Longtime lurker here. I been looking through some of the previous threads about the disconnect between producers and customers. Producers trying to raise or maintain their prices for their videos and content while trying to make a profit vs customers trying to get the most value for their buck. There will always be costumers who will pay for their porn however there are a large majority of people on here who cant afford to pay and probably never will. They would like to pay for their porn but its not in their budget. Producers are not going to lower their prices and if they do its temporary. And customers are not going to magically get more money unless they get a new job or win the lottery.

So what is there to do? How do producers get these people to pay for their content, how can customers find a way to get the videos they want without resorting to piracy? It seems like no one is budging?

It's a business above all else. Producers have to justify their costs to continue operating, so there really is no middle ground. I can't go to a restaurant and say "I like what you have on your menu, but I don't want to pay the prices you have listed. What kind of compromise can we reach?" I just wouldn't be able to eat the steak I wanted that night. You can find a vast quantity of killer scenes for $10 or less; that could be what you might spend on coffee, fast food, or a drink at a bar. Prioritize. Save what money you can, then buy from producers who best cater to your WAM preferences. Piracy and the price leadership model will only serve to drive more producers out of business.

Aside from putting a shot gun to their head and forcing them to input their credit card details which is not really practical for a number of reasons not a lot!

Pie_cooks answer completely nails it though, there really isn't anything I can add.

If it eliminates piracy... why not?

There is plenty of free stuff out there without resorting to piracy, so if you want people to pay for material then your going to need to produce something that people want and cannot get substitutes / alternatives to. Simple's really

Pretty much the same as any other business - you offer a decent product, accurately described, at a sensible price. Nothing on sale at the UMD is exactly expensive, nor are site memberships, anyone with any kind of disposable income should be able to afford to buy stuff. When you compare the price of a wam scene download to spending the night in a pub, or going to see a band, or going to the cinema, the prices are more than reasonable, especially considering with downloads you get to keep the content. Or you can join a streaming site and have a vast feast of everything for as long as you keep your membership running.

Very few wam producers make much in the way of profit, by and large, they're just aiming to cover the costs of producing new scenes. Models expect to be paid, cameras and lights cost, and every few years you need to upgrade because people want better quality.

The short answer is you can't. Unless you know hypnotism and can use it on a large scale over the interwebs, you can't.

As stated above, there is a lot here you can get for a few bucks. There are even a number of name your own price items. Furthermore, there is a lot of stuff that people just post here for their and others' enjoyment.

People being too poor for it is a bullshit excuse. I live currently live off of Social Security Disability, I'm hoping that changes soon, but for now that's my reality. I have a fixed monthly income of $1200, so I'm pretty damn poor. I don't buy a LOT here, but I still manage to save up my pennies and get something I love when it comes out. So I get there are a lot of people with not much disposable income, I'm one of them. If you're poor and you want a scene though, you can still save or work something out.

Some producers offer free scenes for reviewing another one. Some may offer you one if you're steadfast in helping them report piracy. There are deals and sales galore. There is exceedingly more access, and cheaper than ever in the past for this kink.

People won't pay for porn because they don't have to. It's that simple. Why buy what you can get for free.

So the only answer I see is another technology arms war. Producers will start to offer streaming ONLY, no downloads, and race to stay on top of technology to keep video capture software from working. Meanwhile, the other side will continue to create new technology to circumvent it and download video.

I don't envy them the battles ahead. Because unlike a dine and dash, even if you find the person, you can't legally prosecute them in most cases. The governments just don't care. And when they "do care" they overstep their bounds and try and take complete control over the internet. It's all or nothing with them.

often a store will have a sale, or offers on certain vids making great value. Often theres also 3 for 4 and 2 for 3 deals happening. And theres a "name-your-price" tag on some videos to search for.

You produce for the people who do pay and let those people influence the future content, reinvesting in the models/participant, outfits and scenarios that they want to see.
As harsh as it sounds, the people who don't pay or can't afford to pay, have to become largely irrelevant to a producer. As human's, we sympathise on their missing out on all the fun, but as website producers, our focus and time must be on those who contribute.
Most people will be happy to pay a fair and reasonable price/subscription for content they like if they feel valued as a customer.

Fire ants.

You can just do what I do and produce content that is very niche even for a niche. Most people are not into the kind of models I produce with so the sales volume on most of fhem compared to the occasional "normal" girl I shoot with is drastically lower. Most of the people who want to purchase that kind of content also have a kind of pride in ownership and supporting one of the few people posting that kind of content so they're much less likely to share because when you bite the hand that feeds the only thing that satisfies your very specific appetite, all of a sudden you have to go hungry. Also I offer extremely reasonable prices. I'm not part of the rush to the basement level pricing movement but my scenes are basically never more than the previously mentioned $1/minute level an often times hover closer to 50 cents a minute. I also have a buy 3 get 1 free always activated, offer discount sales pretty regularly, and occasionally give away free content when people help squash some piracy links for me or do other stuff that helps out like in my Please help me get another altporn nomination thread

Agree with most of what you said. Some of the prices are outlandishly high. Some people just record with their phone in their bathtub and use one can of whipped cream yet charge $10+ for the scene. Obviously not everyone on here does but if the producer doesn't put some money into the video, I'm not going to put money into buying it. I also agree with the tributes part, tons have wish lists where you can buy stuff for the person, I agree to some extent but some almost guilt trip you into buying it. I may get some negative feedback for this but I feel WAM should be a hobby and not a business. It's okay to charge some money but something like $20 for a scene that's 5 minutes is absurd. I would never pay that and the producer can't expect everyone to spend that much. If you're looking to pay the bills with the income you earn from WAM it'll almost never work out.

