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View Full Version : Amateur Seeking Advice after Almost 1 Year of Experimentation


erotola
01-02-2008, 02:15 AM
If you are short in time, you can skip this introduction message and go to the next one where i put my questions. ;-)

Hello, for the past 9 months i have been seeking information on several boards to help me start my own business. One of my favorite was AmateurMasters. I miss it, even if i discovered it when it was slowly dying. I noticed that many among you guys gladly share their experience tips with newcomers. I did not write many messages on Boards yet, but reading those from others helped me a lot. Thank you very much.

It is obviously not an easy time for starters in the adult business nowadays. The amount of porn available has grown exponentially during the recent years. Not to mention that the industry is experiencing many structural changes. There is the recent explosion of the web 2.0 model (users feeding content). The high speed internet is now widely used. The European and Asian Markets are catching up. Also the affiliate-sponsor business model was shaken by many abuses. I guess that our business is simply getting more mature. In any case, i do believe that the opportunity level is still comparable with many other types of commercial activities on the Internet.

As a part-time Amateur Content Provider, it was not easy to plan an entry in the business. Most advices for Newbies were to start by operating a Free Site with Purchased Content. The idea was to understand how the business operates before getting into it, while building a traffic base. I did not follow this advice because it looked outdated to me. Indeed, message boards showed many established webmasters making jokes about any money coming from newly established Free Sites, TGPs or Link Lists.

Anyway, we first tried by performing live shows on webcams. It looked pretty crowded for singles, but as a couple, the live cams market was a very valuable experience for us. It enabled us to understand both the workings of the business and the needs of the clients, while making some reasonable income. We collaborated with Ifriends and ImLive. I think that i would give LiveJasmin a try if we would do it again. Sometimes, we did have to wait a couple of hours before making any money. But as part-time starters, showing on average 10 hours a week, i can say that in our worst weeks we made probably around 10$ per hour. During our best weeks we could cash-in 25$ per hour. That is nothing extraordinary, but not bad either. I do believe that if we would have played the traffic game a little bit more, we could have doubled these numbers after a few months. Webcaming is also crowded, but being live, it has the advantage of not being flooded by the dumping of some old content from the past...

We decided to enter the content market by selling our clips on an individual basis, until we build enough content to supply our own pay site. We opened a store at Clips4sale and operated it for almost a year now. The beginning numbers were very exciting. If every day would have been like our first day of sales, i could have gone full-time right away... But there was a significant drop in sales during the following days. It became soon obvious that the exciting results were beginner's luck.

I tried the PPM (Pay-Per-Minute) model at watchme.com but the results were very disappointing. I did try to drive some traffic to my page at watchme.com but there was no significant increase in sales. It did not even worth the time i took to upload and manage the content on this site. It probably depends on what you have to offer, but i do not believe in this formula to generate income for a content provider. May be it could be profitable as a marketing tool to bring some future sales on a pay site.

I did not try to sell our content elsewhere yet. One reason being that the split offered elsewhere (often only 20% for the provider) was not appealing enough for an individual and fresh content provider. I can believe that the owner of a massive content stock may be interested to recycle it at 20%. Not me.

I now drive my own traffic to my store at Clips4sale (1,5K to 3K unique visitors daily). My clips are pretty much mainstream so i do not get much sales from Clips4sale own customer base. I keep some stats since the beginning. Here are the most interesting:


A unique visitor is worth 0.0124$ (or 1.24 cents). It was still worth more than 4 cents at the end of the first month of operation. Driving external traffic to the store pulled this stat down but it is now pretty stable.
The average sale is $9.66. There are some repeating buyers. Unfortunately, i cannot yet put an average value on a customer. I would guess that it is close to 20$. This does not compare well with the value of a member on a pay site. However, one could argue that there are much more single clip buyers than members...
You can see some customers purchasing one clip and coming back a few minutes after to purchase another one, which is a real pleasure. But the real excitement comes when someone purchase a bunch of clips at once.

erotola
01-02-2008, 02:17 AM
My questions now, as i am planning our next step in this business, which will most probably take the form of our own pay site:

1- I now make 60% when i sell my clips at clips4sale. If i open my own pay site, how do you think that the operating costs would compare with the 40% i leave to clips4sale? How much percentage do you leave in operating costs for your pay sites?

