Originally Posted by Paul Markham

When reading boards to form an opinion on this industry you have to realise what the boards are about and the main reasons for many of the posts and motivation of the posters.

More often than not with sponsors and some affiliates it's to promote their site to get more affiliates to send more traffic. Which is fine until it escalates to a level where people are lying or in the least misleading.

1. Clip stores are not worth the effort. For many they are not and for sponsors it's not good for them to have affiliates realise that they could make money from clips stores.

2. You can't make real money on content that is not HD, high end, super models. For years there have been so many people telling others that you have to have this or that to make money. Which by coincidence is exactly what they have. I was told by many that the I would never make money out of my style of shooting and it had to be theirs to succeed. They are all gone now from the content game. WHOOPS!!

3. You must have a pay site, DVD, VOD, to make your money back on content. But non exclusive is saturated so it must be easy to sell non exclusive and it must be easy to get sign ups on those sites to saturate the content. Yes very often the advice is contradicting other advice.

4. Niche or fetish is overrated. Unless you really know the niche and love it like your customers do it is over rated.

5. The message boards are how you gauge the health of 'the industry'.
6. No real business gets done on boards anymore. Yes often the advice contradicts itself.

9. Programmers or designers that are high end are worth every penny. The problem is few people in this industry can afford to pay top rates. Or just won't.

I could of said more but the real advice I can give you when taking advice is this. The advisor is selling you something, step back and use logic to look at what he says. Then act accordingly.