Legit Tickling is by no means a top C4S Studio.
But I consistently make (in profit) hundreds of dollars a month between Patreon, C4S and customs.
Here are my three tips:
1. Find girls for as cheap as possible
2. Get cheap hotel rooms if you can’t film at your place or theirs
3. Customs, Customs, Customs
My store has always been profitable because I keep costs extremely low.
This is basically the same for me. Only no Patreon for me and custom work went dry about a year ago though and I stopped uploading to C4S about 2 years ago, but I still get a pay out every month. I've talked to and worked with some very well known models who brought an established and paying fan base, whose rates are more than half what some of the current IG models will charge. I don't know HOW any studio could turn a profit if they are paying those rates. What you pay though will also be determined by your market and model availability.
So from my experience, even not actively producing, there is money available. To get into it at this point though and to be full time would require the same thing as ANY start up in most any industry: CAPITAL! You're simply not going to make a profit or enough of it in the first year, so you would need funding for the continuing expenses.
Pricing - There have always been those who cannot afford product. I think $1/min is reasonable and also feel the majority of producers have gone out of their way to try and be flexible where possible with pricing structure. I've reduced, run sales, offered direct sale discounts, large clip discounts and have never seen any real impact to sales.
Marketing/Consistency - I never did this full time, but there was a period when I would release 2-4 clips a week (I thought that's what I was supposed to do lol), because that's what the full time studios did. Spent endless hours editing multiple size/resolution long previews to upload to tmf, tickle theatre, dailymotion, youtube, facebook, tumblr, twitter, fetishtrain, fetlife and my blog, including pics and screengrabs and long descriptions. Then I stopped updating dailymotion and youtube. Then facebook. Eventually I only posted in the video clip section here. Then eventually, stopped that. I never saw any discernible difference in sales until....
Piracy - I kept an eye on sales, but never really monitored things like chargebacks. I started noticing clips just wouldn't sale like they did previously, but I figured it was just one of those cyclical things. Started doing some research into the refunds/chargebacks and noticed they corresponded to the clips turning up pirated. The timing corresponded with the decline in sales. Now, as to the major studios that have been consistently producing for many years, you can't underestimate or overstate the value of being active and building a customer base prior to this "piracy era."
I understand piracy has ALWAYS been there, but in truth, if you're going to call this the tickle clips producing industry, you have to call THAT the tickle clip piracy industry, because the major culprit is monetizing his piracy. In effect, this niche market to begin with, is cannibalizing itself. So it isn't that piracy isn't an issue, it's that the larger-volume, established and prolific studios are able to absorb it's impact better than the smaller ones. James Darke told me he was just focused on continuing to release material regularly to stay ahead of the piracy. That's absolutely the way to go, but it's considerably easier and more feasible to do so when you have a huge catalog and established customer base that's a decade or more old.
Lastly, I'm sure any content producer could spend multiple paragraphs expressing displeasure with certain elements in this community but I'd like to give a shout out to all the tons of awesome members who have supported not just my store, but all content creators over the years. I know there are plenty out there, because I've sold many clips that have never been pirated/shared thanks to these great customers.
