Kachi Ogbonna

How does Pornhub make money in 2023? Understanding the business model of one of the world’s leading adult site.

You will have to be in the class of Google, YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia and co to gain more traffic than adult sites. And one of the leading porn sites in 2023 is Pornhub second only to xVideos. Not many people living in the sex-driven age and time would be surprised at why the huge traffic to such sites. But definitely a question in the heart of many people will be how the owners of such sites make money.

So in case you are one of those asking questions around “how does Pornhub make money”, you are just in the right place. And only for educational purposes I am going to share with you how Pornhub makes money.

By the way when we talk of how does Pornhub make money we are talking about Pornhub business model.

But before we go ahead to answer that question – how does Pornhub make money, we have to first know the basic.

What is Pornhub?

Pornhub is a Canadian pornography website. It is one of several porn sites belonging to MindGeek. As at January 2023, Pornhub is the 13th-most visited website in the world and the second-most-trafficked adult website after XVideos.

The site was launched in 2007 in Montreal (the second most populous city in Canada).

How Does Pornhub Make Money?

How many of the fortune 500 companies makes annual revenue over $100 billion? Pornhub is so close to that. With annual revenue of $97billion we are interested in finding out how Pornhub makes money.

So when we discuss the question of”how does Pornhub make money” the first thing to know is that most of the contents on the site are available for free.

So how does Pornhub make money from all those free for all videos?

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1. How Does Pornhub Make Money? – Through Ads

Pornhub is very close to the top 10 most visited website in the world. And it is the second most visited adult site. What this means is that millions of visitors visit the site on a daily basis. In fact a personal search I made on Keywords Everywhere shows that there are about 510 million searches of the word Pornhub every given month.

You will agree with me that with such volume of traffic most companies will be falling over each other to advertise their products and services on the site. In fact the way Pornhub works you can see dozens of ads on the same page and that is lots of money for the company.

Pornhub actually displays ads to users at multiple instances and here are some of them:

1. Banner Ads – This is the most of ads you can easily see on most websites. The ads are displayed in multiple places – below the video and on the sides of the screen.

2. Preroll Ads – Preroll ads are advertisements that appear when a user chooses to play a video.

Pop-Under Ads – This is probably the type of ad that gets the most attention of users. It just pops in between the user activity so that the user can’t turn a blind eye to these types of ads!

2. How Does Pornhub Make Money? – Through Subscription

It is true that majority of the videos on Pornhub are available for free, but ‘majority’ is not the same thing as ‘all’.

So there are still some premium contents and features available on the site that can be paid for. So the company makes provision for premium subscriptions that people can sign up.

The most common features of their premium plans include:

• Exclusive access to some contents
• Higher resolution HD videos
• Removal of the ads
• 24/7 customer support
• Options to view VR videos and all user-uploaded videos

Their membership cost is $9.99 per month. However if you choose to be billed annually, the monthly equivalent will drop to $7.99.

That means the Pornhub business model uses a combination of advertisement and freemium revenue model.

3. How Does Pornhub Make Money? – Through VPNHub

The fact that there are countries where access to porn sites are restricted opens another revenue opportunity for Pornhub. It is a well known knowledge that with a VPN software, a user can access a particular website even if regular access is not allowed from the country of residence.  And today, VPN has become a necessary tool for accessing adult sites.

Pornhub launched its free VPN service (VPNhub) a couple of years bago. The software promises features like,

• Online surf protection and data encryption
• Option to secure 5 devices with a single account
• Top grade security to protect sensitive data and information
• Ad-free and easy to setup.
• Cross-platform support – Android, iOS, Windows and macOS.

Though there’s a free version, there are also multiple paid versions of the VPNhub. And that became another interesting revenue source for the company. If you care for VPNhub services then the plans and their cost are:

• Monthly Plan – $13.99/month
• Yearly Plan – $6.99/month at $83.88
• Two-Year Plan – $4.99/month at $119.76
• Three-Year Plan – $3.49/month at $125.64

The three-year plan allows users to save up to 75% as compared to monthly plan.

4. How Does Pornhub Make Money? – Pornhub Merchandise

One big thing I have learnt about business is that it is very easy to diversify or expand your product offering once your original model proves to be successful.

Who could have thought that a brand that started out as just an entertainment hub will today be making billions of dollars from selling clothes?

However, that is exactly what is on ground today – Pornhub actually sells merchandise.

In fact, the brand has a stand alone domain for its merchandise arm.

The products that can be found in the store includes:

• Tops – T-shirts, Sweatshirts and Sports Bras
• Bottoms – Shorts, Leggings and Intimates
• Accessories – Hats, Socks, Mugs, Keychains and lots more

5. How Does Pornhub Make Money? – ModelHub

The last and latest addition to how Pornhub makes money is called the ModelHub. It is a platform created by Pornhub that allows individual content creators to upload and sell their videos.

With the huge traffic Pornhub receives every day, the opportunity to sell videos on such a platform seemed a great idea to content creators. This works more like the idea of OnlyFans where creators can place a charge on their contents.

Just like in the case of OnlyFans, a creator on Modelhub can sell,

• Photos
• Videos
• Custom Video/Photo Requests
• Fanclub Subscriptions

Similar to the OnlyFans Business Model a percentage of the money made by creators on ModelHub goes to Pornhub.

Is Pornhub Available in Nigeria?

Pornhub is a global brand. And with the exception of the few countries where it is banned it is available in almost all other countries of the world. A report in 2019 shows that Nigeria tops the list of countries browsing Pornhub at a time. So Pornhub is very much available in Nigeria.

Your Opinion Matters

I will like to hear from you.

Did I miss out on anything? Share with me and I will be glad to reply – the comment section is open for you.

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