Just wondering how other people are viewing 'name your price'.

I like the idea as a consumer because it gives me the chance to acquire clips I NEVER would ordinarily buy, as there are just too many good clips out there. Far too many. And the ones that grab me i will buy at full price, or 20% off or whatever. Then there are all the others, good clips for sure..but you can only afford so many so there are 100s that you know you will never ever buy, even tho they are clips that have plenty of good things...its just there's too dashed many great scenes

Under name Your price I can visit a producer I have never bought from, and pay what a clip is worth to me. Usually this is a VERY low value, or I would have bought it at fullprice..which is where the dilemma kicks in.

If a clip is worth, say, $1 to me as the consumer (ie In a world league of wam scenes given the sheer number of amazing scenes out there it would never be bought by me, and given that I need to keep that money for scenes I really do want, it would have to be a really low price forme to view it as worth it) is it 'right' to buy at that really low price which is the scenes genuine value to me, when the producer has previously valued it at, say, $10

If I put myself in the mind of the producer I presume I am running this sale to get people who don't rate my scenes enough to buy at full price to buy.

And if I would never buy at full price I am guessing they would rather get something from me than nothing, given the expense of making the scene is already done, and it is not physical stock being depleted

and yet..and yet..so far I haven't bought anything from these sales, because there's a part of me that thinks..this producer is going to think 'what a fecking tightwad...he's grabbed stock that I previously rated as worth $10 (or whatever) for $1..arsehole..'

..and that holds me back. So it's a tough-y...

I have been musing: as a producer would you feel it is better to have $5 you would never have had from the 'drowning in choice' consumer, even tho they are getting 5 great scenes for such a low price

... as a consumer would you feel you were doing the right thing in giving some money to a producer who would otherwise have got nothing from you, or would you feel worried about appearing tight? In the absence of analysis from the freakenomics chaps, I'd be interested to read people's thoughts on this...

I think you have summed the issue up I am having with this. I think generally I would err on the side that it is better to get something for the producer than nothing, especially if it is old stock and it wasn't someone I would have otherwise bought from. Especially. if it the cheaper videos were good, I'd be incline to go back and buy again at a full price.

You said it well. There is a dilemma and element of risk associated with the use of the NYP tool. There is always risk in business, that is a fact. But in most markets there are rules that help mitigate, define and control the risk. As a producer my issue is there is no minimum price setting for the NYP tool and that creates a HUGE risk that probably will result in producers not using the tool very often or in as many ways as it could be.

We did one sale using the NYP tool to give it a try. Honestly it has work reasonably well. We tried it selling a bundle of 20+ videos that are among our least selling videos. And it generated about 30 sales and at last check over $150 in revenue... not bad for videos that hardly ever sell. A few people even paid over $25 for it!!! Thank you!

However, you would be amazed at how many people bought it at .10 cent, .25 cent. ! We knew and promoted it as a bundle of poor selling videos, so we did not expect people to pay top dollar for the bundle, but .10 cent? thats not worth the processing fees, esp given it was for a bundle of 20+ videos.

I think to give producers enough confidence and assurances to use the NYP tool, the tool should either have an option to set a minimum price or a process where the seller has to either accept or reject the buyers offered price. Either way adds just a little more control to the "free market" to account for the simply ridiculous offers.

Also, what we discover is that while we knew there was a minimum check out total of $5, meaning if you were trying to buy a video priced at $4 you would need to add another video to your transaction to get the total sale price to $5... We erroneously thought that would indirectly create the minimum sale price by allowing the buyer to set the price for their NYP purchase but if they picked a price under $5 they would have to purchase at least enough additional material to get too $5. Sadly, what we learned is that the $5 can be made up of purchases of vids from multiple producers. So it turns out many of those .10 cent sales were not only a really low sale price, but were the only video they bought from us in that transaction.

Other producers should be aware of this when setting up a NYP sale. It is very possible and highly likely, our sales records reflect it.... that buyers will just add one NYP purchase for pennies to an existing purchase they are making from other producers.

