basically there is no money. apart from a major producer or 2 (who probably have cash to burn anyway), there is no money to produce high quality clips anymore. we discussed reasons for that but i'm not gonna get into. and that producer told me he's looking to get out as well. he's trying to entice people to order customs so he can make 1K and get out. this is how bad of a shape the industry is in. and this from a producer who has been pretty successful in the past. he even said "you'll only see quality clips from people who have money to burn"
-
The TMF is sponsored by Clips4sale - By supporting them, you're supporting us. -
>>> If you cannot get into your account email me at [email protected] <<<
Don't forget to include your username
The TMF is sponsored by:
what a prominent producer told me about the state of the industry
- Thread starter didates26
- Start date
Comfort Eagle
Level of Cherry Feather
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2003
- Messages
- 10,217
- Points
- 48
Pretty much. I know a lot of the Big Dogs make ok enough money but that's maybe like... 6 studios? If I started a C4S I'd never see a profit from it and I'd wager none of the rest of you would either. Sucks, but until somebody knocks Keep2Share offline, people are going to be able to get their shit for free, and unless people stop posting shit to PornHub models explicitly ask not be posted, you're going to get "the same models every time!" with relatively few new faces. It sucks, but you get the community and industry you deserve, and this has to be far and away one of the absolute shittiest communities/kink scenes I've ever had first person experience with, and it gets the porn industry it deserves.
That said, I find that making content for its own sake is an underrated and should be at least considered even with the realism of making anything close to a profit from the time an effort is becoming less and less realistic.
That said, I find that making content for its own sake is an underrated and should be at least considered even with the realism of making anything close to a profit from the time an effort is becoming less and less realistic.
proud2tickle
TMF Expert
- Joined
- Feb 29, 2004
- Messages
- 493
- Points
- 16
The real problem isn’t piracy, or sharing or anything like that even though producers use this argument every time, the real issue is pricing. You can’t charge 30 dollars for 30 minutes. That is an astronomical number to the product being produced. You are talking a small target audience. Start selling clips at a more reasonable price and I bet you will see an increase in sales. Let’s say the averages budget to produce a clip is 500 dollars. At 10 dollars for 30 minutes alll you need is 50 people to buy and you have broke back even, if 100 people buy you have make a profit at double what you spent. There are no sales, there are no loyalty programs, and when you have to pay twice to three times the money to see a clip be seeing avengers endgame for 2 hours and 30 minutes less your going to lose. I had said this for years and the industry still has refused to attempt it. Also older videos stay at top price. How about reducing them to increase sales. What about memberships, allowing you access to all videos for a month for a reasonable price. It can be done, but it seems no one is willing to try
Comfort Eagle
Level of Cherry Feather
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2003
- Messages
- 10,217
- Points
- 48
Yeah bullshit, Instagram feet girls sell 3 minute videos for as much as $20 and cultivate fanbases that happily pay those rates. We all browse PornHub and I'd bet money a significant chunk of this board are religious visitors to that blog. Ticklefuckers are just tightwads.
proud2tickle
TMF Expert
- Joined
- Feb 29, 2004
- Messages
- 493
- Points
- 16
Again, unwilling to change to market standards, you have solidified by point. Economics 101
Tbh I blame most of this on the prominence of streaming. Huge platforms like Youtube and Netflix make people subconsciously undervalue the price it takes to produce a video and expect it for free or almost free. People aren't used to paying per video of any kind, especially porn. People don't even pay for honest to god blockbusters that take millions to make because they can stream it for basically pennies.I don't blame the average consumer for this as much as the culture created by big 6 huge corporations who can afford to drive the value of videos down for personal gain and block out smaller creatures.
I don't think there is a good solution. You aren't going to convince the average guy to pay 25 bucks for a clip when they can probably get it or something similar for free. I don't even really blame them, tickling videos are expensive to produce and have a niche audience so they will be expensive, and not everyone can blow hundreds on porn. The hardcore enthusiasts may, I've bought several clips this year, but it won't really be enough. This obviously isn't the producers fault. They're between a rock and a hard place and I wouldn't wish their burden on anybody. I deeply respect anybody who works hard on creating content for us and hope they think of a solution soon.
I think there'd have to be either a much higher, mainstream demand for tickling in the near future or a few big companies team up to create a streaming based tickling service for 15(probably higher) bucks a month that also hosts smaller channels. I'm under no delusion that the latter is a flawless, completely unthought of idea invented by me that can singlehandedly save the industry, but it's worth considering. The producers are right when they call this bleak.
