It's harder to shoot porn today than it was back in the old days.

Nice post. Is solid gold to any new photog or experienced photog shooting a new niche..

That would be a very good idea for any company that is hiring new shooters and wants that new shooter to maintain their brand and style of shooting.





I have the same type of books. I loaded all of my posses for all of my different niches into a Sony PSP. The visuals comes in handy when working with brand new models.

And when you bounce around 30 different niches for different clients those electronic pose books come in way handy for nailing the right poses for the right niche. A very good memory refresher from time to time.


I always recommend that as a step 1 for new photogs trying to get good or trying to get into adult. Find the posses that you like and load them into your Iphone or Android and pull them up as needed.

Yeah, this is definitely something I never thought about doing. Hell I only shoot ONE thing and I still find myself at the end of the day going: "DOH! I should have got THAT pose!"

I hope Paul keeps posting. It really shows the difference between guys who know what they are doing and the idiots and trolls in this thread of whom half are either not in this business or are on the fringes as "wannabes"

It's pretty easy to spot them. Don't let them get you down Paul. There are still a few people on here like JustDave who DO respect you. We may not agree with you completely on your assessment of marketing and selling porn. But hell, reality is none of us agree with each other either lol

Bottom line is...yes, you are very talented and very knowledgeable. And though I have that clown Fabian on "ignore" it is still fun watching you destroy his inexperienced and ignorant ass on how to shoot porn.

And funnier to watch trolls babble on how Fabian is "right" and you are "wrong".

Only on GFY would IDIOTS side against a guy with more than 4 decades experience shooting porn and side with a guy who has never even been on a porn set in his life.

Really?

When I'm at the beach shooting surfers in the pounding surf and the salt spray is blowing past me I don't even think twice about switching my lens on the spot in order to get a different perspective. It's just what needs to be done in order to get an interesting image.

Even with best care you'll get dust internally to the lens over time because the movement of the internal lens elements during focusing and zooming (where applicable) will cause ambient air and particles it contains being sucked in

1) Nikon?s new Integrated Dust Reduction System employs quad-frequency ultrasonic sensor cleaning every time the camera is turned on or off.

2)The are cleaning buds and liquids in every good photographic shop

To whole point of a DSLR is the range of lenses from 6mm to 6000mm.

You will find that the Czech film was made with very modest resources, less than a lot of US porn movies, but that was not the point, the point is the erotic is in the mind.

great tip Paul and one I keep asking my photog to put together - a pose book/binder so girls can see.

I'll just say this: I've made money with Paul Markham's content. No doubt about it. And so did many people here.

On the other hand, Paul uses to have such extreme and stubborn points of view that it isn't even funny. I've lots of respect for people that stands up for what they think, but I want some objective demonstration of that. Saying "because I say so" or "because I did it 30 years ago" is frankly annoying. Personally, I think this is what caused him losing a lot of work opportunities, rather than the OP description

I got it from Steve Colby, who got it from someone else.

An excellent site for big boobs stuff is Scores site.

Agreed. I got my ideas for many big tit poses not from the site...but just remembering jerking off to the magazine back a couple of decades ago. heh-heh

One big tit pose that I use and really pleases the members is one that I first saw a young Kayla Kleevage do in a mag many, many years ago where she had one leg propped up on a chair and then bent down so you could see her face...and of course those giant tits hanging down under the leg.

That's just one of those poses that made my cock jump. And I use my cock like a divining rod for money. lol

Consumer Reports has zero advertising and is totally fee based to resist influence. I think you are thinking of Consumer Digest, which is completely meant to appear as unbiased as CR but is in reality a shill. Just had to say...

Back to the regularly scheduled programming...

In order to stop all photosets looking the same, you have a book with 24 poses in it, so all your photosets look the same?

I'm missing the genius here...

That's why I said IF you believe any porn review site is like Consumer Reports then you are a "mark" (carny slang for a target who is easy to con)

I can see it totally went over your head. So nothing new there.

As you can see I showed 3 variation of a few poses. The books had 50 to 100 pages in them, so 2 sides would make it 100 to 200 pictures.

Of course an elementary point like that you call genius. Most others call it normal.

Yes we took a few orders today and had a few sign ups. Not bad in a time content providers are closing down.

What opportunities did I lose? To shoot solo girl scenes for $500 outright a scene?

