This Thing Of Ours
By The Colonel
I want to believe, I want to understand, I want to keep my mind open to infinite possibilities and imagine how my life, my country and my world could have been, should have been. Regardless, I must accept facts and realities as they are; some comforting, some scary, some uplifting, some devastating, some black and some white. One of those realities is how mercilessly and rapidly the adult industry is evolving. Previously I talked about the different stages this industry has gone through in the past three decades and what elements have caused and attributed to the current downfall; in this article I want to discuss the alternatives and solutions.
We must accept that things will never be the same, we will never make sweet profits per each title based on VHS & DVD sales as we used to in the early 2000s. We can never ship 3000+ copies of one title at the wholesale price of $8 to $10, and if we start operating a web site today, we will never make $20,000+ per month. Like extinct mom and pop stores, disappearing American cars and shrinking 401k accounts, huge profits in the smut business have become a thing of the past. However, speaking from a producer’s perspective, this business is what we’ve got, all we’ve got, this thing of ours; and even though there are days that I feel I hate everything about it, but still I wouldn’t want to be somewhere else, doing something else; and I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. So I’ve started making plans and experimenting new alternatives, survival tactics, if you may, and I want to share some of them with you. As always I appreciate your feedback and opinions.
1. We must change the method of content delivery. DVD market is broke and seems beyond fix. Do the math: when instead of shipping 3000+ copies of each title at the wholesale price of $8 to $10, you get to ship less than 800 copies at the wholesale price of $4 to $5, when instead of making an average of $18,000 to $20,000 per each title you roughly make $7000 to $8000 which doesn’t even cover production costs, that’s when you know the shit has hit the fan. As for VOD sales, 8 cents per minute of which you only get %40 as your revenue share. Penny on dollars, but still a necessity. Another necessity is of course clip sales, again, %40 to %60 revenue share is not ideal, but it all adds up specially if you have a Back Catalogue with an average of 100 to 200 titles.
There are many potential black holes in today’s adult industry which keep sucking up studio’s profits, for example video member sites. Here’s how they operate: they go through small time producers, free lancers, content traders and content brokers and buy unlimited rights to titles for an average price of $300 per title. They then sign up members for a flat rate of usually $9.99 per month and give their members the access to the entire archives of more than 100 studios and 25,000+ scenes to watch, download and do whatever they want. Not forget to mention these video member sites are also the ones that operate a big portion of tube sites. Their justification is to entice tube viewers with short clips so they sign up with them and watch or download full scenes. But the point is even in that case studios won’t benefit, because video member sites have already purchased unlimited rights to their titles for the convenient price of $300 per title, and therefore don’t have to pay any revenue share or royalties to the studios.
We need to cut our dependency on DVD sales and modify the method of content delivery. We must work with both domestic and foreign cable channels and prior to release a title on DVD, broadcast it on cable. Collect royalties from cable sales, and 4 to 6 weeks later release that title on DVD, then on VOD sites, then on clips sites. Needless to say, we must do our best to keep our titles away from video member sites which do nothing but ravaging our profits.
2. Experiencing a live event is something that most consumers cannot avoid, and unfortunately unlike European countries we don’t have places in the U. S where people can go to watch a live sex show. But now with the expansion of televised pay per view events and broadband internet, we have a unique opportunity to manage and broadcast live sex shows on both cable channels and internet. This will be our advantage against the amateurish, low quality, recycled material that’s saturating file sharing and tube sites.
An average porn title consists of 5 to 6 scenes with an average running time of 100 to 120 minutes. The way most professional movies are shot is that the studio rents the location for one full day and schedules performers to shoot scenes back to back. For example Jane and Adam at 10AM, Janet and Joe at 1PM, etc. We can manage to broadcast one full shooting day with everything that’s happening in real time, from the arrival of girls to changing their clothes, taking still shots and eventually filming the sex scene; and later we can have two different versions to present on DVD: the regular edited version which only includes sex scenes, and the extended uncut documentary version which literary takes people behind porn scenes and provides them with every detail that for years have been the subjects of their discussion and speculation.
If people are willing to pay $34.99 to watch two trailer trash steroid-ridden scumbags pretend to beat the shit out of each other in a WWE event, I don’t see why they wouldn’t pay the half of that price to watch their favorite whores getting double penetrated live. They can cheer, cry, jerk off and simultaneously chat about it on Facebook or Twitter. Frankly as long as they contribute to my bank account I’m good with all that.
3. Another thing that most consumers can’t avoid is interacting and meeting porn girls; and trust me, a large portion of porn consumers prefer ordinary girls over contract stars. Why? Because they can relate to them, they can imagine that ordinary girl in their apartment, in their bed, but they know that will never happen with someone like Jenna Haze or Jesse James for a variety of reasons that I don’t need to get into here. So we can manage tours and take girls on road trips where they promote their work, sell DVDs and novelties such as their used panties and lingerie, sign autographs, give lap dances, etc.
An average movie costs $10,000 to $12,000 to produce, and as you can see $7,000 to $8,000 DVD sales does not even cover the production cost; and it takes months to collect VOD and clip sales and make a relatively small profit. The way I see it, we can invest the production budget of one title to manage a tour and take girls on the road; and compare to releasing a DVD title, the chances are we can make a better profit in a shorter time. It doesn’t have to be anything big and overhyped, it can be a short tour with limited appearances in ordinary clubs, but as long as you sell tickets and merchandise and make an instant profit, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. And tell me who wouldn’t want her favorite porn girl to dance naked in front of him and rub her snatch in his face for $20 price of admission.
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People keep telling me what are we gonna do? Our content is all we have and now brokers and internet thieves are taking it away from us and breaking us down. I say bullshit, it’s not just our content, it’s what we can do with it and how we can utilize it to maximize our profit. We gotta do what we gotta do even though things will never be the same. But possibilities are too many and I only addressed a few that I believe are viable. It ain’t over till it’s over.