The words of someone who does not actually look at pornography. The vast majority of pornography-by-consumption is free / ad-supported. Customers are not "paying" and those ads are usually the bottom of the barrel with regard to sleaziness or legality.

It’s still just a sales funnel for ads or subscriptions. Why do you think porn sites exist?

Plenty of porn exists for free, posted online by models or digital artists. It's archived in places that circumvent copyright, don't require payment or accounts, and are easily accessible.

Sure: models need to advertise to find buyers too, but there's certainly not as many models or rehosts if there's no money to be made anywhere.

pornography is not a profitable industry. even famous participants like 'mia khalifa' only made GBP9.5k (USD 12.8k) lifetime earnings. The average onlyfans has about 21 fans, with an average subscription price of $7.20.

the future of the industry is probably ai slop, personalised ai, and so on

one of the purposes of the porn industry in 00s was money laundering: cash only, large stores with no CCTV, very sparse records, not possible to objectively value why a dvd was being sold for $85

The industry is profitable .. the onlyfans founder is now worth circa $8 billion.

Being grist in the mill of that industry, however, only leads to being ground up for the consumption of others.