2- I would like to open a pay site that would offer individual clips download as well as membership. How does this model fit with the standard affiliate-sponsor model? Is selling individual clips interesting for affiliates?

3- What percentage of sales is coming from your affiliate programs compared to your own traffic?

4- What kind of percentage split do you experience or would expect between individual clip and membership sales? Do you expect that individual clip sales could match membership sales anytime soon?

I hope that 2008 will be as exciting for all of you as 2007 was for me ;-)

Best wishes to you all,

Dany.

gonzo
01-02-2008, 05:31 AM
My questions now, as i am planning our next step in this business, which will most probably take the form of our own pay site:

1- I now make 60% when i sell my clips at clips4sale. If i open my own pay site, how do you think that the operating costs would compare with the 40% i leave to clips4sale? How much percentage do you leave in operating costs for your pay sites?

2- I would like to open a pay site that would offer individual clips download as well as membership. How does this model fit with the standard affiliate-sponsor model? Is selling individual clips interesting for affiliates?

3- What percentage of sales is coming from your affiliate programs compared to your own traffic?

4- What kind of percentage split do you experience or would expect between individual clip and membership sales? Do you expect that individual clip sales could match membership sales anytime soon?

I hope that 2008 will be as exciting for all of you as 2007 was for me ;-)

Best wishes to you all,

Dany.

Clips for sale is one of the least talked about recent innovations to happen over the years. I myself am working on a project to provide an outlet for am videos. The first one will be in the form of a paysite that breaks all the rules.

Its a loing haul.

Specifically heres what you will be dealing with.
1. You will be making 100% of what you sell as opposed to 60% - BUT you have to pay for the hosting and bandwidth. You will need to pay for the design of a pay site. You will need to fork over the 750 Visa fee. If you dont plan on taking Visa then you have just shit yourself out of 80% of potential purchasers.

Dont believe me. Look at whats in your wallet. Most typically Visa.
But the most important thing you will have to rely on for yourself is traffic.

Which is the hardest to get these days and will and should consume a lot of your time and money.

Not percentages for operating costs but these are issues of major consideration.

2. The membership processing is pretty easy. However I dont know anyone that is processing by the download. They will try and tell you epassporte but thats another thread which I will sum up as STAY AWAY.

Then the affiliate issue is that most affiliates want EVERYTHING. There are many that think you should just depost the money in their account for free and do all the work for them.

I would suggest focusing on learning how to sell you site and build traffic on your own before offering an affiliate program.

Selling the clips will be interesting for the affiliate if you are paying a percentage on them. Again a processing issue... if you arent they will tell you that you have a traffic leak which means your sending out traffic to places that pay and they arent getting paid on it.

3. I would have told you in the past you would see more than 50% of your traffic coming from outside your own efforts but thats generally not the case anymore. Getting anyone to actually promote your site is a bit of a trick now simply because there are so many programs now. I will say again work your own traffic to get an understanding of how it works with a potential eye toward affiliates in the future.

4. Affiliates are going to tell you that they dont like a 50% split and would rather you pay them per sign up. Giving them all the money up front and you taking the risk of chargeback etc yourself.

While this brings in more potential sales it also opens you up to massive fraud as meany like to "card" sales - that means use a related credit card that the have access to in order to get credit for a sale - then once they have taken your money charge it all back.

Even a legit pay per sign up business model requires a fat stockpile of money to get started and once running a dedicated team to monitor fraud.

I do think 50% is a reasonable split and its honestly more money in the long run for the legit webmaster. Its like in the real world....some companies stress long term relationship as business PARTNERS.

Even if it just puts the idea in their mind most should react like they have some skin in the game.

I hope this helps you and some of our exiled ammasters friends.
With AM redirecting all of its traffic to Rude I am sad to say Ive heard of some interesting business practices there which I hope will be addressed in the future.

Its sad to think that my friends have resorted to using Zango to steal sales and are using stolen content to help the numbers.

I however cant pass judgement until they address it themselves.

