How about crowd-funding a WAM video production? We'll need an escrow service, but what's wrong with it?

Which is precisely why I said


The average potato has no idea how to do this. But those are the larger chunk of people not just stealing content for themselves, but duplicating it and handing it out to anyone and everyone. So, if suddenly they can't get access to it as readily, you've suddenly cut down the flow of larceny considerably.

A little bit, or even a lot bit of piracy isn't going to hurt companies Disney (btw FUCK Disney because 90% of their income has been ripping off public domain and continually getting copyright laws changed every time Mickey Mouse hits the limit), but it's going to fuck (not in the good way) a lot of little people here.

Resurrected this thread after the OP deleted it. It's a good discussion I think.

MM

When you can get 10 different WAMmers to agree on EVERY aspect of a production.... from the model, to the wardrobe, to the types of materials..... Let me know.

Agree to a point, but most nowadays are only in it to make a quick buck I feel.

Ah, those halcyon days of the old fashioned, wholesome fetish shoots.

And then the final product is exactly what was promised. Kickstarter anyone? As many good projects as have been funded through there, an equal amount of garbage has gone though.

https://www.gobankingrates.com/making-money/business/biggest-crowdfunding-scams-failures/#0

Of course people still use computers and hard drives. My job is to look to the future, and the world is increasingly mobile. Didn't think the point was that obscured.


They don't need to. It's already all out there! But doing that seems to be less popular than it was, because of the streaming services that are even easier to use. People are now used having all their stuff at their fingertips, even if it's for a reasonable price. But ironically that's part of what's driven up piracy by way of the tube sites that offer similar cloud storage for porn. Without an equivalent Netflix type of operation for adult content, illegal hosting on tube sites will continue to be in demand, and I believe this is a largely unconsidered factor driving piracy. I have no solutions in mind.


Of course it's not "their" collection as we are talking about pirates. I'm trying to get into the mind of these people and understand how they see it. To them, they have porn files and they want to stick them somewhere. Whether it's publicly or privately displayed, they obviously don't give a damn, so long as they can get to it themselves in a couple of clicks. That's my theory anyway.


As the trend has always been toward more specificity in WAM, I always thought the logical conclusion would be completely customized or at least highly personalized channels of some sort. Still skeptical about the DRM though.

Messmaster

I think it is about getting the most bang for the buck as well as awesome content. I love the subscription model. You pay x amount per month for WAM videos. The higher the quality of both production and content the higher the price. If you just want to see some cell phone video of someone getting pied in dollar store clothing with dollar store supplies that is great. If you want to see formal wear with pie tins and crust instead of paper plates or multiple substances that is great too. It is all about what you are willing to pay. Yes I realize that the pay per view model is not sustainable against piracy with how quickly things get out there from netflix in the movie/TV show industry.

It all comes down to who you are as a person. This industry is extremely different from the movie industry. With the movie industry I genuinely feel ripped off going to movies even though I love it. If I like the movie, then I have to buy it on the format it exists on until something else comes out. I don't care about special features or added content or director commentary. I care about the movie and that is it. With WAM production it is much different. There are no multiple releases of the same thing. It is produced and sent out to the world for consumption. To me this is a better model than what the movie industry is doing. There is no greed in my mind in what happens with the WAM industry. With movies, tv shows and music it is all about bilking consumers for as much as possible. Does anyone think that the cast of Casablanca is getting anything off of the VHS, Beta, Laser Disk, DVD or Bluray releases? Of course not. The only people benefiting are the greedy CEO's.

I will admit that things have changed for me personally when it comes to my porn. Videos don't do it as much as it used to for me. I get more out of stories than the videos and so maybe that has altered my purchasing habits.

There is plenty of stuff out on youtube that is given away free to satisfy a lot of appetites. I know I have my playlists. There is also a LOT of great content being made here by the producers and models doing this professionally. The only suggestion I could make that may help close the gap, at least for me as a consumer, would be to offer a different price for different quality of production. Smaller files that are only maybe 480 or 720. I know that it only takes about 15 minutes to convert the files to that size.

I want producers to be able to make money with their videos. I want everyone to come out ahead, but sadly I know that it is not always the case. I do hope that in the end everyone feels that it is worth it. I know that even though the videos may not be as stimulating to me as they used to be, I still think the money I have spent and will spend is worth it for the videos.

I don't buy that many clips and I'm usually looking for a niche within WAM. I haven't seen the pirated sites, but some clips that I've seen (on YouTube) are so unusual that I wouldn't have ever found them. I am willing to pay for the stuff I see if it's what I'm looking for, up to a personal limit (based on many factors).

The clips that producers make are often better than free clips, and I get that it costs money to make the clips. However, I'm surprised by how often an amateur clip excites me (regardless of production value). I recently bought a super cheap clip with mediocre production, but it was exciting to me - and it was also the same person as one of the first WAM clips I ever saw - wow!

I wanted this thread deleted cause it was just turning into another Old People bashing millennials and how they are members of ISIS, communists, and how they are going to sell the USA to China to buy avocado toast.

I wasn't having it.

Isn't that what you wanted? You sign up to many UMD accounts after having been banned over 20 times, just to post topics that you know will rile people up.

Messmaster

Entitled generation!

So someone who's been banned 20 times can STILL post on the UMD?
Interesting.

You've been here long enough to know that trolls return despite our best efforts to keep them kicked to the curb. Thanks to the help of a lot of people, I remove the accounts as soon as I discover them.

Messmaster

Wait, ISIS likes WAM? Damn this is a new development. Thanks quicksand for that insight. Are there any other things you would like to share from your special friends?

If I sell the USA to China can I have a lifetime supply of green gunge instead? Not really a fan of avocados you see.

