When I hear people dismiss my business as "just porn", it irritates me. And usually when people talk about the industry's stats, you don't find a lot of solid source material or reliable statistics to back up whatever claims they make. It doesn't help that most people use the words "alarming" and "insidious" when quoting the stats. They see the explosive growth of pornography, and the large number of people who admit to using it (and the likely larger number who won't admit it, even on an anonymous survey) as a bad thing. They see the thousands of workers in front of and behind the cameras as exploited and exploiters, and the money they make as somehow tainted. It doesn't matter to them that most of the people in this business are here of our own free will, we have kids to feed and bills to pay, and we pay plenty in taxes in a fairly heavily-regulated industry. "Porn people" aren't really working, apparently, from what the industry's critics say. Because sex isn't work, in their minds. Never mind the marketing, photography, advertising, etc. we pay for. Never mind that the vast majority of operations are simple "mom-and-pop" sites. None of that matters.
But here is a fairly neutral, fairly objective reporting on some actual stats, courtesy of OnLine MBA. (click to follow the link for the complete stats -- I suck at HTML). For any other industry, they would be hailed as a a healthy sign of vibrant economic expansion. The only really disturbing figure is the one about a child's first experience with porn (at age 11, according to the figures), but I can only hope that this is due to one or two utterly slack parents in the survey who have never been discreet, and are blowing the curve.
But other than that . . . Porn is a for-real-though industry.
Via:
Online MBA
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