We are doing business 2.5 years after stopping shooting and real work. Not bad for anyone. And it's ONLY because we did refuse to sell our work outright that we can do that.

What makes people annoyed, is me telling them their members areas are not very good. And them knowing it's true.

Anyone who disagrees can email me a pass and I will take a look and admit I'm wrong.

Just reviewed the Mofos three girl lesbian scene that I posted the pictures of earlier. Not bad at all. Could it be a bit better with some guidance? Yes it could and that's my point. Maybe even a lot better.

I haven't forgot all the lessons I learned over the last 33 years and while my physical condition isn't good. My mental and knowledge is.

11 pages for a solo masturbation shoot. Porn is definitely harder to shoot nowadays

Quoted for truth.

520 epic posts

congratulations. now maybe you can stop preaching that online porn is dead.

This shit still going on??

Great post Dave. I wish I would have thought to use a book years back. Would have saved me a ton of time and frustration.



Spot on Robbie.

To you guys knocking Paul, don't. I GUARANTEE he would teach even most of the seasoned producers something. You don't get the longevity in this business that he has had by slacking or not being on top of your game. It doesn't matter if you like what he shoots or not, he has made a long living here and that is more than most will be able to say when it's all said and done. We can all learn from others, especially those who have been around for decades. Some of these guys have so many tricks and tips, it boggles the mind.

I'd pay Paul money to sit on a shoot with him for a day and it would be money well spent, I know this for a fact. Every time I get the opportunity to see a real pro shoot or something with years of experience, I ALWAYS learn something new and walk away a better producer for having been there and learning from them.

ya the only thing i've ever knocked him for is negativity. this industry needs fresh blood and he is the first to tell them that the industry is dead. i've made money off his content - half a decade ago. i'm just not sure why he isn't positive on the industry and seeing the rebound that his sales are obviously indicating.

hey did u shoot that avatar pic? looks like bkk.

What are we supposed to do now???

I don't agree with everything Paul says, I'm just speaking in terms of having a long career and knowing how to make money with content. He was shooting content when most of us were in grade school, and some of us were not even born yet. Something to be said about that kind of experience.

No, didn't shoot that, but it is BKK.

Buy 19 of his HD videos for 150 bucks.

Dur.

just out of curiosity do you think youve made paul any sales from your, ermmm shall we call them "piss take comments"

What if someone read that or your jokey sig and thought, "yeah i think i will purchase that"

Paul, any info on this? has damian ironically created you sales?

It's hilarious you think he has the wherewithal to set up tracking for his sales, analyse that data and then make business decisions based on that data.

sorry.

So are you saying the old blood can't hack it? Then we agree on something. Most of the old blood are stuck in a rut and don't want to change.

But what would new blood bring to the table? New ideas are great, but they need skills to execute them. And a ton of money. You still think it's 1999 when someone could start up a site on a shoestring and keep going until he gets over the initial stages.

No the game has changed and unless someone comes in with a lot of skill. experience and money the idea of them making any changes is far fetched. More likely they will learn from those who haven't changed much in 10 years and carry on doing the same.

However maybe they will buy your CMS.

It would be ironic if Damian created sales for me, when he finds it so hard to create them for himself.

Yes I can track sales a bit, see the link on my banner. http://www.paulmarkham.com/?from=GFY

Also have a program on the DB that tracks traffic.

Looked at the traffic and GFY seems to be sending a bit more. Even a sales from the GFY link. So all is fine.

Me and my buddy Allan E who was a box cover designer and took his 1st sex pics on my sets, came up with that idea about 8 years ago. We copied all of our favorite posses, box shots, sex stills, etc from different web pages selling DVD's and loaded them onto PSP's. We liked a lot of Chris Streams box pics. His stuff always appealed to us.






So on point and i totally agree with you on all of those points.

Working for people that are better than you is the key to getting good at anything.

Me and my buddy Alan way back when took assistance jobs. Alan with a photog named Bret Burny and I took an assistant/C-light job with Craven Moorehead during the day and worked with Chico Wang at night a few nights a week. With what I and Alan learned from assisting we would pool it all in 3 nights a week and practiced till we actually knew what we were doing.


Assisting people that are better than you is solid gold.

New blood is shit without learning from the experiences of the old blood.


