150 IMPORTANT Topic:s :glugglug

i will say this again.


ultimately, content pricing is not determined by webmasters and content producers.

it is determined by surfers, i.e. conversions.


content that converts will command a good sales price.

content that does not convert will be on the blowout sale.

it doesn't matter what "we" think, or if we think our stuff is great.

it only matters what the surfer thinks.

because that's where the money comes from.

interestingly, the cost of content and how it converts is not necessarily a linear relationship.

how beautiful the girl is and how it converts it not necessarily a linear relationship.

you can tell what converts by testing, by using the tools of scripts which rotate content based on clicks, and if you pay attention you can find out with very good certainty which images are valuable and which are not. this is fluid, and what is popular varies over time, it is really stable for a very short time, maybe 60 days, then new stuff rotates to the top. the trick is to keep your hand on the pulse of the surfer, whose attention wavers constantly.

the results may surprise you.

i don't doubt this is true in europe.

but i'm not talking of europe.

some of the most physically beautiful women i have ever shot have cost less than $50 dollars to shoot. women that if they were dressed right and walked down santa monica blvd they would turn heads guaran-fuckin'-teed.

and these women are on my most popular paysites, the ones i make the most coin with.

i'm just saying that model cost does not necessarily equate to conversions.

i've shot in LA many times, too many prima donnas and suitcase pimps for me. i can make more $ hopping on a plane and hiring an interpreter.

Sorry i can not say ive seen much of this.
The content biz have been tough for a long time, but i dont think its any tougher right now then 6-9 months ago.
In fact we have a new product hitting the streets that will be launched with 20-25.000 minutes of video so get in touch if video is your business :)

Exactly.

Buy content becasue it converts and no other reason and you will earn enough to buy again.

this is the most interesting/informative thread i have read on wm board, haven't been here for long , but this is what i thought a "forum" was all about ?

Anyway we are a new content provider of a couple of "old" magazine photographers who have sold to nearly every men's magazine out there, existing or closed down.
In the last couple of months since we got into this what really surprises me the most is the price of the pictures, all i get is people asking for what discount am i going to give them , wasting time talking about a discount that is never enough.
Is a bit strange really when i can sell one picture for a calendar for $500 and have trouble trying to sell the same picture with 80 others from the same set for $50 to web masters ?
I suppose it all depends who your contacts are.

JBdeB
I have experience in both magazines and Internet content and though it is very similar there are major differences.

Firstly a magazine set needs to be far better than anything required on the Net. We can shoot around two magazine sets a day and five sets+viddeos a day for the Net. The money may be smaller but the production greater.

The other factor is the magazine market has a limit, for us, of 120 sets a year. The Internet could take 20 sets a week without dropping sales.

This market is fast changing. David Slaughter and Jon Silverstein are not buying up or doing "Blow outs" with companies making a lot of money. They are picking up companies and basically asset stripping them.

latinasojourn pointed it out very clearly, no matter what the webmaster likes, the price or the "Cool Dude" who sells the pictures, it's down to the surfer to give the final approval. If he does not click on the link, buy a membership or renew the content buyer does not have the money to rebuy, so they both suffer.

You and I have been providing porn for way to long to suffer that fate. The porn consumer has been buying our product for decades and as long as we keep up with the styles we will last. Then the shoe will be on the other foot, with a reduced supply the customers will have to pay more. Yes there will always be the newbie provider, but unless he shoots porn the surfer will buy he will not last.

And do not let them tell you the Net does not want our "Glossy Magazine" styles. Some of them telling me that 2 years ago are gone.

Keep at it and you will see the rewards, you just have to get your message over to people.

ps
I love your work.

good thread!

Charly, for someone who is making as much money as he claims you sure do post and spam your shit a lot. Maybe that is why you are still in business.

This content biz is so dymanic. It changes so fast. I remember when all the blow outs started I jumped in and made bank. But the reason I made bank and why I am still here still making money is becuase I prepared for it.