MRock
01-02-2008, 08:12 AM
Welcome Erotola, this board is a great place to seek advice. The folks here are friendly and trusted webmasters with much experience. I have just recently entered the boards myself and have found Gonzo and Oprano to be a good source of solid advice.

You guys sound like my partner Jill and me ... we too have been involved as amateur content providers, but we've been doing it for about 10 years now. We started out with a 7 cam voyeur house website in '98 and have been "experimenting" ever since. I try every new site that launches as a distributor for amateur content. I've tried the ones you mentioned and many more. In my opinion, this is where it is all going. How many of these sites will the market support? I'm not sure ... but we're content producers and I put our product on the shelf at every 7-11 I can :). I do agree with you about the aversion to placing our stuff with programs that only offer 20% ( you know which VOD sites ) The split just seems offensive when it's your own naked ass in the stuff, LOL. Do you run "replays" at Ifriends? Just curious. Back in '99, we ran 7 rooms at Ifriends on their replay system with a 2 hour VHS tape looping the feed and pulled down about $100 a day. Ah, the good ol' days, hehe. It doesn't make that good anymore of course. Mostly because they changed the replay system to VOD style with uploaded movie files. It does amaze me how little money the VOD sites charge for movie viewing. I'll run the same movie clip as a replay at camsites and not only get a better split ( usually 40-50%), but also charge a MUCH higher per minute charge and get it ( .69 per minute). I just wish I could set up 100 computers running replays!

The advantage to being an amateur content producer is you can create more content at no cost. I think you're on the right track by seeking as many outlets for your content as possible. I would recommend you launch websites too. My current portfolio has 8 membership sites, 2 TGP's, 1 toplist, 15 clipstores on three different platforms and 1 mainstream music site. Jill still works live cam on 2 platforms under 6 names ... and we're still expanding. Since my involvment with C4S and the single file download sites, I have adjusted how I run my websites. It has given me a value now for my content that had never been established before. Neil set the bar, as far as I'm concerned , at $1 per minute for video, and I really appreciate that. My websites have about $400 worth of content by the C4S measure, and I always update with enough content to make the member rebill a value to stay. I do retire content with each update too.

Not sure why your money has dropped at C4S. You need to analyze that. I have made steady money with them for 2 years. Very consistent for me. How many stores do you run? How often do you update? How many niches do you cover? How many movie file formats do you post? Review those things ... C4S makes as much money for me as my websites each month. I'm trying to improve my website money though, because the cost is only 14% instead of 40% ...

Again, welcome to Oprano! Listen to these guys about building websites. Maybe we will learn together :okthumb:

gonzo
01-02-2008, 08:24 AM
I'll run the same movie clip as a replay at camsites and not only get a better split ( usually 40-50%), but also charge a MUCH higher per minute charge and get it ( .69 per minute). I just wish I could set up 100 computers running replays!



This is ingenious! Thanks for passing that tip out.

I can tell you a little of whats involved from the other side of a VOD system that might help you understand.

You send a DVD as a producer to AEBN and thats the LAST thing you ever do. The company encodes it, they store it and they multicast it.

And thats where other companies end but AEBN also aggresively markets your titles and all you do is cash a check.

Sinclair from Kandi Peach felt the same way you did but I had him just send in his older titles as to not impact his new sales.

He agrees that hes recieving a nice check from titles that have seen no action in years. Not bad for the investment of postage.

I think youd benefit from a discusssion from one of the reps on here about what VOD can do for your pocket book.

I know that there are some VERY exciting things coming for the am market in 2008 designed to put money in your pocket as a producer and in the pockets of others that promote your videos.

Thank you for your kind words also. Im overdue a trip to Tampa and I have a few friends down there. I think I will make the trip soon after vegas and round up all yall for a night of fun.

KevinG
01-02-2008, 12:12 PM
Great thread with lots of intelligent discussion.

Why are downloadable clips a processing issue?

gonzo
01-02-2008, 01:03 PM
Great thread with lots of intelligent discussion.

Why are downloadable clips a processing issue?
Ask CCBill or Epoch. I dont know.

