Working with "Solo Site Models" Advice Please
 

There is a girl that I have shot several times and I had agreed to help get her started with her own website, with the end goal of educating her to do her own updates, etc, teaching her the basics of photoshop, dreamweaver, etc.

She had been kinda blowing me off as of late. I figured she just had alot of other things going on. We were suppost to go over our contract last night and she postponed that to next week.

I replied to her email stating that maybe it would be better if she got another webmaster to help her out, as it seemed like she had alot of stuff going on in her life right now, etc. And I would rather have us be friends instead of having any potential rift as far as doing a partnership together.

She replied saying that she had mailed me but got an error message saying that my mailbox was full. I have never had anyone say that I have gotten an error message in the 6 years I have had my email accounts. She also said that she was not going to beg me to do her site and that she has other offers, which is fine.

I had told her that alot of girls in this industry were fickle and I had only met with her 3 times and did not know her that well. That I was just being careful. She replied that if I didn't trust her that there was no reason to do the partnership.

Am I being mean from what you have read? Some porn actresses are just fucking nuts. I was just trying to convey that actions speak louder than words and I was not sure that her heart was in it. As usually if you want to work with someone, you try to have a good solid first impression. Not returning emails imho is not a good first impression.

Some of my other friends in this biz that are producers say to me "run the other way". That saying that other girls who do solo sites put the "H" in "handful" And not worth my time, as most girls are just selfish. I was going to give her the benefit of the doubt. I feel like she is a good person, but...

I would like some advice from other producers on here that run solo sites. Are you both pretty happy about it? Those of you that have shot girls for they're own solo sites, is it a great working relationship or is it just a huge headache?

From her last email, we are dead in the water I guess. I guess I should not have even offered to help her out. And I am quite suprised that she has pulled the plug via 3 emails, just because I questioned her sincerity towards the endeavor and had doubts. Which kinda pisses me off. And I have most likely lost her friendship as well. But I guess if that is the case, we were never really friends anyway.

What do you other producers think?

Sounds like she isnt sure about it, fuck it, don't do it.
And if you do it, forget about teaching her the basics of PS, DW etc.

She wanted to "piggyback" off of my ccbill account, since I paid the VISA fee's. I was only going to take 20 percent off of her monthly sales. Which is unheard of... And have shared content rights, etc.

I do not think she will find that anywhere else, another reason I am suprised by how our email convo went. I told her that I was not saying "no", I just had doubts about her actions and was just wondering what was going on. I'm pretty bummed. I really wanted to stay friends with her in an industry where true friends are few and far between sometimes. I put too much faith in these girls sometimes :(

Do what you are comfortable with and get it in writing.

If she doesn't go for that move on.

If you have to think about it this much then I would say RUN AWAY!

yeah, i will probably never hear from her again.

Let me know what the site is called so I can avoid promoting it.... she sounds flaky as fuck!

Thanks Sharphead, we will see how it all turns out... I will give her the benefit of the doubt for now. And it's thanksgiving time, blah.

Seriously... I don't envy what you guys have to go through to get a decent solo girl to take off her clothes and have a little personality. Just be careful... no girl is ever worth the trouble and hassle, there's a thousand more just like her ready to get naked, just takes some patience and luck to find them... :2 cents:

Hmmm....Call me crazy but that shit don't add up right to me.

Oh, a really good friend referred me to her 2 years ago. We run in the same circles. I shot her for one of my concepts and we stayed in touch through email. I met her a month ago over coffee to talk about me helping her out on her website. I shot her again 2 weeks ago for some content that she wanted for her site. But I had been in touch with her maybe once every couple of months via email. But still, only met in person 3 times. She does seem like a nice enough girl. But being mean, just makes be feel like a fool for being nice, if that makes any sense.

my advice: solo girls, be VERY careful. and in many cases not worth the effort, with girls changing mind and so on. i did that in the past, will not do it again in the future. my personal experience of course.

