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Originally Posted by Robbie
That's the truth. BangBus sold more memberships that Shap and me put together and it was shot with a freakin' handycam. 
That's what I'm trying to tell Paul...yes I'm sure that Shap COULD have spent a fortune on pictures that were laid out perfect and cost tons of money to get perfect.
And then? It wouldn't necessarily sell one more membership or retain one more member. I promoted Twistys from the time that Shap first opened it.
In my mind it was a softcore "glamour" style "babe" site. He did really well with it. Made as much money online with that concept as anybody ever has.
Could he have made a dollar or two more? Of course.
Would hiring an overpriced photographer to shoot have made more money for him?
I don't think so. |
The quality of porn has little to do with the equipment. It's more often about the ability of the shooter to control and "use" the model. The rest I've answered.
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I personally wouldn't presume to tell Shap how to market to that niche. Yeah, I have some ideas and I think I'm pretty average at selling "babe" stuff. But for me to tell Shap that he should have done something different?
Ludicrous.
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Not telling him how to market. At online marketing he's great. Missing the opportunity to hire someone full time to raise his content to the level where it makes a profit
offline is about business management skills. Looking at other ways to monetise the commodity he was already paying for.
Nothing wrong with arguing points in general and talking about ideas and opinions for tweaking shit. But Paul's mistake is to show the utter disrespect to people who are at a certain level in what they do.
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Shap ruled his niche in online paysites.
Now you can argue a lot of things with him, but you have to realize that he is the master of that in the online world. It doesn't matter what some fancy-shmancy photog would have charged him for a set of photos that may or may not have done anything to please his members.
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The
online world. There's other worlds in porn. Employing someone who could get him into those other markets isn't a good ide?
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The bottom line is Shap set the stage, the curtain went up, and the crowd roared.
A lot of guys tried to do that...and failed.
That's all you need to know Paul.
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And a lot of guys tried it and succeeded. Most of them coming from offline to online porn. Online thought it ruled porn. Well doesn't mean it should ignore the possible income of other areas of porn. Could he of taken a set of Deans, that he owned full rights on, and sold it to Club US and Club UK. For more than he paid Dean. Not as a one off. But 20 times a month? For sending a few Fed Ex parcels. We did it all the time.
We sold offline
and online. The same content.
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And no disrespect to you Paul. I wouldn't begin to try and tell you that you don't know what you're doing when you shoot a scene or a set of pictures.
It's called respect and professional courtesy.
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And marketing and selling is what I've been doing for the last 30 years. OK shit at driving 100,000 of hits and never claimed to be good. Marketing and selling content. Well the quality of my work shows how good I was at that.
</sarcasm>
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It's easy to lose track of that when you're getting attacked by clowns on GFY who don't know shit. But don't mix up clowns with real guys like Shap.
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The problem is trolls posting crap and making this only about Shap. He was one of many who never maximised his potential by selling offline. You as well. Never made a fortune with our sites, but at least I opened a couple. I saw online as a place to sell content and started selling to it in mid 90s, kept increasing these sales on top of offline sales. Then opened stores, then paysites. Most paysites stayed stuck in paysites for far too long.
Few went to DVD in the good times, very few went to magazines, Shap bought some content from Holly, Subams from Simon Davies. The rest, well they're few and far between. Look at the offline shooter and companies who came online.
Hustler, Score, Swank, Private, Playboy, DDF, Viv Thomas, Steve Hicks, Suze Randall, PRO, Crescent (yes they fucked up) Paul Markham, Sullivan, Gold and more. Many many more. Some did well, some didn't. The traffic flow the other way wasn't so good.
All that was required was remove the blinkers and look.