When I saw that prices for exclusives were dropping I decided not to get fucked by all the programs out there who want complicated videos but were not willing to pay a decent number for them. I decided to be a distributor first and then a producer second. I figured that if I had 10,000 small customers my business would be more stable than if I had 10 exclusive customers who would squeeze me for everything they could and never be happy.

Read this article I wrote at the time when this revelation dawned on me. As a matter of fact. I wrote this on the plane ride back from AMA Joe's house. I went up there to drop off a 2000 (TWO THOUSAND) dollar check for content he was selling SoBeGirl and see what kind of hotties he had up there. Here also are links to the videos I shot while there. The TWO grand was just the tip of the iceberf of more than 12 grand I paid him for content to be used on ************* This is the same content he now says he did not sell SoBeGirl.

The guy is a fucking liar. He makes deals, takes money and then backtracks. In business, you cannt make a deal and then go back. In business when you make what you thought was a bad deal you have to learn from it, hope you survive it and move on stronger and better learning by your experience.

http://www.*************/articles/bullish.htm

Anyone who cant get click troughs from their galleries or conversions with their sites from these sets should not be in the adult internet biz in the first place.

http://www.*************/Models/iraq/200/200.mpg
http://www.*************/Models/iraq/198/198.mpg
http://www.*************/Models/iraq/197/197.mpg
http://www.*************/Models/iraq/199/199.mpg

And all these people making predictions.. well here is mine. Hang on for some tough times ahead. See TGPs begging for video gallery submissions becuase singups are not paying for the bandwidth free galleries produce.

Hosted galleries are nice but they will never EVER offer the kind of flexibility and creative freedom that buying some content from ************* will give you. Your gallery design will make the difference between a 3 percent click thorugh or a 13 percent click through.

And nobody offers a huge easy to pick from selection with instant FTP download and the opp to pay with credit card like SoBeGirl does.

As everyone tells you it's traffic that is important, you got to get the guys to your site to get the sales.

But in the end as latinasojourn points out, no matter how cheap you sell if the surfer does not like it the buyer loses money and is not coming back for more. But you opened an interesting door about blowout sales.

We have two sites, <a href="http://www.bargainbasementcontent.com" target="_self"><img src="http://www.banapro.com/banners/our_banners/bbcs_small.gif" width="88" height="32" alt="BBCS" border="0"></a> Which is for sets $5 to $15 with the ability to give them to affiliates and use on as many sites as the buyer wishes. Sales are pretty good and even webmasters buying the 12 sets for $20 offer keep coming back for more. So they are not "saturated everywhere".

Then there is <a href="http://www.paulmarkham.com" target="_self"><img src="http://www.banapro.com/banners/our_banners/banner_88x31.gif" width="88" height="31" alt="PMCS 88x31" border="0"></a> which has the better stuff, sets and videos, less distributed and restricted to only the buyer posting to free sites and a limit of 10 URLs. These sets or videos are from $30 to $50.

The point I'm trying to make is that the sales from Bargain Basement are nice, but account for only 33% of our net income. Whether sales would be higher if we put everything into Bargain Basement is not a risk I want to take.

I agree with your point in the article about exclusive not paying. A set or a video sells on average 20 times at $35. Tell me the buyer who will pay $700 for an exclusive custom set. Much better selling from our site non-exclusive.

Whether we make the money I say we do is up to you to guess, not showing you my bank statement. :1orglaugh

Good point. That's why I shot non-exclusives at the beginning and declined most of requests for exclusive content. But I'm not that good as big guys here, my content rather qualifies as "good amateur" so now when many "small" webmasters are out of the biz I'm suffering a lack of customers shopping for non-exclusive and have to make exclusives... I don't like it. But I have not lowered my prices for non-exclusive. I realized that when I sell it too cheap most of people who purchase it tend to use it on FHGs and post into TGPs too much. That often completelly spoils the models. If surfers see the girl all over the net for free, they are not up to paying when see her on the frontpage of a paysite. So if I'm lucky to find a cute girl, I just make a site with her, or may be shoot several exclusives. Into shop goes all the stuff I do not have a good use for... Someone can say that I'm an asshole trying to sell shit to webmasters but this is actually what they get me to do using my content too much all over the free sites...

