great thread.

Hey Dave, thanks for coming on board with the interview. Seriously one of the best people I've worked with..

Professional porn shooters are never worried about sharing knowledge. They know that with the basic knowledge we inject our style and personality and the work looks different. But still appeals to the same people.

This post will stir it up I think. :winkwink:

The people who make the final decision on whether your content works or not are not affiliates, not even the serious affiliates who send up to 10,000 hits a day. It's the surfer who BUYS porn and not the surfer who looks at porn. Numbers of hits are no longer a good link to the number of sign ups.

If you produce cloned porn that has no individual personality and character why should anyone sign up? Tube sites are full of this stuff and these surfers might of had to buy a membership 4 years ago, now they don't. Yes what ever efforts you put into producing a great scene it can still be stolen. But better the surfer wants YOUR porn then any porn. Better that your porn has a theme and believable fantasy that is individual then the same porn that 100 other guys with cameras produce. When you have an individual product it's worth protecting.

So it's essential in todays market that you target a fantasy the BUYERS will spend money on, produce it with flair and have something that people are looking for. Then it's the choice of chasing it down on the free sites or buying it. Today to sell you need content people WANT to buy, rather than content to buy.

20 years ago when I started to shoot videos it was easy. Sit a girl on a sofa, tell her to strip, jerk off and cum. Repeat the same scene in the bedroom and bathroom and you had a tape to sell. Stick an advert in soft porn mags and a few other places. And it was easy to sell that video 100 times for $40 in the first 3 months. Over it's life time 300 sales were average. Yes $12,000 from a tape that cost 400 tops to produce and $2 each to duplicate and post.

Today it's a very different business and if your site is full of girls on a sofa or bed getting their rocks off and little else why should anyone buy? It's all over the Tubes. Sadly that was the way many in the business went, buying content on price, people with little preparation shooting content in the belief that all it needed to be was exclusive and the results are clear to see.

Unless you have content shot 20 years ago. That in itself can make it unique. LOL

Make your content individual to you and your site then it becomes worth buying. Maybe you have access to a fine lady like Lady Sonia or a similar star, maybe you have access to a farm, swimming pool, aircraft or woods near by. What ever can be done to make the content different. And that means every scene. 100 scenes of 100 girls going through the same routine can get a bit boring no matter what you do to spice it up. Unless you're shooting solo girl making sure she's real. Her personality can be enough to make the scene different from the last one.

Use your imagination, because you can bet the BUYERS are.

Of course it's hard, but the rewards are clear. People do not send traffic to sites that don't convert as well as others, owners of those sites can't afford to spend money on content and traffic like they used to. Because the final decision is made by the man with the credit card.

I think it's pretty well accepted that we are losing customers to Tubes. And it's not because they are free. Because if the people on the Tubes never spent money Tubes would disappear. The "Free Porn" is a smoke screen to hide the real reasons.

Tubes offer more choice.

So how can we compete when producing content?

With the girls, letting their personality take over the scene. So we have to make sure the members know who the girl is, what she likes and why she's doing this. It's hard and you have to explain to models it's not about opening their legs and revealing the crack. It's about opening their mind and revealing who THEY are.

Assuming who she is, is worth revealing!!!!

Bottom line is if she's just doing another faked cloned scene, the members will not want a second month of more girls doing the same.

Will read and learn. Need to leave for content. So far our non excluisve sales could be much better.

With the girls, letting their personality take over the scene. So we have to make sure the members know who the girl is, what she likes and why she's doing this. It's hard and you have to explain to models it's not about opening their legs and revealing the crack. It's about opening their mind and revealing who THEY are.



Very true. it is all about vibration on DNK level. If model fake any idiot will know becuase only mind makes him idiot but DNK knows all.

:2 cents:

For all you Dave Cummings fans...