Now don't get me wrong.... I am glad MM created the tool, and it brought in about $150 in revenue from the sale in this case of videos that sell very infrequently... so I am all for it. And I have no issue with cross producers sales, we all benefit when customers make purchases and buy product from more then one producer. I just think a few modifications are need to prevent a great idea and new tool from being abused by super cheep customers. Otherwise, i fear the end result will be producers don't use the NYP option because its not worth the risk.

My two cents, based only on one demo sale using the NYP tool.

Comparing WAM clips to Radiohead is comparing apples and toasters. Radiohead was (and is) a HUGE band with millions of fans around the globe... And their "pay what you want" model netted them millions (far more than their previous albums with a major label) because they sold directly to fans and didn't have a middleman company taking 90% off the top.

The WAM community is tiny. The people who actually BUY clips within the community (and don't just hunt for the thousands of freebie clips online) is even tinier. And then the niches WITHIN the tiny community of people who buy is ridiculously tiny.

I've been fortunate to have a few clips sell over 100 and even over 200 or 300 downloads, but that's over YEARS. The vast majority of clips now barely sell 50 copies. If you set a "pay your own price" and people are paying $1, then you're netting... $50 total for a clip? MAYBE $100? The only way any producer comes out ahead in this scenario is if you're not paying a model for her time (maybe it's your wife in the video, maybe it's you) and you're using super cheap materials (a few bucks worth of shaving cream or one bucket of slime).

If you want good, quality material, you have to pay for it. You can't nickel-and-dime producers out of existence. Personally, it's been a LOOOONG time since I was able to do a 3- or 4-scene shoot for under $500 up front. It's still feasible to turn a profit with increasing costs, but it's not getting easier... especially as the market gets saturated and certain stores try to race to the bottom for pricing.

Just to put it in perspective with other fetishes: A model I recently worked with had a frank discussion about a few other "weird" shoots she'd done (no nudity, but obvious fetish stuff). One guy near me does "female wrestling" videos in a cheap hotel room... Literally his only cost is the hotel room (which the model then stays in afterward) and the model fees. Every one of his videos is financed via customers and customs. And his models make $600 to $2000 (!!) per shoot.

Meanwhile, folks in our community want that same model to get covered in pies, slime, and goo for a 45-minute custom and they balk at paying more than $100, which barely covers materials. Or they want those same clips priced at $1-3.

Just my two cents. It's a theoretical discussion for me anyway... The Mothership doesn't offer any sort of "pay what you want" setup and you can't place an order without a $5 minimum regardless.

We shouldn't bemoan someone getting paid. The trouble with the Internet is that you can get a lot of information and applications for free, so people are less inclined to pay a fair price for something.

A good WAM clip is worth $10, a bargain is $5. I have paid a friend (ex gf) £100 (about $150) to get filmed whilst I mess her up, and had three sessions with randoms that cost me between £50-£150.
So I've probably spent about $600 on a handful of private videos which could have got me up to 100 clips from here.

So if someone has paid a model, got all the kit, filmed a good scene and done the clean up, I think they deserve your $7.99 :readit:

I completely agree w Andy and Rich. There sales data and analysis is dead on. You can't make a half decent two girl mess video for less then $500 and at $8 a sale that mean you need 63 sales BEFORE UMD's or some other platforms fees, just to break even. Those kind of sales numbers hardly ever happen or take years to achieve.

Thus my suggestion that the ability to set a minimum price for a NYP sales is necessary to prevent the .10 cents offers. Using the NYP tool is a risk, a calculated gamble that it will gain exposure for our site, videos and library of vides. But there is a huge difference between a calculated risk/gamble and a give away, which is what a sale for .25 cents is. Without the safety net of a minimum price, my bet is producers just will not use it.

I love the idea of a new tool like NYP to help promote and gain exposure for our videos, esp our library of older videos. But a tool that lets people buy stuff for .25 cents just isn't a smart business decision. Frankly i don't think that covers MM download bandwidth costs.

Good discussion everyone, thanks for the contributions.

