I first wandered into an Internext show, crossing the corridor from the AVN show. And was shocked with the people selling manning stands then.
Did buyers of the Zmaster content discs know where the images came from, thought about what they were doing? The images were often the out takes from a porn video shoot or old stuff from the archives of magazine shooters. The discs were selling in the 1,000s. Of course it was saturated, that was Zmasters and my aim. We want loads of people to buy the same sets over and over again.
Then the sponsors who were offering me @5,000 a year and slightly more to shoot exclusive for them. The best was $50,000 They didn't have a clue what a successful magazine shooter makes. Here was a Brit, in Las Vegas, on their stand for business and they still though $25,000 was a wage for me.
Then content brokers who didn't have the money or a clue what would sell or were going to rip me off. Not wanting to pay $300 for the license to sell my sets online. Soon found out $300 was a steal for them.
Bunch of clueless people. most didn't last very long. We all remember those who did and forget those who fucked up.
Then site owners and sponsors. did they really think buying custom content from someone who couldn't sell the same scene 7 times from a store wasn't that good? Forget magazines, none of the content shooters in 2000 had a clue how to shoot 120 frames for a set that would sell for $3,000.
Then the guys who think shooting porn is about the camera. It's not, it's about the model and the way the shooter directs her. Cameras even in the days of film weren't that hard to use. Video has stopped being on film before many here were born. No excuse for that. But a guy who had no idea how to shoot porn, thought he could do it because he had a camera.
That surfers only wanted cheap badly shot content masquerading as amateur. When the truth was clear, that's all they could afford to buy.
And that's the truth about the birth of online porn. It was a business started on a shoestring by people who couldn't market bottled water in the desert, couldn't tell the difference between a nude model and porn. And worse of all people who were so convinced they were right, when they were doing all they could afford to do, and the rest of the world was wrong, created instead of the best thing to hit porn, created the worse.
Yes you can now tell me I'm wrong. Doesn't change the fact online porn is on a downward slope and know one has a clue how to apply the brakes or even thinking of it. Just trying to pick up more speed by supporting the their nemesis. Pay Tubes for ad space.
Maybe the demise of of online porn will make a more read book than one on how to shoot porn, very soon.