I'll say two things that will hopefully help. First, I absolutely promise that if I ever decide to pack it in, that I'm done with the whole amateur pornographer thing, I'll let you know. As long as there's no post on this blog that says "that's all, folks," more updates will be coming, even if they're trickling out very slowly.
(Clips4Sale requires stores to update at least once a month, so at least there's an upper bound on how long you'll have to wait.)
The second thing is better. To thank you all for your patience, I've decided to make available -- for free -- one of my most-requested pieces of content. That's right: Ashley answering the door naked for the pizza guy. (Just to make it absolutely clear, this is a real pizza guy, not an actor... and when he set out on his delivery run, he had no idea what was in store for him.)
Sound good? Read on to download.
IMPORTANT: READ THIS, BITCHES
By continuing to download this video, you agree to all of the following:
- You are over the age of 18, or whatever the age of majority is in your jurisdiction.
- You will not show this video to anyone under the age of 18 or a minor by the laws of your jurisdiction.
- You will not sell, rent, or otherwise profit from this video.
- You understand that this video contains female nudity.
- You do not find female nudity offensive, and consent to seeing it.
- There is NO rule #6
- You will not sue me at any time in any place for any reason connected with this video.
Have we got all that? Click the seventeenth word of this disclaimer (starting with the word "IMPORTANT") to download. Please use right-click/save-as... the file is packaged as a ZIP to encourage this. Enjoy, and hopefully I'll have the time to do some real content soon.
This video, by the way, is licensed for free distribution. Share and enjoy.
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23 comments:
OMG I clicked the link even though I'm severely offended by female nudity. Think I broke rule no 6 too and decided to file a lawsuit first thing next week.
Anyway, always nice to see you're still hanging on mate. Good luck with everything.
EDIT: Spelling mistake. Can't seem to edit posts so removed previous one.
/J
Moooorrrreee Ashley she is smooking. wow what a great vid. was she wearing heels? would have liked the whole bod shot. did pizza guy see camera holder, it looks like it. great great vid.
Got some bad news, some good news, and some better news for you, anon. First, the bad news: Ashley is moving away. Across the country. It'll be very difficult for me to get any more new footage of her. Very sad :( She's my favorite girl (and judging by the comments and clip sales, the favorite of a lot of my customers, too), and I'll miss her. :(
The good news is that I do still have plenty of raw footage with Ashley that I haven't edited together yet. So there will be some more of her.
The better news is... well, I couldn't just let my best girl move away without doing one more shoot, could I? I really do not have the time for this, but I'm going to make time to do another shoot with Ashley. Tomorrow, in fact. And her opponent for the games to come is none other than... her hot little sister Kala. No shit no foolin' for real real. So if any of y'all have interesting ideas for what I could pull off with a pair of competitive sisters, speak up! (And quickly! You've got a little over 12 hours before it's too late.)
Of course, there are limits to what I'd ask of them, being siblings and all, but I'm sure there's plenty of room to play within those limits.
Wow, Red...sisters playing a strip game? (And, just for the sake of clarification, in the video they would "appear" as sisters?) Well, here's one idea: sisters are always borrowing each other's clothes, often without permission. So, little sis Kala borrowed an outfit from big sis Ashley, and Ashley got upset about Kala taking clothes from her yet again. So she tells Kala that the only way she can go out with her friends and wear Ashley's outfit is to manage to keep it on by winning a strip game. Kala then replies that if she does win, she gets to keep the outfit permanently. Ashley could then reply that both of them have to greet Kala's friends when they show up to get her for their night out - with the loser completely naked, of course. (That ending would have to happen just after the fadeout, most likely. This storyline might be too convoluted, though.)
Well, here's to hoping that Ashley moves in next door to my house!
Red, I like the games where the players are all running out of clothes, rather than the all or nothing results in some games. It would be great if the "loser" could play double or nothing to try to get the other girl naked as well.
Great Video and great news on the upcomming sister strip lost bet.
How about getting Kala her male friend, Ashley and her husband into a four way game.
I wonder if you will have enough time to delvelop this game within your one month time frame.
Go ahead and shout this sister game, but how about editing and producing some of your unreleased games and other footage into the clips store.
Keep up the good work.
Finally, have you thought of working with Dare Ring? Maybe you could create a game or two for them and in tern they would agree to host some clips for you. Then you could both share in the royalties.
