Monthly Paysite Tip - Exclusive vs. Non
 

http://www.guaranteeddesigns.com/blog/?m=200703

This ought to open a can of discussion I'm sure. :)

That's the main point in my opinion. The "average" surfer won't be able to disguish exclusive from non-exclusive content, depending on its marketing and whether or not you are in a niche. But with exclusive content you don't have to worry about it and you make webmasters happy. :)

Yeah usually the barrier with exclusive just comes down to two points:

1) Cost
2) Ability to get volume.

Several years ago I emailed a paysite telling that I'd seen the same pics on another site, so they must have stolen his pics (which were watermarked), and hope I helped.

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

I'll take dead horses for $1000 Alex.


*waits for Paul Markham to come make an ass out of himself again*

Good post.

You mentioned Twisty's under non-exclusive. I was under the impression that they had exclusive content? Or is it a mix of both?

I thought they were exclusive.

They started non-exclusive, almost all matrix content.

They shoot exclusive now mostly because there isn't enough non exclusive content of the quality that they require out there for them to update, so they have to create it themselves.

At least that's how I understood it when Shap explained it.

Oh yeahhhhh. I remember that in the thread he started showing his stats from when he first started up.

They are exclusive on most of thier stuff now, but when they started, they were using mostly the same thing every one else was using.

thanks for the link!! that is very informative!!

I was speaking of the path they took and how they started non-exclusive and succeeded at it.

"Look at the successful path taken by a program like Twisty?s..."

They did have that really cool post some time ago speaking about their success which is what reminded me. =]

for somebody small and who is going to depend alot on affiliate traffic they have to go with exclusive content to have a shot at success. few are going to promote non-exclusive content for revshare when they can promote the same non-exclusive content through a PPS program.

even the big PPS programs these days need to do some exclusive sites to keep some of their affiliates happy and to keep their program looking like it's not an old fashioned cookie cutter crappy paysite PPS program. i bet these programs still make more profit from their non-exclusive sites while the exclusive sites are as much for their reputation and image.

if u are small but experienced at generating and buying your own traffic in good numbers then non-exclusive is probably your best bet.

The surfer does not care if you are the only guy with this girl on this sofa with that vibrator. He cares if it turns him on. The guys that buy content spend time inside paysites, work out the odds they have seen everything.

Very true. But this can be made worse if a site has only a little exclusive content. So exclusive content can be more saturated than non exclusive on TGP sites.

Start out with 100 exclusive sets of a girl, $400 a set and $40,000 total, and you are still giving affiliates TGP saturated content after a short while.

Do you think we stayed in business because no one bought it?

Also over all quality many of the exclusive shooters are shooting 5 sets and 5 videos in a day of a solo girl. Some do more and all to get $1500 from the sponsor, what level of quality do you think working at that pace leads to?

With non exclusive you have the budget to have those extras. Better looking galleries comes from better looking content, then the design. Unless you're selling design to guys looking to jerk off.

What this article does not touch on is why has exclusive been pushed so hard and what is the affect?

Here are some suggestions.

It raised the bar on starting a paysite, it stopped affiliates accumulating good content and starting their own paysites for their own traffic. If the start up for a paysite is 100 exclusive sets it's $30,000 plus, non exclusive it's $4,000 plus. If you have affiliates buying content the content is not a problem.

It has led to shooters shooting on a budget and at a pace that led to poorer content, shoot with a tired model, tired shooter and you lose the magic ingredient that converts surfers. The porn effect.

So Lenny did I make a fool of myself? :1orglaugh

Good point. So if you're small and have $40,000 to spend on content give it a shot.

There are few good non exclusive shooters left, we are now feeding off the DVD market to a large extent. Still a few and still making more money than exclusive shooters. Or the content would not be on many sites.


The big programs make more money because they have more money and more traffic. not because of the content, other than having more money to buy exclusive and keep out the new guys competing with them.

You like me sell exclusive and non exclusive so don't have a bias, where is your non exclusive content store?

As no one else will bring it up I will.

Why is it that so much content is "Saturated" on TGP type sites and only in the eyes of the gallery reviewers and probably because 20 other people submitted the same content that week or even day?

How and why did we get into this situation, who benefited and who suffered?

The effect it's had, I didn't touch on but I think you stated it pretty darn well here. WHY, I think is just a matter of the perception pushed by the affiliate which I alluded to in there.

Let's go back 6 or 7 years and remember the conversations we were having about TGPs and how some big sites at the time refused to play ball with them at all. We all know that the more free content there is out there, the less people would be willing to pay. The easier it was made to scan through heaps of it only made matters worse.

But what does discussing any of this do to make any of our business better? We can prattle off many things that shot the business in the foot but it's just pure capitalism how it evolved and it will continue to do so. A better use of energy is figuring how to profit from the changes and maybe even be on the cutting edge of some I'd think.