My skills jumped leaps and bounds as a photog and as a video shooter as a direct result from working for people who were way better than me. Working for free or as an intern for someone who is way better than you at what ever you are trying to be good at, is highly recommended if you can.

somewhat. i think the old school guys - those in the game prior to say 2005 - aren't used to working so hard for their money. the industry went from a gold rush to an actual industry that takes a workforce to succeed. the only old school guys doing well right now either hired workers or turned into workers themselves.

obviously you don't realize there are different types of workers in the world. there are some hugely successful mainstream developers and marketers that want something more fun to work on. they have skills and talents way beyond your comprehension.

before i got into porn in 2000 i was one of Ford's senior web developers. we were building massive traffic sites before most people knew about the web. a divorce pushed me to leave the US in favor of the coastal air of Portugal, where i put my talents to use getting Hegre from $20k a year to $3m a year.

fresh blood has fresh talent that can MOVE an industry.

i don't still think its 1999 so i would suggest you do some research before misquoting me. you don't know me. you are just assuming stupid shit based on your negativity and prejudices of industry vets. i have evolved with the industry - even over the last 6 months. if you actually looked at the demo of my cms, instead of just attempting to bash the homepage copy, you'd realize your error in logic.

it is always pretty obvious that, although you have some knowledge and experience shooting porn, you know little to nothing else of the rest of the industry or any industry outside adult. do you even know what's going on in mainstream SEO these days? did you know that all of Facebook's tech is open source? do you even care about anything beyond your limited little corner of the business?

if they have content and want a paysite, then that would be their smartest move. but as i tell every one of my clients, launching the paysite is only the first step (made incredibly easy by my software). the hard work comes after the site is up. this is well documented in my literature, something you didn't research before attacking my business.

and another reminder - keep attacking my business. i got another sale from gfy today.

I've listened to this "New Blood" line for years. The Internet was new blood. Well the new blood is now old blood, didn't take long for that to happen.

The truth is the new blood comes into this industry thinking it's easier than it is. Not just today, it's been happening for 30 years I know of. Some of us survived by listening and learning. Most didn't because they didn't listen and learn.

so what would new blood bring to the online porn industry? A better way to give the product away for free. Well we've definitely been good at that for the last 10 years.

A better way to shoot, design, create a paysite? That's like saying someone who has never driven a car can drive better than an experienced driver.

A new niche that has never been thought of? The Internet never made that possible. Girls were taking their own porn pictures with Polaroids and video tape cameras. Homegrown were buying the videos 15 years ago, I think, and magazines were printing the pictures 20 years ago.

The Internet is just another vehicle to deliver porn. It CAN deliver more niche porn because of the low costs of publishing. but I've not seen any niche that wasn't produced 15 years age produced on the Internet.

What the Internet did do, is allow more people with less skills to open a website or drive traffic. And give away tons of free porn.

Homegrown Video, amateur porn since 1982

Homegrown started selling homemade porn in 1982. That makes the company almost 30 years into the amateur niche.

I agree with what you are saying - so much of what many people here think is unique others were doing well before that.

Amateur has changed more in relationship to people's owning more advanced cameras and the ability to edit their material, the natural progression of becoming more accustomed to shooting too. It is like the difference between someone learning to use a blunderbuss back in the 1500's versus someone using a laser scoped rifle today.

I know what a mark is... I just misread what you wrote since I was scanning quickly, my apologies.

Yes Paul...but it is the first time in all of history that porn has been accessible to everyone. And no, I'm not talking about "free" porn. I mean that for the first time in history...anybody with an internet connection could buy a membership and view hardcore porn.

That was not so easy before. Trust me. I've traveled all over the U.S. in bands throughout the 1980's and 1990's and 2000's. Most small towns don't even allow (by law) adult bookstores. And the few that do? It's a tricky thing trying to go there and hoping that none of your neighbors saw you.

And then what if your thing is fat girls? Or trannies? Or you're in a redneck town but you like black girls? Or you like to watch gay porn? Then you had to go through the embarrassment of picking up that video or magazine and walking to a counter and looking another person in the eye while you bought it.

The internet changed all of that.

And as far as giving stuff away...As a guy who made a whole lot of money with my tgp's...I think we hit a "sweet spot" back around 1998 and it extended all the way up to 2008 and was ruined when tube sites started running full stolen scenes and bit torrent and file sharing sites exploded stealing full members areas.

During that period of around 10 years...galleries were selling memberships like hotcakes. I was making so much money that I honestly couldn't spend it fast enough. And that's no lie.