Actually I was trying to see it both ways. I won't be using it anytime soon because my clips are brand new, and still are generating sales but if I manage to somehow still be producing in 3/4 years I may well. Or indeed for a couple of scenes Jessie produced for my store which are VERY niche!

With a producer who has made clips for years and has a massive back catalogue, I can quite see why they would do it, to try and drive traffic and some sales of 'dead' back catalogue.

'girlsingunge''s sale that got me thinking. I have had 5/6 years to buy many of those clips and never have, and never would have as tho he is a great producer there is just so much choice of great content out there and his stuff doesn't tick enough of my personal boxes. But if they were dirt cheap I probably would bite(probably will tonight in fact). So while buying a bundle for 10c is clearly wrong, buying an old scene for a dollar seems okay to me..from either side. In this case GIG will get say $15 from me, he would never have had otherwise. So it is a tricky one alright

And don't get me wrong. MD, Rich and Andy's analysis is the same for me. I know how tough it is to break even, even at full price. Without giving away too much...I am nowhere near breaking even on my first 3 clips yet because, as MD says, I would need over 50 sales a clip to break even. I am just going to keep going till all the money I should be investing in a pension or saving for a rainy day is gone and then stop until/unless the clips I have made generate enough for another shoot

I would never advocate a race to the bottom in pricing..I sell my clips at what I think is a fair price based on the cost of models, materials, time and effort etc. But I can see that if I had a lot of back catalogue that was rarely viewed let alone bought, I would be tempted to put some on an NYP short term sale to generate interest, traffic etc.

btw Andy, I am not sure why it is only MM who benefits if people use this. (I am not being facetious..I genuinely don't understand the logic) Messy Dreams got a cheque for $150 out of it and no-one is compelled to use it so it just seems like another tool to use or not use, to me.

It seems unlikely to me that people will wait 3/4 years to buy a scene they like, in the hope it goes down from $7 to NYP. But if a NYP sale occurs and a scene they were 'so-so' about is available, they may chance their arm. That is where I am now but I may be way off in my thinking

but as for the difficulties of coming vaguely close to breaking even..I am with you all

Very interesting discussion.

MM takes 30% off the top. So if MessyDreams got a check for $150, that means MM made $64 from those purchases.

However... According to MessyDreams, a lot of those purchases amounted to 10 cents or 25 cents. So he basically got $150 for selling 600 scenes (if they were ALL sold at 25 cents). Assuming the fair price of $5 per scene, he gave away $3000 worth of product... for $150. Not a great business model.

MM's store is already set. The more producers sign up, and the more downloads get sold, the more he makes. Heavily discounting scenes leads to more downloads (in theory) and that leads to more revenue for him. That $64 was extra money generated for him via this "name your price" option... If 50 producers do the same thing in a month with identical results, he's made an additional $3000 just off the 30% cut.

However, there IS a flaw in that logic: Bandwidth. If discounting scenes leads to 10 times the bandwidth for the same product (assuming scenes ARE being sold at 1/10 their normal price, which sounds reasonable), then MM suddenly has huge bandwidth costs without a similar increase in profit. And I don't think THAT'S sustainable either.

But I don't know the details of his servers or his bandwidth. If he's paying a flat rate and only operating at 40% capacity, then he would WANT downloads to double as he would still be at only 80%. Honestly, I would assume the bandwidth to download a $.10 scene would cost more than $.03 (which is what MM gets in that transaction, and he still has to give something to the CC companies)... So it seems like everyone loses in that extreme scenario. (Except the guy who got a scene for 10 pennies.)

Just because this thread is getting kinda TL;DRy, here are Cali and Kym to illustrate how much I'll be paying for a name-your-price clip!

When I first saw the announcement of this new concept, my sarcastic nature went into high gear and my immediate reaction was....hey...I have always been a huge fan of William Shatner too....so if Messmaster can get Shatner to promote my media to millions of people in the same way he does his Priceline commercials...then count me in. But the current business model for this system is rather short sighted imho....because what it does is heavily favor those longtime producers like me, Rich, Lenny and others who have hundreds of shoots completed in the past (that were already fully expensed and paid for) who may not mind doing a fire-sale and selling off their old media, cos those shoots already recouped their costs years ago. This puts the newer producers at a disadvantage because they are doing new shoots that may not have recouped their costs yet, so they cannot afford to be doing fire-sales while the older producers with tons of old media can.

