Content blowout question

Interesting question ....

Just from my limited experience in dealing with people who own paysites, they want to spend less and less - and make more, more, more! There are very few webmasters in this biz who REALLY AND TRUELY CARE about the quality of their content and/or offering their members a quality experience.

As I see it today - keeping a good paying member around for a while (retention) by offering them quality content, a great surfing experience and supurb customer services - has taken a backseat to how many new signups a webmaster can get in a month.

I've always heard - it's easier to keep the customer that you already have instead of trying to find new ones. This practice hasn't sunk in with most of the paysite owners out there yet.

Most of the paysites that I've joined over the last few years have featured shitty content ( looked good in the tours though ), links that don't work, pages that don't load, shitty navigation and design, infrequent updates etc..etc..etc. Some even make it almost impossible for the average Joe to figure out how to cancel his membership. Does this type of webmaster care about paying more for quality content? Hhahaha - what a joke!

One of the best paysites that I've ever seen was by J. Stephen Hicks (Penthouse Photographer - www.ddgirls.com ). I was lucky enough to work for Stephen for about a year and I can tell you he's not your average adult webmaster. He truely cares about the quality of the content, he cares about the retention and he thinks its extremely important to offer his members top-notch customer service and support. Links to cancel your membership are placed all over the website. No jumping thru hoops to cancel with him. Hell, he even offers a bulletin board inside his site so that members can communicate with one another. Most paysite owners would NEVER put a bulletin board in their paysites because they know that their members would be trashing them on their own boards about the quality of the site.

The interesting thing is that most of the webmasters who run paysites would not be in business long if they ran a mainstream business they way they run their paysites.

D*

Got to agree with Dean for a lot of what he says, but there are exceptions. We should know.

But the problem for us content providers is the following.

Are we better selling a set at;

A) $300 exclusive

B) 15 times @ $35

C) 100 times @ $5

Of course you can do B & C if you retain the ownership of the set. Plus with some if you mention $300 they tell you about Boris in Moscow who started shooting last week and will shoot a Teen set for $100 of a 25 year old in pig tails and sitting on 50s furniture. *Turn off sarcasm, but you get my meaning*

But the future looks good, sales have been climbing steadily for the last few months and I do not see them dropping, more people are getting out of the content game and the replacements are not serious competition.

With a 1% CB ceiling the paysite that does not deliver is in for a bleak future. There are too many sites coming up with the goods and a member leaves them with an expectation. Those who don't meet it are toast. IMO

True - true ***

interesting. thanks.

but neither of you guys are buyers of content blowouts.


Dean what did u do with the content you had for license when u had a content store?

I am a buyer of content blowouts. I have bought several in the past year. But here is the catch 22 situation:

There are two main types of buyers for content blowouts. First of all you have paysite owners who buy the content as filler content. They do not have to worry about saturation as much because it will be inside their members area anyway. So unless they plan to use the content on tours, saturation wouldn't be of as much concern to them as it would be to buyer type two, the non-paysite owner.

Type two would be buying the content for use on TGP galleries, AVS sites, free sites, etc. They DO have to worry very much about over saturation of the content because if a ton of other people purchase the same content, then it is going to become practically worthless to everyone because it is being used so much.

Now here is where the real problem lies. The average paysite owner who is not as concerned with exclusivity can more often afford to pay a better price, but the TGP/AVS/Free Site webmaster who truly NEEDS the exclusivity cannot usually pay such a premium.

Therein lies the problem. Those who really need the exclusivity most could not afford to pay for it, and those who could pay more usually won't care that much. Obviously if a paysite is buying a blowout, they know it is filler content and honestly, when it comes to members area content there isn't that much difference between 10 licenses and 25 licenses.

This is just the way I see it as a buyer. I purchase content both for free sites and for upcoming paysites, but price is of great concern to me in today's market. With all of the difficulties facing the industry today money is getting tighter all the time.

No but I sell content blow outs, if that's how they want to run, fine. If they close down the content is still mine.

But the lack of response is interesting.

I have always liked Semi Exclusive Content or Exclusive.

As long as it is Updated, Semi exclusive or Exclusive my instincts tell me that is the formula.

Numbers say everything and thus far Amateur sites seem to stick out with retention.
Thus the reason why many membership sites with alot of blown out content must contend with horendous chargebacks and a sad retention thus forcing them into lower pricing models and ganking with a cross sale.

Essentially Amateur niche sites are proving exclusive and semi exclusive is a winning combination and only a few sponsor programs have caught on.