KevinG
01-02-2008, 01:04 PM
Ask CCBill or Epoch. I dont know.

I was going to ask my mom, but she said, "go ask your father".

MRock
01-02-2008, 04:57 PM
My questions now, as i am planning our next step in this business, which will most probably take the form of our own pay site:

1- I now make 60% when i sell my clips at clips4sale. If i open my own pay site, how do you think that the operating costs would compare with the 40% i leave to clips4sale? How much percentage do you leave in operating costs for your pay sites?

hosting is cheap now, bandwidth too ... get a domain and build a site yourself ... CCBill will only take about 15% of subscriptions ... the content is free :) You said each customer for you spent about $20 at C4S? Is that after C4S charges? Each new customer at my website is worth $25 initial, and then there's the rebills ....

2- I would like to open a pay site that would offer individual clips download as well as membership. How does this model fit with the standard affiliate-sponsor model? Is selling individual clips interesting for affiliates?

... as per Gonzo, the problem is with processors.

3- What percentage of sales is coming from your affiliate programs compared to your own traffic?

0%, but I'm just developing this area myself

4- What kind of percentage split do you experience or would expect between individual clip and membership sales? Do you expect that individual clip sales could match membership sales anytime soon?

see my previous post ... it has doubled my sales

I hope that 2008 will be as exciting for all of you as 2007 was for me ;-)

Best wishes to you all,

Dany.

Wanted to pop back in and address Dany questions each. My first post was more of an intro of Jill and I.

PS. Gonzo, let me know when you're heading to Tampa. I owe you a dinner at Berns.

erotola
01-03-2008, 02:50 AM
Thank you Gonzo, MRock and KevinG for your replies. I am very glad to have some feedback from you guys. I have read several posts from all of you during the past months.

Gonzo i recently followed many of your posts regarding the Zango case. They were very interesting. But i cannot count the times i found your writings helpful. You are obviously a monument in here. So many thanks to you.

MRock i indeed related many times to your inquiries and findings on boards. We certainly share some interests. You are among the rare fellows who did write openly about C4S. And, euh, i almost quoted you from another thread when i wrote about the 20% split. ;-)

KevinG i recently came across your concerns about your content being stolen. And while your point did not seem easy to make that time, i did share your concerns. It is nice to see that you appreciate the content of this thread.

Gonzo i was very happy to read your comment about C4S. I am eager to see how your project materializes. From what i read here it looks quite promising. Since i started to operate a store with C4S i kept telling myself: Why is there so few postings about that model? I mean as a newcomer, i must admit that i am not a great fan of the membership model.

Why should i stop a guy who is willing to spend more dollars on my site during a given month? And why should i stop the guy who has only a few bucks to spend either? I had many sales of 3$ from customers who were interested in only a specific part of a clip. And some who ordered for more than 100$ of clips that they found appealing enough. I feel it so rewarding to have someone order a clip, and to have him order another one later on, especially if the second order is for multiple clips. ;-)

I will follow your advice and MRock's about continuing to expand my own traffic, while keeping affiliate programs for a later phase. I will certainly try to solve the processing issue for downloadables, and keep this operational model. I guess that the only solution will be to get my own merchant account.


I know epassporte and have used them in the past. I have read some threads about them and understand why you do not favor its use. I do not see that as a viable option for downloads either.

MRock my customer value may be 20$ and yours probably 75$, if your sites match the average retention rate of the business, which is about 3 months from my readings. But what if the clips download model allows you to reach a 4 or 5 times larger customer base?

Our customers want to have some fun immediately. The membership model forces them to be sure that they will want that same kind of fun later on, before committing themselves. Or think about the girl who asks you for marriage before going to bed with you…

I like to dream about porn being as legitimate as restaurants. It fills an immediate physical need (it may not be as vital though - but that can probably be argued upon) while its experience can be designed in very different manners, depending on personal tastes. Do you know restaurants that do business using a membership model?

Anyway, thank you very much MRock for all those practical tips. I will try to apply these ideas as much a possible. I did not try to run replays on cam sites yet. To be honest, i did not think that it could be an interesting source of income.