Creating a system where the media can be sold for only 10% of what it costs to produce, is a system that may be great for the consumers and great for the older producers who have tons of old media already paid for, but it is a deathspiral for new producers that discourages the production of NEW shoots, cos who wants to be hiring models and creating quality productions when the media can only be sold at 10% of what it costs to produce new media. So this system merely encourages fire sales of old media and discourages new producers and established producers from creating new media for the fans. So, short term this is great for consumers, but long term this will mean that more producers will quit or established producers will cut back on creating new media.

I love watching those car auction shows on tv....but auctions (i.e. Ebay) have a concept that this system lacks...a reserve price...where the owner of something has the right to set his minimum reserve price....beyond which he will not go....so before I use this system I would want to have some control to set what my minimum reserve price will be...and anyone who makes an offer that is below my reserve price will get a link that sends them to Youtube (ha ha...just kidding)

It would be amusing for consumers to see if such a system would work if they tried to hire models to do a wam shoot, or wanted to order pies from your local bakery...i.e. try offering a model 10% of their normal rate and see if they would show up for your shoot, or try making an offer to your Publix Bakery department and offer them 10% of the price they want to bake your pies.

The only way I could get models to work for me on wam shoots by only offering them 10% of their normal rate, would be if I spent 100 grand on plastic surgery to try to turn myself into a clone of Brad Pitt....but no amount of plastic surgery could make me look like him...ha ha

Frankly I would rather have Messmaster develop an online blackjack game for us to play with consumers...i.e. a double or nothing game...where if the consumer wins against an automated dealer they get the clip for free, and if they lose they are charged double for the clip....cos at least that would be a sporting chance for both new and old producers and for consumers too... and if we lose at least we are having some fun.

MK

Really interesting point. That captures exactly what I meant about the advantage to producers with old media...but I hadn't made the correlation that you had with the impact on new product. I have always seen that when new producers sell new product really really cheaply, but for some reason hadn't seen the correlation here. All very interesting

The irony is that the proliferation of WAM producers... And the low entry cost to produce and start selling... AND all the download stores selling present (and past) clips... AND the literally thousands of free clips out there... Means prices for downloads are as cheap as they've ever been since stores started. (And physical media is basically dead, so no making up losses there.)

But literally EVERYTHING else involved in the making of a shoot has skyrocketed: The cost of equipment, hotel rates, plane fare, supplies (crusts, cake mix, whipped cream, hell even SHAVING CREAM), and especially model costs. So it's basically more expensive than ever to produce a scene that will sell less copies than ever, at a price lower than it's ever been before. :-S

As for discounting, Neil once told me this story, and I guess now that he's basically gone from the community, it's OK to retell. He was mentioning that he'd gotten a surge in sales thanks to the latest crazy offer he was running. (Buy 2 scenes get 2 free or something like that.)

Me: So the sales do well for you?
Neil: Yeah, but I've basically painted myself into a corner with them now.
Me: How so?
Neil: I've done so many sales the customers EXPECT me to have one. Anytime I don't have some crazy offer, my sales are basically nothing. The ONLY way I can get people to buy clips now is to offer some huge discount. I can't go back to normal pricing.

Food for thought....

And yet I still spend way more than I ought to on wam porn.

Hell, if I'd never bought a video, I probably could've saved up enough to buy one of those Czech mud wrestlers from Allwam by now.

As a customer yes like to grab a bargin but also want quailty. Each go hand in hand want quailty content have to put some money in to the producers hand to make it. Failing that just have to order a custom film.

Here's another issue.

I have been very badly affected by piracy and had an issue with some of my sites that allowed people access to loads of my media for a stupidly low price (Now Fixed). I've issued literally hundreds of DMCA notices this week.

The problem is, when a treat is given too often and obtained too easily, it looses some of its desirability and the excitement once felt about obtaining it is lost.