Come see him in person at Cybernet Expo and sit in on his workshop! Gaining from his knowledge is well beyond the price of admission. And hell... the ladies love him so there is no telling what might happen at one of the parties ;)

The man really knows how to captivate the audience!

http://www.cybernetexpo.com/seminars.html

June 27, 2009 -- 10:00am - 11:20am
Producing and Directing Adult Videos with Dave Cummings
Porn legend Dave Cummings is a producer, director and star in countless adult video productions, and a member of the AVN Hall of Fame. The oldest active porn star in the industry, Dave is an expert on producing, directing and distributing adult videos. In this incredible addition to the Cybernet Expo lineup, Dave Cummings will teach attendees how to produce and direct their own adult videos with minimal startup cost. Dave will discuss essential topics like what equipment you'll need, finding proper locations for shooting videos, how to find models and how to work with talent. This is your chance to learn from a legend about what it takes to produce quality adult videos on your own, so make sure to set your alarm and don't miss this incredible opportunity to learn from the best.

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Yes it's hard to get some models to reveal anything but a plastic porn character. Seen it loads of time the moment the camera starts rolling out comes this fake, plastic porn star persona. But I learned this a long time ago. If it's easy everyone does it and there's no money in it. If it's hard and you can crack it selling it is easier.

The biggest problem we have is so much of the content on the Net has little individuality and the buyer can get the same anywhere else. A site with 1,000 videos all similar comes down to a site with a similar video a 1,000 times. We need to give members more reason to sign up.

My way is just how I see it.

As for non exclusive sales could be better. Our sales are holding up, slumped and now steady.

I have a nightmare buying in content for the teen paysite. Most scenes I see are just a girl on a bed doing the same every other girl does and to be honest I think we got lazy because some of our content went that way. Contrary to the myth non exclusive was not saturated and still is not. If the myth had been true we could of afforded to shoot more inventive and scenes with personality. At the moment I'm unable to shoot, unable to do anything but post on the boards, CHEMO SUCKS IT OUT OF YOU. But it's going well and when I'm fit I will be shooting again.

The situation is then down to what the market will pay for a scene. Because like everything else you get what you pay for.

If you have any non exclusive scenes that are different to the normal content then you can hit me up. That goes for you and anyone else with non exclusive video teen scenes for sale.

It's non exclusive that saved us over the last year. If we had gone the route of shooting exclusive content for others we would of been sunk.

Sales are slow and it's strange when you think of it that sites are cutting back on the exclusive they buy and not even boosting their members areas with non exclusive. Maybe they've all moved to buying DVD content. But the solo and lesbian sites must find that tough to find.

Changing market. :)

And sorry for not posting more, had a few very bad days.

This is the last one I could think of, but if anyone has any questions feel free. I may know the answer or may not.

So make it plain on the casting what you shoot, show the girls clips of different girls doing the same thing their way. Clips with girls "hamming it up" and clips of girls being 100% natural. But most important clips of girls getting themselves off. Then tell the girls with a smile that they must of seen all the fake stuff and thought it funny, crap or what ever and tell them "This is what I want". And "Good girls get my members asking for more and I have to keep re booking them or even make a mini site out of them. That's a pain because it can mean working with the same girl 10 or more times." Then smile or wink to reveal the last bit was a joke. The easiest way to control models is with money, in the extreme take it away from them and send them home. At the other end have good girls working over and over.

When we shoot the multi girl scenes I always try to shoot a girl we have shot a lot of who is good. She soon tells the other girls she's always here. Yes I know with the drive for nothing but new faces this is tough but it works.

Today with so little work around it should be easier. 3-4 years ago the girls would of got up and walked out. Today they need work. The only thing is you can't get girls to do it for "real" 5 times a day. I found the maximum was 3. So 3 small pictures sets with a video after each was max. It takes 10 to 30 minutes to shoot a picture set and 20 to 30 minutes to shoot a video. So 30 minutes to an hour per scene. And an hours rest between scenes.

Most girls in bed with the man of their dreams don't want to do it 5 times a day one after the other. Give her a long breather between scenes and get the most from her or fill the site with faked orgasms. Your choice.