I want to concentrate on clips production for the moment. I still have my regular job so i cannot put more than say 10-15 hours a week. This is the reason why you will not see me very often on boards. This is also why i was not able to experiment as much as i wanted yet.



Last year's experience for me was mainly to verify that this can be a reliable alternative to my regular job, both in terms of possible income and self-commitment. I now know that it can be the case. I plan the switch to happen progressively starting next year. I will take the coming year to prepare a solid ground for that to happen.

EmporerEJ
01-03-2008, 03:23 AM
I was going to ask my mom, but she said, "go ask your father".

He said, "I don't know, go ask your mother....."

"why, why, why..."

MRock
01-03-2008, 06:42 AM
Had a few more thoughts from this thread...

I am using a php script to sell zip files of music CDs. I use PayPal for processing. This same method can be used for clips, but who will process the money? Obviously someone will, C4S found one. I wonder if stormpay could be configured to work with the script? Or if they would allow it?

I know everyone hates DRM, but really, it is the simple solution for the individual clip sale that has been here for a long time. The parameters can be set to allow full use after purchase. I've always said that it should have been called "Digital Register Media" instead of Digital Rights Management. Weedshare had a slogan: "The cash register is in the file". They sold song singles with DRM, but you could burn to CD or transfer to mobile with no problem after purchase. They set the permissions on the DRM that way. Porn should be the same ... Then content producers could just hang the files where ever. It would be much easier than worrying about scripts and processors. How do you change the consumers view of DRM though ... quite the task. Don't use DRM to "protect" the content, use it for easier distribution. Thieves will steal no matter what protection method is used. C4S built its whole business on the fact that consumers don't like DRM. When I quit worrying about "protecting" my content, I started making a LOT more money.

As a side note ... Ifriends provides a drm service for free to all cam hosts. The site is pay2play and your username/pass for IF works there also. The fee for cam hosts is 0, nada, zilch. You get 100% of the money. Others wishing to use it pay a 5% fee per file sold. I rolled up last year and made a go of it with them, but alas, the money was not worth the effort. I did sell clips. I did make money. But the sales were mostly from IF customers. I did not get much from regular website distribution. Their DRM parameters are set the "old way" though. I wonder if it would have worked better the Weedshare way ...

KevinG
01-03-2008, 09:55 AM
1. I use DRM for my content and I don't give a rats ass if people hate it. Too fucking bad.

2. Clips for download - I am skeptical about this not being possible, but I could be wrong.

I have a client that mentioned he had an issue with it.

However, I have my own functionality with aMember and indeed offer individual files for download on http://www.cigarglamour.com. Granted, I have my own (non-adult) merchant account.

But ... we also use aMember for http://joannaangel.com with the processing through CCBill.

That site doesn't offer clips, but I could set it up in about 20-30 minutes. The functionality is there.

What I still don't know is if there is some RULE that would be broken.

I called ccbill yesterday, got voice-mail and didn't leave a message.

Hammer
01-03-2008, 10:30 AM
It looks like PayPal may be coming around and you might want to talk to them about your pay per download option instead of a membership based site. At this time they have stated that they will once again process for adult as long as it's a hard good, like sex toys. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to include downloadable clips in that category. They may not be ready to consider it just yet, but hopefully they'll keep coming back in our direction because PayPal rocks.

KevinG
01-03-2008, 10:41 AM
It looks like PayPal may be coming around and you might want to talk to them about your pay per download option instead of a membership based site. At this time they have stated that they will once again process for adult as long as it's a hard good, like sex toys. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to include downloadable clips in that category. They may not be ready to consider it just yet, but hopefully they'll keep coming back in our direction because PayPal rocks.

Sorry Hammer, but downloadable clips are definitely NOT hard goods.

My client found out the hard way when his merchant account got shut down.

He was selling adult DVDs and downloadable clips on the same site. He got shut down without warning because of the clips. So then he could sell anything for about a week. A weeks worth of sales for him is not insignificant and it could have been much worse if we didn't have the resources to scramble for a new merchant account with Net Billing's help.

Hammer
01-03-2008, 10:47 AM
I suggested he talk to them to find out how they would classify downloadable clips, I did not suggest that he start using PayPal.