I have actually had people moaning about media saying it is boring, it's all the same, etc, etc, when they have bought nothing or hardly anything from me? Why, because they've got loads of our media for free, they have gorged themselves on free/stolen media. Now it is incredibly hard to produce media that they find exiting, they've spoilt it for US and THEMSELVES. If people just purchased as intended as a rare treat, a lot of it would still be new and fresh to them. A lot of these people have seen as much of my media as I have.
These same people then have the cheek to make requests to us to produce things for them that they would never buy and wait for what they have requested to be posted somewhere for free, assholes of the highest order.

If WAM media is too cheap, this is the likely outcome, people over indulge and find it very hard to satisfy their new level of desire, they build up a resistance.

So even though I probably have one of the biggest back catalogues, I won't be taking part.

I've always used NYP to try clips from producers I haven't downloaded from before, or to buy clips at a low price that from the preview pics don't really seem to fit my tastes.

Most of the time the videos will get deleted after one viewing, I'm not too out of pocket and the producer gets money (though not a lot) that I guess they wouldn't have got, at least from me, before.

On the occasions I end up with something great, i'll either go back and pay more (when I have some extra cash) or at the very least be encouraged to go and buy some full price videos.

The system does seem risky as fuck though, an old housemate of mine produced some artsy bs short films (the meaning of which went way over my head apparently) a year or so ago and sold them under this model, some of the figures really discouraged him

Unfortunately the times are a changing, and when I look back at the last 24 years I and other 90's producers had, those first 14 years from 1991 until 2005 were "the golden age" for wam producers, when it was possible to finance relatively expensive productions and get great support from the wam fans. But 2005 was a "game-changer" because that is when Youtube was born and began the slow drip dip process of turning what used to be our "wine" in free tap water as it is today.

I know what Leon means about consumer expectations being much higher today, because in the 1990's consumers were content to see just about anything we did that involved wet or messy models, but today the wam consumers have grown to be very sophisticated and they measure us against what mainstream video sites are able to offer. Rob Blaine used to charge $75 for 1 of his VHS tapes in the mid 90's and I used to charge $50, and wam consumers were most willing to plonk down $50 or $75 for a tape, but these days consumers are picky cos they are spoiled by millions of free clips on Youtube, and online services like Netflix where you can get full unlimited access to their ENTIRE library of 300,000 titles for a mere $9 per month. So today if we even try to charge $10 for something the consumer now only wants to pay $1 or $2 for it. We cannot do what Netflix can do...i.e. imagine if we gave people full unlimited access to everything we have on our servers, for $8.99 per month as Netflix does. With today's high internet download speeds (mine is 150megs for downloads now) you could download all my sites and media in about 5 days....so you would not need to pay for more than a one month membership to download several terrabytes of my files, and not need to renew again for a 2nd month. So Netflix has basically caused consumers to expect to get everything you have ever done in your entire wam life for less than $10.

Being a WAM Producer today is like being a VCR repair technician....our time has come and gone and is no longer needed (and I know a friend of mine who went to technical school to become a VCR repairman and once had a very successful business...and he has been out of work and on the dole for years now).

But even though Youtube has now succeeded in turning wine into water, there are still some opportunities for some producers who have the ability to create high quality Perrier water....just as Starbucks is successful at selling their high quality coffee....but Starbucks business model is not to discount their coffee and sell it for $1....they just price it at a premium price for those consumers who want to pay extra for a quality product, and those consumers who want cheap coffee, they can go to Dunkin Donuts or McDonalds for their cheap coffee.

So, every producer should use their own judgement to decide what his or her pricings are and whether they wish to cater to the higher end consumer or the lower end consumer, and just because some folks decide to run fire sales that devalue everybody elses products, we do not have to follow like lemmings jumping off a cliff to do the same, so like Leon I will not be participating in this NYOP scheme either because this scheme will not motivate producers to create new projects and will only devalue even further what Youtube has already devalued.

When I first saw this NYOP concept being promoted the 2nd thing that came to my mind (after William Shatner).was......this is the greatest idea since 1985 when Coke decided to launch their "New Coke" recipe.....cos it looks like a fast track solution to hasten the demise of the WAM producer and drive the final nails in our coffins.