Do you mean more people seeing more content that is not worth paying $30 for? Because it's no better or different from what is on 100,000 free sites?

So why do we have 100,000 free sites? And who lost and who benefited. Think a bit outside the box. And as a guy who earns from free sites you would be one who benefited. :thumbsup

Members today sign up for video content and convenience, so the free sites have not really cut into that.

How do we benefit? Knowing why we are in this position might help to know how to benefit from it.

Knowing what the real problem is also will help us profit from it.

Why is so much content saturated in the eyes of the gallery reviewers?

I love reading Mark's blog, got some great tips from there :thumbsup

yep.. it's a good one!

Lots of food for thought and I wanna post back but I gotta finish a launch tonight. I'll come back tomorrow though. Thanks for the challenging questions and insights as always Paul.

Thanks. Sponsors having been misleading people about my product for years. (Non exclusive content is saturated, not PMCS content in particular.) When the real problem was too little different content being submitted by too many affiliates.

Why are there too many affiliates submitting too little content?

Why does the surfer think "THE HUN" meets his needs more than the average paysite and is he right. If so why?

Why do the vast majority of sponsors see the solution of too few signs as "Get more traffic rather than sign up more of the traffic we do have."

Why do we as an industry spend more on surfers not joining than on surfers who do join (the traffic/affiliate system v members areas) then complain too few surfers want to join up?

Big questions.

Lenny got any answers?

I believe with content it is very similar to other products on the market. If you go for shopping to the store and buy some food, you will see many similar products with wide range of pricing, different packages etc. You buy one of them while other, often cheaper and maybe better are left on shelves without your attention. Why? Because of the marketing - some products you like, some other not, no matter what is inside of the box.

So I think, that if you know how to sell something you may succeed both with exclusive and non-exclusive. The key is how you market it, how you 'pack' your paysite to make potential buyers feel, they want to get what is inside.

Very true. Marketing is very important and should never be ignored. It's what I do all day long.

But how far should the marketing go to sell a product. Has too much emphasis been put on marketing a product that is not meeting the customers needs. Is the marketing more important then the product. Does too much marketing hurt the product.

And finally throwing mud at a wall was never called marketing and that's what a lot of sponsors and affiliates do.

And then what is exclusive?

I know models who work 10 days a month posing for "Exclusive" content. Some work far more. Some solo girl sites are started with girls we shot to death and don't want anymore.

Not saying it's wrong, but how "Exclusive" is it?

There is one thing you have to understand : There are many ways to do business, and everybody must have a different business plan. If we would all be doing the same thing, we would be sharing peices of a very small pie.

You are a small to medium affiliate site owner. Non exclusive has worked for you. Bangbros/NastyD and all the other big guys are there for one reason right now : Quality exclusive content and great productions.

It's very hard to get accepted on tgps and other sites without exclusive content.

It's also very hard to get good reviews on review sites without exclusive content.

I doubt there is one program doing 200-300 + sales a day having only non exclusive content.

P.S. Preaching for someone to join your business plan is plain stupid. Unless you have a lot to gain from it.

So tell us Paul, do you make more money from the content store or from your paysites ?

Yes good points and different business plans are good.

I agree totally that the present business plan has worked very well for Bangbros/NastyD etc. But has it worked well for others trying to start up or should we just let them dominate the industry by competing with them on their terms?

Yes it is tough to get accepted on a TGP with content that is not exclusive to the submitter. If you're an affiliate taking the same content as 100 other guys it's very tough. Multiply that to the affiliates some programs have and you realise why affiliates do so badly. Maybe they would be better off buying content. :winkwink:

Would the sponsors be better off?

Why do review sites review a site on an aspect that is of little interest to the surfer?

I doubt if there are many programs that started up in the last 5 years doing 200 joins a day. So what is the reason for the high number of joins, having exclusive content of getting in before everyone else?

And if you think 200 people a day are joining a site because it's exclusive you're in the wrong business.

If you think 200 people a day join because the content is good, because the sponsor is able to spend the right amount of money on getting it created properly. Then you are in the right business.

As I said the sponsors moved the sponsors moved the bar up on running a good paysite. And lowered the bar on being an affiliate. Good moves for the sponsors. :thumbsup

Preaching we should all follow the business plan of sites who started up 5 or more years ago is plain stupid, unless you are one of those sites and have a lot to gain from it.

With our content being so saturated, what a lie that was, and running a paysite so tough, nose grows another 6 inches, what do you think? :winkwink:

Also we have to remember when comparing sites and their success.

Is it due to them getting 10 times better ratios or 10 times more traffic?

Are their affiliates 10 times better off sending them traffic or better off sending it elsewhere?

Also I know of 2 very high marked sites that get good reviews and do not have 100% exclusive content. And the have very good ratios.