As for piracy I feel it will always happen and can almost never be stopped however would feel more guilty if it was a small time person who made the video rather than someone who makes a video weekly. For example if the pirated video was $5 worth, I'd feel bad for the producer because to think someone wouldn't even pay $5 for it is horrible. On the other hand if the video was $20 and the video was cheaply made with supplies only costing $50, I'd feel not as bad due to the producer not putting in the time to make a good video and instead trying to make a quick buck.

Just my opinion, feel free to disagree with anything I said and obviously I don't condone pirating but at times I can see where they could reason why they have done so.

I just checked and most of my videos average out to 20 cents a minute.

Someone's charging $20 for a 5-minute video and getting sales with it?? DAMN. I've been doing this all wrong.

So what I'm hearing is I need to start offering a premium Snapchat, huh??

One of the other things I have found is that as a producer I face the uphill battle of the changing industry where a majority of customers prefer to purchase content from models because of the perceived personal nature of such a transaction and potential for a connection. I've done some experiments where I've given some of the models I work with copies of our messy work to sell on their own clip sites and they outsell me by a large margin

I don't think anyone feels forced to buy porn? We all enjoy an uncommon fetish and when someone puts together a video with our type of girl or our type of girl with a mess that satisfies we're more than willing to buy. If anything I want there to be more types of videos for me to buy. I am grateful when a producer puts something I'm into up for sale. WAM videos are also generally cheap. Most stuff is $10 with buy 2 get 1 free. The top videos for my other favorite fetish go for $30.

Here is the way I get over my fear of spending a couple of tens of dollars once every ten years on WAM material: I don't worry about whether the particular video I'm purchasing & downloading is perfect. I consider my money just a tiny DONATION to the past decade of FREE stuff I've gotten to seen. That's how I get over buyer's remorse if I buy something & it turns out I don't like it (which never happens entirely: I only don't like part of it, never the whole thing).

That's the logic I use.

The realitys are economic. The demand is small. Really small. This makes prices higher, because its expensive to produce and the customer base is tiny.

When your product is pirated, it shrinks your already small base of clients and you can lose money. And if you lose money you stop making videos. Because any buisness, even passion ones, go out of buisness if they lose money, eventually.

Pirating stabs its self in the foot in niche markets like ours, because there is just less and less stuff to pirate as time goes on.

Its not hard to look back at so many much loved wam sites that have shuttered over the last few years. Here is a clue. If they were making money, they would still be here.

If a site needs to charge $5 a minute to stay solvent, cool. I get it. This shit aint cheap.

I 100% appreciate both the support and the acknowledgement. I also do my best to make it known that I take fan feedback quite seriously and I think some of the works I've released show that. If there's ever things you think I could do to step up my game don't hesitate to comment on one of the threads for my scene posts or send me a PM

You have the type of models I like but you don't make the content I want so I can never financially support your work. Its really hard to find the perfect combination of what Im looking for so I rarely buy videos here. Yea sure producers are going to tell me to order a custom video but those cost 500 times as a much as the average video here and even custom videos you dont get exactly what you want.

It makes it a little harder to make stuff people are into if they don't say what it is. If it's something you'd prefer discuss privately feel free to PM. I've expanded the kind of stuff I shoot (never did slime until it was brought up in Vegas) to kinda suit what people wanna see. I mostly shoot the kinda stuff I wanna make I to art cuz my kinks lay elsewhere but I'm always happy to try incorporating other stuff within reason. To better answer the question of how to get people to buy my stuff instead of pirate it? Make what they're looking for they have a hard time finding elsewhere

Ouch - to be honest I would be very unhappy with that too, unless the site had a ton of older content also available. One of my proudest boasts is that in all the years Saturation Hall has been operating, we have never "skipped" an update. We have sometimes been a bit late, but then always caught back up to schedule with the following release. Our current offering is two photosets and two videos per month per site, and we sometimes throw in extra bonus free ones if there are 5 weeks in a month. If someone joins and downloads everything released to members during their membership they're paying less than $5 per scene. Having said that being slaves to the membership update cycle is why our download store is often way behind where it should be, though I do work hard to catch it up again, but that tends to be in bursts of activity.

And with a few specialist exceptions, our download store content is way less than $1 per minute - many are less than half that, and I'd never go much over that unless the content was very specialised. I have seen people try and charge silly prices for short videos but they tend not to last very long, all the main producers seem to have sensible pricing for reasonable content from what I've looked at and bought.