Hey, Mutt. For one thing, a consumer can never KNOW if the so-called limited to 25 webmasters is always true.

Mind you, for most providers it IS true. For the trusted providers (they're "trusted" afterall and that was earned) it is always true. But overall, one can never be sure. So "semi-exclusivity" is not always a selling point for me, personally. Depends who says it.

I sold the content and the rights to distribute that content as well as the domain name. People can still license that material by going to www.PlanetContent.com

D*

Such a premium is around $35 a set.

For a set that is brand new and makes the buyer the one putting it out there for the first time. He gets the set he wants, he's not in danger of not getting listed because he will be the person putting others in that position. He can buy the set he really needs.

We are talking about one sign up, is it not worth it to ensure the extra edge in a very competetive market? Buying 10 sets is going to cost $350 or even less, how long and how strong will ten brand new good sets make the buyer against the guy buying 10 for $20?

There are too many "Freebies" being offered that many lose the purpose of what they are doing. The choice is take all the free rides and work like a dog or invest and work smart.

Dravyk, you're right about that. And even if I did trust them to hold it to 25, I don't think 25 is low enough for me to pay more for. I mean, with 25 other people clamoring to post the same stuff to the same places as me, it'd still be really hard to get listed. Even if it were held to 10 there would still be a fair amount of competition just as there always is in the non-exclusive market.

Plus, I'm in doubt that alot of the blowouts out there get 25 webmasters to buy them, anyway. I's guess only the good to very good quality stuff at a very low price sells that many. There aren't really that many webmasters that can afford over $1000 all at once in today's market are there? Not in the TGP poster market, anyway. And those are the ones I think would need exclusivity the most. I could be wrong, obviously. But even at 10 sets I'm not sure I'd pay more. Still alot of possible competition after shelling out that much money all at once.

We're about to start selling 5 licenses for $100 and 10 license for $50 on selected sets, will be very interesting to see how people respond.

that's true, customers can only go on trust and reputation when dealing with 'semi-exclusive' deals .....or even on exclusive content you have to trust that whoever is selling it isn't backdooring it to somebody else.

but most webmasters would be able to tell if somebody lied and sold well over the 25 packages - the content would appear to be everywhere. 25 sold packages wouldn't have the same effect, the Net is pretty big, you wouldn't be running into that content on tours seemingly every time u clicked a link like u would if it was sold over 100 times.

The problem is, I can't get truly exclusive for $35 more per set. I can get pretty decent exclusive stuff for $150 a set, but I'd have to make at least 5 sales just to pay for that one set of content, not to mention bandwidth and such. I haven't even found a place where I can pay an additional $35 for 30 day exclusivity, which means that several other people could buy the same set the same day and post it the same day and I'd still have the same problem that I would have if I spent $5 on a set.

I buy alot of your content, Charly. Good stuff. But is there a way you could guarantee exclusivity for 30 days at a premium price without it costing almost as much as a fully exclusive set? I might pay a premium price for FULL exclusive rights for a 30 day period, after which it would be sold as normal. That would be worth it, I think.

Tootie
If you buy a set on the day it goes on sale then you are the one making the set "Over Exposed"

But would people be prepared to pay $70 for a 30 day exclusive?

On our multi girl sets we sold 10 licenses at $100+ for a three month exclusivity.

It's a possibility, hit me on ICQ.

But again you are talking about exclusive for $150. Ts 4 sales and to be honest any set in www.paulmarkham.com that does not do that in 4 months goes straight into Bargain Basement where it will sell at $5 many times.

If they can shoot well we would buy from them to resale. The money for us in non exclusive.

different for everyone ... for paysite owners that want to jam pack the members area im not sure they give a rats ass, for tgp / avs (is it even still alive?) ... and tours ... of course semi-exclusivity would be important ... i believe a provider can meet a certain sales goal both ways. i think a smart provider would do a little bit of both, or for less money, limited time semi-exclusivity ... but thank god i dont need to worry about this anymore

Also keep in mind alot has to do with the license restrictions a set has. If you sell a semi-exclusive set to 25 webmasters where the license allows for unlimited domain usage, affiliate usage ect. Then logically it would be worth less than a non exclusive set sold unlimited times with a restricted 1-5 domain usage rule.

I personally rather pay more for quality and exclusive than semi-exclusive and sharing.

I think content blowouts are usually used for paysite filler, not the main content of a site, so the exclusivity wouldn't matter much.