How Tough Is Plugin Biz?

[Mutt]

i know nobody likes to come out and say 'we cant sell our plugin' cuz it makes you look to be a failure but thought i would ask people in general.

I peek in on a whole lotta members areas lately, found a BIG password list. Looked to me like same old plugins from years ago, most i saw were the same ones over and over, Holio and Webmaster Paradise. So i'm always seeing people coming out with new feeds and I didn't see much evidence of them in most members areas. David Lace has some of the best teen content around, he came out with leased plugins, I think i've seen it on ONE site. California Pimp plugin - my favorite Net porn guy and
never seen it in any members area.

So I'm thinking even if you have great quality content it's a tough sell. Seems like people are now falling into two camps - people who have decided that content isn't worth the investment and they just run crap (i.e. Babenet and many other affilliate programs) and then the other guys who are going the exclusive content route with reality video sites and other types of custom content. WantonGirls does great, there are lots of guys making some big investments in their own content, only problem is that there aren't enough models to please everybody.

So I don't know where the plugins fit in for the future, one hand you have webmasters who just wont pay for quality, the other hand you have all the custom guys who shoot for themselves or buy exclusive. Plugin guys caught in no man's land?

whachoo think?

[The Other Steve]

Perhaps its because people aren't prepared to pay a reasonable amount for good plug-ins when there are cheap crappy plug-ins available.

[Winetalk.com]

I don't know about cheap plug ins,
but I wouldn't recomend anybody to use cheap butt plugs
;-))

[slavdogg]

mutt, i would say it all comes down to marketing

[cj]

Originally posted by slavdogg@Feb 12 2003, 04:33 AM
mutt, i would say it all comes down to marketing

I guess i must suck at this marketing thing then because I haven't been able to sell purvette to more than 20 paysite owners ... (granted, i've only spoken to about 50, but that's too low of a conversion for my liking!)

mutt, its all just too hard, trying to convince someone else why they need what you have, webmasters get shown a bunch of SHIT everyday, making them take the time to look past the front page of what your offering requires the right hook, not sure who has done that right with plugins yet ... so we have just settled on purvette being a better quality plugin for our own sites than anything we can pay for, which is why we built it the way it is in the first place.

plugins are also expensively priced, because of the maintenance required by the plugin owner - paysite owners don't like paying too much for content ;-)

we use a lot of plugin style content in our sites, because it guarantees you have variety and updates ....

sinempire (brad hangs around here sometimes) has audio erotica for $250 per month
xxxphoto mark has just launched a few ezine plugins
sexentertain has a bunch of stuff very reasonably priced (plus all david lace plugins)

[slavdogg]

Originally posted by cj@Feb 12 2003, 06:04 AM
I guess i must suck at this marketing thing then because I haven't been able to sell purvette to more than 20 paysite owners ... (granted, i've only spoken to about 50, but that's too low of a conversion for my liking!)

cj, i would say you've done well selling even 20 plug ins out of 50 trys.
Considering you're in what i would call a micro niche. How many Fem sites are there ??

and you just missed a marketing op by not posting the link to your plug in

Is this the right link ?
http://www.purvette.com/webmasters/


cj, it just hit me while writing this, i have some very targeted traffic for your sites that i should send your way. Will do it tomorrow.

[Rolo]

I would say price model is the issue... most new plugins we receive are very pricy - typical want to get paid based on how many members we already have - some set their price at $1+ per member, so if we had 10 of those providers then we end up paying $10 per member - per month! This is the wrong way to get into a paysite in my opion, because the new plugins would add to the cost per member from day 1 (to not have it add to the cost per member, then we would need to cancel some other feeds, which is playing with our recurrings, so thats a no go). Now I know some plugin providers will let you test their plugins free for a month or so, but this again is a bad option, since it might create confusion with your members when you take down the feeds again...

The best solution would be if all content provider plugins did not bill based on amount of members, but on the actual usage (bandwidth or access - with no minimum). It would also allow paysites to give access to more content, and the content providers with the best plugins (those who gets the most traffic) would earn most money (will make content providers produce better plugins

Now if your content is so good, that it actual could make conversions better on the paysite tour (ex. Pam&Tom video, exclusive content, very rare niche content), then you will be able to sell it for something upfront, but most content providers with plugins should only get paid on the actual usage (bandwidth or access) if they want access to members areas.



Last edited by Rolo at Feb 12 2003, 04:09 AM

[Mutt]

you can count on CJ for honesty!

it is a tough sell and most people just won't pay the freight for higher quality content ................. and to lease at the price point that is likely to increase the amount of customers you have to look at it and think whether it's even worth bothering.

i don't think the plugins are too expensively priced - well some are, i took a look at the GotJizz plugin, 12 dollars a GIG, might even be more per gIG on the smaller packages. But most plugins i see are in the 2-5 dollar a gig range. That seems fair but it's still a tough sell.

And the problem with doing a more niche-y type plugin is that you will get like about 10 sales the second you post it on a board or advertise it. Cuz there are always about that many people in any niche who are always on the prowl for more content for their niche. But after that first day, like pulling teeth.

Traffic still king - content far behind. Though i can point out a whole bunch of examples of very successful companies where content meant more to their success than traffic. Traffic came because of the content.

[Rolo]

We do tracking on all our content in our member areas, and from the numbers we get, then our members do visit the quality content alot more than the "mass low rate 10 sec. video clips" or "100K unsorted pics" feeds... the numbers actual helped us to replace alot of the "bad" content from some paysites we bought, and make the recurrings alot better

The price is the main issue, yes.
There are only a few plugin providers with the right quality and price, others are either too expensive or are already on all the other 23232424 paysites.


