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How much money do porn websites make?

Digital Boudoir Photography: A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Fabulous Images of Any Woman
Digital Boudoir Photography:
A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Fabulous Images of Any Woman

As is almost always the case with technology, porn leads the way.

It was the case with VHS vs Beta video tapes.  It’s been the case with online payments.  And it’s been the case with social media. 

Porn is a big money-making industry, and the Internet has just made it easy for Anyone to do it.  And we’re not just talking about those leaked celebrity sex tapes, either.

No, porn has made it into the mainstream, with nightly news programs talking about the dangers of “sexting”, the horrors of flirting via Facebook, and why digital photography has all but made those clandestine trips to the PhotoMat non-existent.

And it’s due to websites like EX GIRLFRIEND PICTURES – http://exgfpics.com/) or Hunter Moore’s IS ANYONE UP? – http://isanyoneup.com/ (WARNING: both links are 100% NSFW!).  And the best part about this business model is that they don’t have to pay for any of the content – it’s sent to them for free.

These sites have become a clearinghouse for what’s called REVENGE PORN, where ex-lovers and spurned spouses have found a place where they can forward all those naked pictures that were sent to them digitally, in order to share those images with the world.

What were they supposed to do with them?  Delete ’em?  Probably not going to happen.

All this does come with a cost, and we’re not talking the strictly legal ones – although Hunter Moore does have a lawyer and staff to perform age-checks on all submissions to ensure that the photos that are being posted are of men and women who are of legal age.

So while Moore’s website pulls in an average of $13,000 a month, he does have the overhead of the servers and that staff.  So he may be making upwards of $150,000 a year, that’s not profit at all.

But let’s get back to that $13,000 a month that Hunter is making– he says that he spends 12 hours a day, 5 days a week going through photo submissions.  Assuming an average month, that’s 240 hours.  Divide that by the $13k, and he’s making a little more than $50/hour looking at photos of naked people (before expenses).

So while he’s making money (and some would say, fairly easily), it’s not without risks.

Here is Hunter Moore being confronted by two of the women featured on his website on Anderson Cooper’s daytime talk show:

And the FBI can even come calling, although Hunter hasn’t had any issue with his site… yet.  But he’s careful – he has to be when his website gets between 100,000 and 175,000 unique hits a day, and he says he received 10,000 photo submissions in three months time.

Hunter does have a kind heart and doesn’t just post any photo he receives through the site’s submission form.  “If someone has a real job, like a school teacher or something, I don’t want to ruin their life.  There’s a never-ending supply of photos anyway.”

So keep this in mind if you’ve ever sent a naked picture of yourself to someone and then later had a bad break-up with that person — that photo (and your Twitter or Facebook page) could become Hunter Moore’s next piece of content. 

And the rest of the world — well, the world that’s interested in that stuff — will thank them.