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The figure I heard was 3 mil. in development around the year before the official launch, so it's definitely a lot of money thrown on it.
I've also been a part of one of the first official product presentations at Internext Vegas in 09' (I guess), I've touched it and it totally freaked me out as this really felt about 95 pct. real, and I wasn't the only one who was quite impressed.
This alone persuaded me to eventually try to sell some. I've put on a landing page with mainstream media reviews, some youtube vid, explaining how to and what the requirements are, what pornstars can one have fun with etc. with a discount at the end (which still meant $199 a pop).
I even went so far that I had a Steve Jobs parody with one of the pictures from his famous product presentations, but decided to strip it down later to avoid wrath from Apple or its fans (although something like iMasturbate could be definitely a good addition to their product line up)
The supporting page was a page with real customer testimonials (that I took from Realtouch customer forums) and a youtube channel, this all had a very mainstream feel.
From what I sold I made over 200 USD per device in recurring revenue (the cut is 20 pct.) but the conversion was nowhere near acceptable from a well targeted traffic, it was more than a hard sell.
Which somehow confirmed my initial reservations:
- on one hand, that the product, once used, can be quite addictive
On the other other hand:
- that it's close to impossible to sell it online (without a demonstration, checking it with your fingers first or so..)
- it costs $ 249 (when launched, later discounted to $ 199) and you have to buy extra credit - that's not an easy sell
- that it's still a major gadget, you can hardly persuade your wife or girlfriend that it's just a new hypersonic vaccum cleaner you bought
This I observed also in the stats, someone was using it monthly then didn't touch it for six months, then started using it again, may have something to do with this.
Theoretically, according to my stats, a customer could spend more than $ 1000 on the Realtouch VOD alone, again this stat doesn't come from a relevant amount of customers, so the average can be lower. Given the fact that this comes from about 24 months of customer life it may also confirm that the pricepoint for VOD was most likely perceived as high.
They could as well do better offering it for extra $29,95 to US members with their AEBN membership, or even give it away for the price of shipping to those that are already repeating, current customers that have already spent $ over a certain threshold.
Maybe they could even offer that to overseas customers this way, since they wouldn't be technically selling the gadget, but PPV only.
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