Feet have a much larger market than tickling. If there was a larger base of consumers for tickling content, there wouldn't be an issue. I don't think the tickling community is especially egregious in this regard.
I don't think there is a good solution. You aren't going to convince the average guy to pay 25 bucks for a clip when they can probably get it or something similar for free. I don't even really blame them, tickling videos are expensive to produce and have a niche audience so they will be expensive, and not everyone can blow hundreds on porn. The hardcore enthusiasts may, I've bought several clips this year, but it won't really be enough. This obviously isn't the producers fault. They're between a rock and a hard place and I wouldn't wish their burden on anybody. I deeply respect anybody who works hard on creating content for us and hope they think of a solution soon.
I think there'd have to be either a much higher, mainstream demand for tickling in the near future or a few big companies team up to create a streaming based tickling service for 15(probably higher) bucks a month that also hosts smaller channels. I'm under no delusion that the latter is a flawless, completely unthought of idea invented by me that can singlehandedly save the industry, but it's worth considering. The producers are right when they call this bleak.
Feet have a much larger market than tickling. If there was a larger base of consumers for tickling content, there wouldn't be an issue. I don't think the tickling community is especially egregious in this regard.
Hi there,
From the perspective of a platform owner that sees a lot of numbers and talks a lot with studio managers :
- Even a relatively new studio can make a 1000 $ / month by combining customs and clips
- You have to accept that if you are not very known, you do sell less, but it's temporary. If you do good things, you'll be rewarded in the end.
- Piracy is totally irrelevant. (it hurts but doesn't kill)
- If you want to live out of tickling, you need to make it the center of your life. Releasing multiple times a week is the real deal.
- Being on a platform (whether it is GT or C4S) is worth it (can't emphasize that enough): you benefit from all the others traffic and vice versa.
-> Half of the carts on GT are spread across studios. In my example, every time cash4laugh releases a clip, I sell a little without doing anything.
And when I release something, other studios benefit as well. It's a game of getting as many eyeballs as possible on your previews.
Really, there is a spot for a lot more people.
I met French tickling and we really talked about it for days, and he really taught me something
"Big old studios don't live by their name itself, If I stop posting for 2 days : I don't sell anymore.
The key is consistency and hardwork, shoot every week, every time you can. Of course I sometimes post some clips or models that fail, but you just need to be moving on your next clip release, planning your next session".
So anyway, as everything, it's work, luck and talent that does the trick, but I think that living on tickling people is a million time easier than being a Youtuber or a Footballer. And it's still a dream life
Starting is always harder, but it's also the part where you have the most fun, I try to keep that in mind (even if I sell quite well for an unknown studio)
From the perspective of a platform owner that sees a lot of numbers and talks a lot with studio managers :
- Even a relatively new studio can make a 1000 $ / month by combining customs and clips
- You have to accept that if you are not very known, you do sell less, but it's temporary. If you do good things, you'll be rewarded in the end.
- Piracy is totally irrelevant. (it hurts but doesn't kill)
- If you want to live out of tickling, you need to make it the center of your life. Releasing multiple times a week is the real deal.
- Being on a platform (whether it is GT or C4S) is worth it (can't emphasize that enough): you benefit from all the others traffic and vice versa.
-> Half of the carts on GT are spread across studios. In my example, every time cash4laugh releases a clip, I sell a little without doing anything.
And when I release something, other studios benefit as well. It's a game of getting as many eyeballs as possible on your previews.
Really, there is a spot for a lot more people.
I met French tickling and we really talked about it for days, and he really taught me something
"Big old studios don't live by their name itself, If I stop posting for 2 days : I don't sell anymore.
The key is consistency and hardwork, shoot every week, every time you can. Of course I sometimes post some clips or models that fail, but you just need to be moving on your next clip release, planning your next session".
So anyway, as everything, it's work, luck and talent that does the trick, but I think that living on tickling people is a million time easier than being a Youtuber or a Footballer. And it's still a dream life
Starting is always harder, but it's also the part where you have the most fun, I try to keep that in mind (even if I sell quite well for an unknown studio)
Last edited:
proud2tickle
TMF Expert
- Joined
- Feb 29, 2004
- Messages
- 493
- Points
- 16
I agree tk, that was one of my solutions memberships at a monthly rate... you can’t get rich from this the market doesn’t exist, your could make a little money and just enjoy doing what your doing like being a musician, micro brewer, things like that. You don’t have a big enough base to sell a single clip at such high rates and expect sustainment. If someone buys 4 30 minute clips they paid 120 bucks in a month. That is a power bill, weekly grocery bill, half a car payment, car insurance. It’s not there
Comfort Eagle
Level of Cherry Feather
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2003
- Messages
- 10,217
- Points
- 48
I don't understand what you think you've proved; you complained producers charge way too much. I countered with citing people who charge far beyond the industry-standard dollar a minute. What in Economics 101 says to charge way more than your competitors for significantly less produced material?