IMHO one of the main reasons the solo girl site market crumbled was the idea that we could fill a site with the same girl. shooting 5-6 scenes a day over a period of 5 to 10 days. The scenes became stale and the surfers soon saw the same scene repeated over and over again. Sometimes on site after site. The girls here hated doing it because it was boring and it showed.

Yes there are a few exceptional girls that broke the rules, but that does not make it right for all.

Next is the scene itself. On the bed, sofa, floor, kitchen, bathroom, stairs, garage, dining room, in the garden, outdoors in the woods, fields, farm, beach, in the rain, snow or sunshine, in the streets on a beach, villa, by a pool in the Canary Islands (or somewhere warm), the only limit is your budget and imagination.

Then think of what she can be doing, dressed in stockings and suspenders, dressed in a tennis outfit, starting naked masturbating and then getting dressed, making a phone call or a video for a lover and getting herself and him off. Great one for dirty talking girls. Talking to you behind the camera and trying to get you to join her (made a fortune doing that one and it sells like hot cakes because she ends up talking to anyone looking at the screen, chatting on the Internet and getting off.

As I said the limit is your budget and imagination. Budgets can be adjusted and it's amazing how easy it is to make something that would of been average for $400 great for $600.

And it does not need$1,000s for a HD camera and proper lights to turn an average scene into a great scene. I think as techies we sometimes lose this. We think the customers needs crystal clear images above everything else. If this were true we would not be losing him to Tubes. The quality and size is poor at best compared with paysite porn. No the appeal is selection and no commitment. They are not all there for free stuff, otherwise the Tubes would close.

We need to give the customers more satisfation if we want to keep them buying from us.

Thank you. I wish people had more questions.

Maybe this will stir some reaction.

If you're shooting for yourself you don't have to keep it 100% your vision of how it should be. You can look to buying in content. Of course I'm assuming your site is something that's not so obscure that no one is selling it. Even if it's a solo girl site wrapped around one girl, the members will enjoy seeing other solo girls doing similar scenes. The truth is few of us have anything so good the members are not going to leave and join another site in a few months.

They are more likely to leave a site with one vision and half the content than a site with many views and twice the content. IMHO One of the great appeals of Tubes is the variety of content in the same niche, style and genre.

Look at what you're buying and think if your members would appreciate that scene and why. It might be filler, but if you buy in 100 scenes they're still able to give your members 100 scenes more to stay for. Updating a site once a day with exclusive is for the elite few, updating with non exclusive is for any successful site. Assuming you can buy it.

Just tell the members it's bought in. Buy a scene at $5 odds are it's been sold 10 times more than a scene for $50. Buying cheap might get you more or might get you less.

If you can afford to employ 3-4 different shooters to interpret your niche/style their way that's great. But it's a lot of money.

100 bought in solo, lesbian or hardcore scenes $5,000 tops.
100 exclusive solo, lesbian or hardcore scenes $40,000 to $200,000

Who can't afford $5,000? It's 333 extra joins or 1 month retains over the life of the site. Few people today can afford $40,000. And don't tell me you can get it done for half the price.

You did not get the gist of the post. LOL

And yes I know I'm a content provider. LOL

But is the information right?

While I do not show them shit, I am pretty in your face about what we do. There is a sales cycle to recruiting my models, and getting them to gobble on toes, just like there is for recruiting a new member.

Something many people do not understand is the sales cycle. I have had this discussion, what seems like endlessly lately, on this topic. Whether it is your sig, recruiting models, or closing a deal. Selling a membership to surfer or yourself to your colleagues. All of it is a sales pitch.

The problem, as I see it, is the vast majority never learned to sell in the past decade. They were too busy playing the traffic game, they never bothered to listen or learn from their peers. The old throw enough shit and some will stick theory.

Over time, the content was worse, saturated, less than promised, but that's ok. Just pump up the volume on the traffic. Instead of 10,000, make it 100,000. Still not working? How about a million UV a day? Still not working. Damn. I better get my fry cook hat.

While I do not always agree with Paul's ideas. Frankly he makes some good points from time to time. A bit wordy, no offense to PM :winkwink:. I simply think it comes down to lack of listening to your customers, your fight against technology, and ignorance in regards to the sales cycle.