Sorry to hear Ashley is moving. I think she did very well in the games; she is very spontaneously and funny too. I very much liked the games with her, Mia and Ashton starring.
Ofcourse I wish her all the best at her new place.
StripGameFan: Thanks for the suggestion. Can't promise I'll use it, but I appreciate it.
Anon 8:54P: My overarching principle guiding the shoots I do is: variety, variety, variety. I've had people write me asking for more "piece by piece" games, I've also had people write me asking for more "all or nothing" games. I'll try to accomodate you both.
Anon 5:00 AM: Thanks, I'm glad you like the vid. I don't know if I'll be able to entice Kala and Ashley's significant others to join in but I'll certainly try. As for the one month limit... well, I don't think it's a hard-and-fast enforced rule. That is, I don't think my store will suddenly shut down exactly one month after my last clip is posted. (I could be wrong.) But in any case, I do have some videos that are "almost" good to go, so I should be able to make it in under the one month limit anyway. If nothing else, I did promise to post Ashley's Revenge in segments for people who didn't want to buy the whole thing, and I could just post that. I'd rather get some new material up though, and I'll try.
And yes yes, I know, I know, I need to get cracking on the editing stuff. I'll try.
As for working with DareRing: I've exchanged a few friendly emails with the proprietor there, but that was a long time ago (before I even got started) and maybe I should reopen that discussion. But frankly, I have no idea how the heck he makes money with the price he charges. If any of my readers are unfamiliar with the site, I very highly recommend it... it's a fantastic deal and would be a bargain at twice the price.
Anons: please sign your post. I allow anonymous posting but I'd really prefer you pick a pseudonym for yourself and sign your posts with it so if I reply I don't have to address you as "anon 5:00 AM".
Myself: Yeah, the Ashton/Ashley/Mia shoot was my favorite, too. A great time was had by all, and some fantastic videos came out of it. I'm still way too busy to get back into full scale production (and am only doing the shoot today because it's my last opportunity to get more of Ashley) but as soon as I'm ready to start shooting regularly again, I'll definitely have to get Ashton and Mia back.
Welp, here I am at the shoot... Kala isn't here yet so I'm just hanging out with Ash. She says hello to you all. Last call for suggestions...
Holy helling hell, guys. You have no idea. I hereby promise to do everything I can to get the clips from this shoot edited and published ASAP. Christ almighty this is hot.
That is nice of you to inform us the shoot was hot. I can't hardly wait to see the result.
I think you did this on purpose, to make us (or at least me) crave for more ;-)
I do not see a link but i appreaciate all your work.
Follow the instructions that appear in boldface, and you'll find the link :)
"But frankly, I have no idea how the heck he makes money with the price he charges"
Well, part if it is that no one like Clips4Sale is taking a cut; he just needs to cover hosting costs. Part of it is that a lot more people will pay $20 for a one month subscription that gets them many videos than will pay $20 and up for a single shorter video. I bought a subscription there and downloaded everything in the month I had, and if they ever put up a couple more games, I'd buy another month to catch up. I've never bought any of your videos, even though there are several I'd like to see, because the price is too high- you're missing out on making any money from people like me. If you switched to a subscription model, I'd gladly pay $20 to download everything you've made so far. I admit I'd let my subscription lapse, but if you keep putting out material, I'd pay another $20 every few months to catch up again. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that you'll find several times the people willing to pay into that model than are willing to pay $35 for one (admittedly long) video.
But that "hosting cost" is the backbreaker, when you're now looking at the newer hi-def files Red is creating running up to 600 megs on the two most recent postings. Even the older files were averaging around 100 megs. If he went back to creating tiny-sized files and only had a few of them, then $20/month might work, since no one user could leech enough at one time to overwhelm the paid bandwidth. But with filesizes increasingly pushing towards the 1 gig threshold, a few leechers could produce a bandwidth bill of hundreds of dollars in a matter of days, and thousands of dollars over the course of a month.
The trick is to find a way of balancing bandwidth against cost, and right now that balance isn't in Red's favor.
Hmmm... I was just gonna stay away from that one, but since SGF has spoken up on my behalf, I guess I'll throw in a couple of thoughts:
"Well, part if it is that no one like Clips4Sale is taking a cut; he just needs to cover hosting costs."
Really? You think credit card processing is free? You don't think CCBill is there to take its slice of the pie? It's a much smaller slice than Clips4Sale's, to be sure, but it's still a chunk.
