Before the entire Southeast washes away, I figured I'd better put the SS148 edits up for sale.....
HD.SlapstickStuff.com
SlapstickStuff.vidown.com

Jen & Ginger... Two veteran models... together for the first time... To wear a lot of mess and a little bit of clothing.

You've seen the pics & the posts, so you know what you're getting... And if you've been holding out for the final edits.... Now's your chance.
--All three clips are SIX BUCKS EACH as of 11:39 AM Saturday for either HD or "small file" versions.
--Once a particular clip hits a certain amount of sales, the price will go up.
--Yes, this is an experiment to try to reward the "early supporters." Buy these clips early and get the best price! Let me know your thoughts and enjoy!

So everybody just got stoned? Sounds like a great shoot!

Pics...........

Wine might've been involved. (And not just for Jen to throw into Ginger's face... )

How did Ginger feel about getting a faceful of wine? Did you use something non-alcoholic so it wouldn't sting her eyes?

Obviously we didn't waste good wine! HA... Just water with food coloring.

She still complained because it was "just" tap water, of course... :ohbruther:

Well, it's almost like multi-tier pricing. Tier 1 are the unedited clips... They get rolled out first and promoted heavily, and they're more expensive. (Although not always.) But over time they go down in price, since they don't sell very well for very long.

Tier 2 are the final edits... They get released later (because I have to find the time to edit them!) but are priced cheaper. I assume at this point someone who wants to save money knows the edits are coming eventually, so they can forgo buying the unedited clips if necessary.
That said, the edits usually keep selling over time... Some more than others, obviously. But they're consistent. And they don't go down in price either. (In fact, most of the scenes were rolled out at $5 or $6 apiece and are now $7.99 or $8.99.) So... I'd rather reward the people who have been waiting for them, and offer them for a few bucks cheaper the first weekend.

I still haven't figured out how to roll out the final edits AND unedited clips simultaneously, though. I mean, I still do it once in a while.... like the 4th of July Aaliyah scene or this new 'Shelly vs. Shelly' gameshow clip... But what invariably happens is the edit sells well, but kills sales for the unedited clips. FBOW, I need the unedited clips to sell well as that's usually how I recoup most of the money I spent on a shoot.

Anyway, more nuts and bolts talk.

Not trying to be a pain in the ass here, just honestly confused. If what you say immediately above is true, then you've had a similar pricing structure that rewards early buyers in place for quite awhile. Maybe the timing of the price increase has changed, but it sounds like the same general price trajectory -- $5-$6 at first and then several dollars more later.

Yep, this isn't a new thing.
In the past I would raise the price at a certain time... Like, say Sunday at midnight.
This time I raised the price based on sales... So, Scene 2 was cheaper than Scenes 1 & 3 for a while there. Seems a bit more "fair" that way.

Okay, thanks for explaining. I guess the above is what threw me. Both methods you describe really reward "early supporters," they just have a different methodology for deciding who fits that bill. I guess I just didn't realize that you had regularly done this in the past -- i.e. starting your clips at what is effectively a sale price and then moving them up to "regular price" after a short introductory period. You probably were explicit about this whenever you did it -- why wouldn't you be, since it's a call-to-action sales incentive? I probably just missed that part or forgot about it.

I guess maybe it seems a little unfair that buyers of the raw clips effectively get penalized for being early supporters while the pricing of the edited clips actually rewards early supporters. You can easily justify a penalty for early adapters, of course -- with any new technology, for instance, some are willing to pay a lot to be the first to get their hands on it, while the majority will wait for some time, knowing that the price will eventually come down. And I understand the same applying to WAM clips -- some are willing to pay more for a clip to get it sooner rather than later. It just strikes me as a little weird that the pricing differentials over time skew in opposite directions for the raw vs. the edited clips.

Please understand I'm not trying to make a stink about this -- it's your business and it's your right to price things however you please. You asked for our thoughts, and these are mine.

I'm not trying to mess with the price of the unedited clips... I set them where I think they're gonna sell. If I have to adjust downward, it's because sales have been so slow that I feel I NEED to reduce the price just to get people on board.

