Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Markham
Most offline shooters shot for an average cost of $300 and sold in total for an average of $3,000 a set non exclusive.
The downside were shooting 10-20 sets a month for which they would rarely get paid anything for 6 months and on average 9 months.
We were doing 20 a month.
20 x $300 = $6000 a month
$6000 x 9 = $54,000
If a shooter sells everything he shoots, not a problem. If he doesn't he was throwing money into the fire. And that's why few of the online shooters ever sold to magazines. Not even by shooting and selling a few a month and building up the back log.
Yes DVDs did make that kind of return and for the same reasons they were not coming online to sell. Even more so with them, they knew selling online would devastate their sales to stores. Store chains would simply black list most of them and told them so.
So let's assume there was a lot of money to be made online with porn. Then why did most online companies that approached an offline shooter fail to recruit one? The answer is - they weren't paying enough.
This isn't just us, it's 100s of offline shooters. We were nearly all freelance, we would shoot for anyone with the money. Yet who ended up with a top offline shooter and who made do with anyone who could shoot cheap enough? It's a short list for offline shooter and a long one for cheap shooters.
We could easily sell a solo girl set for $35 10 times and if we shot a video a set+video for $60 10 times. So the return on the stores sale for a set was well over $350. For a set and video over $1,000. Which is why we never sold custom exclusive. All our content we sold to magazines, plus online and still own.
We can all clearly see what great content will do when trying to sell it. Met-Art, X-Art, Perfect Gonzo, Party Hardcore are just a few sites of a small number who have truly great content, or did. Why didn't more sites just go offline to get one of the best shooters and simply employ him or buy all his production to raise themselves above the pack to a level other sites couldn't reach with the shooters they had?
It really is that simple.
The shocking part is. If an online company had really thought it out and could afford it. They could of funded the shooter and the sites content for free or for very little.
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$6k a month is a job or a small business, even back in the 80's.... but that's the point, it's just an income stream.
Because plenty of online shooters do a perfectly fine job at a much cheaper rate? Business logical I guess.... If it was such a huge difference, those few offline companies that moved online, would kill online, but online wise - they don't.
Just like the 100's of self shot paysite owners, many of which that earn upwards of $300-$500k+ a month? Most of these people are earning $1000's to $10,000's per scene, per month, and normally never need to sell the content for pennies.
Those sites do have some nice content, and it's perfect for the buyers that like that niche style.
I guess when other paysites/companies that don't hire/partner with professionals and they earn as much and more than those that do, it is probably tough to convince people that it's needed for them to succeed - when it's not. It is needed because it fills a money gap in our Industry, but it's not what everyone should be doing.
Really, it's that simple....