Please, sir, I just want some drama!!

appreciate the points you made paul and the compliment, thanks.

I am going to keep at it and as far as getting my message over do you want to give me your mailing list ???

charly: you obviously understand the differences between porn in print and porn online, but I wonder if you have thought about all those differences and their implications. Here's some context:

freehostedgalleries.com lists 2,600 sites offering hosted galleries. Let's take a guess based on that figure and say there are around 5,000 paysites in total. If anything there are more.

In almost 8 years I have found just 20-odd sites which rebill well enough to suggest that they are using content as a way to retain members. For sure there are others I haven't found and sites that rebill well but do not offer a revshare program. But it's hard to escape the conclusion that around 95% of paysites use content primarily as filler, relying on designs and sales pitches to make sales; and on consoles, cross-sells and up-sells (rather than rebills) for the rest of their income.

I'm not going to try to defend the specific numbers, but my gut feeling is that the final percentage is close. Double it to 10% if you want and it's still bad news. With such a small number of sites (of all sizes) placing any real value on content, not more than a handful of content producers have any reason to hope that prices might rise towards what they enjoy when shooting for print media.

Although I see some changes as the market matures and factors such as pressure from Visa, there is a built-in resistance to such change. 5 years ago my expenses were less than 10% of my income, now they are approaching 20% despite all the reductions in bandwidth, content and design costs. Even so, profit margins are still obscene by most standards, but it's what we are used to and we are naturally reluctant to let go.

Another consideration is that many times as much content is sold to promote paysites as is sold to the paysites themselves. It is usually difficult to buy content to suit the site you are promoting. So other factors apart, it's easier, more effective and cheaper to use a sales pitch to do the work and hit the bargain bins for your content.

I believe that content producers have even less reason to be optimistic about looking to these customers for any increase in prices. Most would cut back on how much content they use. Many would join the ranks of those who sell without using content at all, rather than pay more.

If this is even close to an accurate picture of the present and the mid-term, it means that the majority of successful content producers for online porn will be selling on price: slick operations, efficient and effective from the studio through to the sales and licensing process. Contrary to some of the views expressed here, I believe licenses will become broader and more simple, as producers recognize they are handling an essentially throwaway item with a 3-6 month shelf life. If protection doesn't increase the bottom line, it's a waste of time and money.

Those who want to command higher prices, if they are not already established names from the offline world, are either going to have to fight over a relatively small number of customers or they are going to have to invest in themselves and educate webmasters away from their current attitudes. Offer to do mag-quality shoots on a profit-share basis, sell them at regular prices to start-up sites for 3 months... whatever. If you want to wean webmasters away from what they know works to what you say should work, you have to overcome their scepticism. The most convincing way a seller can do that is by putting his own money where his mouth is.

One last thing. I get p*ssed when someone shows me perfectly edited samples but sells me material that needs hours of work. The print media world understands that post-production work is an in-house job, but if online porn producers are going to show the finished product to their potential customers, IMO that's what they should sell. It's also self-protection because every time a webmaster publishes raw content (and experience shows that's what most will do), that content will under-perform: the last thing producers hoping for higher fees should want.

well, you make some good points, but i think your numbers might be off.

i'd extimate there are closer to 100,000- 150,000 adult paysites in the world, don't know about hosted galleries, but i own a bunch of TGPs and now get about 30,000 galleries/day submitted, all with unique URLs.

it is true that shooting for print vs. shooting for the internet are two different animals.

