I feel like you're conflating two unrelated ventures. The producers who have substantial skin in the game are the ones we're trying to protect by paying to support their work. Yes, there are quite a few all-around fetish models and porn stars who dabble in WAM yet charge what we might perceive to be above market value. Often, they're using their own customer base's willingness to pay as the barometer for what they want to charge. You always have the option to, you know, not buy it. On the flip side, you have producers like the Moomins, Jayce, MPV, Rich, and many others who use the profits from their businesses not as simply a break-even point, but as a way to re-invest in themselves through upgrading technology, hiring more models, or just making bigger and better scenes than before.

Yes, WAM can be considered a hobby, but if everyone followed that line of thinking, you'd end up with more scenes that have bad lighting, minimal mess (food ain't cheap), and the low resolution from a smartphone camera. No one would bother hiring a model, buying bigger hard drives or hi-res cameras, or making big messes because it would be cost prohibitive.

I find that last sentence troubling. Replace the word "pirating" with "stealing." There is never any justification for stealing, especially if the only reason is that you don't like the price. That's just entitlement. I commission a significant amount of customs, and it angers me to no end when I see them on hub sites because I paid full cost for them. If they generate good sales, some producers may quote me a better rate on a future scene. Once that scene gets pirated/stolen, they lose out on that income and have to charge me more money to cover their costs. So even as a consumer, I lose out because some shitbird feels compelled to share someone else's work for free.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6C8vXbJ6ts

I definitely appreciate the new truck and Coke analogies too. Where I live, I have to park in a publicly owned parking lot. Back in November I had a tree in said public parking lot fall on and crush both my and my brother's cars. I got enough from my insurance company to only put me into $3k additional debt for a new car, my brother got nothing because he didn't have full coverage. My landlord is not liable because he doesn't own the lot. The lot owners are not liable because they are the township and have this thing called 'sovereign immunity'. Should the car dealership have to give me a deal on a new car?

Boo fucking hoo, life's not fair. And this is fucking PORN people are complaining about! It's not like something you need (except for the people selling it to make a living) so you can get to your job, or buy food, or get outside the radius of the meltdown your local nuclear generator will probably have because it's ancient technology.

Also, regarding anyone comparing this to other types of porn. Keep in mind 'regular' porn is a LOT cheaper to produce than WAM. If it's not, it's because all that extra money is going other places, models, or producers. But in the average sex video you're paying for cameras, lighting, photographers, editors, and actors. Clean up may be wiping some jizz off the floor. And hell, some times one actor licking it up may be part of the show.

It didn't involve the $1000 necessary to fill up a claw foot bathtub with applesauce (wamfan David)

or...the destruction of a chaise lounge (Ariel & Jayce)

or the use of a $5000 foam machine (Leon)

or the modification of a basement for who even knows how much to convert it into a small but first messy theme park (Candy and Henry)

Even if you're talking a small shoot that maybe Rich is doing with like a sheet cake, a few pies, and some cake batter slime; that's probably and extra $80-150 in materials right there.

Like why don't you hire an escort, receive the services and not pay her? See how that goes.
Go to a restaurant, eat a meal, and then refuse to pay because it wasn't what you expected.

Jesus, I'm not that old, but I still remember when scoping out porn was stealing dad's playboy's out of the trash when mom found them. Or constantly flipping between spice and the channel before it hoping to catch a second or two before the picture went out again. But we don't live in those days.

It's fucking 2019, like 30% of the internet is porn. It's EVERYWHERE, you can find it by accident when you're not even looking for it. There is so much free stuff out there, some of it even legal.

Go watch that rather than complain about price when some person shooting a mud wrestling vid in their garage decides they want to make the money back they spent putting it together. (Jayce, and I think Ariel did one too)

You're not Robin Hood, you're not stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. You're not fucking over Disney, Comcast, or Warner Bros. You're fucking over people who invested time, energy, money, and sometimes their health, to make shit you like, FOR CHEAP!

If it was a hobby a lot of people would be making stuff just for themselves. No reason to share it with you. Definitely no reason to put it out there for some Mafia style porn theft site to make money on. What would you do then?

Da!

I'm also guessing this is why high quality big productions like Rob Blaine's MessyFun vids don't have their more modern counterparts...

Rob paid his models $250 a scene (one of his models made over $10k), would spend several thousand dollars on a scene, and could expect to sell hundreds, possibly thousands of copies of each $50 tape (mailing list was over 3000 people). No-one can afford to spend like that any more, because no-one sells like that any more. Difference being back then there were only about six producers in the world.

