Quote:
Originally Posted by Eldon Hoke
Simon is probably one of the best photographers around here, hands down. You can tell he spends the effort in his artistry rather than creating 20 page threads on GFY.
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There is no stills shooter, I know of other than me, who could shoot a set for a magazine. There are lots of good single shot shooters, but not seen one good set shooter.
The mistakes are many and basic. Missing poses, repeating poses, getting poses wrong, using girls that people here think are "hot" and a magazine editor would take the piss out of me for shooting.
Now the excuse is often "I couldn't be bothered." Which if true was a damning of their business skills. A sponsor could of bought content in and then sold it to a magazine. Thereby making his content free and even profitable before a single member joined. Of if the sponsor was shooting for himself, sell to magazines and still use it in his site.
Custom shooters could of sold sets to magazines, like we did, and done custom work and opened a content store. Like we did.
The truth is their content simply wasn't good enough and good shooters who could sell to magazines weren't shooting for the money sponsors paid. It would of lost them money.
Now you can troll, flame and make all the excuses you like. But look around and see who did shoot for mags and custom?
The shooters who were good enough opened sites, all small earners because the real money was elsewhere. People like Viv Thomas, Suze Randall, Steve Hicks, Deni de Francesco and more. Many more.
If you want a site that competes with Penthouse, Mayfair or such like. You employ a shooter who shoots for them. If you want a teen site that competes with Barely Legal, you employ a shooter who shoots for them.If you want a site that competes with Evil Angel, you employ a shooter who shoots for them. And so on, these are just examples.
What you don't do is employ people who can't shoot that level and spend a fortune marketing. Because the site doesn't convert and retain. That's sheer madness. Because any clown can do it and a lot of clowns did.
So traffic had to be king. Because sites didn't convert and unless around 1,000 were looking at your content you wouldn't get 1 sale. Hell it was often 1-500 on TGP traffic clicking on a banner in and decent niche.
An easier and cheap er route would of been to employ the right PRODUCT creator, sell his content offline to absorb his wages and created a site that really kicked ass.
Some sites did it and these guys you know, the rest of you followed my leader into masher.
Maybe you couldn't really afford it in the beginning, which I'm sure is close to the truth. And as you got to where you could, you weren't good enough businessmen.
Please no excuse about mags being dead. They were very much alive in 2005. When all the gurus were around. In 2000 they were thriving.
And what about the DVD market, the same applies there. But as usual you will find excuses for your own failures.
