Breaking down the price of a tickling clip

I saw in my recent survey (it's still open for entries tho) that about 30 % of people agreed with the statement that clips are too expensive.

I don't want to judge anybody's response, we all like to rant about prices, but I feel like there is some need for the public or at least a small portion of it to understand why a clip is sold around 1$ / minute.

1) Volume : When you release a clip, most producers rarely sell it over 10 times. And some clip flop horribly for no reasons (more than they become a hit)

2) Platform fees : The middleman needs his share too, and when it's 30 or 40 % you can imagine that you need to sell more to break even on a clip.

3) Model cost : Not the same in every country, but it ranges from 80 $ to 300 $ and more for a session with 2 or 3 clips. (and that's per model, imagine the upfront cost when you program some gang tickling)

4) Piracy : Something to be taken into account with sales revenue.

5) Gear : It's easier to film with your phone now, but you need to take into account stocks, ropes, tripods, things that break.


Let's take an average example :

Mylittleticklestudio shot a neat little F/F session, he paid the models 100 $ each, and made 6 clips with them that are 12 minutes.

He will sell them 10 times each for the first 2, 5 times the next ones, and 2 times the last ones.

His revenue is now 407,66 $ (price is 11,99/clip).
But the platform takes 40 % so it's only 244,60 $ now.

The models cost remember ? It's only now 44,60 $.
Then, I spare you the taxman and other costs, but you guessed it: there is almost nothing less.

I hope this can help better understand why 1$ per minute is a hard limit, there is a lot more to it in the tickling economy that I'd love to explain,
but this post is already too long



Also :

Any kind of Netflix of Tickling wouldn't make economical sense I'm affraid, because it's already hard for the mainstream tv show / movies industry to break even with that.

Imagine paying all the producers a fair share of something bought by less than 1000 people. The price of the membership would need to be very high.

Thanks for the breakdown

It's cute that you think explaining the facts to these people will make a difference. Producers have been explaining the realities of every possible aspect of clip production since the day this forum was founded and nobody listens.

The only fact that matters is that these clowns don't want to pay for their content. Any price that's not free is too expensive.

I've seen people whining at foot models on Instagram that a $10 monthly fee for regularly updated content is unaffordable.

And yes, streaming is not the answer. The few adult streaming platforms that I'm aware of pay something like a penny per thousand views.

Another reason why $1 per minute is a hard limit is that the distribution platforms set those hard limits. Clips4Sale generally won't let you lower the price more than a few dollars per clip. That margin grows as the length of the clip does. Other sites have a flat minimum and you simply can't charge less.

But again, all of this has been explained before. Nobody cares. It's like they get off on complaining more than they do on the clips themselves.

No need to be agressive. The point is to show that the industry isn't healthy as producers are squeezed between producing costs and selling costs.

And I certainly wouldn't call the people that replied to my survey clowns, they are actually people that buy clip with their hard earn money.

The hard limits set by some platforms are both preventing dumping and saving them from being crushed by fixed payment processing costs.

tbh Dollar Per Minute wouldn't be so bad if producers still occasionally did 5 minute videos. 5-7 minutes used to be the standard during the "golden era' Tickle Abuse days and I could generally talk myself into buying one every week or so like that, but now you see clips that range anywhere from $13 on into the $20+ level and that's a bit much.

Speaking of Tickle Abuse, back when Tommy owned it he claimed his membership income was actually several times more than the individual clip sales. I believe other producers have mentioned similar success as well.

Comfort Eagle said:

tbh Dollar Per Minute wouldn't be so bad if producers still occasionally did 5 minute videos. 5-7 minutes used to be the standard during the "golden era' Tickle Abuse days and I could generally talk myself into buying one every week or so like that, but now you see clips that range anywhere from $13 on into the $20+ level and that's a bit much.

Click to expand...

Putting aside the fact that I know of studios that do produce short clips, honestly I don't think the economics support it anymore. You put out a $5 clip, you have to sell far more of them to make your money back than you do a $10 clip. I know which one I'd pick.