"I bought a subscription there and downloaded everything in the month I had, and if they ever put up a couple more games, I'd buy another month to catch up."
Yeah, me too. But that's a pretty big "if", wouldn't you say? DareRing seems to update about once every other leap year, and undoubtedly at least part of the reason is to keep costs down to effectively zero.
"If you switched to a subscription model, I'd gladly pay $20 to download everything you've made so far."
Oh, I'm sure you would. And if they sold gold-plated Ferraris for a nickel, I'd gladly buy one of them, too.
"I've never bought any of your videos, even though there are several I'd like to see, because the price is too high"
What can I say? I'm sorry you're poor? I hope your financial situation improves?
The total retail price of all my videos put together, discounting things like the promo clip, is somewhere around $260. There are plenty of people, myself included, to whom that price falls within the range of an affordable luxury. That's about as much as a dinner for two at a nice place with a good bottle. That's about as much as a copy of Rock Band and a bunch of downloadable content. That's a little bit less than a couple of tickets to Le Reve at the Wynn in Las Vegas (an awesome show, if you haven't been.) If it's too much for your wallet... well, sucks to be you.
"you're missing out on making any money from people like me."
And there's the key point that you're missing. I'm not doing this to make money. I have a job, a job which pays me absurdly well to do work that I love doing. No matter how successful lostbets.com becomes, it's highly unlikely that it will ever compete with my salary.
I'm doing this because fans of stripping games have been waiting for years for somebody to come along and make vids like this, and nobody has, so I stepped up. It's for them that I'm doing this, and the price is a way for them to chip in for the substantial costs of making these vids, and maybe give me a little bit of compensation for the hundreds of hours of work I've invested. Because I'm never expecting lostbets.com to be a significant chunk of my income, because it's more of a hobby than a business, there's a limit to how much work I'm willing to do and how much crap I'm willing to put up with. You want to pay $20 for every bit of material I've produced? Fuck you. I worked really hard on the 21 videos I'm currently selling, not to mention spending many thousands of dollars, and I deserve more than $0.95 each for them.
How Darering has lasted is beyond me. It's by far my favorite adult site on the web (Red, you're a close second and gaining). Considering he had to pay 5-6 people per game, letting his entire collection go for $20 is crazy. I don't think his lack of updates is to keep costs down, so much as a matter of finding people to play. The last few updates he had seemed to have more "experienced" players that didn't give the right feel to what they were doing. His new endeavor, while not for the strip game lovers, is another great bargain and has some really good amateur content.
$1/minute for your stuff is a bit much, but the product is high quality and you get to keep it. While darering is probably the best value on the net, the other extreme are the sites that charge $35/month and don't let you keep the content. While your stuff is a bit steep (especially with the lack of guy vs. girl games), it is by no means "over priced". I think of it as something of a treat.
There will always be people that want more for less. There are always people that want me to give them my darering collection for free. Don't let it upset you too much.
Somewhere there has to be a happy medium. Your library is getting large enough that you might have some new options. My idea would be to put all of the current videos "in the vault" so to speak. Increase the price of each a bit (or keep them the same price and find a better hosting model to make them more valuable to you). At the same time have a "mini-collection" of the month. This would include a new game, teasers for the next month, and 2-4 "games from the vault". These could be older games (or parts of longer games) in lower resolution. If you charged $20-25/month for that, you would probably get a lot of people willing to subscribe every month for the new stuff and to add to their collection with the vault games. You would only need one "new" game per month, and it would go into the vault after the month was over. Just rotating the selection available could get you a lot of repeat business.
Ashley leaving is a downer. Just make sure that any time she comes to visit, you make her spend the weekend in constant competition for her modesty. I'd also like to see her come back to be the lovely co-hostess of the strip gameshow you're going to do nudge nudge, wink wink (btw, I have a lot of ideas for that if you ever think you can pull it off).
Again, keep up the good work...
Veni, vidi, volo in dominum redire.
"What can I say? I'm sorry you're poor? I hope your financial situation improves?"
Funny man. Affordability isn't the problem; I could buy your without any financial hardship. It doesn't mean your library is worth anywhere near $260 to me, though, just as receiving $1 for every person that watches a video doesn't seem to be worth it to you. I was explaining how Darering can make money; the basic economic principle is that to make the most money, you have to maximize (the price per item*the number of items bought). The number of items bought goes up when the price goes down. Is your optimal profit at a price greater than $20 for the whole collection? Yeah, probably, but that doesn't change the fact that lower prices would make you more money than you are now AND more of the fans would see the videos.
