| Paul Markham |
09-11-2011 10:32 AM |
What we used to do and how we worked.
A lot of people keep telling me how we should of worked and what we should of done. Without knowing what we did do, so maybe it's time to explain what we did for the last 12 years.
We were content shooters, in our field by no means good. Just could produce a lot of pretty to beautiful teens, because we were in Czech. Combine that with my to get a girl to open up in front of a camera and it worked great.
The most important part of the job was to find new girls. Finding a girl after another photographer had shot her was costing money. In those days like today new girls are at a premium, a new girl who was pretty was worth 4 sets, attractive worth 10 sets outstanding anything up to 20. So if a shooter had found a girl before us, every set he shot would be one we couldn't sell.
A shooter recently posted a girl who was just 18, just 18 and already well known. Probably with an agent and probably already shot by the agents favorite shooters, the one's who paid him the most.
So we advertised everywhere we could, in local papers and National ones. We also had recruiters out looking for them and got girls to recommend friends. We also had to do castings, as they were profitable shooting "Readers Wives" pictures it was also a way to make $300 from each girl who turned up with an ID and pay the girl so she could tell her friends.
Relying on photos was useless, old photos, good photos of poor girls, bad photos of good girl and even photos of them before they had the "ions" tattooed on their backside. Doing a casting also gave us an opportunity to get to know the girl, for her to get to know us and see if we could work together.
We did 1-2 days a week in Prague, once a month to other majors cities here and of course castings all the time in Brno.
Then we had to shoot the girls we had selected. It's impossible to shoot 5 magazine sets on a day. girls tire, shooter tires and the work is poor. 2-3 a day was maximum. sometimes 1 because the girl was studying or working and couldn't do a whole day. We had to take time to build sets and keep the studio fresh.
When the shoot was over film went to Kodak to be developed. When returned slides had to sorted into different sets, UK, US and EU. This had to be done for each region, putting a lot of softcore into a US set was going to lose a sale, and hardcore into a UK set the same. EU had different markets.
For the UK I went once a month, this was a 3-4 day trip. We had 3 major clients there and it was nice to walk in with a months work. I flew into London with a suitcase full of sets and flew home with an empty one. Had a wardrobe in my London home. US flew twice a year, usually coinciding with shows in the US.
Then we decided to launch a content store, so got a programmer and got on with it. I had to sit by him and work with him, many times I wondered if it was worth it, but kept going. Thankfully it was. We later got rid of the original programmer and employed the one we are still with. He's freelance and now runs his own business programming for others.
So to take on a paysite, build it, work it, look after affiliates and all else it would require. Without even thinking of shooting just for it, wasn't a good idea. It would of cost us a lot of money to do prior to 2005. We were busy enough doing what we knew and knew would make us a lot of money.
The programming wasn't the problem, it was everything else. We had 2 programmers by then. We would of needed for me to sit down and learn the traffic game and run the affiliates or get a guy in. Most peoples first complaint about a sponsor is the level of support. I tried many time to find a guy who was capable, never did. Found a lot of people who simply wanted a slice of what we were getting, they were not interested in a deal based on sales over and above our present ones, guys who wanted a flat wage, guys who were clueless and straight con-men. Got stung by 2 of them. Like some other shooters.
I suppose the problem was those who knew the game were working for themselves and those that didn't ..............
So maybe this explains why we didn't open a site earlier, why when we did we didn't spend all our time looking after it.The content business was paying us good money, from magazine and online sales. To risk that a go into something new was stupid.
What might of worked better was if some guy who knew how to drive traffic to others partnered up with us and worked on his side of the business while we worked on our side. DDF found such a person, as did a few others. Most found con-men like we found.
3 top shooters went with a guy who was a whale with a giant TGP site. Their returns were pitiful. When I met one of the shooters and pointed out what he was selling ad space for where he had their site's ad. He realised what the score was. The whale would of been better off just selling the ad space, if his figures were to be believed. We had numerous deals put to us like that, only needed to do it twice to learn.
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