These days, if something exists, there's "porn" of it. To clarify, I'm not talking about the extreme version of something, as in "food porn". "Food porn" in the world of porn is very different from "food porn" in the regular world - although both involve food. What I mean is that porn is so pervasive in our society that you can do a search for just about any word you can think of, add the word "porn", and get some legitimate (and very strange) search results. Even with safe-search enabled, it's still brimming at the edges of nearly every Google search. And everyone's using Google search. Yes, kids too.

Recent studies show that minors are being exposed to porn at a very early age. Whether accidentally or intentionally, on average, it's by age eleven. Not only that, the consumption trend of porn is mainstream, at school, work, church, laundry rooms, bathrooms, and from childhood to adulthood. This means that porn is much more than a giggle-worthy social meme. It's woven into our culture. When someone does a web search, there's always that nagging question: "Is now a good time to search for porn - or in a few minutes from now?"

You can sense it all around - in casual conversations, in media, and in just about everyone's search history, if they let you see it. It's not so much a social taboo to say that you watch porn.

Those of us who are (or used to be) video movie collectors have branched out into video porn collecting. We have refined our tastes, and we know what we're looking for, where to find it, and how to download and categorize it. The problem is, if we're still in the closet, we're our only fans of our collections.

When "social porn sites" like myvids and others came of age, they gave us the ability to keep track of our favorite videos and seek out like-minded members. We became collectors and connoisseurs again.

Unfortunately those collections remained within the walled garden of each porn site - unless you paid for a premium account (or used a video downloader browser plug-in, but that's technically cheating).

I've looked at a lot of subscription plans, and found not a single one that motivated me to dig out my credit card. Why? A couple reasons. One is the pricing structure. Most are high-priced and inflexible, offering no "taster" option. Many are niche, or have a limited selection of videos, limited features, or limited genre (a.k.a., fetishes). And the biggest problem, at least for my fetish, is that most have totally clamped down on incest-related videos. For example, if try any incest-related search term and you'll get zero search results. That's just being completely paranoid.

That lead me to examine closely what makes Netflix popular... so popular they now account for 1/3 of all Internet traffic. (Aggregate porn traffic accounts for another 1/3.) If social porn sites are to flourish like Netflix, what are they to do? Other than the obvious reasons regarding socially-acceptable content, what can porn sites to do be financially successful like Netflix? I think I have a pretty good strategy:

1. Start by being a real customer-advocate. Do this by acknowledging the social stigma of porn across all social classes, and provide a means for members to confront their guilt, shame, disgust, curiosity or other notions in a friendly way with other members.

2. As with gambling, address the problem of overconsumption by including resources for kicking the addition. That weaves nicely into the first point.

3. As with drug abuse, address the problem of the availability and consumption of abusive porn, such as pedophilia, in a similar way. Being strict doesn't mean shaming those people. Rather, provide a path for those porn consumers to better understand their problem, and provide help with some external resources.

4. For the rest of the members, make porn searching a really fun game. Many sites like Myvids have already made inroads: by creating a point-system for number of views, personal popularity, etc., with rewards for achievement. And, like Netflix and Amazon, cross-sell other videos based on viewing habits of similar members.

5. Encourage communication among members. Make it as easy as possible using integrated email, forums, chat systems, groups, clubs and, of course, allow video commenting and rating (and ranting).

6. Encourage (and I mean really push) nonmembers to create a login.

7. Create a tiered premium membership. For example, I would love to become a premium Myvids, but not at the price they're asking - at least not yet. I want a cheaper (half-price) onboarding option that gives me a few premium features, and a prorate option to upgrade later.

8. Have higher standards with advertising. This addresses very reason why AdBlocker is so popular.

I hope at least one or two of these suggestions would be useful to pornsite admins.