You wanna know why there are no free clips? Because of all the trading! I'm sickened by the low life pricks out there that just want something for free and have no respect for what we do. I don't give a shit what anyone here says, if YOU did it.....if YOU DID THE WORK-and believe me it IS work-you'd have the same attitude.
While I might use different words to express my feelings about this, I do understand Brad's frustration. Running a tickling video business may seem like a dream come true to some people, but it's really not. It's not all fun and games, far from, it. It involves a lot of effort, time, money and, well, frustration. Often enough, you don't even get a chance to actually enjoy the tickling that's going on, because you're too busy making a decent video and interacting with the models in a respectful, professional way. Oh, it can be fun at times, but overall it's more like work than anything else, in my personal experience. I actually find a video shoot to be a rather stressful experience. Believe me, you become disillusioned very quickly when you find out about all the negative aspects of such a project.
I personally don't mind my free previews being distributed (though I have reasons to prefer not to see them posted on popular mainstream sites like YouTube). That's what they're for. I know the vast majorty of people who watch and download them will never buy anything. It sucks, but it's how things work, and I accept that. But I also know that there's a good deal of piracy involving commercial clips going on, and that hurts. All that work, all that struggling to survive in this highly competitive market, only to have our hard work shared for free? It's very discouraging. Fortunately, I know that most people don't do this. But it doesn't make having one's work basically stolen by other people any more pleasant.
I definitely understand that offering free preview clips can be good for business, and it helps potential customers choose the clips they want. However, no producer is under any obligation to offer them if he/she prefers not to (or can't), and I think it's unfair to put any pressure on them to do so or to complain about it. If seeing previews is essential to someone before buying clips, fair enough, there are several vendors who do have them.
All they want to do is shoot, put it up and try to make a buck.
It's not the case of all producers, but I guess some do have this philosophy, which is unfortunate. The worst thing about this is that there isn't much money to be made with tickling videos. It's a fairly small, oversaturated market. Some producers do ok, but most don't manage to make any money, or only very little. Because of Internet business developments like Clips4Sale.com, as well as advances in technology like cheap, decent quality camcorders, that allow more people to easily produce videos and sell them nowadays, the number of vendors has increased exponentially these last few years. The market has changed in a major way.
Now, I realize that everyone has the right to take the plunge and to give it a try. After all, I did so myself 6 years ago. I won't tell anyone that they can't produce and sell tickling videos (though I might share my personal experiences with them, including the bad ones). Some of the more recent vendors do excellent work and obviously care a lot about tickling, which is great. However, that doesn't change the reality that you get an overabundance of vendors, a lot of which don't really make any money. But the sales they do make still decrease the profits for all vendors. Again, everyone is entitled to join in, and of course money isn't everything. It most definitely shouldn't be everything. But when you think about it, money still matters to some extent. So it's tough to run a tickling video business with today's fierce competition, especially with all the piracy going on. It's all part of the game, but it's not fun, and it's very frustrating. The thought of having to compete with producers who aren't even really interested in tickling makes it even worse.
I hope this post doesn't make me sound selfish or anything. I just wanted to share my thoughts about some of the issues brought up in this thread.
By the way, on a side-note, isn't this thread in the wrong forum? Granted, it's about clips, but it doesn't involve any actual content.