"You want to pay $20 for every bit of material I've produced? Fuck you."
I don't see where I said you had to bring the price point down to something I was willing to pay. I was answering your comment on how Darering makes money and opining that you could make more money from a similar business model. I don't see why that brought so much ire from you; I didn't say anything like "You want me to pay $35 for a one hour video? Fuck you, I could go to Darering and buy 25 hours of video for $20. I bet you'd like to sell me your 1970 Torus for $100,000, too." Also, your "I don't do it for the money, I do it for the fans" contradicts pretty heavily with your "Fuck you, I deserve more than $.95 for each of them (even if I got paid more in the end and more fans saw them)." You may want to think about how those two sentiments line up, because it sounds like either the money or your pride at having anyone who sees your stuff pay a certain amount (regardless of what you get paid in the end) is the most important thing here.
That said, I do hope you keep making these videos, even if you never price them in a range I'm willing to pay, because you are right that there are fans that really want this material- besides, your promos are always fun to see, too. You're certainly a better person than I for putting your time and money into this, and I hope doing so works out for you.
Crosis: The putting things "in the vault" idea is a good one, but here's the problem. I've recently come to understand just why Clips4Sale takes such a hefty cut: it's because they do all the work, and more than that, they take all the responsibility. Look, we all know that there have been times in the past (and the present, honestly) where I've had zero time to spend on lostbets.com. Right now, what does that mean? It means that updates trickle out slowly. But what would it mean if I were running any sort of subscription site? What if there were a bug in the server code that an attacker could exploit? Or what if someone emailed me to complain that his download didn't work? Or a mother was ticked off that her 8-year-old "borrowed" her credit card and used it to buy pornography from me? Or a federal agent was sniffing around demanding proof that everyone in my material was of age?
Right now, all that crap is handled by Clips4Sale. If I were doing my own thing, I would be responsible for dealing with it, and it wouldn't matter how busy I was with other stuff or how little I could afford to divert my attention. By doing any sort of self-hosting arrangement, I'd be assuming a responsibility, a duty to devote time to the site when necessary, and I just don't feel like I can make that kind of commitment.
That being said, there is still one way I could monetize my content without going through Clips4Sale, and that's to sell DVDs. I'd be able to do credit card processing through PayPal, and there are plenty of software solutions for order processing. I'm seriously looking into the possibility, and will probably do so before, uh, the end of the decade. (Even then, I'm worried about some thing. For example, a very significant number of my customers are not based in the United States. While I'm sure the weak dollar has helped make my prices more attractive to them, I have no idea of the legal ramifications of shipping adult material across national borders.)
Anon: I apologize for being uncivil in my response to you. I was ticked off, but that's no excuse. I'm just so tired of people whining about my prices. This isn't directed at you specifically, but to everyone who wants to tell me how to run this thing: if you've got a better idea, do it yourself. Believe me, it isn't that hard to get started, and nothing would please me more than for somebody else to do this, so I don't have to. It's not nearly as fun as it was at the start.
By the way, "I don't know how he makes money" was a rhetorical statement, along the lines of "I don't know how she stays so thin, the way she eats." Of course I know how DareRing makes money: by taking in more revenue than it costs. I've said before and I'll say again that DareRing is an excellent value and I highly recommend that everyone purchase their stuff. But however much revenue they're taking in, it doesn't seem to be enough to fund many updates.
Offering DVD's sounds like a good addition to downloaded clips. I think both methods will still be attractive. International shipping doesn't seem to be that expensive. As you'll no doubt know SGC once offered a DVD with videos, don't know if it's still there, but might consider throwing a very kind question at Ed about any such ramifications.
Just adding another thing to the discussion. It might help people to choose which videos to download if spoilers and/or screencaps of some sort were available for every video. As taste is undoubtedly personal that might guide some to buy videos they'd otherwise be uncertain of.
What do you all think about that?
Price elasticity.
50 units at 10$ = 500
10 units at 40$ = 400
Im glad your doing wut you love. If you can automate your downloads you will make more. I know, Iknow your not doing it to make money. If so than why not post for free? B/c you know theres value in your material. However the internet provides lots of demand. Just a thought.
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