Paul, other content shooters, myself, can always find more girls available to shoot then we have work. Why? Because we can sell the material, ourselves, build rapport and trust.

Oddly enough, this is the same skill set you need to get, and retain members. Most in this industry just have never come to see the light. It is so simple in so many ways, but all this tube, and traffic is king, and content over saturated, and whatever the excuse of the month is detracts from how simple it is. Learn to convert a sale based on customer's wants and needs.

But that's ok. By end of 2009, this industry is going to be a lot leaner, and there should be no shortage of fry cooks.

:2 cents:

Good points. And yes I'm long winded. :winkwink:

Very true. On a casting you're selling yourself to a model that she can work with you the way you want because you're the man who knows what he's doing. Not just because you have the money.

Very very true. But who were we selling to for the last 8 years. The customer or the affiliate?

While I do not always agree with Paul's ideas. Frankly he makes some good points from time to time. A bit wordy, no offense to PM :winkwink:. I simply think it comes down to lack of listening to your customers, your fight against technology, and ignorance in regards to the sales cycle.

Never been a shortage of girls and to people who can manage them a need to shoot the ones who think they know best. Always a shortage of top drawer new ones though.

The customer has many different needs. Some want 3 months membership and others want 30 minutes. We need to realise the customer is KING and instead of sending more traffic because the traffic we have is not buying look at why it's not buying and work on giving it what it will buy. They're surfing paysites looking at porn, the true freeloaders are mostly gone. converting 1-1,000 is missing out on 999 potential customers. Is it easier today to find another 1,000 surfers or sell to one of the 999?

Those who change have a chance of surviving, those who dream it will change for them had best be careful.

:winkwink:

Sig.

Great info, thanks for all your advice...:thumbsup

It was great meeting Dave for the first time last year .....looking forward to his seminar :thumbsup

There was a thread elsewhere about recruiting models, so I thought it might be helpful to put something in here.

Seriously and I am not trying to be clever here. How many of you recruiting models have been in front of the camera as a model or/and been on a management training course that involved employing people?

Because teaches to think from the other side of the coin. It's a management term for thinking like the other guy and appreciating how she/he see the situation and using it to your benefit and either getting the best out of her/him or letting her/him go. For now I will use the female but it applies to males as well.

This is the most important part. THEY'RE ALL INDIVIDUALS WITH DIFFERENT NEEDS, AIMS, MOTIVATIONS, PERSONALITIES, CHARACTERS, FEARS, LIKES, DISLIKES, ATTITUDES AND HISTORY.

I can't emphasise that enough. Each model who comes to you is an individual, to start thinking of them as the same is a big mistake. Remember it's your job to get the most out of them if you want your work to stand above the rest. You need to see it from their POV as well as yours and use it to your benefit. Or spot those who will be trouble and let them go.

Let's look at it from the two sides. And it's general.

MODELS SIDE.

(A) Models do not look on being a porn star as a positive career move.
Sounds obvious but it needs to be stated. It's a means to an end, to get money. VERY few girls end up behind the camera after their modeling career is over and that tells you a lot.

(B) In most cases they know your job is a one off job, especially if they're bad. Fewer models today get re booked like they used to.
It has changed a bit in the last few years with so few people shooting, but it's still true. most models feel this is a one off job and they fell there is little benefit in them giving a bit extra in their performance. Shooters like Michael Ancher and Dean might disagree with this and they are right, from their POV.

But even if you're shooting a solo girl site of the girl she will have a clue that you are going to do 5 to 15 days with her and that's it. You need X amount of content and she may get the idea that half way through you're so committed she has the whip hand. Be very very careful how you handle these situations. One of the sad things about these solo girl personality sites is there is little input from the girl after she has finished her posing. Which is probably why so many failed.

