It’s impossible to make a buck. Everybody’s out of work. It’d be easier to sell ice in Poland on Christmas Day.

But I gotta say: part of me actually likes this recession. Because we’re all in the same boat. Everyone’s a massive failure, which makes it so much easier than when it was only me.

I mean, seriously - what if I was in the state I’m in now, and it was 1999? God help me, I’d lose my mind. New movies come out all the time and they fucking tank. Books get released, get a day’s worth of publicity, then quietly disappear. I love it! There’s no one to be jealous of, because everyone’s rolling around with piss in their boots.

Even porno’s been hard hit. Check out the Alexa ratings on your favorite membership site from the olden days; chances are, it’s going down, down, down. Blacksonblondes.com went from about the 4,000th most popular site a year and a half ago, to about the 12,000th today. Bangbus.com did precisely the same dip.

But I fear that I’m collapsing two issues here, so let’s make this discussion clear: more likely than not, those numbers are not about the recession. They’re about the TUBES.

Tube8.com is the 71st most trafficked site in the United States. It’s free. Pornhub.com is number 50. It’s free.

As Billy Watson put it to me during a recent conversation on the state of porno, “The stuff that’s on the tube sites is better and more varied than the stuff we used to pay $30 a month for. There’s no codecs, there’s no download. Admittedly, it’s hard for the consumer to do better than that.”

Watson agreed that performer rates are, indeed, down from what they were one year prior. Nina Hartley stated the same to the Economist Magazine. “More girls are hooking,” said Watson. “They never would have considered it before, because they always felt there was a strong division between adult film and plain old escorting. But now, faced with getting a real job, and fucking some old dude, they’re choosing to fuck some old dude.”

“And the thing is, they’re loving it,” continued Watson. “There’s no camera, no director to yell at them, and mostly the guy wants to talk for forty-five minutes and fuck for five. Their dad’s friends aren’t going to watch them on some DVD and beat off to their naked pussy . . . I’m telling you, we’re gonna lose some girls to whoring, you watch.”

Will things turn around for porno? Watson says they will - but that it won’t necessarily happen when recession turns. “In my opinion, the slowdown we’re experiencing in porn is 80 percent due to the tubes, and just 20 percent due to the economy.”

“The guys who run the tube sites have huge bandwith bills - up to $30,000 a month. But they’re being supported by their advertisers, and until guys start to realize that they’re not going to get laid on Adult Friend Finder and the Facebook of Sex,” - two of the major advertisers on Pornhub.com - “the tubes are going to flourish.”

But are membership sites dead in the water? Watson says no; not necessarily.

“I’m actually having the best months I’ve ever had,” said Watson, who owns the sites Manojob (a handjob site) and The Dick Suckers. “Guys who like handjobs - and believe it or not, there are plenty out there - can’t really get a lot of that content on the tube sites. Thank god. So they’ve been coming to my site.”

And they’ve been staying. Watson employs a unique strategy to involve his Manojob members: he lets them choose the female performers who will perform in the scenes.

“We keep a message board, and I basically ask them who they want to see. I give them links to the agency websites, where you can see which girls are available for work - and they make the call. It’s a great system, because even if the girl ends up being a disappointment, no one seems to care. What was important was that they got to make the choice. It’s the next best thing to getting your own dick in the game.”

Message received. We’ll beat this thing, as long as we stay innovative. We’ll succeed, but only if we stay alert. Pay attention to your audience. Give them something useful and unique.

No matter what you’re selling, let them get their dicks in the game.