Partnerships with them rarely will ever workout

Man, we've all been there to some degree, some girls work out, some don't. It's best to be in a position where you have multiple ways of selling any content you make so you don't have to suddenly rely on some person you don't really know to be doing their job. Then if a girl winds up having content for a site you can do it.

Don't be a fucking retard.

Drop her now and walk away. Either way you can kiss the friendship goodbye so you might as well do it before putting any more of your time/resources into something that, in the end, will probably not benefit EITHER of you.

You came to this board to ask a question. Between the responses you have gotten here and the input you say you have received from others...And yet you still sit there and say you will give her the benefit of the doubt.

Stop now before you end up fucking yourself over. :2 cents:

You've gone about this completely WRONG. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

Don't try to start off a solo girl site by 'helping a girl out' - only taking 20% and teaching her how to do shit...

If she's going to do a solo girl site she's likely an idiot and is going to need 90% if not 99% of the work done.

Treat her as a model and leave it at that. If your site ever gets released, and if it ever makes any money, after that miracle, especially in this day and age, then consider letting her take on promotional responsibilities or VERYYYYYYYYY unlikely but possible site maintainence responsibilities if she's actually willing to learn.

You, or an experienced partner, needs to make the site work first, and I'd wish you a lot of luck just trying to get that to happen, don't get ahead of yourself like your site is actually going to make any money, or even get off the ground, and that you can start handing off responsibility to the model :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

This girl sounds like an idiot... and is already giving you bullshit excuses.... even if you had a top notch, extremely responsible model, you'd have to be pretty careful with the site responsibilities you gave her, let alone an idiot flake like this

You have to admire the few girls/models here that work on their own sites... good for them... but I also bet in a lot of cases they face a lot of problems as well

thanks for the advice everyone. I was just trying to be a nice guy. I have ready traffic with my concepts. I know, I know. That is why I made the post in the first place, to get some good, honest feedback. Thank you!

There is an old expression I always apply to situations like this ...

"Is the juice worth the squeeze?"

I don't think you will ever come close to paying for your time investment. I also think she, and the boyfriend she will eventually drag into this, is another problem you will face.

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Yep. :thumbsup

I don't have to be a producer to see what is going on here.

She is using chick logic to work on your man logic. You will either give her everything she wants or she will go elsewhere. She is also retarded. No really. Her IQ is like 115 and she thinks because she is smarter than her friend with a 110 she is really smart. That is bad. It means she will do stupid shit and not understand why others think she is a bitch. She will think they are just haters and continue doing progressively worse shit.

RUN!

You've already spent too much time on this.
In the future content first, crazy girl stuff later.
CONTENT IS KING>:pimp

also, obviously she's no Aaliyah Love.

RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!!

unless she looks like the next Raven Riley and anything less than 50% goes to you it's not worth your time and aggravation. even worse it sounds like you have a crush on her a bit - or a lot.

i'd say don't listen to this guy because he's insane but on this he knows what he's talking about

you always fall in love with some deadbeat model.

try and find a partner on plenty of fish. much cheaper.

Dude, don't get hung up on the idea of the girl being a "'solo site model". You want to make your life easy- here's what you do with a hot new girl who you think would sell. You hire her for the day- you pay her a few hundred bucks, and you shoot the shit out of her- photos, videos, softcore, hardcore, whatever you can negotiate. You do this for a day or a few days in a row, until you get enough content to make a movie, a whole web site or at least a few updates for one of you own sites, like a teen site or multi-model site. You pay her and you own the material 100%. Now you have no partner and no complications, and you can do whatever you want. Go crazy, launch a site, put her in another site in your network, sell the clips, make a movie out of the content, whatever. If the model is popular, you can always bring her back and shoot her again for more content.

I have taken the route of going to school for graphic/web design to build my own website and I will be intervinewing photographers .

Sometimes its not really worth building a site for a girl. but if you do end up agreeing to making a site together make sure both of you are happy with the agreement.

Sometimes girls leave becuase they are unhappy about the agreement and feel unable to talk to the person they are in agreement with.

VRocks speaks some extreme wisdom here :2 cents::thumbsup

lots of good replies in this thread

.....do i?

