The content game has changed dramatically over the past few years.
I shot 200 girls, 50,000 pics for Content Broadband and the lease gallery did well, but the individual content sales in the store did about $40k a month.
Now, with more and more exclusive sites, the climate has changed. We shoot mostly exclusive, but also do semi-exclusive stuff for customers. It's custom, they pay the procution costs and get pics and video with their needs and url on the video...1-2 months down the road we add it to our store
A gamble, because individual sets and lease gallery sales are way down from a year ago....we figure it's like a hotel room...if it's empty you're not making anything...produce something custom for a customer that pays the bills and make additional $$$ somewhere down the line.
Exclusive does real well cash flow wise for us, but it's the old "working for someone else, paycheck to paycheck thing". Content producers will need to diversify like webmasters are doing to keep moving ahead in the biz.
My fealings:
-lease galleries - a tough road to make a buck
-exclusive - cash flow, but not big bucks
-custom non-exclusive - someone else pays for you to shoot and make the $$$ long term
-your own websites - make use of the talent and other people paying for content to make long term $$$
- diversify - do a little bit of all of the above
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