Comfort Eagle
Level of Cherry Feather
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2003
- Messages
- 10,217
- Points
- 48
Hi there,
From the perspective of a platform owner that sees a lot of numbers and talks a lot with studio managers :
- Even a relatively new studio can make a 1000 $ / month by combining customs and clips
- You have to accept that if you are not very known, you do sell less, but it's temporary. If you do good things, you'll be rewarded in the end.
- Piracy is totally irrelevant. (it hurts but doesn't kill)
- If you want to live out of tickling, you need to make it the center of your life. Releasing multiple times a week is the real deal.
- Being on a platform (whether it is GT or C4S) is worth it (can't emphasize that enough): you benefit from all the others traffic and vice versa.
-> Half of the carts on GT are spread across studios. In my example, every time cash4laugh releases a clip, I sell a little without doing anything.
And when I release something, other studios benefit as well. It's a game of getting as many eyeballs as possible on your previews.
Really, there is a spot for a lot more people.
I met French tickling and we really talked about it for days, and he really taught me something
"Big old studios don't live by their name itself, If I stop posting for 2 days : I don't sell anymore.
The key is consistency and hardwork, shoot every week, every time you can. Of course I sometimes post some clips or models that fail, but you just need to be moving on your next clip release, planning your next session".
So anyway, as everything, it's work, luck and talent that does the trick, but I think that living on tickling people is a million time easier that being a Youtuber or a Footballer. And it's still a dream life
Starting is always harder, but it's also the part where you have the most fun, I try to keep that in mind (even if I sell quite well for an unknown studio)
A few things;
$1000 a month, while sounds good, is way, way under minimum wage salary. Itself an unlivable income, you've pretty much said in order to make tickle videos work, you need to make it a full time job. If the "mid-tier success" rate is well under poverty levels, how exactly is that supposed to pan out? While a hefty number of producers are either photographers or in video-related fields already and thus have an easier time 'throwing together' a shoot, the idea that one needs to buckle down and run at a fetish whackoff empire balls-to-the-ball from the offset is baffling. Even attempting such an approach would be dependent on already having quite a lot of money banked.
French Tickling has been doing this,what? Nearly 20 years at this point? The man built his business at a time that predates PornHub and Keep2Share. Nobody will deny he works hard but he padded his coffers at a time when selling a batch of clips and being surprised by a credit card charge-back wasn't a routine event.
Most people are limited by cash on hand and the number of free hours in a day, how you can just overtly dismiss that is bizarre.
I'll say it :
there is nothing wrong with Patreon or any subscription based system, but:
- You have more pressure on producing content, for some people it's a bad thing
- We don't know if it's something that will last long : when you have a dozen of subscriptions, tickling is the easiest to cut out.
So for me it's hard to say if it's reliable, and clips sales are still growing.
Sales have definitely declined over the years and piracy is a massive issue, but I've never really experienced the kind of sales hit that you're describing here and always find it hard to believe that I'm in such a tiny minority of studios that turn a profit. Every producer speaks from their own experience and so I'd be wary about generalising their experience to everyone else. From my experience (not necessarily everyone else's), I put a lot of work into my content and I do make a profit. I definitely do not have cash to burn (and I started out with nothing at all) but it is an expensive business and sometimes you have to be willing to make sacrifices to make good quality material. That said, quality is also about doing a good job and learning from experience - there's plenty of fetish and porn producers out there making bad clips with expensive equipment.
It really is
That isn't the issue. Most studios wouldn't offer up a clip of that length without some kind of discount anyway, but 30 mins is a lot of material to produce and output. The fact is, people who pirate clips wouldn't even pay $5 for a 30 min clip, let alone $10. Most probably wouldn't be willing to pay anything at all if they think they can find it for free instead.
A $10 sale on clips4sale = $6 for the producer, so 50 clip sales = $300. Even 100 sales would only equate to $100 of profit in that example and believe me when I say that it takes a long time for most producers to reach 100 sales on a new clip - many won't get anywhere near that figure and where they do the clips have generally been up there for a while. If I calculate the time taken to shoot, edit, render, upload and list a clip it generally works out at around 7-8 hours (i.e. a full day) per clip. With that in mind, $100 profit isn't all that much to shout about.
