Quote:
Originally Posted by jimmycooper
I've just figured out why you continue to think you're always right and everyone else continues to think you're always wrong. It's because the bulk of your career took place in an era where the consumer had little to no say of what was made available to them and where 'quality' was defined by whatever it was the publishers deemed to be quality. By and large, the industry as functioning as a market with fixed prices. When the internet caused the market to open up and the laws of supply and demand kicked in, wages were eventually driven down to the level that they would have been at for years had there been a more free market.
Compounding those issues was a lack of fluidity, a lack competition and a lack of communication. How did you know what your competition was doing ? Copy deadlines were probably further out from publication than they are now, so looking at a two month old Penthouse spread would only tell you what Michael Ancher or Suze Randall was doing 6 months prior. They were probably keeping their work fresh by incorporating previously unrelated elements and in doing so they were able to push their craft and the industry as a whole forward. Not having access to the same information and or the same networks made it difficult to keep up and even though publishers didn't necessarily know what it was that their consumers liked about their products, they just continued to pay the fixed rate because they didn't know any better. In a such a situation, it's easy to see why you think the way you do.
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So selling the same content that was in a paysite to offline areas of porn and making a huge profit on the content in offline. Is the wrong thing to do?
The rest of your post displays a complete lack of understanding of offline.
Consumers who wanted the "Twistys" niche had maybe as many as 10 magazines to choose from. The editors that got it right, got the most sales from a loyal audience. Yes it was restricted by delivery and wholesale. Ultimately the restrict ion was decided by it's sales. As you say online ever had that restriction and 10,000s of sites were opening. Which brought down the earnings.
The skills to open a paysite and market it, are not as high as they are to fill it with content of the level of Hegre, Met-Art, Holly Randall and others. Twistys got higher than most. Which made Shap's job easier. The majority were left all trying to stick their noses into a few troughs. Imagine 1,000 pigs trying to get a mouth full from a trough meant to feed 100. Now think of 10 pigs feeding in a trough made for 20. Who gets fattest fastest?
By improving what was inside the members area. You can do this. Most couldn't afford it only selling via their sites. Easy to do when you sell in other places.
Now is that good business or not?
I'm off to bed. Had a surreal day dealing with something else. Nice to get back to GFY for a spot of trolling. Now the day is out of my head. Thanks guys.