My honest thought is we're moving away from a WAM free market and more towards a handful of people subsidizing the costs for the rest. [In historical terms, this is how Mozart and Beethoven were able to live and write music. In modern terms, this is why a piece of software like Windows costs $200... It's to offset all the people copying and trading it for nothing.] That's basically how a lot of producers operate right now: They only shoot custom requests, so the people willing to pay control the content.

I don't do a lot of customs, but I do have a handful of very good customers who buy new scenes regularly. And if they want me to bring back a model, I will, because I know those are guaranteed sales. If they don't support a model, I probably don't bring her back.

Discounting scenes and running sales are simply a part of the business these days, but in those cases you're attracting casual customers... They might wind up being loyal, or they might simply be sampling because they can pick up a few clips for nearly nothing. The ones who buy scenes straight out of the gate are your super loyal customers, and THEY are basically the reason I can still afford to shoot new stuff.

PR, you're always super curious about MY numbers... What did you think about Lenny's recent comment about why he's not shooting new content anymore?

Would you please name names here, Rich? I'd honestly like to know specifically which producers out there, to your knowledge, are only doing customs and then selling them on the general market afterward. I'm not so naive that I didn't know this kind of thing happened (customs covering the cost of some videos, which are then sold publicly), but I honestly didn't know anyone was entirely running their WAM business this way. I'd love to know specifically who you are referring to here.

We may be moving away from a free market in terms of powerhouse WAM producers being able to just produce what they like with the confidence that most of it will sell well no matter what, but in other, more important senses, the market has actually become MORE free over time. One of the things almost everyone seems to agree on is that there's so much more competition in the WAM market than there used to be -- which is about as clear a sign of a free market as you can get. The advent of the UMD Store certainly made it vastly easier for "average wammers" to make and sell their own videos. (The recent change in tax reporting requirements admittedly reduced that freedom for some people.) You can complain all you want about the lower production standards such videos tend to have, but I don't see how you can honestly feel like the free market is disappearing... it's just changing.


First of all, PR is either for Puerto Rico, which is fine but totally unrelated to me, or Public Relations, which are icky (and at which I clearly have no gifts).

Over the last six months or so, you've given us a lot of detail about how your business has been going, much more so than any other major producer has ever done, as far as I've seen. All kinds of interesting stuff came to light in the process, and that's a big part of the reason I am interested in your sales numbers (coupled with the fact that you really are one of my favorite producers, whether you believe it or not). We just don't hear much at all from wam producers about sales, except in isolated instances (e.g. "a suprisingly big seller," "this one really didn't sell as well as I expected.") Aside from your own comments and those of Lenny (posted just two days ago), most of the comments about overall business I've heard have come from the more amateur end of the spectrum, and that tends to be people saying they've never made money on any clip they've done.



Maybe it's common knowledge that Lenny hasn't produced new material for some time but I honestly didn't realize it until I saw this post (if someone had asked me before this, I probably would've guessed that he had just slowed down his rate of output somewhat). To be honest, with a few exceptions, his stuff isn't really my thing, so I don't follow it very closely and I have trouble keeping track of it. Looking back through his semi-recent posts, it looks like he was planning to shoot a new video back in June (not sure if this happened or not, but he posted pics of a model and asked for ideas), but has lately mostly been posting very old videos in his store, stuff that he uncovered during his recent move.

I do find it somewhat sad that a legend like Lenny may be calling it quits soon, but it hardly seems like a tragedy, since he's admitted his own lack of passion for the work in later years, and it sounds like money became his main motivator a decade ago. Not that there's anything wrong with wanting to make a living at doing what you love, but at some point after doing just that for so long, the making a living part can clearly threaten to eclipse a producer's passion for pies ... or slime or mud or whatever. I'm not trying to suggest this is what has happened to you, though, Rich. It really doesn't seem like you have lost your passion for this stuff at all. You've continued to produce top-notch work into your second decade at this, and you're also a vital member of this community, participating in all kinds of conversations far beyond just hawking your wares (which is all we ever get from a lot of producers).