I can remember when I couldn't afford to buy content, I had to make do with site promo freebies - which is one of the reasons I've always released quite a lot of free samples with each scene, because I remember what it's like not to be able to shoot your own content or buy whatever you want. Plus the freebies bring more people to the UMD which benefits all of us in the long run.

I do agree with the point Messyworld made though - at the end of the day, producers will shoot what their paying customers want to buy. You sometimes see people complaining about how many jeans sets there are in wetlook, compared to skirts and dresses, but presumably that's because jeans sets sell, else there wouldn't be so many of them shot.


The problem with crowdfunding is you end up with "too many cooks". One person wants the model in wellies, someone else wants her in high heels - someone's going to end up disappointed. I think that's part of why crowdfunding for specific products is banned here.

I feel a right mug, even when I go to wh Smith's at a station I actually go and pay for the things...

Btw on the models promoting their multiple platforms it's all about engagement with their fans, you know the people who buy their work, who book sessions, who help them out. Wishlists can help create content - Jayce added some things for the custom scene I did with her as it simplified the process. Why does a model show off the gifts that a fan has bought them? It's a good way to say thank you! Of course they'll try to give the impression that all they do is swan around in front of a camera all day - the reality of life isn't so glamourous and if they did video themselves putting out the bins or picking up their dog's poo it's not going to bring them much traffic!

Broadly things here are affordable - I pay less for a streaming membership to one producer than I used to spend buying individual scenes!

Customers are not entitled to content. If they can't afford a specific video, they don't get to have it. Right?

I'll say it again....and again....and again.....

This whole discussion about "how long a video is" is a silly and irrelevant.

"PERCEIVED VALUE" is what makes sales in any business or product including WAM videos.

A 30 minute video of seven women pieing each other in the nude might not sell as well as a 3 minute video of a specific woman being pied fully clothed.

By the way, MOST (not all) individual models are not very educated about how to promote, market and sell their own videos.

Robby

My feeling is that paid-for porn, like paid-for news, is on its way out over the medium term. Louis Theroux made an excellent documentary about the slow death of the porn industry and that is quite a few years ago now (ca. 2012). Piracy is always wrong, but there is just so much free and amateur stuff available now, except for very specialized interests. If I'm going to pay for anything, it has to be live participation in an actual experience or event - not paying to watch someone else have all the fun!

YUUP!!! This is TOTALLY a thing.

I can't say that I'm not sort of guilty of this too. But it's a little different and more broad than just "models". I find that I tend to buy more from people that I have established a relationship with even if I don't necessarily like the content as much as a stranger's. I guess it's that I want to see my money go to my friends, and people where I know or have a better idea who and what are going to benefit.

It's also a reason why stuff like the Messy Jessie escapade happen. Male producers/owners find that if they pose as a female model in their employ will increase their sales by a decent enough margin to make the effort and time spent lying worthwhile.

Obviously you can't force anyone to do anything but I sure don't mind encouraging them a hell of a lot.

Problem is that there are too many of those who don't understand or care about how this works out there today. I've had conversations with very blatant pirates who refer that as "sharing Russian style". Costing you ten percent of your sales can pretty much eat your profit margin. Ultimately it forces producers to offer a diminished product or eventually none at all. I don't understand why those who don't want to pay for it think that they are allowed to steal. I'd like to have a new truck but I know I can't drive one off the showroom floor and expect the dealer to look the other way. When the cops drag me out on the asphalt I'll just explain that I couldn't afford it. They'll understand.

Anyhow, If you consistently offer a good product and treat your paying customers right you'll get most of it. Hopefully this also keeps you from having to compete too much with those who offer crap at a below market price.

I think it would help if producers on occasion lower their prices just a bit. Even if its a one day thing.

I'm not talking about the occasional sale. I'm talking about selling most of your product at such a low price that there's no way you are going to make money. We have too many people that might understand the fetish but are not very good at the retail side of things. They hurt themselves and others as a result.

As a former producer, I just found 2 videos on a popular pirated porn site and had them taken down.

As a consumer, I'm very happy to pay for wam material. If I can't afford it, that doesn't give me the right to get it for free, same as not being able to afford a cellphone, a gym membership, or any other thing. Everything costs something to make, and producers have a right to make enough of a profit to keep producing.

I have been burned a couple of times though. For example, I was once a member of ___ wam site and recently purchased a month membership to check out what they have been up to. To my disappointment and shock, they are passing off very old material as 'new'. It is still being 'updated' every couple of weeks, but with old, very old content, that perhaps some people had not seen. To me, this is a deceitful practice, and I won't ever spend another dime with them. For the most part, I do see new content on most pay sites, and am willing to support what I like by paying for it.

And to 'Quicksand Princess', the reason nobody is budging on price, it that it costs money to make wam videos. Many producers are no longer here, because they didn't get the support necessary to continue buying materials, equipment, hiring models, renting studio space, etc. How can they 'budge' on lowering prices if they're only breaking even? Wam videos don't just make themselves, it takes a lot of time, effort and money to create them, and a producer hopes to get some of this back to sink into the next production.