Just like everything...there is a "sweet spot". And I believe that was it.

When we first opened up in 1996...we made our own galleries with "softcore" images. Not showing much. We made good money. But when we started using hardcore and later on video...it was like an avalanche.

It was just the right combination that made sales. Anybody can argue that all day long with "theories". But there were a handful of us that truly made stratospheric money with that "sweet spot".

Too little and you didn't get a sale. Too much and you didn't get a sale.

And statistics prove for me that we had it tweaked perfectly.

Then tubes and torrents and file shares fucked it by giving away EVERYTHING and not even worrying about selling porn sites anymore.

Unreal.

Those guys have no idea how much money they lost themselves. I still make a damn good pile of money on dating and cams and VOD. But it is not 1/20th of the money I was making as an affiliate of paysites as recently as the last part of 2007.

THAT is where the stupidity kicked in.

Manwin is making more money than ever now. Of course they are. Brazzers was never a big program. I don't know of any of the big guys back 4 or 5 years ago for whom Brazzers was a top seller. It just wasn't.

So of course all the money rolling in from their tube sites make more than they did before. But as we all know...little by little that is falling away as they eat themselves from the inside out like the cancer that they are.

And so now we see them using their ad company to serve ads on The Pirate Bay.

Sounds like desperation to me.

thanks for another plug. keep going! quote my site copy on every post.

since they were successful webmasters before, they relied mostly on their own traffic from day one. and they started with Juggcash in 2005 - thats when i met them and when we started shooting for them. Brazzers came much later.

Juggcash was what I meant when I said "Brazzers"
Promoted them right out the gate. And made decent sales. But never at the top of my sponsors by any means. And for the last 3 years...they have been one of the worst converting sponsors of them all.

Actually is this a negative post or a positive one?

Maybe if a newbie see it he will realise some of the things required to create good porn.

A decent budget. No matter what the idea is if you don't have the money to put that idea into actual good content. It is very likely to fail. AND if the idea is something that can be shot on a shoestring the odds are it's been done.

Models. Great ideas, great budgets can all fall down if the model is simply not into it. Good porn is largely about about the models pleasure, unless it's Sade Masochism or like Paul Little shoots. A model going through the same old routine she has done a dozen times before can get boring.

Ease of selling. In reality it's never been harder to sell porn. Not for producers selling to sponsors. But for sponsors selling to members. Ratios suck, retention largely sucks and rejoins aren't great. Unless the MEMBERS area stands out.

Is easier to open a paysite today? YES?

Is it easier to make a profit from one? No, in fact only a fool would think so. It's the toughest time porn has ever had.

Wow, that's a long time. As I only knew you from when we met I was afraid to quote an earlier date. Congrats on lasting.

You're right about what people here think is unique, the only thing I've ever seen on the Internet that was unique in porn. Was giving the product away in such vast amounts.

The editing on a computer is totally new. Before editing had to be done on a reel to reel machine and out of the scope of any amateurs budget. They sold it unedited to guys like you who edited it for them.

A laser scope rifle in the hands of someone who can barely shoot a blunderbuss is a waste. Give it to a trained sniper if you want to see it brought out to it's best.

This is the toughest time for all. Shit, 2 years ago my car dealer neighbor told me his 750 FICOs were getting declined. Hard to believe but it's probably worse now.

Damm man, I can't even reply b4 you post again.

Adult's not the first obsolete industry I've seen, btw. It's just happening faster in internet time.

Agreed.

All those niches were available. Yes the Internet meant it could be viewed a lot easier.

As this part cover the same subject here's my answer. You saw a massive increase. Other parts of porn saw a massive decrease. A lot of those buying magazines and videos switched over to the Internet. Many switched to viewing it for free. The stats prove that. Everyone quotes banner clicks to joins. What about gallery views to sales?

How many people were looking at a gallery and just downloading it and going to the next? Too little and it didn't work, too much and it didn't work, naming all the images or clips in sequence didn't work as well as numbering them out of sequence and dumping them onto a site.

1,000 gallery views to 1 join isn't selling like hotcakes. Often some galleries didn't even do 1-1,000 on banner clicks. But it worked because of the migration of buyers from mainstream porn to the online porn. Then the Tubes turned 1-1,000 into a dream for old timers.

Bus as plsureking points out no one has any new ideas how to turn the tide. All they can do is put out more free content to get ever worsening ratios. It's been going on for a decade now as you point out.