I can't even recall her name, it was a female producer, possibly one based in the UK, who just kinda tossed off "I only shoot custom requests now." It was some discussion about sales, or lack thereof.

Based on their posts, several other female producers are doing mainly (not necessarily 100%) customs. Which makes sense, as it's FAR easier to line up a custom if you're the primary model (basically just agree to it, get the money, buy the stuff, shoot the video) vs. having to bring in a model to do said request. (Scheduling is my main issue, and if a model's only available for a few hours, I'd rather shoot scenes with more general appeal.)


OK, let's put it another way: In the music industry now, the market is definitely "free." You can, in theory, put your music out there to anyone in the world with an Internet connection, no label required.
But from a business standpoint, almost no musicians make any real money anymore. That's why you're seeing bands fund their recording budgets and tours via Kickstarter and such... The days of simply releasing your new music and seeing a profit from it are gone, with a handful of big-name exceptions. (And most of those big names make FAR more money from endorsements and branding.)

We are moving from a community where there were a handful of producers, but there was a viable market and they could usually turn a regular profit... To a community where everyone can be a producer, but it's the same amount of money being spent (or less), so it's just split 500 ways now rather than 30. (So basically the music industry, but on a MUCH smaller scale... And with no superstars or branding options or mega-tours to bring in serious cash.)

Maybe free market was the wrong term?


Ah, no worries. I was a member of the community long before I shot anything, so that won't change.

Yeah, I figured it was the female producer/models who were doing a lot of this. I've certainly heard anecdotally that a number of such producer/models in the U.S. do a lot of customs and then sell them on the open market. But the really surprising part to me was learning that a lot of U.S. single-model customs these days get made in the range of $100 or so! (Some modicum of pies/slime/whatever is often included in the basic fee, but if you want tons of the stuff, or special outfits, or whatever, you do have to pay extra for that.) That sounded ridiculously low to me, yet I haven't heard this through rumor and hearsay, but rather straight from people who've actually commissioned customs from a number of different models. Of course, if the producer IS the model and thus saves on the modelling fees, that eliminates the biggest cost of almost any shoot. But even so, $100 - $150 as "seed money" to do a video isn't exactly a fat wad of cash (espeically when they're paying for expense out of that), so it's not like these producers would be doing terribly well on just the custom fees and then the download sales are all gravy on top of that. They are certainly going to need both the custom fees and download sales to make this worth their while.


I see your point here. But earlier you were saying "We're moving away from a WAM free market and more towards a handful of people subsidizing the costs for the rest... the people willing to pay control the content," which kind of implies there's a certain oligopoly that is beginning to take over the WAM market. (For anyone who doesn't know that odd word, it basically indicates a near-monopoly situation where instead of one company/person/party controlling everything in a given market, you've got a small number of parties doing it.) And yet it was already an oligopoly before... it was just that the producers themselves controlled the content, not the "patrons" of the producers. And yeah, the producers were beholden to public tastes to some extent in their choices, but they did have an awful lot of control. For example: Despite the dozens to hundreds of people over the last 12 years who have pleaded with you to do nudity in your videos, Rich, you resisted that (you say it would've been impossible, but obviously others found a way to make it work and you could've too if you'd really wanted to and if the market really controlled your business; the demand was certainly there, but the supply not forthcoming). You also used certain models more than their sales warranted, because you found them to be great at this particular job, and you persisted with certain genres of videos, like the ones with costumes or elaborate skits, long after you'd realized full well that these don't sell as well as your regular videos (particularly ones in bikinis, etc.)

All of that is COMPLETELY fine, really, I'm not complaining about the choices you made at all. I'm just pointing out that there was an awful lot that WAS under your direct control and not greatly shaped by the so-called "invisible hand" of the marketplace -- and now maybe some or all of that control is shifting to the customers well-heeled enough to commission videos from producers, or in your case, the small number of devoted early purchasers of every RAW video you put out. I suppose that loss of control seems pretty bad from your perspective and from the perspective of any other producer in similar shoes, but I don't know that it's bad from the general wammer's perspective. Of course, that will depend on how well the WAM tastes of the patrons line up with the tastes of the public.

