RubberZone is in Trouble - Important Announcement

Hello, RubberZone.com Member –

This is difficult for me to write, but I've always tried to be open and transparent with our members.

Quite frankly, RubberZone is in trouble. The past two months have seen a significant decrease in sales and traffic, and I am deeply concerned about my ability to keep it going as a sustainable business.

In 2023, I made a concerted effort to boost interest in RubberZone by producing the most content we'd ever published one year, and people responded - there was a measurable rebound. In 2024, there was more new content, second only to the amount put out in 2023, but sales lagged in comparison to 2023. It was a gradual decline, with moments of good performance that helped me keep up hope.

Then things started to tank - and fast - in November. I attributed this to (justifiable) anxiety due to the election results here in the United States. We did have a good “Black Friday” weekend, and that gave me some renewed optimism.

But, December and January were disasters, performing far below the baseline of periods when there's no new content - and there was new content.

I believe the decline has multiple causes, some of which, admittedly, are self-inflicted:

• 1. Increased restrictions by the credit card banks on what content is allowable
• 2. The longstanding ID requirements of 18 USC 2257 increasingly intimidate potential models and content producers
• 3. Local laws which are a direct attack on adult entertainment producers and consumers
• 4. Economic and political uncertainty including, but not limited to, attacks on LGBT rights
• 5. The general trend of social media replacing discussion forums and groups
• 6. RubberZone and Squirm leaving Twitter (10K followers) and Facebook (3K followers)
• 7. RubberZone's own antiquated interface
• 8. The closure of realtime chat in 2023 for security reasons

Items 1-4 are external factors, while items 6-8 are the results of my own decisions. In particular, the antiquated interface. Please believe me when I say that nobody is more aware of how behind-the-times the interface is than me. For the past 2 years I've been devoting a lot of spare time to rewriting the site's code to be modern, adaptable, and to run on a new server. This process is about 25% compete. There has been a shiny, new server operating as a development environment all this time, and I've been using the new site myself (as the sole user) for admin purposes. But, paradoxically, since RubberZone has been only slightly profitable (before the recent sales decline), I must rely on my mainstream sources of income to make ends meet, which leaves little time for long-term development projects. The majority of my time for RubberZone is spent making new content. (There has also been a decrease in user-submitted content. RubberZone's original model was share-for-access, but now nearly all content is produced directly, which takes a lot of time and effort.)

Regarding leaving Twitter and Facebook, that had to do with the well-known political considerations, but also because those companies are now mining user content to train AIs, which constitutes plagiarism in my book. Things are going well on Bluesky and Mastodon, but thus far there's only about 15% of the followers and engagement as before, which I'm sure has contributed to a portion of the sales decline. But I had to put principle over profit on that issue.

(Relatedly, there has been a big increase in the past month in email bounces due to account closures - whenever I send out a mailing, bounces are tracked and the mailing list is updated. I suspect this is because people are deleting their alt/porn email accounts for fear of violations of privacy.)

Given all the uncertainty, unless things turn around, I cannot guarantee there will be a RubberZone by the end of 2025. I've added language to the Terms of Service and to the subscriptions in the store indicating that there is a risk that if you buy a subscription, the site may not be operational for the full duration. This is painful, and it may hurt sales, but I must be honest. I've also enabled the sale of 30-day subscriptions in the store for the risk averse. (I had stopped selling 30-day subscriptions during the pandemic because there were long gaps without new content, which led some people who purchased 30-day subscriptions to express disappointment.)

Video Downloads still remain a good way to go rather than subscriptions - you get a copy of a video that you can save on your computer. There's no “Digital Rights Management”, you are free to make backups and to watch the video on any device. I've just reduced the pricing on the “Everything” collection which features all of the videos available in the store - you can now download them all at a 50% savings compared to the individual pricing.

I am hoping that being open about this will cause long-time supporters of the site to rally, and to make new purchases. But, I also understand that these are very uncertain times, and people want to be careful with their money, so I am open to the possibility that this won't work.

Thank you for taking the time to read and digest this. I hope that you will continue to support the site, and if you haven't made a purchase lately, that you'll come back.

- Squirm

Visit the store for direct video downloads, DVDs, subscriptions, and renewals.

Plus, check out the “Everything” Collection:

Our popular “Everything” Collection, features all the RubberZone video titles in the store at a 30% 50% discount. If you've already purchased the collection within the past 30 days, check out your download link as any newly-released files have been added to your purchase - at no additional charge! This is a great feature of the collection - new RubberZone titles in the store are made available to you within your 30-day download window.

Attention Subscribers: Another great feature of the web store is the ability for existing subscribers to purchase early renewals at a discount. You can purchase an early renewal at any time and the purchased duration is added to your current subscription.

The store is currently available in the following countries: Antarctica, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belize, Belgium, Bermuda, Brazil, Canada, Cayman Islands, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Guam, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, San Marino, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Vatican, Vietnam, Virgin Islands (British), Virgin Islands (U.S.) and the United States. (If you don't see your country on the list, contact us - we may be able to add it!)