Re: To all ponographers :how competitive is porn?
@ the OP,
Old thread, I know. But I'm reviving it to add another perspective since I'm about to re-enter the industry myself. I first got involved in porn as a producer of amateur stuff when I was a college student in the 90s. Back then, people were still going to adult video stores to rent movies, and internet porn was relatively new. Online porn was mostly limited to pics because of the technology. Back then multi-gigabyte storage drives that can hold large video files didn't yet exist and most people were on dial-up connections that were too slow to download or stream full-length movies anyway. But even then, there were a lot of people who were getting into the online porn business so competition was always there. The technology has changed a lot over the years, but many of the things that make porn so competitive today existed in some form back then, too. Surfers who were looking for free stuff got plenty of it from the TGPs, toplists, newsgroups, and search engine groups. Those things have been replaced by the tube sites, P2Ps, and online forums like this one. And the annoying pop-ups that used to plague the free stuff of yore is the same as the pop-unders on the tube sites today. But then, as now, if you have original and decent quality content and you know how to market your sites you can still make money from porn because there are still a lot of people who are willing to pay for it---IF the stuff is good and if the webmaster is regular and consistent with the updates.
My old college buddy and I started out doing small straight sites with mostly solo girl stuff. We tried to do gay porn for a while but eventually went back to doing solo girl and boy/girl straight stuff because we made more money from that. Another reason we didn't stick with gay porn for long is that most of the guys who were interested in working with us were not gay and weren't at all interested in doing anything even remotely sexual with other dudes, even when we offered them more money---significantly more money (Man how times have changed!!! LOL). Those guys were pretty hot stuff but they would only agree to do solo j/o stuff, and we knew we wouldn't be able to keep the gay sites going for long without hardcore content so we decided not to bother.
We never "made it big" but did ok. We made a pretty decent profit after we deducted the costs---which was basically only what we paid the models and to rent the hotel suites where we did our shoots since we produced the content and designed and operated the websites ourselves. We hooked up with people at Ynot and learned the business there. Then we started out using AVSs and moved up to operating pay sites with our own merchant account.
It was a lot of fun, but it was HARD work! You have no idea how much time and effort it takes to maintain a website until you have done it yourself. And most webmasters I knew were running not just one or a few, but many different ones. We screwed up a lot with the content production part of it in the beginning but after a while we got really good at things like lighting, makeup, making good pictures, and then some pretty good quality hardcore video scenes. Of course, there was no HD back then and the digital still camera that we started out with was just 1 megapixel. LOL. But the stuff we made still looked pretty good. I've been playing with some new equipment and the images are stunning. The latest generation of prosumer HD digicams are nothing like the old SD camcorder that I used to use years ago. I don't even need a light meter with this one. I can shoot in a 24p set up and make video movies that look like film. and I can blue screen my scenes and chroma key the models into some really awesome looking backdrops instead of the typical bedroom/hotel room setting. Throw in a basic three-light set-up, a decent lens, an off camera boom, a tripod, a steady cam and a few miscellaneous accessories and you've basically got most of what you need for less than $25k. And if you want a really good editing program Media Composer is the best one to cut with. But the tech stuff is just one part of it. Harder still is finding the kind of models you want (or can afford). Even if you're working with a modest budget you can still buy good quality used professional equipment, or even consumer gear to start.
The reason I stopped doing porn is because I had finished undergrad and moved away from the area for med school. The dude I used to do it with became an engineer and was offered a job right after he graduated so he didn't have the time to do it anymore either. I want to get back into it now more for fun than to get rich.
As far as competition nowadays goes, I don't believe its prohibitive. From my observation, porn is VERY genre-oriented now. You just have to find a niche and sell it better than the other guy. Although, I have to say that I really don't see all that much competition in porn nowadays---particularly gay porn. Most of the studios are still making the generic tattooed muscle boy stuff, most of the amateur sites are in a perpetual round robin thing with the pretty white boy jock/twink stuff, and altogether the big thing now is straight-worship with gay4pay actors. If you can make a site that's at least a bit more original than these you just may hit the ball out of the park and make it big after all. The big challenge is that of marketing your sites so that people will not only find them but will also buy memberships/downloads. In the old days we used to rely on link lists and search engines. Nowadays you can easily upload teaser promo clips to the tube sites and the P2Ps. All you have to do is embed your site url somewhere in the video frame.
If you really want to learn about getting into the porn biz check out the Ynot . com webmaster resource site. There's lots of good info over there and its free. I've known a lot of the guys and gals over there for many years and they are really cool people. If you read through the info and have questions they will give you good advice.