(C) There is little communication between shooters, so if she or he is crap there is little come back for them.
Back in the "Good Old Days" ( :1orglaugh ) shooters talked to each other and we soon knew who was a bad egg and who was a good one. I used to get phone calls from other shooters who would ask if "Jane Doe" was a good or bad girl or how to to handle or shoot her. The bad models soon found they had no work. Today it's a different situation and I offer few solutions. It is possible to ask her if she would be free for a day next week as you might have a job that needs someone similar to her. If she's doing solo you can ask her if she would do a 2 girl shoot next week, you can get someone to phone and pretend to be a model working with you asking for more work. Gives the impression you shoot the same girl many times. You need to judge each situation on it's own merits.

(D) They have little reason to give you a good, average or poor performance, other than you kicking them out or your "model's management" skills.
It's 100% down to you if you get the performance you want in the can. The model has little invested in whether the scene is good or bad, she did not come to work to further her porn career, to get fucked or even have a good time. Your skills as a model manager are crucial to get her to produce something that's worth buying.

(E) The previous people she worked for might of been clueless at handling, training and guiding models on how to maximise themselves. AND accepted what she or he did.
This is the BIGGEST problem today with models. no one teaches them what is right and what is wrong. So many shooters are lacking in skills and hiding behind the "Amateur Niche" they are unable to teach a model how to pose or act in front of a camera. OK I have not shot for a long time but I doubt if it's changed. But I've lost count of the models who said "No one else has said it's wrong." Or "No one has told me how to do it." Yet when you show the model what they're doing wrong they see it immediately.

Models learn bad habits, it's our job to teach them good ones. And if the tail wags the dog, heaven help you.

(F) She or he thinks you will be making a fortune out of her or his body.
This is in some cases true. I've had models that have worked a few days for $500 a day, or less, and made a return of $10,000. My very best day ever was a 2 girl 1 boy shoot. Models cost $1,500. We must of made $50,000 that day. Sadly these days are exceptional and in todays market it's a lot tougher, but the models still think they're getting the short end of the stick. Be very careful what you say to them. Don't be too flash and arrogant and on the other hand appear like you know what you're doing and know the business.

(G) You're about to shoot them and give the content to 1,000s of affiliates, plus all the thieves to stick in places their family and friends will find the content. They're giving up their anonymity.
Nothing has limited and reduced the quality of models we have today more then the fact that the content will go everywhere and anywhere. It does effect models, who applies, what they will do and how they will do it. In a community of webmasters who hide behind nick names, hide their domain registrations and few want their neighbors to know what they do. Think about what the model is giving up for her $500

(H) They need the money. How badly depends what you get from them.
And this is the key. They need the money. Use it gently and with thought and you can coax a good performance out of them. Think it gives you some right to act like a tyrant and it will reflect in the work. This is a simple rule that applies to all employee/employer relationships.

SHOOTERS SIDE.

(A) If you want YOUR work or a site to sell and retain you need a great performance out of every girl or guy on your site.
IT REALLY IS THAT SIMPLE. You're either stacking shelves with tins of meat or creating a feast of pornographic fantasy.

It's down to your skills to manage the models. Some lack self confidence needing constant reassurance. One of my best models over the last 30 years could not work well if she did not think she was turning me on and I would make love to her after the shoot. Yes we were dating. Many are a constant battle to get off their high horse and stop them thinking I was in the least interested in sex with her her. Usually applies to the very good looking ones who get hit on all night in a bar. And there are everyone in between these extremes.

Some will fuck anything at the drop of a hat if they fancy you, some are terrified they will have to fuck you. Some like to be treated like ladies, some like sluts, but most want to be treated like human beings doing a job AND WITH RESPECT.

Do your job well and you end up with a product that has a chance to stand out in a sea of mire, do it badly and you're part of the mire. Always remember, the models need your money less than you need a great performance out of her. It's an attitude of mind that will effect your approach. But still remember you're the boss, just a good one.

Sorry for it being long winded but the above was learned on a training course that took two full weeks. It was for a multi national company not for a porn company, but a lot of what I learned is very useful when dealing with models.

The final point is this.

LOOK AT A COIN FROM BOTH SIDES AND SEE THE DIFFERENT SIDES. SAME COIN DIFFERENT SIDES.