most targeted of porn micro-niche audiences.

There’s enough content scarcity to draw high conversion rates, and enough intrigue surrounding virtual reality porn to create a monstrous growing industry.

This is why the conversion rates for VR porn sites vs traditional porn sites… aren’t even worth comparing.

The difference is huge.

We’re seeing a 700% difference in conversion rates between one top VR porn affiliate program, and another of its sister sites (without the VR).

Both the VR and non-VR videos are high quality.

But only the VR site satisfies the scarcity of content + excitement of a completely different viewing experience.

This is no anomaly, either.

Across the board, we see VR porn sites trashing their non-VR counterparts with high conversion rates and excellent user retention.

No doubt these are aided considerably by some of the top companies in the space offering freebie goggles, $1 trials, and other intro deals.

VR Porn = Porn That Converts

That’s about the size of it.

The adult industry has always been on the frontier of new technology.

Funnily enough, because it had to be.

Our actual conversion rates have always been so low that new innovations have come thick and fast, often appearing on porn sites before getting adopted by the mainstream web and receiving acclaim. About two years later.

Virtual reality represents a huge opportunity for all porn marketers.

It will shape the experiences available to the ‘mainstream’. The regular John Doe porn viewer.

And with those new experiences will come the premium of higher conversion rates.

As the thrill of watching porn becomes ever more realistic, there will be a shift away from amateur content and back towards the higher production videos that can tap in to this new technology.

The same content producers that offer handsome revshare/PPS models to reward affiliates like us.

So, if you’ve tried promoting porn and given up at the sight of those lowly conversion rates, now is a good time to take stock.

Things are changing.

The next generation of porn — driven by virtual reality — is a whole new market, rich with opportunity.

And yes… much higher conversion rates.