Far more money is made from clip sales over time, from repeat buyers, large sales orders and customs. Cutting prices probably would have very little benefit on sales for most producers but it would shave even more off their profits
Membership sites are not an option for most smaller producers since they typically cost several thousand dollars to set up and then require constant management. Given that you are then giving away thousands of clips for a small amount of money per customer they are also much harder to turn a profit on - especially when you factor in the 20% you have to pay to the credit card processor to take payments, webhosting with plenty of space and a high bandwith for people to download thousands of GB of clips every day. You also need someone to content manage the site, security against outside attacks, hackers etc. I do have a membership site and I produce separate clips for it. It is a load of extra work and I would never post all of my C4S content on there or on any membership site because it is too easy for pirates to rip and upload everything in one go.
1) 1000 $ / month for a studio that is under 3 months is good. I didn't say you would stay at that income for all your life.
I don't want to reveal the income of the producers I know, but they are well above that mark, and you wouldn't guess by how much.
2) I don't disagree with you.
If you want to make a side income with tickling while doing sometinh else, you won't go past 1000 $ / month.
If you want to live solely on tickling, you can go far beyond that, but with the work that goes with it.
If tickling is a hobby for you, you'll get a hobby income. It's not that bad, you get what you work for.
For the record : I really don't want to look pretentious, I just try to be based on facts and numbers I know and see every day. 3 months ago, I didn't know shit about it and I thought the best producers were earning at best 2000 / month, reality blew my mind.
I even know some people that can tell me who earns what based on the C4S top seller chart!
3) If you want to go specifically about FT, I don't feel at ease talking for him but :
- He sells more than ever
- His clips are pirated every time, within a fucking week
- He has all the chargebacks / Pornhub / K2S / High risk merchant fees / C4S Fees you can imagine. He even hosts his videos on totally overpriced servers.
- Yet, it works well for him.
As I said, even he, when he doesn't posts, loses 100 % of his income.
That's why he posts 3 times / day, he's a machine (with a heart, I can testify lol), and it works.
One can't complain if he hasn't even tried having some regularity.
That's also the problem with C4S fees, the visibility they give you costs a lot.
And you didn't mention the conversion fees too, because I guess you get paid in USD instead of GBP.
I find it greedy that they don't even offer rebates for high volume sellers. But it's what it is ...
For memberships : A Patreon wouldn't take all those fees, it's actually about 10 % so it's a great deal, money wise.
15 % is what takes overpriced companies such as CCBill, there are other high risk payment processors that take less than a third of that (I'm into that at the moment), even less than Paypal.
The market has moved, but they still leave on old contracts.
Yeah this is true I've never thought of it like that. Especially the pirating point.
Myriads
Tzar of the TMF
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2001
- Messages
- 14,298
- Points
- 38
A dollar/min has been the industry standard going back to the days of video tapes that delivered an hour of content for $60. It's pretty standard across the sex industry in all fetishes and vanilla porn also.
Several producers played with lower pricing in the early 00's. And they found out that it didn't increase sales all that much. Not enough to make up for the loss incurred by halving the price. So $1/min returned to the standard. What they DID learn was that cutting a clips length, to 7-9 minutes DID increase sales at a $1/min. And for a while clip size shrank.
Also Clips4Sale uses a length to cost ratio that is automatic. Producers cannot set their clips lower in some cases.
The tube sites have been a huge factor in declining sales, as they saturate the market with material that is at the optimum price. Free. Unless a buyer is motivated for a very specific model or situation, most can find something good enough for their moist spasm needs.
This is not a problem unique to the tickling side of the industry. It crosses the entire porn world.
The all face: "Why pay when its easily and safe to see it free?"
Myriads
Comfort Eagle
Level of Cherry Feather
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2003
- Messages
- 10,217
- Points
- 48
People can, and do, flake on customs routinely.
I wonder what the sweet spot for sales vs pirated clips is. It seems the top clips get pirated, and to be top clips they must be selling. I also think the more a store or models clips get pirated the more popular they become and the more they also sell. I wonder how much it cost to change a C4S store name vs creating a new store. Maybe when a store cracks the top 10 stop releasing new clips for a few weeks and also change the store name.