John
BigCash.com
Send your mailing traffic our way - support @ bigcash.com

[Mike AI]

In downturns of economies, companies cut back. One of the first place many people cut back in programs, is their members area.

For the most part 70-80% of members could careless about members area. ( I know scary numbers) IT is the 20-30% who do care. When this number becomes big enough then it is worth buying extra content to make this number happy. But if the number is low ( 4,000 total members) then spending money on tons of fresh content and plugins is not worth it.

[DrGuile]

It is a much easier sell when your product is free. Or makes the webmaster money!



Now, to the 3 webmasters who dont use, signup!


and if dont like us, use pornication!



Last edited by DrGuile at Feb 12 2003, 10:23 AM

[PornBroker ::.]

Originally posted by Rolo@Feb 12 2003, 04:26 AM
more than the "mass low rate 10 sec. video clips"

Would there be any reason to have these there in the first place?

[Rolo]

Originally posted by Mike AI@Feb 12 2003, 07:16 AM
IT is the 20-30% who do care. When this number becomes big enough then it is worth buying extra content to make this number happy.

I would also add that its not about getting the "biggest" members area in the world (was a trend for a while) - there are far more bad plugins then good ones.

If a new member´s first experience, when clicking in the members area, is one those "mass low rate 10 sec. video clips" feeds, then it sticks with him, and the next click he might do is to the cancel page...

I bet there is a market for both quality hi res plugins and somewhat less websized medium quality.

Socalcoeds
bubbelgirls
vivthomas

i think these quality plugs do ok.

Some real good video plugins out there as well.

Quality sites with smaller memberbases might go for quality plugins when there is a decent progressive billing.
149usd up to 250 members 300usd 250+...and so on

[SykkBoy]

We're currently revamping our member's areas and adding an area we call Broadband Central with the higher quality feeds. We stick the lower quality feeds in an area we call "The Archive" so that our members realize it's "extra" content and not the main focus.

My biggest problem with most of the plugins I've seen are the lack of updates. Especially if I'm paying per member rather than bandwidth based......if I'm paying per member, I want fresher updates, otherwise I can spend that same money and do a bunch of lower cost custom shoots...some feed providers seem to get lazy and that mentioned 20% who do care will get very vocal with lack of updates.

We have some members that have been with us 2 years now and we listen to them like we would listen to our own mothers because these guys have paid us a couple hundred dollars over the years...

[Mutt]

Rolo said:

The best solution would be if all content provider plugins did not bill based on amount of members, but on the actual usage (bandwidth or access - with no minimum).
************************************************** **

hmmmmmm............. i think the majority of paysite owners get scared off when you tell them billing will be bandwidth usage, they feel more secure when they're told a price based on membership count and in the fine print there is usually language about excessive usage and overage charges billed by the gig.

how much bandwidth do you think a site that says it has 500 members would use per month on a video feed plugin that has broadband 300k and dialup 56k streams?

If a plugin billed only on a bandwidth usage basis no minimum what per GIG charge would people be ok with and what amount would make them head for zee hills? $3.00 per gig? $5 per gig? $10 per gig?
The more popular the plugin the more bandwidth used but also it would be likely that that plugin is helping retaining members so it might be worth a higher per gig charge.

[Rolo]

Originally posted by Mutt@Feb 12 2003, 10:10 AM
how much bandwidth do you think a site that says it has 500 members would use per month on a video feed plugin that has broadband 300k and dialup 56k streams?

We use our own raw hits to the plugin when comparing cost with the other plugins in our system... that way they can bill us anyway they want, but we just match our bill with how many raws we send to the plugin... ex. lets say we get a bill for $1000, and see that we have send 100 raw hit to the plugin, then we know that feed is not good business. This also works on "per member" billing, "per access" billing, and we have an easy way to find out which plugins are too expensive (well for our taste

When taking on a new pluging which use bandwidth billing, then we usual count 1 raw hit = 10-20mb transfer on average high bandwidth plugins. Depending on the number of plugins and how many current raw hits we got, then its pretty easy to find/guess how much it will cost before it goes live...

Now there are many things, which can not be counted for just by looking at the hits we send to each plugin, but its the best alternativ we have until all content providers start to bill bandwidth or access (even then it will still be nice to know, what our members are clicking on

Mutt: I'm going to try and answer your post and other points raised in this topic without it turning into an outrageous spam fest for our products.

These days plugins are a much harder sell than they were back in 1998 when Richard first launched the BritBabes library - even with superb quality content *cough, cough*. There's more competition and there's more webmasters who've been burned by having crappy, non-updating, over-priced plugins.

Our view is that plugins have to add value to a pay site - either in encouraging sign-ups or encouraging member retention or through cost savings - otherwise there is no point in having them, plain and simple. Some plugins certainly add value and without slagging off any of our competitors, some don't.

Our experience has been mixed, some have been very straight-forward sales & clients and some have wanted to haggle down to the last penny, I guess that's true of every sales operation though. For the most part, the people who have been straight-forward, easy sales if you like, are the ones whose businesses we have seen grow. It seems that people who count every single penny forget how to make pounds.

Richard based the script that manages the plugins (based on his old Brit Babes script) and designed the products we sell based around his own frustrations with the plugins he'd looked at for our own pay sites.

(This is the spammy bit now)

So, what he built was a plugin system that:

- is completely customiseable (and I mean completely);
- clearly updates daily for image galleries with a full set and twice weekly for the video one with a full-length scene;
- has full access to the back-catalogue with no content rotation;
- has good, paysite quality, reasonably exclusive content;
- doesn't have any additional bandwidth charges;
- has full access stats on request.

http://www.adultcontent.co.uk/plugins/

(end of spammy bit).

Now... where do I get an Oprano button from?

[cj]

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