IMO the print side of erotica is on the wane, not a growth industry (i'm talking adult bookstore type specialty wanker magazines) while electronic transmission is. Yes, there will be a market for coffee-table book high end print erotica for the fine art niche, but the ordinary jerkoff mags found in adult bookstores will mostly be gone in 5 years.

so for whatever reason, content shooters must think about the internet.

i often say that i don't see any shooters with unique "style" that would captivate the surfer.

but then i am often surprised in the quality of stuff i see once in a while (some bikini voyeur candids in a different thread today are just outstanding, and i KNOW they will convert like crazy) so there are some great shooters out there.

some originality with camera work will sell, no matter how much competition.

and that is what is lacking from content producers in general.

too many guys shooting formula---what worked in 2000 just ain't makin' it today. the internet moves very fast, whether we like it or not---we cannot be "set in our ways" for very long.

As a gay content producer I can think of several reasons. I know what I hear when people contact us about content sales. Alot of things in this industry have changed and alot of things have not.

Alot of webmasters have no idea how much it costs to produce a set of pics. If you do it the right way and produce a great product its expensive. The still think the more is better and its easier to fill areas with old overused conent because it looks like more.

Some of the biggest companies in the industry still do not want o pay for content. Gay sites are not abig priority as much as straight and they get little or no attention.

We have big companies that ask for major discounts on less then $1,000 worth of content. Whether you are shooting your own or repping another persons work. big discpunts for small sales hurt the industry.

Magazines pay $1200 for an exclusive set and online will only pay at the most $500 usually. See the difference?

Most companies are just concerend with traffic and will never wise up to the fact that some day they are going to have spend some real $$ on content!

No offense....and I don't know you personally .....but I'd say this quote is the "The pot calling the kettle black " lol

Can you add something here without 25 links to your blow job content for sale?


:)

THAT is a nice photo!

It's very true. Both from the aspect of the volume of content used (print takes the best 10 or so pictures, Internet wants just about the whole shoot) to the resolutions needed to make it work.

This lesson comes to me all the time. I am constantly on stats learning about works and what doesn't and I find if I rest on what I think I know for more than a few months, the information is incomplete or has now become quite different.

Sorry but my mailing list is sacred, I also promised not to give out the email addresses and my word is more than sacred. LOL

jayeff you make some good points and I would agree about their being too few sites who look at content as a reason to retain members. But these sites are growing and Visa have announced that if we do not clean ourselves up they will do it for us.

More sites in the future will come to realise that you cannot keep selling mutton as lamb, especially as the surfer becomes more aware of what he should expect to get for his $30 a month.

As for more people moving away from content to motivate surfers to click, don't think that will happen. It's already a flooded market anymore will just dilute the results.

As I see it the days of "Feel the quantity not the quality" are diminishing. More and more sites are realising that with all the effort and expense they put into driving traffic into a leaking bucket, they could treble their incomes by plugging up the leaks. Look at Karups, Alsscan, Score, Hustler, Lightspeed, to mention a just few, these guys make a fortune this way. Those who think it's all about traffic will soon realise they can make a damn site more money from converting and keeping more of that traffic.

One of the reasons so many content providers are in trouble is they simply cannot produce the goods. As latinasojourn points out, they have to change to survive. Well some of them can't change. I 2000 you could sell any content to make a profit, well look at the content market now for the answer to that question. Clearly a lot cannot sell enough today at a profitable margin.

So very true. Had a client last week who thought $400 for 5 sets was fair as I was paying the model $200. Obviously he has no idea of what my content is worth to me and the other costs we incur.

The danger of using old over used content today is simple, 1% CB levels will soon make these guys realise that they need to deleiver a better product.

all true.

and even if you get on an airplane and go to a 3rd world country to shoot costs still add up, all the fucking payoffs, and buying girls clothes and makeup, interpreters, security problems, theft, etc. the only really cheap content is for the 22 year old stud and his girlfriend who shoot POV and share the profits.

just bought a kodak 14n and 70-200 VR lens, even at mooch pricing and rebates this toy costs about 5k.

so i ain't sellin' content. i'm keeping it exclusive on my own sites.

just hired a guy to shoot for me in recife brazil, half the fees will go towards local payoffs.

there ain't no cheap content to produce, costs real loot.

:thumbsup