That makes perfect sense and sadly, I know girls like that

...and for the record all i did was smell her feet. I don't play with talent usually and I never fuck them. I think it's rude, however that makes sense. Most all become my friends though. I just am really into the networking aspect and since I travel and shoot so much. It's always nice to have zero drama and a ton of references. Also, most of you know that I am a lifestyle foot fetishist. We look at eroticism much differently than others most of the time imho. That is the truth as to why I am freaking out on the "friendship" aspect of things.

She emailed me very late last night and apologized. I did as well for being crass if I was. Now she is saying that she has doubts in my sincerity, which is fine. I am so busy with my other concepts. She wants to meet next week and discuss things. I am pretty much over the situation. I don't really have any interest in doing it anymore. I am planning on wishing her the best of luck on her other "offers" and forget this mess ever happened.

just looked at your sites. nice stuff actually.

thank you sir! My baby is my foot fetish site and digitaldivasonline.com is far and beyond, one of the nicest visual adult indexes online. Moderndebauchery will have to wait to be finished, I am currently reskinning digitaldivasonline.com to white and updating the website images. All 1000 plus websites :(

well, I can say it can get very bad trying to help some of them. They can ask for more and more and give you zero except guilt trips if you don't do everything they want.
I'll spare you the long story which may have concluded this week for me with a potential model.
If they seem flakey, you aren't married to them. Move on. Fewer grey hairs someday.

bump it up

I spent the last two years focused on one model and one solo model site. While it was doing well and growing, she had a tantrum pulled out, kept all the equipment both computer and cameras, cams and hd video, didn't return anything, didn't call and quit, then slandered the hell out of me to justify breaking a 5 year agreement. I would have never put that much time and energy and funds nor would my business partners, had we known she would bail out after a lil over a year - and not in a good way. I will never touch a solo model site again either - ever. I won't work with solo girls, and I'm not even sure I want to shoot or meet these models anymore. that's how unethical I have found them to be.. and yes - they change their minds about what they want quite frequently - and it's hard to make any long term plans or investments into a brand thats future is decided on the random whims or bad moods of unstable people.

Welcome to the nightmare.

Don't waste your time or money. Come on, you know that she isn't going to be able to fill the site with the content you need on a regular basis. You knew that as you were typing your first post. Trust your gut!

jusy kill yourself now and save yourself the headache

You obviously didn't have it setup right, too bad you were a newb and are now crying in your beer.

If you are close friends with a model and have worked with her for years and are creatively on the same page, as posts in this thread attest, things can still go south with a solo girl site. If a girl you barely know is already flipping out at you for asking whether she is sure she wants to do a site, you don't need to take that meeting to know it is a bad idea to partner with her.

I've done several solo sites and eventually she'll flake... even if you have a shitload of content you eventually run out of new stuff. I remember years ago talking to webmasters who give their "solo girls" percentages, fuck that! Pay them for the days of work and that's it. Let's be real... dealing with most 18-24yr old amateur girls or even porn girls have serious mind issues, they aren't stable and many are unreliable :2 cents:

old thread.

Your dealing with a model. If she was smart, she wouldn't be a model, she'd be a program owner. When I worked for Lightspeed Cash I handled all of the models, and their stupidity never seized to amaze me.

The best one was Tawnee Stone. She was the highest paid model, and she came in to renegotiate her yearly contract. We all walked into the meeting and she opened by saying "I'm your most popular model so I want my yearly salary doubled". Steve just looked at her and said "We've decided to let you go. We opened a multi-girl site, and both traffic and income for your site is down by 80%". I swear you could physically see the color drain from her face.

Eventually she took a fifty percent pay cut and had to shoot twice as much.

If she is not coming to you and asking for you to show her how to do it, she does not want to do it.

Old thread, but Rochard's story made it worth the read. :thumbsup

the 50/50 split with model is horrible deal for you. great for a lazy model. you know how much work is involved. 20% are you nuts?

can't give my opinion until i see a picture of her..