RedTube

Let’s talk about RedTube. It’s MindGeek’s third most popular website, behind PornHub and YouPorn. It’s also entirely indistinguishable from those sites, in damn near every way that matters, but having multiple websites is not about variety - it’s about the illusion of choice. That’s precisely why MindGeek doesn’t go out of its way to market these sites as one large network, even though they operate exactly like one. They’re making money on all of these sites using roughly the same content, and you have millions of people out there who believe that their preferences actually matter. They don’t.

For you, the lowly webmaster trying to turn a quick buck, this pretty much means that you have to treat RedTube the same way that you treat other MindGeek sites. You should probably also extend this methodology to include every single free porn tube that has millions of views. Today, we’re talking about RedTube specifically because I got to cover all of these sites on a one-by-one basis. I’m trying to be as thorough as possible, so bear with me.

Posting Your Own Smut

First, let’s cover the basics of how you are actually supposed to use a porn tube to make money. You can’t market your content on RedTube, technically. But that word, technically, means a lot - it makes the whole difference. You see, you can’t link back to your site on RedTube if you, say, upload a video. But you are free to upload any video that you want. I’m pretty sure that it doesn’t even have to be pornography. As long as people want to watch it, RedTube will be happy to have it. However, I’ve noticed one very important change in how RedTube does business in the past few years.

Basically, there’s been a large push towards professional content uploaded by the studios that made it or by the people within the actual videos, as is the case with most camwhores. In other words, they’ve turned this place into an OnlyFans rip-off. I don’t know why every mainstream porn site is trying to be the next OnlyFans. It boggles my mind, especially since the entire MindGeek network is getting more traffic than that site. There’s no comparison there. Still, there’s been a significant push towards a more professional approach on these sites, and I suspect it might cut into your business model a bit.

Promoting Your Website

The whole point of using RedTube to promote your own content is that you upload collections of videos that you are trying to push on your own website. So, you can upload watermarked trailers or even the full clips themselves and hope to get some traffic back on your site. That’s all well and good, and it’s still technically not a violation of any terms of service. However, check out RedTube’s homepage right now. Hell, check out any page on that site. You’ll notice a distinct lack of any watermarked videos from external sources.

Now, if you’re thinking about posting on RedTube to promote your own site, undoubtedly, other webmasters are thinking the same thing. So, where’s their content? Where are the watermarked videos? Are they being deleted or just hidden from the public eye in lieu of more profitable content? I haven’t the slightest idea. It’s not like they’re going to have a PSA about this shit. This is all information you’ll have to attain by testing the site on your own and seeing what happens. You’re free to sign up for an account on RedTube. The signup button is up there, clear as day. You’re also free to upload videos.

And since you’ll be using the site to cross-promote, you’re clearly not looking to get paid by RedTube directly, so you don’t care about any of that. You don’t want payment information or any special treatment. You just want to post videos. My advice is that you post as many videos as you can while you’re allowed to and measure your results. I would also advise that you use some sort of unique domain name for your RedTube campaign specifically, as UTM parameters are just not going to cut it.

Tracking Your Success

If your users can just go to the main domain, they’ll do that. So, fuck that noise, use a specific link that they can’t fiddle with. You could also use Google Analytics to figure out where they came from, but that will not give you proper information. You’re better off just tagging every single video with a different domain or maybe generate some reroute links for free and slap them on every video in case you really want to figure out every video’s performance.

This isn’t technically necessary for a run-of-the-mill marketing campaign, but it’s very important at the start. That’s especially if you have no experience using RedTube for these kinds of marketing efforts. You need to know exactly how useful this is. I know that there are many auto-posting bots that can help you get a ton of watermarked videos on tons of sites like RedTube. I have reviewed a bunch of these software solutions on my site already. But the industry is moving so quickly that I genuinely can’t keep up. Information becomes irrelevant by the time it’s posted.

What I’m trying to say is, run your own experiments. The tools are there. Don’t get an auto-posting bot, and don’t plan out an entire RedTube campaign before you’ve had a chance to at least test a couple of videos and prove to yourself that they’re actually leading traffic back to your site. Try to measure the average number of clicks you get versus the number of views the videos get. When I say clicks, naturally, I mean people who actually wrote the damn URL into the address bar. You get the point.

Why RedTube, Specifically?

Now let’s talk about the types of content that are likely to work on RedTube as promotional materials. Personally, I don’t have a preference between long-form videos and trailers, at least, from a marketing perspective. I believe that the full videos are likelier to elicit a positive response from viewers but at a lower click-through rate. But, of course, you’re free to experiment with both, to be honest.

As for the flavor of content of the site itself, as I said, they’re moving towards mainstream lowest common denominator bullshit. There are now unofficially only two real genres of porn on RedTube. One is solo camwhore action, and the other is mainstream Brazzers-type porn with step-sisters and horny secretaries. There doesn’t seem to be a third genre on this site. I remember back in my day, we had hundreds, but the lowest common denominator always wins because people are extremely suggestible.

What’s funny about that is that you could swoop in out of the left-field with genuinely original content that people would love to jerk off to, but you won’t get recommended to people, so they won’t see it regardless. They’ll still end up watching mainstream drivel. It boggles my mind. It’s as if these companies don’t want people to experience different types of porn for themselves. Sure, there’s a tagging system you can use to find specific smut, but that too gets reduced to mainstream triple-A porn productions. The most egregious of them all is the amateur tag on RedTube and every other similar porn tube. That’s not amateur porn. Amateur porn is made by real people, not porn studios, for fuck’s sake.

Ok, I’m done ranting. Look, my bottom line is that marketing your shit on RedTube is kind of a bad idea unless you’re a camwhore looking to expand her portfolio. You could also do it as a guy, but if you appeal to gay dudes. I can’t think of any other way to use RedTube to make money in a streamlined manner. Suppose you manage to establish a marketing network that successfully uses RedTube, then good on you. Tell me how you did it because I’m dying to know.

In this day and age, it boggles my mind to see that RedTube is still getting millions of views with this kind of approach to porn curation. But maybe I’m getting old and out of touch. I don’t know. But I know that the internet is still free, and uploading videos to these kinds of porn tubes doesn’t require you to pay a single cent, so you have nothing to lose by trying it out. Don’t forget the damn watermark.