The problem is that sales of individual clips tend to plateau after a short while, and piracy is a factor in that. It's not always the case, but I've had many top selling clips that occupy the #1 or #2 spot for a little while and then they just flatline once they turn up on pirate sites. There is sometimes a little boost of exposure through piracy but it's become much more limited. In the past, many of the people searching pirate sites for clips may have gone on to buy other clips from that producer/model. As tubesites and others have expanded though, people have become increasingly greedy and reluctant to spend anything on clips - hence they will simply trawl pirate sites and try to get their kicks from there as Myriads pointed out, rather than going and buying something they really want. This is why you get so many threads on here declaring that clips are basically 'all the same crap' nowadays by people who believe they've seen everything there is. In reality they've just become burnt out after ploughing through the same clips on pornhub for hours each day.
proud2tickle
TMF Expert
- Joined
- Feb 29, 2004
- Messages
- 493
- Points
- 16
Everyone keeps throwing out this 1 dollar for 1 minute standard. But obviously for tickling clips it’s not the industry’s standard if it’s failing. This is what I am talking about by simple economics. If your base isn’t willing to buy at a rate that you have set and it’s causing you a deficit the absolutely first thing you need to do is to try and reduce your price to see if sales increases. No one has even tried that, you are seeing such negative fed back to the idea because your all set on this industry standard when you have apples vs oranges. It’s better to sell a 30 minute clip at 10 dollars especially if it has been sitting out a while 100 times than to sell it at 30 dollars 5-10 times. Every arts and entertainment industry faces privacy, yet they still over come it. Again we are also talking about making enough to sustain operations doing something you love vs actually making a life wages... with as many studios, clips, prices, and limited customer base I don’t think it’s probably to make enough to actually live off of. This topic has been talked about for years and it’s always the same marry go round, inability to change, complaints from producers, videos still turned out at a high rate. I remember the big thing a few years ago was trading clips, clips had become currency. This alone tells me that people are willing to buy and go online Just not at the rate of this magical industry standard your applying with completely different variables. I mean look at how picky your base is. Some are upperbody, some are feet, some are bondage, some are wrestling, some like male, some like female, lee and ler preference. I mean I am actually giving a solution and I have yet to see anyone else toss in a course of action, I all I hear it’s the standard! This is how it has to be! Blame freeloading.
OmahaTickler
Verified
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2002
- Messages
- 1,018
- Points
- 38
As others noted, it's not Economics 101, it's Free Online 101. I used to work in newspapers, until I was laid off 11 years ago as circulation/subscriptions were tanking and ads were drying up. Most news on any level is free somewhere online now, and the same is likely true for any fetish porn. As for high prices, not really. When I first learned foot/tickling porn could be found on VHS tapes in the early '90s, I spent up to $70 bucks for 30-minute tapes at adult stores near an airport. It was the only media game in town at that time, so I'm not complaining about 10 bucks for a good 10-minute online clip.
Ever consider that maybe, just maybe the "standard" is something that is real? Did you even really read what the producers have said about Clips4Sale? Do you even understand basic economics such as if something is free, why would they pay for said clip? I don't think you don't understand the actual business costs. It is not just a simple "make it cheaper" solution. If that was the case, then you would see WAY MORE of that action. You think these producers are thinking "I am going to make it expensive! Yeah, that will inspire people to buy more clips!"
Think about the cost of producing clips. Models are not free. Equipment is not free. Then C4S takes about 40%. Then, how many clips are actually purchased. You can have a ton of material, but unlike fast food, they don't move in huge volumes. So, using basic economics, if I pay a model $200 ($400 for F/F or whatever combination), already invested $1000 for equipment (base amount), then time for editing and such, and I made a 10 minute clip and sell it at $10 ($6 goes to the producer), you know how many clips they have to sell just to break even? Now, reduce that price to let's say $5.
I think the issue is, you don't know how many of the clips out there are actually sold. You might be thinking "They sells hundreds of clips so there is no problem". But in reality, it doesn't move as much. Then you have places like Pornhub where you can see it all for free. These producers are probably not rich. So the cost of doing business may not match what they can hope to get in return. It is more like they love to do it rather than make a living off of it. Can you please explain the actual cost in doing what you're saying? That model price of $200 is cheap. Now imagine that they get that amount for A clip or maybe 2 or 3. The more clips you make, the MORE it cost for these models. There just isn't enough volume to compensate for these costs. That's why piracy is more of their focus than just making clips cheaper...
Also, unlike other industries that deal with piracy, the difference is that their markets are LARGER. Tickling is a niche. There are not millions and millions and millions of consumers unlike let's say music and even porn. The pool is way smaller... Simple economics...
Lord Churchill
Guest
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2018
- Messages
- 27
- Points
- 0
How can you flake on a custom? You pay in advance.
TTT for joy
TMF Regular
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2014
- Messages
- 245
- Points
- 16
Yet it's the only economic model that seems to be viable. People just won't throw tons of money on videos/music. Revert back to old models and you get huge piracy problem again.