Legitimate concerns, but there are ways to mitigate them.

For the scam angle, that's why I mentioned an escrow service. That means an independent 3rd-party holds on to the money until the product is delievered. There may even be a time limit, like the video needs to be produced within 3mth of full funding.

For the requests angle, you can't make every WAMmer happy. But... you can have each contributor specifying that there is one "must see" in the scene and maybe one "no go". So for example, my must see could be messy wristwatches and my no go could be white chairs. Rank contributors request by $$$ contributed, and I'm sure there's a way to make a few WAMmers satisfied to some extent.

For the quality angle, you can open this up to established producers, and have a rating system for those who paid into the crowd-sourced product to review it. After a while, we will get a sense of who is good at this.

Every time somebody brings up "crowdfunding" of some sort I know it's with the best of intentions but the big question that's never answered is "who?" Who is going to get out in front and do this? It will be time and hassle for anyone involved and even if completely successful it's unlikely to return much for the person who has to head it up. I wouldn't expect anyone to volunteer and I wouldn't want them to. The value of "free" is nothing and it's hard to get a best effort with that. In short the path to a group funded creative effort is probably an impractical one.

I think the best crowd sourced funding we can expect is to continue to support the existing producers in their efforts. If you want to help or have something specific in mind then contribute wardrobe or props and buy their product. In the end this is going to come as close as anything to getting the stuff most want to see.

That's great. But as you say it took a lot of work from someone in the business with clear goals who got out front and led. That's the most difficult thing to find.

That's different to the kind of crowdfunding that's usually mentioned here though. You set out what you were doing and invited people to contribute, but they already knew what the result would (and wouldn't) be - your style is distinctive.

What's usually suggested though is a bunch of people combining together to crowdfund the commissioning of a custom scene - MM banned that because of the risk of abuse after the "model takes money and vanishes" scams of a few years back - but even if not banned, can you imagine trying to cater for ten different people's unique tastes in a single custom? If tightly enough defined it probably could work but the risks of people being disappointed afterwards, not to mention the admin hassle for whoever had to co-ordinate it all, would be huge.

Exactly. To quote one wag from Page 3....

MadLoverJoker does offer a way this COULD work, though. You're not crowdfunding a custom as much as the producer is saying, "Hey, we have this idea for a GREAT scene, but the budget is more than we can swing alone. Here are the specifics. If you want to contribute, that would be awesome."

So it's pitched somewhere between a custom (where the customer funds most of the cost but dictates how the shoot goes) and a normal sale (where the customer sees a completed scene and decides to buy it). You're putting money towards what you HOPE will be a dream shoot, even if it's not shot to your exact particulars.

The problem, of course, is how much can you REALLY crowdfund this way? $200 for a custom is reasonable for most, but not $200 for a scene where you don't control the particulars. I feel like anything higher than $20 is a tough sell. So to fund a $5000 shoot, you'd need 250 people pledging $20 each.... and most COMPLETED scenes now can't sell 250 copies, no matter how amazing they are.

Except chances are plenty of "budging" has already occurred on both sides. I doubt there are any producers out there who have overpriced videos with no sales at all and yet they still refuse to lower their prices and/or film their next video with a lower budget. Likewise, chances are if a customer really wants to see a certain type of video and cannot find anything like it legitimately offered for free, they're probably going to start saving up for what they really want while making do with what they've got. Kind of like...I'd really love a fully-restored '71 El Camino SS but in the meantime an '07 Chevy Cobalt gets me from point A to point B.

What I really want to know is whether Pornhub even pretends to care about pirated videos that get reported. There are some that have been up there for well over a month.

Exactly. The reason we might not be "budging" on a price is because said video has sold very well already. Conversely, a video might be offered for cheap because the demand isn't there.

Example: This month I've released two shoots. One had a lot of nudity and sold very well, and the top price for the "Complete" scene (all 3 angles plus edit) has remained at $19.99. The second was more PG and the model doesn't seem to be a favorite, so those clips are literally HALF the price.
I'm definitely not "budging" on the first, because why? It's selling well at that price point. I could see myself going even lower on the second one tho, depending on response, although pricing below a certain point sets a bad precedent.


They're slow but they pull everything eventually. More than likely said producer of said videos isn't reporting them, or isn't aware of them. One (former) big-name producer had literally HUNDREDS of his vids up there, because he simply didn't seem to care. Now he does, and they're all wiped.
Actually, most good WAM has been wiped off our favorite Russian Theft Site. There's some free trailer clips and a few 240p WAMF clips, but the pirates who refuse to pay producers for their work are having a tougher time jerking it than usual lately.

Scroll down to the bottom of this page, click the "Report Piracy" link. It's a pretty good system MM has put together for us all.

Haven't you heard? They're PIE-SIS now.
I think they're into pie play & sissy fetish.

The key word in the original question is "force". That is the wrong mindset as basically you cannot force everyone to pay given the technical limitations of the Internet on protecting content. Yes, there are more advanced techniques to better secure content but they tend to cost additional time/money to implement and can always be defeated by the more determined and technically savvy pirates.

A better way to consider the question is to instead ask how do you entice potential customers to pay for videos voluntarily and reward customers who purchase your videos even though pirated content will always be out there.

Something else to consider. Preach to the choir, not to the pirates. You cannot convert most pirates to paying customers but you can drive customers and potential customers into their ranks with anti-piracy rants and threats. When you do this type of behavior, in essence, you are advertising the effectiveness of piracy. Instead, encourage purchases and thank purchasers.

Keep in mind that "force" was probably a bait word used by the troll who was the original poster. As far as encouraging customers to pay for what they take we'll probably have to continue with providing a decent product at a reasonable price.

Take for instance the current status of the OP's account.