Sites marked way above lots of others, with better ratios than lots of others all with 100% exclusive content.

samp!!!!!!!!!

i guess you never heard of wegcash they only have one exclusive content site and i think they do a lot more then 200 sales aday

good porn will sell the site to the surfer and fancy graphics will sell the site to the affiliate.

if john doe finds the site from a search engine he will join the site regardless of (non) exclusive content. If he finds it from a tgp site with 500 competitors the porn should be better than the neighbour and exclusive content would likely be more attractive if produced well.

And that has been my argument for years.

But have you seen some of the prices "Exclusive" is shot on? Try getting good porn out of a girl who is doing 10 scenes in a day.

Some of the top sites content are shot on budgets that are not lending themselves to producing great porn. But the belief is so long as it's exclusive it's what the surfer needs.

My biggest gripe has been the story for years that non exclusive is saturated, and exclusive shooters are shooting for less than 10 sales non exclusive. how do you saturate a set with 10 sales?

You give it to affiliates to submit to TGPs, so it's saturated in the reviewers eyes. That can happen with exclusive content. In fact if my license says no giving content to affiliates it's less saturated than exclusive. Give exclusive content to affiliates and give the surfer value for money with GOOD non exclusive inside the members area.

But no, lets spend more money on the surfers, less on the members, send more traffic to a site that converts poorly and scratch our head when the surfer decides The Hun is better value.

Whose bright business plan was that?

To the Newbs, DO NOT LISTEN to this rabble...

Everybody here can name a local Burger Joint with burgers that taste better than McDonalds....Hell, even Burger King has better tasting burgers...

But who is the #1 Burger Seller? McDonalds...And that is because of their brand name and the MARKETING...

I just started mixing bought DVD content with my exclusive content to give the customer a better deal for the money...I got positive response from members immediately..What matters is if the content gets you off...If it does, then it's good content...So I used my BRAND NAME and my MARKETING to my advantage so now I can even sell non-exclusive content and do fine.

Marketing a good product is fine. It's when marketing a bad product hurts the rest of us that we need to watch out.

So you agree with me that it's about the content then the marketing?

I know a lot of guys who run their own burger bar making a lot more than the manager or franchise MacDonalds owner across the road.

And again a sponsor telling you it's all over, go away you can't compete, you don't have the marketing budget so why try to compete.

Nice spam for your site. :thumbsup

Okay there are exceptions to everything.


And Paul, about affiliate buying content... why would they do that with all the programs that have fresh exclusive content ? I mean the user is gonna signup to the site cauz he likes the content he sees on the promotional tool, and it's not even gonna be in there.

Unlike you, I make quality posts and if my site happens to be mentioned, it's all good because I provided a service to the board...You on the other hand drive by hard link spam your shit unapologetically...There's a difference..

Nobody said that somebody is marketing "Bad" content..the only way it can be bad is if it was non-existent....when it comes to a horny person with his dick in his hand, ANYTHING that may catch his eye as good porn will get him off..And that's the ONLY thing that matters is the ejaculation at the end...If he gets that, he gets his money's worth.

When it really comes down to the basics, nobody really cares of BVF or Paul Markham was the tool behind the camera..They only care that the porn gets shot so that he can get off...

Your mindset is still stuck in the magazine age where the name of the photographer actually meant something...You needed a name to even get a chance to shoot for big magazines like you did. And the magazines were the only way that your content could get distributed to the masses..

Now Anybody can hold a camera and with some ingenuity and "marketing", he can get his work distributed througout the world without the help of big name magazines...But YOU think that coming on the net and saying, "I'm Paul Markham" really means Jack Shit.

BVF, Paul Markham, Twistys, FTV, Met-Art, even the Bang Bros could all at once disappear tomorrow and besides the paying members, it wouldn't even create a ripple in the ocean of available material...Surfers will just say, "Oh it's fucked up that so and so is gone", and then go jack off somewhere else..

In closing...The surfers really don't give a fuck about you Paul, just the flesh you can provide them..and if you can't provide fresh meat, they'll go elsewhere.....Get over yourself.

Thats a very interesting read....

Did you read the article?

It says the only place saturation takes place is on the TGP sector. The content the reviewer is seeing he's seeing from 20 different people. If you're not submitting and let's face it it's largely yesterday business method, it does not matter.

So lets put it into perspective 100 affiliates submitting galleries made from sponsors exclusive content. They submit on a daily basis. How long before a site of 200 exclusive sets with 10 updates a month is getting lots of affiliates being told "Seen the content before."

The good content providers put a stop to their good content being given to affiliates.

Do the maths and work out the ratios. How much new content is needed to feed how many affiliates submitting to TGPs?

When the exclusive content angle came out one of the reasons given was the surfer does not want to see the same content on every site. Well it now turns out that was wrong. It's impossible to saturate content on paysites in a major niche.