MK

Perhaps it's because I have a business degree I find this conversation intriguing, but the Name Your Price model when applied correctly, should benefit both consumers and sellers. The goal for sellers to capture the market that would otherwise be priced out with higher prices, this turns the ordinary sales activity (matching buyers propensity to consumer with sellers desire to sell) into a volume activity (less contribution per sale but with higher sales results in higher overall profit). I know some have suggested a price floor, but artificial price controls like that detract from the NYOP model because they suggest to those who would be willing to pay more that perhaps they should pay less. That said no one should be paying 10c or 25c for a clip, even under NYOP, that's simply disrespectful. I know this pertains much more to physical content than digital content, but the ideal answer to this problem is then to control the supply of the sale. In theory NYOP sales should have a fixed quantity available (arbitrarily say 25 downloads of a single scene) and then the highest 25 bidders would be matched, thus an incentive for customers to make their best offer or risk not receiving product. The practicality of said scheme is probably questionable at best, but theoretically it makes the most sense.

Woah.

Ok, here's the thing.

NYOP as a concept was put forward originally in the online technology community. It's basically donations with an implied guilt value if you don't pay what it is worth to you.

Right now as a tool for producers... it's not one to use if you are looking for profit. It's one to use if you want to shift some videos that don't sell and relying on the goodwill of customers is a fine enough chance to take.

But frankly, I would rather just give something away... and we have that available on the UMD.


This concept is not for producers outside of that scope. It's for people that are making something they would otherwise giveaway but if someone thinks it's cool enough to throw a contribution in the pot for them... great!


This is not the end of WAM producers... it's how bathroom and iPhone producers find out they are going to get a Porsche out of this in a hurry. There is a high expectation of free now, and that's what most are willing to pay. On the flip side, there are decent people out there... and that in my experience of this in other areas outweighs the cynical.


So...


You know what we could really do with?

Are you listening MessMaster?


How about tips. Make a way to drop a tip to someone if you love a post, some pics or a video. Hell, I have paid three bucks for something I would have been happy paying ten for... let me drop the producer a couple of extra bucks and buy him a cup of coffee.

JoeBob posted some pics of his wife getting messy... they were great pics... let me drop him a couple of bucks to buy the guy a beer or his wife some shampoo.

JillBob posted some pics of herself... let me drop her a few dollars for a new pair of shoes...




You're welcome.

Wonderful conversation... thank you!!! This has been very interesting and helpful.

I am a conventional free market, republican, big business kind of guy... and CGBatch's general approach is my normal view of things. But the fact remains that without a minimum floor price, human nature kicks in and people will do what human nature predicts, they will pay the least amount possible. Even in the most open, least regulated free market, there are basic rules that govern a business transaction to make sure its fair AND sustainable. Without the ability to set a floor price, purchasers will catch on, and realize they can pay pennies for a NYP purchase.

I was in Turkey years ago, shopping in their 1000 year old markets. In their culture it is rude not to haggle, barter and aggressively negotiate over the price of everything. But even there, what governed the transaction was the ability of the seller to eventually say, this is my final lowest offer. Absent that, I a consumer would be silly not to pay the lowest price they could.

I respectfully suggest our producer community should ask MM to add a floor price setting to the NYP tool. Otherwise, I think a useful new tool that could be used to help producers, will simply not be used.

That would be a shame.

I've never seen the name your price thing and probably would be weirded out by it.

That said, I am a consumer that would buy more if there was more of what I wanted. (IE my limit is on content that appeals to me rather than budget).

I think its good to have a way to signal "More like this" to certain scenes by paying a higher price for them, in hoping to see more of the same.

My non-UMD store had a NYP model for a couple of years while I wasn't really adding much to it. It was mostly fairly old videos which had already been posted at full price, and already paid for themselves.

It brought in a small amount each month, and at first did quite well.

But having experimented with it for that amount of time I probably wouldn't use it again. Even with a note before purchase saying that $1 (the minimum) didn't even cover processing fees, the number of people just taking all my videos for $1 was huge.

