[LadyMischief]

The problem with Erik is he shoots his mouth off before he thinks and gets all defensive as soon as someone says anything negative. Erik, check your icq, and yes I AM going to scream at you again.

All these content sales might seem like a great thing at first.. but they are doing a few negative things that are making this industry that much more difficult to be competative in for the webmaster.

They drive the prices down for content, but the content producer, the guy who has to pay the models, cover his overhead, etc is going to make less of a profit, which is a problem... With the shit going on a lot of producers i know are barely covering overhead.. and if they don't have the money to shoot new content... well... I'm sure you can follow my logic there, it's a vicious circle.

Second, all those people that got a great deal are ending up paying for shit. The content may be wonderful, but consider the NUMBER of people who bought those images. My best estimate puts the sales on those content bundles at around 300-400 sales. That means there's not just 20 or 30 people running around with the content..there are HUNDREDS. It's going to so saturate the market it's going to be less than worthless, because so many people are going to be using it. I really feel sorry for those people who bought the content beforehand, full price, because now what they paid full price for is worthless, esentially. Most good content providers will pull a set a limit on sales or reduce it's price after so many sales, to reflect the possibility of oversaturation. I know this is a policy we strictly enforce. Why? Because doing anything less is going to make the content absolutely useless to all the customers who bought it beforehand, and honestly, I wouldn't stab my customers in the back like that. I'm supposed to be giving them a useful product that they can continue to use (and recycling content is a fantastic way to continue to gain value from it). However, once it gets TOO saturated, it's only good for places like RockBottom, which, although they hold an important place and are a great resource for newbies, let's be honest. That shit is THINNER than water.

Those sales are great, The guys at Clutch and Cloud9 are nice guys, but the current trends they seem to be leading in the content world are less than desirable. And the REALLY shitty thing is once people use all that content and realize JUST how saturated it is, they're going to have to come back and buy fresh stuff. Don't get me wrong, I've seen the content, it's nice as hell, and it WILL do ok until all the people that bought it start putting it up en-masse (give it a week or so more once designers start spitting stuff out for people) and realize surfers will already have seen it all.

It's a good ploy for the content provider in a way, but in the end it's the webmaster who gets stuck for it. I don't think a lot of people realized how broad the implications were in the first place, but nobody thinks about it when they're out to make some quick coin. I'll give props where due, Cloud9 shot from obscurity to "fame", and have more capital now, but still. My #1 interest is the customer, that is and always will be my focus, and well, I just don't feel in my opinion the customers in this instance come out the winners. They get good content yes, cheap price, for sure, but at what cost to the market?

I'm sure lots of people will be saying "Oh, she's just saying that because they're hurting her business". No, not really. People want stuff that's unsaturated at a good price, they still know where to come. And we did have a big site sale like Cloud9 and Clutch, however we limited the sale to _5_ customers and that was all. I can justify selling those sets to everyone else at their normal price because well, I didn't kill their value for myself and my customers. As for Erik, well he's just trying to make a buck, but man I am SO going to kick your ass. You have a lot to learn about dealing with PEOPLE. He and Joe resolved their differences as far as I know, and aside from the occassional embellishment and whatnot I've never known Erik to be totally dishonest. He has some nice stuff on his site. Use your own judgement, but Erik you dumb shit you lost a lot of business because of your big fat mouth. I am so gonna kick your ass.