I hope this works out for you, I truly do. But my producers (Jordana Leigh and Hannah Perez) have both told me that almost no one buys the WAM movies I commission. And my idea of a WAM video is very similar to yours, as you know.
Rich and Jayce and others have gone on record saying that WAM producing is not a money maker at all. They are lucky to break even. Some videos are profitable, but I don't think it is enough to live off of.
I do believe that most (if not all) of our producers have a day job.
Maybe PM some producers and get their opinion?
it is difficult to make a living off this....now if messmaster would offer like, dental plans or insurance, i may be able to do better.....LOL XD M.M., GET ON IT!!! HAHAHAA XD but you also have an advantage that you have a lot of very popular girls at your hand. we have newbies come and go, some stay (like dixie) but can only come around every once in a while. we love what we do...that is why we are still here. im teaching at a studio for free out of the goodness of my heart but i cant do that anymore. lol XD too much!!! bc its taking time away from my wamming. i got filthy yesterday from 930 am to 230 and it was like "ahhhhhhh, god i missed this!!" and i just got messy last week. lol XD its a labor of love. and ask teh moomins. sometimes it takes years to build and perfect!! they are also amazing at advice!!
Gness, You raise some great points, and I'm sorry if I'm naive about the realities of a WAM producer's costs. But I think you also lost sight of the fact that my I said it was only a VERY small handful of producers who can make a living doing nothing but WAM -- I only mentioned the two who had already come up in the thread, who both happen to be actual living examples of this rare phenomenon -- and it's my sincere hope that Rev can join their ranks. I understand you're saying that's a very unrealistic hope, and I suppose it's good that someone act as the "wet blanket of cold hard reality" here. But as Rev has said, he hasn't gone into this blind. He's been doing this pretty actively for three years (producing 5-6 videos a month, on average) and he's consulted with a lot of other producers, so he has a pretty good idea of what's involved, and he's already got a back catalog of 200 videos in just three years.
gness7 said: In trying to put a positive spin on the realities of the WAM market, you've basically said that the path to success is to sell your videos for peanuts (by way of "promotions") and do it for years and years so that you you have a big enough backlog that the volume of peanuts can turn into a decent snack.
Here, you are reading way too much into a few of my comments. I never said "the path to success" for every producer is to do promotions all the time -- or necessarily any of the time, depending on what they're selling and how much they're asking for it. (Yes, I did say that I buy the large majority of my videos during promotions, that's true. Just ask Rev -- I bought 5 of his video bundles and 10 of his individual video clips, including his epic 9-girl pie fight MostWam collab, the other night when he ran his WOTD sale. I think it's a reality that there are a number of people like me out there who buy 90% or more of their videos on sale. But we're not the whole market, we're just a chunk of it that some producer never tap into because they never do promotions.)
I was offering the promotions idea specifically as advice to Jordana Leigh and Hannah Perez, for whom WAM is very much a sideline (they do WAM videos commissioned by Bozo and also sell them in their stores alongside all sorts of other adult videos). Those two are telling Bozo they have absolutely no sales of their pie videos through their regular stores, where most of their videos are priced at $20, and nothing is less than $15.
It's an unfortunate fact for producers (especially the outside ones, who don't really know the lay of the land in this very specific marketplace) that WAM customers have become spoiled by the abundance of dedicated WAM producers, which has resulted in average prices well below $15 from the majority of producers, and also a lot of regular promotions from quite a few of them.
The thing is, Hannah and Jordana are already getting several hundred dollars -- at minimum, I'm guessing, maybe more? -- from Bozo to shoot these customs. Dedicated WAM producers do a lot of this too -- shooting custom videos so that one guaranteed customer foots a big chunk of the bill, and then they sell the video online to anyone else who wants it -- but usually those later customers can buy the videos for considerably less than $20.
So I wasn't saying that all WAM producers need to do a lot of promotions, but much more specifically if your videos are mostly $20 and they don't have a lot of production pizazz (such as a 9-girl pie fight with beautiful production values like Rev's with MostWam, or Pie Zone's elaborate gameshow videos, both of which go for $20), then maybe promotions would make sense SOME of the time. It really feels like when Bozo posts news of a new video he's commissioned from these women, he's REALLY wanting to start up conversations about these videos -- he sounds VERY eager for feedback on his ideas, but it sounds like he gets very little of that. I'm sure he also ideally wants the videos to sell too so that Hannah and Jordana will be motivated to keep shooting videos for him (i.e. have more financial motivation than just his custom fees). But conversations about their videos almost never seem to take off on those threads.
If Hannah and Jordana did promotions on their videos a few times, it could potentially help stimulate some sales and get some (hopefully) satisfied customers talking up their videos on this forum, where other messy fans might be encouraged to also buy them. Yes, they'd make less money for the videos during the promotion than they ideally wanted, but as is, they're not getting anything at all for them beyond Bozo's initial custom fees, so I don't see what is to lose here.
I'm sorry to go on so long about Hannah and Jordana, since this should be Rev's thread to shine like the star he is... but Bozo brought up H & J's total lack of sales in this thread as a sign of how bad the WAM market is, and that was specifically why I brought up promotions in the first place. I wasn't buy any means saying promotions were the best way for everyone to run their WAM business, and Rev himself already has a semi-permanent B2G1F promotion going anyway, so it's not like I was trying to convince him!
gness7 said: In trying to put a positive spin on the realities of the WAM market, you've basically said that the path to success is to sell your videos for peanuts (by way of "promotions") and do it for years and years so that you you have a big enough backlog that the volume of peanuts can turn into a decent snack.
But what were the producers doing during that time? Probably making a living from other jobs.
I haven't had a day job since 2003, nor have I been on benifits or any type of income support. To be honest our cost of living was much less then, we lived in a rented shared house. The business grew with our needs. The WAM production industry has supported us for 15 years.
It has been really hard and quite demanding at times, you have to have a drive and passion to succeed. Not to mention a pig headed belief in yourself, your abilities and your ideas.
What really helps is a fantastic partner and team of crew and girls.