In case anyone doubted my statements above that models often charge only $100 for their fees on self produced customs, here's what Piefan2 said in the current thread on Reshiel, the new Fiverr pie girl. Keep in mind that Piefan2 is a BIG customs guy, who has bought at minimum 15-20 customs over the years from a wide variety of producers.

piefan2:
"I think Fiverr is definitely an option for people like me who do not need an extravagant over the top video with modeling fees of around $100 plus supplies....

I think Reshiel may be what we need to shake up the customs market here ! Not everyone needs a 20 minute extravaganza."

So $100 plus supplies gets you a 20-minute extravaganza, and Piefan2 has also said in that same thread and elsewhere that a number of producers have cut him significant deals well below that price level. Now that Fiverr girl Reshiel is doing short pie customs for $5 a pop, even a $100 custom is deemed "extravagant" and "over the top."

Nobody but you in this thread said anything about the model waiving her fees, gness, so there's no need for you to snort derisively at this idea as though someone had seriously proposed it.

I agree that Reshiel's videos are quite bare bones and they aren't going to offer anyone much long-term satisfaction, but then again, they only cost $5. From my point of view, PieFan2 has certainly gotten MORE than his money's worth for at least some of the videos where he paid a $100-or-less model fees. Look at the pies-and-white-pants video Jilly did as a custom for him earlier this year, and then sold through her store. From what PieFan2 has said, I don't believe he's paid a model fee of more than $100 in years -- maybe ever -- and that Jilly video is JUST SPECTACULAR, with tons of pies and an ultra-sexy model doing it up right. (I'm sure other models have done great work for him too, but Jilly's is the one that springs to mind first.)

>>>As for Jilly, great. She's known to run deals on customs anyway so I'm glad Piefan found a good match.

Piefan2 has found plenty of good matches beyond Jilly -- you can ask him about them or find his comments on the posts of any video where the models get pied in white pants.

>>>I'm still not too worried about the state of the custom market. The $100 rule of thumb exists for a reason.

You've misunderstood the whole point of my post -- it's that there IS a $100 rule of thumb for customs. Rich's idea that models were making plenty of bank on cusoms and then pouring (financial) gravy on top of that with download sales was, I believe, based on a notion that people were paying a lot more for customs than they currently are. (I can't know for sure, because he got vewwy vewwy qwiet (to quote Elmer Fudd) on this thread when I brought that up. And now he's never talking to me again, in fact. Oh well.)

I really do think a $100 model fee is pretty damn low. It certainly used to be a lot more than that to get a custom made, from what I heard 5-10 years ago. The dropping prices surely have to do with the great influx of producers we have these days -- especially model/producers -- and all the competition driving prices down. (I get that you may pay a lot more than the model fee if you want great quantities of pies or food or slime. But it's not like the model/producer is keeping that extra money; it's covering an actual expense.)

My ultimate point is that when a model/producer makes as little as $100 on a custom video they HAVE to be banking on also selling it as downloads in order to do well with it. So they're not going to be tempted to take customs where it is something really bizarre and singular -- they're going to want to do customs that also hold appeal for the general WAM market, so the downloads will have a good chance of selling well. It just won't make economic sense otherwise. So Rich's point about a few wealthy individuals controlling what videos get made doesn't really hold -- the tastes of the general marketplace still come into play somewhat, probably about as much as they do when (non-model) producers themselves controlled the content.

By bringing up the $5 Fiverr videos, I guess I unintentionally confused you, gness. I don't think the $5 Fiverr pie video is the future of customs by any means. That was a quote from PieFan2 and not my opinion at all. In quoting him, I was intending to point out how crazy a market we are in, when a person could point to $100 model fees and call them extravagant. It's a freaking bargain in many cases, like that Jilly video and many more.