Romp.com goes subscription.

March 12, 2001 5:11 PM

Romp.com goes subscription. "our friends at icebox.com, before it closed, were making $184 dollars per day on banners, not even enough to pay for one episode of one animated series" It seems their rates will be around $3/month...
posted by owillis (12 comments total)

ROMP Mafioso will be served even better once we separate hard-core rompers who truly value what we deliver from those who believe there are a lot of free substitutes to the ROMP experience.....

Well, I never thought it would happen, but romp.com finally made me laugh.
posted by Optamystic at 5:26 PM on March 12, 2001

Noooooo, I don't get to see the girl of the week videos anymore. And play Booty Call. :-(

If I'm gonna pay, I might as well just get porn.
posted by swank6 at 6:10 PM on March 12, 2001

We'll soon see if people value ROMP entertainment enough to pay for it (only a dime a day)

No need to wait and see, the answer is clearly no. Only a handful of sites, e.g. the "highest quality" hard core porn and the Wall Street Journal, can command those rates. The good news is that when Romp.com's traffic drops 98%, their bandwidth expenses will no longer be an issue.
posted by Chairman_MaoXian at 8:46 PM on March 12, 2001

It does not bode well for Romp that this post is the first I've ever heard of them. It's hard enough convincing people to pay for content from known providers. Getting them to pay for something they don't know exists, that's impossible.
posted by aaron at 9:41 PM on March 12, 2001

You don't seem like the pot-smoking pornhound that makes up their target audience, aaron...

And, I as well am going to miss Booty Call.
posted by Neb at 10:44 PM on March 12, 2001

I'll miss Booty Call as well... but not to the tune of $3/month. For better or worse, the marginal cost of my online entertainment is still hovering right around nil.
posted by youhas at 1:11 AM on March 13, 2001

Hey, I'm a pot-smoking pornhound, and I've never heard of them either.
posted by cCranium at 5:27 AM on March 13, 2001

I've heard of them and spent a fair amount of time at the site. My personal favorite treat is a series called "those f*cking animals." Giggle.

I won't pay for it though.
posted by acridrabbit at 5:44 AM on March 13, 2001

What I find disturbing is that icebox was only making $184/day. Dotcominsanity...
posted by owillis at 1:28 PM on March 13, 2001

Hey, I'm a pot-smoking pornhound, and I've never heard of them either.

I'm not sure why this statement cracked me up so much, but it did. Maybe it's the bouncy insouciance of just throwing that out there.

And for the record, I'd never heard of them either, though I wish I had before they started charging.
posted by Skot at 1:48 PM on March 13, 2001

For all your pornhounds out there, there's still a whole slew of past babes with pictures and videos that are fully accessible without paying. It's just the new ones that they'll be charging for. And they're fine... :)
posted by swank6 at 3:05 PM on March 13, 2001

I've heard of them, but it's my business to, so....

The problem with charging for an unknown service is that you create a barrier to entry which restricts growth and the ability to achieve a network effect.

If Yahoo started charging, they'd still be okay, because people know who Yahoo is--it's a known entity. Hotmail would never have achieved it's ubiquity if it had charged. So if swank6's comment is correct, they are charging for premium (the latest) content. This is similar to the tiered model in the movie industry: first run theatres, pay-per-view, second-run theatres, cable and rentals. This is the same sort of model that internet entertinment companies need to look at until such time as web advertising is effective. The banner ad is not effective and won't ever be. Rich-media ads, interstitials and inline video are some of the only ways these companies are going to make cash.
posted by fooljay at 3:33 PM on March 13, 2001