However I wouldn't actually use their websites as good examples of best-practice in this vertical. Having disrupted the traditional DVD-based content houses, Kink.com is now getting disrupted themselves a little by the 'tube sites' and they really are not on top of this new era for that industry.

The main issue for video sites - of all content genres - is discovery. The author's premis about 'drawing in the viewer' doesn't really allude to this greater issue. YouTube doesn't really do a great job of discovery - relying only similarity clustering and string search.

I'm not going to link to sites from here, but there are a number of adult content tube sites that have some really quite excellent taxonomy, categorization and deeper search functions - surfacing the content that each viewer wants is a unique experience for each person.

Many of their video player experiences and social features are excellent too - ones that YouTube should really take a look at (in fact I know of YouTubers who gone to work for these sites).

For me, the tube world is yet another example of where the adult website industry is once again leading the R&D in the space.

Many of their video player experiences and social features are excellent too

Please name names.

I don't feel comfortable linking to such sites on Hacker News or really talking about them here in any more depth.

Feel free to contact me offline from HN if you want me to suggest some leading examples. (details in my profile)

UPDATE: turns out the original author discovered all of these sites via my partner Violet Blue (http://guerillashowrunner.com/2011/02/why-a-good-porn-site-m...) -- so the circle is complete. Lol.

The "booru" style of tag-based image sites have been incredibly successful in this regard. Most of them primarily focus on anime-style content, but I haven't seen anyone else get even close to the level of effective user-driven tagging that they have.

Take Danbooru, the most successful such site, for example. Do you want an image of a long-haired character from the Touhou game series wearing a ribbon while involved in a hug? You can do that (search "long_hair touhou ribbon hug") and get over 200 results, all relevant. A large part of this is due to effective moderation in order to keep tags consistent.

Now here's the most intriguing part: how does Danbooru make money? They charge for a premium account -- which allows you to search with more than 2 keywords at once. Yes, that's right -- they monetize based on little more than the power of their tagging system. This shows just how important tag-intersection search can be -- and doubly so for porn.

Fascinating what sort of sites have this feature?

I'd say that the primary test should be how much sense the points in the article make to you.

Having said that, if you want some proof of authority, I have a fair track record in Web shows - I founded Machinima.com, was the exec producer on BloodSpell and Kamikaze Cookery, have produced Machinima work for the BBC, EA, etca, and generally have been doing it professionally for 13 years. I ain't Jakob Neilsen, but I know one end of selling a web show from the other.

Want to pull people in to your video content? Look at some of the better video sites on the web and see how they do it.

I can think of one off the top of my head: http://epicmealtime.com/

But they could have been even more successful - for example, if I'd implemented the techniques I talk about in the article. That's my point.

(Perhaps they'd even have been more successful with visually slicker sites - but the belief that a prettier site automatically equals better conversions is a reasonably well-known business fallacy.)

It was more distraction free and readable than, say, Mashable and they pay lot sum to designers. It wasn't decorated but it was well designed.

Edit: Formatting

The blog that's linked uses a popular Wordpress theme.

It's not "will the audience look for porn", it's "Why will they choose your porn over someone else's?"

(Likewise, it's not "Will the audience look for an action-adventure show", it's "Why should the audience choose YOUR action-adventure show?")

Most successful porn sites cater to a specific fetish, instead of a bucket of random porn.

He needs to find his target market. Not sure who it should be, though.

Point being: there may not be thousands of sites competing, but when the search returns over a million sites and its nearly straight femdom out to the thirteenth results page (and likely beyond)...I'm going to wager that you didn't do that very simple bit of research, a google, before making such a declaration.

As you yourself said, the actual jargon is "femdom porn", not "female domination porn", or even simply "femdom".

By adding "porn" to any keyword search, you will get many extraneous results (see "hacker news porn" above).

Most importantly, these "alot of results" all have affiliate banners to the same handful of "femdom" sites.

Next time, try looking at the actual content, not just the Google results. I should have taken you up on your wager!

I will cede that there are a few fantastically successful ones, like I suspect in most media, which are rather strongly linked to...