I couldn't get past the fact that this basically feels like theft, even though a few people would pay $10 per video and even up to $25 on one occasion.

Putting new videos on NYP would be foolish. You'd never cover your costs.

As a producer I value my time and my skills. If someone else doesn't that is fine, they don't have to buy my videos then.

As I consumer I appreciate people who make cool videos & I want to support people I like. I would rather pay full price for a good video that I know I will enjoy versus buying a bunch of random stuff for $1.

I really appreciate the people who do buy my videos, modeling/production is my only income source now that I can't work outside my home. However the piracy issues with this community have been making it a lot less enjoyable for me to produce wam videos. I have spent hours on multiple nights sending take down notices to websites where almost all my videos are posted publicly. It makes me feel like people really don't value my work.

With the "name your price" tool I know I would get a lot of people paying almost nothing for my videos and to me that's just insulting. I would rather give free content to the fans who actually support me than give really cheap content to people who don't value what I do.

We also need to see if there's a viable model by which crowd-funding can bring back bigger-budget wam productions. Still don't understand why UMD strangled that one in its crib.

This would all be a lot less complicated if WAM stood for Wombats and Mayonnaise.

I think that a "tip jar" feature and "crowdfunding" system are two good ideas that should be explored further. There are some pros and cons though. For the tip jar feature, which is a system Clips4sale introduced on their store system 2-3 years ago (so we know it can legally be done because C4S have this feature and they have a big team of attorneys) I had suggested this to Soundguy who runs the Vidown store system several years ago, and he would not allow it on his system at that time (he once went ballistic at my partner Tracie when one of her best customers sent her a large "gift" or tip using his cc system, and Soundguy said we can't do that because sending money to a model just as a tip or gift where no actual product or service is delivered would be viewed by his cc processor as "money laundering" and thus he banned the giving of tips or gifts to models on his system. But that same year Clips4sale rolled out their new tip jar feature on their store system....which they call a "tribute" feature, where fans of a model can pay "tribute" to the models they like by sending them extra cash via the Clips4sale system, and their attorneys have vetted this system and so I do not know why Vidown and UMD store systems could not create a "tribute" feature as well.

This is how the baristas at Starbucks get supported, by tips from the customers who appreciate their service. Of course the downside to a tributes system is that this system will favor the gorgeous looking wam model temptresses who are also producers, cos I am sure they will get loads of extra tips cos this system is like sticking extra dollar bills in a girl's garter belt....i.e. the sexiest girls get the tips, and those producers who are not models themselves, and merely fat old guys (like me and Lenny) are hardly likely to get many tips cos Lenny and I are not going to wear a garter belt and try to seduce the fans. So, a tip jar feature is a good tool for a model/producer to have, but a system like that will not help those producers who are old geezers who hire 3rd party models and do not have the ability to develop a cult following with the fans because old producer/geezers like Lenny and I do not have big breasts....ha ha.

The concept of Crowdfunding is not too much different to the Custom Video system that messmaster has already approved...i.e. there can be problems and complaints and scams unless some controls are in place to ensure that unscrupulous people do not exploit the consumers and scam them. Messmaster already has a rating system for wam producers who use his store system or advertise on his forums, and because of people abusing the custom video system in the past and taking money from consumers and failing to deliver etc. So Messmaster introduced his new rating system called "Trusted Producer" and now his policy is that only those producers who have the "Trusted Producer" rating in their user profile can offer custom videos on his forums. I do not know what the exact criteria is for getting that rating, but it is based on your long term history as a wam producer and your track record needs to be a long record of providing wam media to the community and a stellar record of customer service etc. This system avoids "newbie" people from showing up on the forums and having no track record of past performance and preying on the fans in the forums to scam them etc.

So, in theory it is possible to create a crowdfunding system here that could be controlled and only Trusted Producers would be permitted to make project proposals and do fundraising efforts on that system. The real problem would be that in order to manage things in a way to protect the consumer from non delivery, it would mean that UMD would have to become an "escrow service" where they hold all the monies raised and not release them until they ensure that the producer is actually going to shoot that project, and this becomes a huge administrative nightmare to manage all these small amounts raised.