However it's easy to saturate it in the TGP arena. Exclusive or non exclusive. It just needs too many affiliates submitting too many of the same sets.

So why are there too many affiliates submitting too much content to to many free sites?

Because that works in the sponsors benefit. He gets maximum exposure because of the over abundance of affiliates with his free content. Which is why they make it so easy for anyone to be an affiliate.

And anyone who equates MacDonald's marketing with Internet porn affiliate programs is really stretching the point. When did you see MacDonald's giving away free burgers, when did you see them spending more on giving away free burgers than on the inside of the restaurant.

Is that your marketing strategy BVF?

Read the above and then ask yourself why so many surfers think The Hun is meeting their needs better than spending $30 a month.

You know nothing about magazines. Absolutely zilch, but spout as if you do know. Editors did not and still do not give a fuck who is behind the camera if he can produce the quality of work they need. And that is it. Make a phone call and book an appointment to see some and see how clueless you are.

What it was, was very competitive. We are shooting sets that would sell for $1,000 to $5,000 a set. Very rarely did we sell exclusive for $200. The reason was it was good porn.

Yes today any clown can pick up a camera and point it at a naked girl but making that girl look fuckable is the hard part. Nice for you to tell us where your standards are.

And again you are wrong on what surfers want. They are all different and if you are aiming at the guys who just want to jerk off that easy you are struggling. Because a guy looking for a 30 day membership wants more, he wants to know the girls, know the shooters, believe in the fantasy. Part of the fantasy of Bang Bus is the bunch of lads going out and getting laid, the same bunch of lads. Just realised how little you know Buttman, Ben Dover, Ed Powers, Max Hardcore, this is how wrong you are.

Yes some surfers do want to live the fantasy through our lives.

You can look at it as marketing. But please don't equate what you do as marketing. Throwing mud at a wall is not marketing.

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

When any of your sites with young white teen girls passes mine in popularity with ugly old black ghetto girls, THEN you can tell me what I know and don't know about marketing..

I have no idea why people would jack off to the hun because I personally can't jack off to short movie clips...I know exactly what my surfers want because I had to scratch out from the bottom and make a name for myself with the surfers and build my brand..I already know about interacting with the surfer and the fantasy shit and all of that because that's what I've been doing for going on seven years.

But once you've built your brand, all you need is the BRAND to push whatever you want..Just like what Danni did with her site...She doesn't even show her own ass on that site anymore because her BRAND carries the site...

I wouldn't consider that "throwing mud at the wall"...But do whatever floats your boat..You're still wrong...I'll just keep working on my brand and living my life, and calling out the fallacies that I see posted no matter who posts it. :2 cents:

I can't tell what the argument is about.. But anyway..

You don't need exclusive content to do 200 sales a day.. I can think of 10 sites off the top of my head that aren't exclusive that do over 100 sales a day.

In the history of my company, my DVD's content sites continue to out convert and retain all of our exclusive content sites. So much so, we quit shooting exclusive content. Oh, and the net profits.. Just a bit higher now.

Webmasters and Surfers both do not know if the content is DVD or exclusive.


And nobody in this post has to worry about content saturation. Nobody is even close to being large enough. TGP's do not create content saturation. Unless your name is NastyDollars, you don't have to worry about saturation.

There will always be room for both types of content. The main thing IMO is that it fits your marketing plan. Nobody wants to see the same content everywhere, including the surfer, but it's just as easy for both exclusive and non-exclusive to become over saturated. Using Twistys again for example; they have both types of content available to affiliates, and I bet only 1 out of 20 submits get accepted to TGPs. Everyone and their dog is promoting them. However, they are selling a brand and that is number one, but this illustrates the point.

This whole business model is changing fast. Paul alluded to it. TGPs are stopping taking submits and going 100% FHG. This gives the free site owner even more control over his niche. The next step is to cut out the TGPs as well and supply your own traffic. Established media realized the benefits of these economies of scale decades ago, why would internet porn be any different?

The advantage of exclusive is that it gives you more control over branding which is important in getting the surfer decide where to spend his $30, but that doesn't mean it can't work for non-exclusive as well. IMO both have their place, so long as it fits the image you're trying to portray. As things evolve, I think saturation will become less of an issue because TGP submitters will have gone the way of the dinosaur, and the webmasters that remain will have much greater creative control over what gets shown.

You made them shut down! Hahaha, just kidding. I remember thinking that way too back in the day.

You made them shut down! Hahaha, just kidding. I remember thinking that way too back in the day.

opinions are like assholes! do what works for you, there is no set formula that works.

You know, as simple and blunt a this post was, it's the biggest truth on here. This is why a debate over most any topic can rage and people can back up opposing points with good examples. No one formula works in this biz. There are certain processes or techniques that always help and work and certain dumbass moves that always hurt (hence the point of my blog), but there is a ton of room in there to make money in a zillion different ways.