How do you force people to pay for their porn?

Answer: Make them use their own credit card instead of someone else's.

That price sure ain't gone down since.

I think we as customers and you all as producers are at a standoff. Customers are not willing to pay more and producers are not lowering their prices. Theres nothing either side can do but to continue to point the blame on each other and let Pornhub win and UMD goes out of business.

Well there's a positive outlook

I've not seen any blame-pointing from anyone? Sales fluctuate, some weeks are better than others, but overall scenes continue to sell, people commission customs and sessions, business continues. Producers and models will charge what they think is a fair rate. I can imagine how my models would react if I said one day "from now on you're only getting 50% of what you used to get, so we can sell scenes cheaper". The first word would be "fuck", the second would be "off", and rightfully so. I'll go on producing for as long as people keep on joining the sites or buying the downloads. If sales stop, I'll stop producing. Same as any other business, it only continues as long as there are customers, but as long as there are customers, we'll keep going.

Couldn't be more wrong. It's thanks to UMD that I've begun to break even on more than a few of my scenes. I was almost afraid to come here at first because I was afraid of being an outsider and I stuck to clips4sale and ManyVids. MessyHot is still a labor of love and not what I would cal a revenue generation machine but at least if I have a few popular scenes a year I can get much closer to fully even. I was kinda on the fence with some of the points you were trying to make earlier but that last just really makes it all sound like a big case of somebody trying to clear their conscience and self justify their piracy habits, especially because you've not really been bothered saying what you ARE willing to pay or what you think is an "acceptable" price level is

Personally I think any video thats over $10 is too much. You can lecture me all you want about how its too little of a price to justify cost but we are not millionaires here. And I also find it rude that you accuse me of pirating your videos, that goes to show that I will not be purchasing any of your material any time soon if you think that lowly of your customers.

Look friend, here's the bottom line and it's basically been explained several times in this thread - things have a cost to produce. If you can't pay it then you need to find a way to do so. Obviously most of the prices are not too high since stuff is selling. It's not incumbent on the those who create to take a loss. The quality of product from many producers is quite high so hopefully you will be satisfied enough with something when your circumstances improve. Until then nobody is "forcing" you to pay for anything.

If you think any video over 10 is too much just don't buy them. No big deal. I'd love a z4 but I don't have that kind of money at the moment yet, but I don't post on bmw forums questioning the reasonability of buying them vs stealing them off the lot. And I also didn't accuse you of stealing any of my videos, I described how your posts came across. Also pretty sure you haven't purchased ANY of my scenes. Therefore you are not one of my customers. And who has to be a millionaire to spend $15 on something that makes them happy? I'm not a millionaire or anything even close to it but I don't mind spending $75 on a six flags annual pass or a few hundred dollars a year on concerts and festivals. It's called budget management. I don't try to sneak into shows I can't afford or steal things I want but can't afford. The major problem with the shift to digital distribution mechanisms in the arts and porn is that many people don't see a bucket of bits as something that has value as its not something they can physically touch.

Times have changed dramatically in the last 21 years since UMD was created. In the last 21 years...

- Wam producers have gone from 10 to 400+ ... an increase of 4000%
- Wam fans have not grown in 20 years, and remain flat at around 40,000
- % of wam fans who suportted the producers and bought media in 1998 was over 80% ...because ...
- number of sites offering free media in 1998 was ZERO
- number of major sites offering free media in 2019 = numerous (Youtube, Pornhub et al)
- In 1998 you have 40,000 + fans with the vast majority supporting the 10 major producers
- in 2019 things have flipped and 75% of wam fans get their jollies from free media sites
- Only approx 25% of the 40,000 wam fans now buy media from an explosion of 400+ wam producers
- Therefore in 1998 every producer got a reasonable slice of the cake in support and could re-invest into producing more media....but..
- In 2019 most producers can only get a few crumbs to support their costs.

Therefore what has happened in the last 20 years is that the production world of wam media has shifted from the domain of professional wam producers, and is now dominated by major hosting company corporations like Google/Youtube and Mindgeek/Pornhub. It is no longer viable to be a professional wam producer (unless you can invest in a really major way, as Mostwam have done). and now the realm of producing wam media belongs to independent wam models and mom & pop style operations who can produce wam media at really really low prices.

Aside from the shift towards free media sites, another factor that has greatly changed has been advancements in technology in the last 20 years...i.,e.

