Why is porn so fucking expensive?

There is 0 reason to pay for porn unless you want a physical copy of it.

This... the reality is that there's tons of porn around, it seems like it should be all free... but man, it takes hard work to get good at drawing, and to make a whole manga. And in our society porn isn't something you can easily do on the side - either you're a porn star or you're a banker. You can't do both, because you'd get fired. Sooo... people need to eat, pay rent, live their lives. I know it's harder if you don't make much money, but I'd highly encourage you to pay from the legitimate source anything that you like.
It's the only way we'll continue to get high quality translated products, uncensored hentai, and ensure that the industry doesn't cave under the pressure of prudes and social bullies err activists. =)

Some fetish porn is pretty hard to find without paying.

I happily pay for the occasional hentai doujin/manga work and also commission a fair amount of translations. But I do believe this topic was talking about live action porn and for that I agree the prices are pretty stupid and most of the western porn sites always rely on pricy subscription services to operate. On the other side JAV videos cost an arm and a leg.

True... I actually worked at a local video rental store while Netflix was driving them all out of business and we went with an adult section to stay in business longer. The markup for sale was insane. I guess you do that whenever you can get away with it, lol. But even with real porn the companies and "actors" do still need to get paid and eat.

One thing to remember is even though there is a ton of porn out there, I believe a lot of the sites and companies are unique - meaning they cannot benefit from the economy of scale that a movie studio can. So even while the market is glutted with content, the individual companies still have to each charge a high price to stay in business. But I dunno... maybe they're doing just fine. Once a price is high, unless you truly need to lower it to compete or increase demand you'd be a fool to drop it.

In terms of JAV the cost of fake cum and costumes and paying that bastard who censors everything probably accounts for some of the additional cost.

because no one pays for it.

I started a thread a while ago about this sort of thing. People don't want to pay, people don't want ads, and they even expect these things to come free of charge. I still don't see how this is sustainable. Something's gonna give sooner or later.

dont complain about the cost, if you are buying it the first place, you are a good person, too many people just pirate it.

If it's only piracy like you claim it is, why a dumb anime waifu statue that's only good for taking pictures to post on anonymous image boards and as a magnificent dust (or semen?) magnet can cost up to 300$? Can you pirate waifu dolls? Piracy is a factor, not the direct cause. Supply and demand.

Anime was an already expensive luxury in the 90s, so was hentai/porn, and back then you had no viable internet piracy.

The less people you're targeting, the more hardcore they are, the more likely they are to spend bigger amount of cash on something. Are you a casual reader? A regular censored monthly/bimonthly magazine with 300 to 500 pages costs 4-7~ dollars in Japan, and there's dozens of them, with plenty authors to follow. Like that author? Buy his tank, less pages but less censorship, for 10~ dollars.

It's common place, like watching anime on TV. Some people are just fine with that, a few thousands need to spend 70$ to have those episodes on disc.

Now look at doujin (authors publish their own stuff) parodies, imagine if Fakku books sold you Renai Sample for 15 bucks, 200p worth of porn, and then next to it sold you a 20p ReDrop Idolmaster doujin for 20-25-30$ (even 50 depending on how many copies were available, watch out for scalpers). Well, that actually happens, and it's because there's less people who care for a doujin, let alone an idolmaster doujin. If that Takanefan loves his waifu, he'll pay up.

There's also selling an eroge/a visual novel-adv, you're targeting a handful thousands of people at most, some of those people are part of the same obsessed fan market that buys kusoge/shitgames like Neptunia, the same market that spends millions of yen on Idolmaster songs (the x360 games sold not many copies but were extremely profitable when looking at songs dlc).

I am not well informed on such details but porn stars aren't exactly cheap, and right now they also have to compete with homemade stuff so it's no wonder subs are so expensive.

Ive spent thousands of dollars on Doujins, but only because I really wanted them. Other than that everything I have ever viewed has been free.

I agree with this, some porn is really hard to find without paying a bit but still there is alot for free.
Like for general porn i wouldn't pay but anyway i can't watch porn only hentai :3

This is probably at least part of it. I wouldn't mind paying a fair price if some site figured out how to do H videos right (streaming and DDL, not stealing, not just some studios) because it's not much different from other entertainment. As cheesy as it sounds, there's also the idea of helping the industry that has put out so much amazing stuff.