Crowdfunding concepts are also not so good for the consumer who likes to see lots of new content each month from their favorite producers each month, cos look at what happens when you have a producer like Won Ton Productions who use a crowdfunding website to raise funds for their Supergirl wetlook series...i.e. they only produce 1 clip every 3 months, cos they need to raise $1500 for each video clip they make and so they don't go into production until they have raised the next $1500 they need in order to shoot the next video, and the net result is, they only shoot 4 clips per year. I do not think the fans want their favorite Wam Producers to make only 4 clips per year, and they want to see a lot more clips being made on a monthly basis. So....Crowdfunding means....less videos being produced on a more infrequent basis....so less entertainment for the wam fans.

MK

Wanna bet, cos I have been doing that for 24 years. I speak from many years of hands on experience at doing that, and so can several other Wam Producers like Leon (Mostwam) and Flaviu (Eurowam) who run use much higher quality production values and more efficient operations...cos they run their video productions as smooth as a sausage making factory. Leon and Flaviu can crank out 40-50 scenarios per month, and with all due respect to Won Ton Productions, cos I know them personally cos they operate from the west coast of Florida and I am on the east coast and we often chat and sometimes use the same models in our productions. Their production values are no different to the production values Tracie and I use for our productions, and our scripting, staging, camera crew and editing standards are about the same, and I know how long it takes to produce long format video scenarios because I have done hundreds myself since the 1990's, and so I know long it takes to produce a 45 minutes video scenario, because Tracie and I normally shoot 5 of those IN ONE DAY when we do our monthly videoshoots. Lenny and I have worked on many pie video projects in the past and some of Lenny's scripts from his custom video folks were very convoluted 40 minute long scenarios and took some time to stage and shoot, yet Lenny and I were still able to crank out at least 5-6 of his elongated long format custom pie scene videos in one day too.

In the last 3 months Tracie and I have produced 30 x long format 40-50 minute Superhero scenarios....as evidence by some of our new releases here...

http://vidown.com/cgi/store2.pl?site=sexyflexi.com
http://vidown.com/cgi/store2.pl?site=liquisex.com

So, Tracie and I were able to produce 30 Superhero and Cosplay scenarios in the last 3 months versus the 1 scene Won Ton made in 3 months, and the reason for that difference is that Tracie and I self-finance all our own productions ourselves, while Won Ton do not go into production and start shooting until they have raised funds from crowdfunding sources first. So this has nothing to do with production values causing the slow rate of video productions, and has everything to do with whether a producer decides to self-finance or whether they sit on their hands until they can raise 3rd party financing first.

Leon and Flaviu have very slick sausage making wam factory operations and they can produce a lot more media per month than I can. Tracie and I only shoot approx 20 new scenarios per month (over a 2 or 3 day period), and that is because her husband is also my underwater cameraman and he has a very busy day job working as a lighting technician in the Miami film industry and he can only spare 2-3 days each month to assist us with our projects. Leon and Flaviu produce a ton more new media each month than I do cos they have more time to dedicate to new shoots each month than we do. But if Leon and Flaviu were to wait to get financing before they did anything, their production output would drop by 90%.....so if you want regular updates from your favorite producers, Crowdfunding is not a viable option, because the only way to keep your sites updated and your fans happy is to bite the bullet and have some faith and passion in what you do and to self-finance your own projects.

I love those tv shows "Dragon's Den" (in the UK, Canada and Australia) which is called "Shark Tank" in the USA...where a business owner makes their pitch to a panel of wealthy investors. It would be priceless for Rich or Lenny or Leon to do a parody wam scene based on that show, where a wam producer brings one of his models to a tv panel of investors and tries to make a pitch to get some financing for his wam site and his model does a wam demo for a group of puzzled investors. Leon and Lisa could probably go on Dragon's Den tv show in the UK and pitch the idea of opening a WAM Theme Park....and pull it off, cos they could sell ice to the eskimos.

MK