- cost of a semi professional cameras in 1998 = $10,000 +
- cost of a hq video equiemnt in 2019 = $300 or less for a smart phone or go pro
- cost of a video editing workstation (Avid) in 1998 = $40,000+
- video editing costs in 2019 = nothing (software comes free with a camera)
- cost of website hosting in 1998 = $3000+ per month for a Real Media hosting server + bandwidth
- cost of website hosting in 2019 = $300 per month for a server or 30% of sales to a hoster

The result of infrastructure costs being so cheap today, is the reason why wam producers have exploded from 10 to over 400 during the last 20 years. ..... but...

- Although equipment and infrastructire costs have declined dramatically......LABOR COSTS have gone UP over the last 20 years. In 1998's model fees were more like $50 per scene, whereas today unless you are a producer who is also a model, most model fee costs are 3-4 times higher today than they were 20 years ago. We used to pay a day rate of $200 per today to shoot several scenes with s model all day.....today we cannot get any of our former models to get out bed for less than $500 to $700 on a day rate basis.

To answer the original question....how do you force people to pay for wam.....you can't. All you can do is keep up with the trends and give consumers the best you can do, or you just retire and let Youtube and Pornhub take over.

I think the producers are giving amazing deals already. Just look at the streaming membership packages offered today on the UMD system.....i.e. I give people access to over 1000 videos for only $30 per month....so that means they get videos for only 3 cents each.

It boggles my mind how young people today are willing to pay over $1000 for the latest iPhone or Samsung phone.....yet they will balk at having to pay $5 for a wam video....but will spend more than that every day to buy a coffee at Starbucks.

We are in the wrong business -- WAM producers should retire and open a coffee shop.

MK

I fixed that for you.

It's not just you

I don't think it takes a lot to understand why having all that wam content just a click away on a tube site would be enough to lure even the most upstanding digital citizen. It's just there and it's so easy. Content is out there to be clicked, so they click it, and that's about as deep as it gets.

Even if we priced it all for free, the mere signup and checkout process is way more steps than just clicking the video. Some of those sites don't even have a damn splash page. So other than constantly trying to remind people that it's not OK (which we do), I think getting people to buy a video that's just right there for free might be a lost cause.

The battle is with the uploader. And I think they mostly do it for convenience. I mean it's a cloud world now. People are on mobile devices, enjoying content on Spotify and Netflix wherever they are. Nobody is collecting porn on hard drives anymore, and tube sites happen to be filling that void.

They give you a space to store your personal porn collection, whether it be from paid or unpaid sources. You can always get to it, the videos always play, and there are even thumbnails. It's free, unlimited, and they don't even kick you off for having... adult material. Who can compete with that!

This doesn't justify it or make it right. But knowing this, we can stop asking why people buy content just to upload it to Youporn. They are not all are evil hackers bent on making everything free.

What it does mean is that our real competition is the convenience that the tube sites can afford their viewers, if only due to their invitation of piracy and then milking of the Digital Millenium Copyright laws. It's an unfair reality.

I think our best bet is to keep working together to use those DMCA laws to get the content taken down (Piracy Tips still going strong). And then really it's on the wam site owners to figure out ways to make wam convenient, fast, and frictionless as possible. People will pay for that.

MM

What he said

Uh ... I guess I didn't get that memo?

(Heck, even with the ISO files backed up, I still use discs to access a lot of my stash, because in some cases they're easier to navigate on a TV.)

Naturally, as one of Putin's top hackers, I am perfectly delighted to steal allllllllllllll your videos. But (unless you get a premium account, which, why would I pay for that?), everything on there is obviously more compressed than the original downloads were, even if it purports to be in "HD." Resolution is obviously a big deal in porn, right? So that's the big thing that keeps me paying for videos. That and the fact that YOU KILLJOYS KEEP DMCA'ING THE GOOD SHIT. But mainly the resolution.

You'd be better off opening a phone store

I think this is an interesting discussion.

Perhaps one way to do it would be to raise your prices, and cater your scenes to price insensitive customers by producing customs.

I've always been curious as to what data producers have available to them, and how they use that data to figure out what to make next.

And when you set the price, is it just based on what everyone else is charging, or is it actually based on maximizing profit based on demand curve?

I've been learning how to do data analytics and linear regression, so maybe if there was a table of model(s), mess(s), price, profit/scene,number of buyers, perhaps one could see how those things influence sales, and try to make something that is more likely to attract buyers. since this would use sales data, you'd only see the demand from paying customers.

I will totally do this for free for any producer who wants me to analyze their data, with the caveat that I'm not a full expert.

