Originally Posted by AaronM

You are WAY over paying. This does 2 things:

1. Potentially pisses off other photographers who may choose to not help you on forums like this.
2. Sets off a "red flag" as being a bullshit company since nobody in their right mind would pay 2k for what you're doing.

The most I have ever paid for a solo shoot, with toys etc... is $1,500.00 and that's VERY rare. If I shoot an 8 hour day for a site like Twisty's then the flat fee I offer is 1k, again for solo work with toys.

There are a lot of factors to consider when recruiting models. Location is a pretty big one as is time of year. I'll give you two examples:

1. One would think that December would be a great time to find new models considering they want more money for Christmas. However, i've found that this is one of the roughest months to recruit new girls.
   
2. For the last 5+ years I've been shooting primarily in Las Vegas. Before moving here I assumed that finding hot models would be super easy. However, since being here, I've discovered that the really hot girls can and do make around 1k per night either stripping, doing bottle service, or hooking...And they aren't putting themselves on the Internet. If I were to offer the same 2 grand you're offering, it would bring in a few more ladies but considering that's more than the average client pays for a solo content order, I'm obviously not going to do that. However, I could offer $500-$600 for the same solo shoots in San Diego, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, and many other places and get better looking models.

Applications have died down for a few reasons. As far as CL goes, until recently I was able to track a number of things on my CL ads. I could tell which ads performed best, what times the ads were viewed, and track the models through my sites. Before CL made it impossible for me to include my code in the listings, I definitely saw a downward trend in the ads that were even being viewed, let alone clicking my links. I tried different titles, putting dollar figures in the titles, and a few other things. Nothing increased the views on my ads but my conversation ratio stayed about the same.

Now that CL has made their changes, I'm flying blind. I'm pretty sure that very few other people incorporated any tracking into their ads so I had a distinct advantage in recognizing patterns and tweaking my ads and sites accordingly.

I could be wrong but I'm going to attribute a lot of this to the increasingly large number of GWC's out there who are creeping models out. All the ads about "suck my dick off camera" & "private videos" from shit bags don't help legit producers one bit.

Other things to consider...

How often do you change your ads?

Are you including photos? If so, are they watermarked showing that you actually shot and own them? Are they classy or trashy photos?

Are you including other supporting graphics? Think "Club Flyers". Many potential models are attracted to a graphic that shows them everything without having to read the listing itself.

Are you asking them to respond through CL's email system or sending them directly to your site?

I could go on about these things for a long time. The bottom line is trial and error along with doing something different than the bullshit artists out there. Make your ads set you apart.