EmporerEJ
01-03-2008, 02:53 PM
1. I use DRM for my content and I don't give a rats ass if people hate it. Too fucking bad.
.


<<<Yawn.......>>>>

:zzz:

EmporerEJ
01-03-2008, 02:53 PM
I suggested he talk to them to find out how they would classify downloadable clips, I did not suggest that he start using PayPal.

It's also of interest to note.....USA only.
And I'm STILL suspicious of them.

MikeSouth
01-03-2008, 11:25 PM
I sell downloadable clips on one of my sites and it has worked well for me but...

it requires a merchant account which is actually easy to get or was for me ... got it through my bank for a grand total of 85 bucks...that done I set up netbilling and I use x-cart shopping cart software.

oddly enough I also have a clips4sale store and it works well on 2 levels...

first the c4s pricing actually forces me to charge a lot more than I do on my store so I make more money on c4s sales

since c4s allows my watermark on the clips it also helps to drive traffic and new customers

cant lose situation there

gonzo
01-04-2008, 07:54 AM
Wanted to pop back in and address Dany questions each. My first post was more of an intro of Jill and I.

PS. Gonzo, let me know when you're heading to Tampa. I owe you a dinner at Berns.
You dont owe me a thing. You can do me a favor though and tell all the amatuers they can hang out here.

Do you have any plans to go to Cybernet Expo in June?

Im trying to help my friend Jay out with his great show.
Theres a rumor of an amatuer roundtable.

erotola
01-04-2008, 10:26 AM
I sell downloadable clips on one of my sites and it has worked well for me but...

it requires a merchant account which is actually easy to get or was for me ... got it through my bank for a grand total of 85 bucks...that done I set up netbilling and I use x-cart shopping cart software.

oddly enough I also have a clips4sale store and it works well on 2 levels...

first the c4s pricing actually forces me to charge a lot more than I do on my store so I make more money on c4s sales

since c4s allows my watermark on the clips it also helps to drive traffic and new customers

cant lose situation there

Mike this is indeed a very interesting point of view. Thank you very much. You are saying that you make a lot more money on C4S sales because the price is much higher than on your site. Have you tried to sell on your site at the same price as on C4S? And did you see a significant drop in sales? I mean how did you set your price on your site?

MRock
01-04-2008, 11:36 AM
You dont owe me a thing. You can do me a favor though and tell all the amatuers they can hang out here.

Do you have any plans to go to Cybernet Expo in June?

Im trying to help my friend Jay out with his great show.
Theres a rumor of an amatuer roundtable.

Definately tell other ams to come here ;)

Afraid we have no plans to make the show, but that could change. If we do make it I would love to see the roundtable.:okthumb:

MRock
01-04-2008, 11:56 AM
I sell downloadable clips on one of my sites and it has worked well for me but...

it requires a merchant account which is actually easy to get or was for me ... got it through my bank for a grand total of 85 bucks...that done I set up netbilling and I use x-cart shopping cart software.

oddly enough I also have a clips4sale store and it works well on 2 levels...

first the c4s pricing actually forces me to charge a lot more than I do on my store so I make more money on c4s sales

since c4s allows my watermark on the clips it also helps to drive traffic and new customers

cant lose situation there
Well there you go ... Mike already has a workable solution it sounds like to me!

An interesting note on the c4s pricing structure. As the downloadable clip model has rolled out, I see more and more sites implementing it. I've seen these sites compete on split and pricing for the content producer and the consumer. I fell for the "lower prices will make more sales" pitch at one place for a short time. But I made so little money that I didn't feel it was worth the upload time. Instead of quitting, I raised the prices to match my c4s prices. Guess what!? My money went up to a level worth participating still. So ... don't fall for it producers! Value your unique, original material. Other "clip distributors" only want you to lower your prices so THEY can compete against c4s. That's my humble opinion.

