The PRO's and CON's of offering Full-Length Downloads to Members..............
 

Do full length downloads for members help retention? (20min+ clips vs 2min)

What are the bandwidth trade-offs?

With connection speeds increasing, will sites be forced to offer full length clips at higher bit rates to compete vs. short 2 minute clips??

this should be interesting

i give them both ,the scene broken into 3 min clips and whole scene.

do you use a download limiting program like throttlebox? I would guess that a member who grabs the full length clip would not bother with the short clips but I have seen where they will grab their favorite 2 or 3 short clips after watching the full length movie. I would assume many members are not familiar with editing programs to chop out of the full length scene.

No we dont but if they try to download the whole site at once it will shut them off.

Some of our older sites have clips only and we are changing that because when offered 1 large vs. 3 clips, they NEVER choose the clips.

Name them all the same "file.wmv" or whatever, to slow down people who come in to mass download and leave. This way, they at least have to change the file names or it over writes the file. Not perfect solution, but it does help a little.

any thoughts? :)

If I was a surfer and wasn't able to DL the full movie in one clip I would be very pissed.

I hate having to stop at red lights, but it helps the flow of traffic :winkwink:

Just offer both, some people are still on slow connection speeds. It's not a bad thing to cater to them as well.

We have the full video in 4 formats. Some are 60 minutes long and they are very happy with that. We would have to change if we had 1000's of members though

Correct, but if I was waiting for a red light I would be sure to cancel very quickly. :winkwink:

also we do a bit rate of 2500+ which is sweet but like I said if we had tons of members or even a lot LOL we would have to redo them maybe

I over full length and pieces though its like 5 minute chunks and not 2 minute. I however also offer full screen hi res and then a low res version for the not so fast people. So I guess I have 2 full length version, and 2 versions of each portion.

we tried to do different encoding rates geared towards dial-up users but it became more work that it was worth, (based on analysis of which files were being downloaded). Even with the large local following we have, the majority of surfer willing to whip out the plastic are on high speed.

We break them into 2-5 minute clips. If they want full length, we sell them on other site.

We also throttle their downloads so that none of those downloaders will work.

If they want to drain the site dry, they are going to have to spend a month or two doing it.

:)

same content on 2 different sites?

There's really no good reason to not offer the full length scene as a one click download.

If you're worried about site leeching programs, they would still get everything anyways if you didn't have protection installed, so that makes no difference really.

Well, I'll come from a customer point of view instead of the webmaster view for this. As a site customer, I don't want the whole video, especially when it takes up to 20 or 30 minutes sometimes to get it. Even when the video is broken down, the only one I would download would be the last clip.

You can change positions as many times as you want, but it still gets old. People want to get a clip, see the cumshot and jackoff. If I want a full length scene, I would just as soon get the video and watch it on my tv. It's all about how fast can i get it and get my nut off.

Just my opinion.

great post :thumbsup

I am still amazed when I see a 30min+ scene. Who is gonna sit there for 30 minutes watching the entire scene? I know there are people who enjoy a lengthy scene but the majority only needs a hot 1-2 minute scene to do the trick. When you have to sort through 30 minutes or wait for a long download it becomes irritating....

Well that's why you offer clips as well, but there's no good reason to not offer the full length movie in one file. :2 cents:

We do both, too...and believe it or not I've talked to people who love the whole clip. They find one they like, DL it, go grab a beer, and then enjoy!

lol