Adult is not obsolete and it won't ever die. It's shrinking and changing.

Selling sites with poor to average content is going to get harder and harder. There might be more profit in giving it away for free, helped by a DMCA loophole, and selling advertising space. Unless you're the size of the big Tubes, forget about the income being great.

The business plan of affiliates needs to be considered very hard. The customers simply aren't prepared to keep funding it. Some make a living still, but their own bank statements show them a trend that's going to be tough to change.

Dating and Web Cams will save some. Saving all of them is another question. Will surfers get wise to paid Dating sites being a con and free Dating sites are better? And yes they're a con, unless the same girl that's in London is also looking for a date in Brno, New York, Hong Kong, etc.

Will someone jump in and make a better model of MFC?

Will Manwin jump into the web cam field and realise that it's better to do it without the costly affiliate program and rely on their own traffic?

What I'm sure of is the porn industry shrinking for the vast majority and no one not even me, can be absolutely sure of where, what and when we will know the outcome.

That's it we're off for a week and I might check in while away, but might not.

we still going strong/

I disagree. It was selling like hotcakes. I was literally watching sales happen every couple of seconds. We had a joke in my offices that every time we blinked our eyes we made more money.

I don't think it was a "migration of buyers from mainstream porn to online porn". I think it was a GIANT increase in people able to buy porn at all. They couldn't "migrate" because they had never had the opportunity to buy porn before.

I was one of those guys. Had a couple of old vcr tapes and 10 year old magazines. I literally had no place to get anything else. And even if I did the stigma of going to an adult bookstore was pretty high.

Literally the market exploded in numbers of customers. More than was ever available before.

The years right before piracy were incredibly profitable times. I believe...no, I KNOW we were at that "sweet spot" with galleries of images and videos. We were "training" young guys to want to get behind the "velvet rope" and get a membership. There was only so much time that they were satisfied with 20 second clips and shitty resized pics in a gallery.

I know that you have some contrary thoughts to that. But all I can say is...I bow down to you as a shooter. I am better at selling porn. And I LIVED it, just as you lived your experience and gained knowledge and wisdom.

Anyway...one thing is for sure: Until everyone learns to protect their content, and also learn to viral market...they are screwed. Thieves like Fabian will continue to do what he is doing.

What was it he told us a few months ago when he popped up from nowhere as the new "owner" of "Manwin"?

Oh yeah...he told us to give him some time and we would see the changes he was going to make.
So far? He hoodwinked PinkVisual and FSC into climbing into bed with him. Piracy is still FULL STEAM AHEAD on all the Manwin tubes. And now his ad company is running ads all over The Pirate Bay.

Nice!

It's easier to get thread views today than it was in the past, apparently. Damn Paul!

Porn will continue to be a viable Industry for years to come but the shakeup and shakeout will mean fewer "players". The problem, long term, is the shrinking customer base. Guys in their 40's+ still buy porn for various reasons (convenience, they have the income, they know what they like after a lifetime of experimenting, they like ownership, etc etc). But in 10 years or so the "younger generation" will be middle-aged, and the 20's-30's out there, who will then be in their 30's-40's, will buy less and less because they were weaned on free porn their whole lives.

Of course, by then most of us will have retired, died, been arrested, all three....LOL

well, OK, whatever, I'm not the one singing the "good ole times" song and how bad and mean people is nowadays. Guess my stubborn remark stands correct.

btw, to my knowledge, most people with your experience and expertise continues shooting and they never stopped. If you want to compare yourself with a newcomer trying to make a name for himself, then that speaks a lot, you're supposed to play in the big leagues, not the junior development. Maybe you should eat a humble pie for once in your life and get off your horse to get to the league I sincerely think you belong to.

Robbie.. do tell me, how much money did you really make "at that sweet spot"? I just would like to put this in relation somehow....

You basically just claimed up there that you made somewhere around a quarter of a million each day. (a sale every couple of seconds --> 86400 seconds in a day --> once every 10 seconds one sale (you said blink of an eye) --> 8640 sales a day --> 259k a day at $30 a sale...)

So you made 7 million a month, 84 million a year? Where the fuck is all that money man!? You look like you live in a trailer park!

It's so sweet you think piracy is new.

i know a guy who told me how he was selling copied porn VHS tapes from his car trunk after the border opened to eastern germany in 1989. he made very decent money from that

5 Fitty