DannyCox
01-04-2008, 10:23 PM
We also use C4S and a few similar sites, but the videos we put up are all over a year old. We keep the new content on the sites, and then after a year, spread it around. We're also going to re-implement the clips sales model back on our own sites. We did that about 5 or 6 years ago, but it didn't work that well back then, but now with the popularity of the clip sites, we'll give it another try. We have the programming done already.

gonzo
01-04-2008, 10:24 PM
We also use C4S and a few similar sites, but the videos we put up are all over a year old. We keep the new content on the sites, and then after a year, spread it around. We're also going to re-implement the clips sales model back on our own sites. We did that about 5 or 6 years ago, but it didn't work that well back then, but now with the popularity of the clip sites, we'll give it another try. We have the programming done already.

Listen to Danny. Hes more qualified than all of us on am sites!

erotola
01-05-2008, 10:00 AM
Well there you go ... Mike already has a workable solution it sounds like to me!

An interesting note on the c4s pricing structure. As the downloadable clip model has rolled out, I see more and more sites implementing it. I've seen these sites compete on split and pricing for the content producer and the consumer. I fell for the "lower prices will make more sales" pitch at one place for a short time. But I made so little money that I didn't feel it was worth the upload time. Instead of quitting, I raised the prices to match my c4s prices. Guess what!? My money went up to a level worth participating still. So ... don't fall for it producers! Value your unique, original material. Other "clip distributors" only want you to lower your prices so THEY can compete against c4s. That's my humble opinion.

Thank you MRock, this makes sense to me. But i did not have the possibility to experiment pricing yet. I remember reading a similar idea about webcams, 3$ per minute being the floor price for solo girls. Regarding C4S, i would like to have more flexibility to make special offers. For example, putting a bunch of clips together at a special price. Or trying to sell a specific clip at a discounted price. I do not know if special offers are really a worthy marketing practice in our field though. I remember reading that introductory specials for membership, for example 10$ for 3 days, do not really help overall sales.

erotola
01-05-2008, 10:08 AM
We also use C4S and a few similar sites, but the videos we put up are all over a year old. We keep the new content on the sites, and then after a year, spread it around. We're also going to re-implement the clips sales model back on our own sites. We did that about 5 or 6 years ago, but it didn't work that well back then, but now with the popularity of the clip sites, we'll give it another try. We have the programming done already.

Thank you very much Danny for giving your advice. Your posts have always been very helpful. I have the same opinion about the opportunity to market the clips sales model. It seems to me that the popularity of porn is making it more like a commodity these days (for which single sales make sense) as opposed to an addictive behavior in the past (for which membership sales make sense).

erotola
01-05-2008, 10:22 AM
Oh, i wanted to share another interesting stat that i maintain on my C4S sales. It looks like sales are significantly better on specific days during the week. Monday is clearly the best at 19%, followed by Sunday at 16.5%. Then Thursday (15%) and Friday (14.4%) are still above the average. But Tuesday (13%), Wednesday (11.3%) and Saturday (10.7%) are much lower than the average (1/7 is 14.3%). Do you have a similar sales pattern on your clips or membership sites during the week?

gonzo
01-05-2008, 02:55 PM
Oh, i wanted to share another interesting stat that i maintain on my C4S sales. It looks like sales are significantly better on specific days during the week. Monday is clearly the best at 19%, followed by Sunday at 16.5%. Then Thursday (15%) and Friday (14.4%) are still above the average. But Tuesday (13%), Wednesday (11.3%) and Saturday (10.7%) are much lower than the average (1/7 is 14.3%). Do you have a similar sales pattern on your clips or membership sites during the week?

I have seen Weds being a bad day for sales and traffic for years.
No matter what niche or business model.

MRock
01-07-2008, 03:17 PM
We also use C4S and a few similar sites, but the videos we put up are all over a year old. We keep the new content on the sites, and then after a year, spread it around. We're also going to re-implement the clips sales model back on our own sites. We did that about 5 or 6 years ago, but it didn't work that well back then, but now with the popularity of the clip sites, we'll give it another try. We have the programming done already.

Hey Danny, are you going to let amateurs like us sell through your clip stores too?? I'll be the first in line!:okthumb:

PS As far as good sales days ... our best are Sunday, Monday, Saturday, Friday and Thursday ... in that order ... just as a general rule. But damnit i work every day :waving: