Quote:
Originally Posted by Jakez
Can you remind us how long you've been in the porn business and how successfully you've adapted to the online aspect of it?
|
Been in the porn business 33 years. Started selling content to online sites in the 90s. I was contacted by a friend who wanted to sell discs of my images from the Internet, this was when download speeds were slow. Then got involved with APIC and after Steve served a DMCA on content I would email the same address with an offer to buy licensed content. The conversion ratio stunk, couldn't afford it or thought it was better to steal. Who knows.
Still many did buy and $3-$10 an image it was a huge income boost from content I had already earned on. Then had John Copeland, Steve Easton and Phil & Laura who ran a content company from their base in Texas.
In 2000 I wanted to expand these brokering sales and that year while attending the AVN show in Vegas I went into the Internext show with the intention of finding more brokers. I soon came to the conclusion that many were con men or running on a shoe string. We had been ripped off by a broker who was selling on the basis 2 sales for him 100% and 1 for the 50/50 split.
So returned to Czech, employed an in house programer to build a content store
www.paulmarkham.com. Once launched the response was almost immediate, I hit a few boards and it snowballed. It was then that I had found out the conman had been stealing from me. I think it's called shaving. 2 customers said they had bought all our content from the guy and I knew he had paid us on 1/3 of what was sold.
Within a year most sets were selling in total for $500, it doesn't take many sales to get to $500 at $35 a sale, 15 sales on a set was easy. And the more we added the more we sold, it was that simple, the same people came back week in week out. Digital cameras for stills were very expensive then, video was small and download was slow.
We started adding video to the stores in March 2001 and even small videos very compresses were snapped up. Some wanted bigger, but the numbers were small. Better to sell a video solo girl in a small resolution 20 ties at $35 than muck around selling it 1-2 times at a large res to someone who wanted it for $35. This was before "custom" hit online porn ad the cry was non exclusive was saturated.
I had a SMS message sent to my phone and Squealer when he was here commented it was going off all the time and annoying him. It was like a cash register to us.
Without checking I think we launched
www.bargainbasementcontent.com around 2004. It was to cater for the sponsors who wanted a license on very cheap content they could give to affiliates. Many blame shooters selling non exclusive for affiliates to use. It's the fault of sponsors who buy it for affiliates.
In 2004 we also saw that we had gone about as far as we could go with the content stores. Shooting custom for the price offered was not on. Giving up the lucrative magazine and content stores was also not on. so shooting 100 scenes for a paysite wasn't thought of as an option. So with our "saturated non exclusive" content we launched
www.paulmarkhamteens.com which did great as a third level income flow.
Then in 07-20-2008, our lives were tuned upside down.
https://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=842595 Read it and find out. I was in turmoil and the business was the last of my worries. Until employees asked if they were going to get paid, Eva did the accounts as well as shoot. It was then I found I was locked out of our bank accounts and posted that I would take any offers on content, to get money into the processors, who transferred it to my BoA account, which I could withdraw cash at the ATM to pay employees. Also did a couple of big sales with money being wired to my account, not the business account, so again I could use my credit card to draw cash.
This is what started the myth of us being broke. A lie spread firstly by DamianJ then a few other trolls.
Then when Eva was well enough to drive, I got the lump on my neck checked out and fond I had advanced cancer. This was January 2009. This more or less made the decision for us, Eva couldn't shoot, I couldn't. Neither could we run the business we had 3500 sq ft studio ad 8 staff. Squealer saw this all. So we decided it was time to close up shop until we were through our nightmare, or I passed away. My cancer was that bad.
During this time Tubes really bit hard into the online revenue, the remaining magazines were not buying or not paying a lot. So my temporary retirement became permanent.
I was able to do this because over the last 30 years I was prudent, or mean enough, to put money away for a rainy day. The stores and sites were still bringing in money, to the tune of $1,000+ a week. The magazine sales had more or less stopped. My pensions were a great income top up. In the last 2 years the pensions have stayed the same, though did recently find 2 I hadn't cashed in, and my retirement stayed permanent.
Not making anything like the money we did make. Still no complaints 3 years after effectively shutting the business down, the sites are still up, the joins and orders still come and that's more than many can claim.
Whatever I claim to be the income we made over the last 10 years, it will be flamed. By people who will look at us earning $1,000 a week for doing nothing and cry or block it out as a lie.
Online was our second income stream. For content shooters who could sell sets to magazines up till 2008, selling custom for the prices paid was a joke. Not even Manwin pay as much for a solo girl scene exclusive that the magazines did for a non exclusive set. This is easy evidence to verify. I suspect it also applied to video shooters who worked like we did.
I bet you didn't expect such a reply. Believe it or don't. doesn't make any difference to our bank accounts and my pensions.