YOU don't get to decide the price. The totality of the market decides it. You only get to decide what YOU are willing to pay. If A large enough group of potential buyers decide that $20 is fair, that's what it will be priced at. Those who think that is too much do not become customers and no longer matter. It's that simple. The point of the market is NOT to include everyone. It's to find a balance point to maximize profit. Some producers have a lower price to get the product out to a wider audience. Some price things higher which means fewer customers. Finding the point where the revenue is the same between those two points is what defines the most successful pricing strategy. If 60-70% of the market thought $10 was appropriate, that would be the average price. That is simply not the case.

You keep mentioning "sales" but that's a relic of the brick and mortar store days. This is digital online content. Sales in B&M land are rarely for the benefit of the customer or to be a "nice guy". They are usually to either expand the customer base slightly or to dump unpopular physical merchandise that is taking up valuable display/floor space and locking up cash flow.

There's no such thing as "excess inventory" in the digital space. Sales mainly exist to entice a subset of customers who were on the edge of buying but needed an extra push with the idea that they are saving some money. This is often amplified by creating a sense of urgency with ads like "Sale ends at midnight!!!".

At Vidown, we have a flat sale system, but it doesn't get used a lot except near the end of the year. Our preferred system provides a cumulative discount. The more clips you buy at once, the higher the discount. The reason this works is because our card processors charge a flat fee plus a percentage. The higher the grand total, the less that flat fee matters, as it effectively becomes a smaller percentage of the total. (a buck is 20% of a $5 sale, but it's only 1% of a $100 sale) We pass that savings onto our producers and many of them pass it along to their customers in the form of the cumulative discount.

You also have to remember that you are not even remotely in the majority. This niche market goes back nearly 3 decades and a lot of the current buyers are probably 50-70 years old. $20 is not a big deal for a lot of people in that age group. It tends to be a big deal for 20-somethings because they have no assets and have fewer high paying jobs on average. It's OK to be a broke kid. Most of us were there once. Being broke in middle age or older means you made some bad decisions or had a bad run of luck along the road, but that's not the majority. Most have moved up the financial ladder substantially from their college-age days.

In general people who worked hard their whole life place more value on things because they know how much effort it took to create them. Young un/under-employed people and those who still live with their parents tend to have more of a sense of entitlement. As MK pointed out, they often post complaints about being broke using a $1k phone on a $100-a-month service plan.

Good catch, RussianBot1. I'd have let that false statement slip by.

So, MM: where ARE people storing their porn nowadays?
In an urn labelled "Grandma's Ashes"?

Without going too political, I have a list of people/types of people/groups of people
for whom I would feel absolutely NO compunction forcing them to pay
(in one form or another) for my or everyone else's porn pleasure.

To all the WAM producers out there: don't worry. You're not on the list.

So, yes, while in most normal everyday interactions, I agree with Potatoman,
I honestly cannot rule out the exceptions.

But ya can't screen capture Netflix and re-upload it somewhere else.


But it's not their personal porn collection because it's available for everyone and anyone to see. And if it was just their's it wouldn't pop up somewhere else if they took it down.


Which is exactly why I see things all production eventually shifting to customs and streaming. Then the battle will be keeping their streams encrypted so they can't be captured and posted elsewhere.


Agreed.

Ugh. I assume the rest of this post is pretty accurate (except for one point, which I'll get to in a second) but this part is just right-wing claptrap. Nice work, being born before wages remain flat and income inequality rises sharply for forty years, if you can get it! Good lord. There are enough windows in the world for every bootstrap capitalist to get pushed out of one, and I just hope I live long enough to see it start.

Anyway, the point that doesn't track for me is the suggestion that the wam consumer demographic is aging, just because of where we are in the lifespan of wam porn as we know it. Wouldn't it make more sense that any porn/fetish customer base would always center around the age of peak sexual drive? And that customers would age out due not just to death or incapacity (as in other markets) but also, and earlier, due to manopause or commitments to "normie" stuff like marriage and kids that encroach on the sexytime? And while customers in the 50-70 year age bracket might have more money to spend, they'll also have less to buy. My spank bank is (so to speak) saturated -- it took 20 years, but I've bought up all the mud content that's really going to do it for me, so I'm only spending on the occasional new release. That's one of the reasons the mainstream DVD market plateaued and then dropped off, even before streaming started cutting into it.

I'll pay >$10 for quality vids, and have paid for quality vids in the past....

Seriously, don't eat out for a night, or don't have too many drinks and that will pay for a WAM video on its own...

Indeed you can though. It's just sort of more effort than it's worth, and the people who do it tend to be the ones who have more of an ideological than a financial motive for pirating stuff.