And my apologies, kingmaker - I was wondering where you got that statistic and if it came from a poll of your customers, that's cool. Clearly the people who actually support studios aren't the clowns. But AFAIK your site doesn't enforce minimum prices for your clips, so the easiest way to see if your customer base would put their money where their mouth is would be to cut the prices on your clips and see if you sell more, no? Have you done that? How often do people actually pay for your "Pay what you want" videos?

I was referring more to the community at large, the bulk of whom simply pirate shit and then complain about it, hiding behind "prices" and "fakes" as ways to justify leeching off of studios they never intended to support in the first place. It's a funny coincidence how there's always something keeping people from paying...

so the easiest way to see if your customer base would put their money where their mouth is would be to cut the prices on your clips and see if you sell more, no? Have you done that? How often do people actually pay for your "Pay what you want" videos?

Click to expand...

Pay what you want clips are 90 % of the time paid 0, others put 1 $ to 5 $ (which cover bandwidth cost so it's good)

For the prices, I see no difference whatsoever, my best selling clip of all time is Elana, a 20 $ clip. Clips that are below 10 $ tend to sell less (maybe they are too short ?)

But in the end, Price is not really a relevant metric, people buy clips when they seem good

People never seem to consider what actually goes into making a clip...

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

I don't want to blame them, a cinema ticket is 10 $ and it cost millions to make a movie.

The only real difference is that clips don't sell for millions

In really good cases that happens very rarely you can make a hit and do 50 or even 100 sales on one clip, a movie with 100 spectators would be considered a monumental flop.

And you still need to consider that you won't make half of the money on these.

Would the producers in this thread be interested in offering older clips or clips that do not sell well to a membership site where they would get a share of the monthly membership revenue (based on % of downloads/views). Members would pay a monthly membership, each membership level would allow more downloads.

Reading this thread I get the sense that so much value is being created in these sessions. But if less than 10 people are viewing each clip, so much value is being lost.

Putting these underused videos together as a membership service could help recoop some of that value. It would expose your videos more and help gain a bigger following as a side effect.

If anyone is interested message me.

The thing is that those clips continue to sell and trickle down.

Also if you offer a service that encourages people waiting, you are destroying sales on the moment.

Almost each producer now has their own membership

Each producer has their own membership site? I was not aware. I've been trying to actively find a list of tickling sites with memberships and I've been having a really difficult time. The closest I can find to a list is wufeet links from 2003 and most of those companies have moved on.

I think discovery is a huge problem. The only way I learn about studios these days is through pornhub, finding a clip with a style I like and hopefully the clip has a title or an intro letting me know what the studio is. I consider myself a power google/duckduckgo/yannex searcher and I can't find anything anymore and I want to. Pornhub is probably doing more favors then taking away business at this point.

If you producers as a group come together and put something as easy to use and discover as pornhub I think your sales would go through the roof. I'm not the right person to bring everything together because I'm not a producer and have no trust within that circle. But there must be someone within your ranks that has a the clout to bring you guys together. Do you guys as a group realize how many new people not in the scene who would love your content will never get a chance?

Just looking at what is happening is you had a pool of users in 2011. After google updated panda in 2012 tickling/porn lost it's google ranking. Some of these people returned to ticklingforum.com directly but others never returned. That pool of users knows about clips4sale, tmf and other older sites. That pool of users keep dropping each year. Those are the only people buying the clips, as more producers quit the remaining ones are able to survive with lower profits but each year it gets harder. New 18 year olds who are mobile only and can't even browse on clips4sale don't buy them. You need to offer them a way into your material and everything now is designed for the 40+ year old.

Tickling in Russia
UK Tickling
Lovely Laugh tickling + Genuine Tickling (together)
French tickling
Tickle Abuse
Tickle in Las Vegas
Carolina Laugh Riot
Daredevil pussy cats

That's on the top of my head, I may forgot some.

Didn't know everyone had a membership site.

Thank you for the breakdown. I just filled out the survey, hopefully the clip store producers get the results.

LBFT

If the clips were a little longer atleast 10-15 mins then I think ppl would be alot more willing to pay... who really wants to pay for a 3-5 min video and im not talking about all studios because I know some produce longer clips for more. Also quality and content goes a long way

The average clip is around 12/13 minutes

However I noted that amateur studios tend to do very short clips