This article originally ran in the January 2014 issue of AVN magazine.
Since 2006 my company Elevated X has provided paysite management CMS software to thousands of adult sites, including a growing number of leading studios. We might already be powering your paysites and we definitely power the sites of at least several of your main competitors.
Over the past several years much of my time has been spent studying paysites to identify what they’re doing right and, most importantly, what they’re doing wrong. There are several trends among most studio paysites that are working against them from a sales perspective.
It may ease your mind to hear that in general the “studio” content product is still quite good. The amount of free content available on tubes is damaging, as we all know. While this presents a big obstacle, in no way is it a death sentence for studio-branded paysites. The truth is that a lot of sites are doing more harm to themselves than the tubes are doing to them.
I joined several big sites to check them out and what I saw was disappointing. Many are severely outdated. Videos are being offered in sizes and formats that haven’t been standard in years. Some sites only offer content formats that have been outdated since 2008. A lot of sites are offering downloads in old formats like Flash and WMV that can’t be viewed on iPads or other tablets, won’t work with Apple TV and won’t load at all on iPhones or any other mobile devices. This is a very big negative in the mind of a modern customer. Many customers won’t join a site because of this; countless others who do join will cancel immediately when they realize how outdated the site is. At that point you’ve lost them, maybe forever.
More than half of the sites I joined are not competitive in today’s world. These studio sites are failing to sell because they’re no longer giving customers what they want. This is actually more damaging than tubes and piracy. I say this because the reality is that your customers are still buying and they will still buy from you if you repackage your content in a way that sells to them.
A lot of people don’t want to join a big “all you can eat” site or browse tube sites hunting through thumbnails trying to find what interests them.
What they will do, however, is type in the name of the studios they remember from past decades and check out the studio’s websites. This is why the majority of the gross web revenue that stays in your pocket comes from type-in traffic. These are the sales you want more of because they’re the most profitable. Type-in buyers also tend to be the most loyal customers.
Believe it or not, even with piracy and all the content on the free tubes and file sharing sites, studios still have a big advantage. The older your studio, the more you’ve got a lot going for you.
When did horn-blowing on the part of studio owners stop happening? Some sites have a little text or a small logo mentioning all their awards, but none really use the hype to their advantage and showcase their collections of award-winning titles, scenes or movies featuring award-winning talent. My first thought was, “Why doesn’t every site have a section of their award winners?” One would think that showing potential customers your very best goods would help convince them to buy a membership, but this isn’t happening on most sites. If this has helped you sell movies for all these years, why aren’t you hyping the shit out of it on your website?
What surprised me the most is that although many of them mention how many movies they have, sections that listed all the different series they’ve produced over the years were missing. Surely showing a customer the tremendous variety of different movies in so many different themes and genres they have access to would be a big selling point, so why this is being omitted is a mystery.
In no particular order, these are just a handful of the reasons people join studio sites:
• They’re fans of a specific video series.
• They’ve known the studio brand for years and it’s familiar to them.
• They like the production style or the type of movies being shot.
• They remember specific videos from years ago.
• They trust the studio brand and feel safe buying a membership.
• They like that they can access many years’ worth of videos in one place.
An association with the brand and the history is missing from most studio sites. Sites are devoid of anything for a customer to identify with. By fixing this, every studio site will cater to more customers and will make more sales. This can be done by taking the list of reasons people join from above and checking things off the list.
Today’s consumer has a shorter attention span and seemingly endless options. You can capitalize on this by showcasing your strengths. In addition to a proven back catalog, being old, reliable and familiar gives studios a massive sales advantage over any other adult site online.
Here are some sales-boosting suggestions:
1. If you have uber-popular contract stars, give them their own section on the tour. This will give their existing fans a chance to get to know them better, give new fans an introduction and entice people to join to see more.
2. Let people know that the old, reliable adult brand they remember is still alive and well. Make sure you tell them that while you have lots of new movies, they’ll also get access to all their old favorites inside your site. Access to classic models, scenes they remember and old favorites is a big reason many people join studio sites instead of sites like Brazzers or big all-you-can-eat sites like Video Box.
3. Work toward making your content modern and offer HD-quality 1280 resolution videos in MP4 format with additional sizes and speeds for tablet and mobile phone users. Advertise that your content is available for viewing anywhere, at any time and on any device.
4. Showcase your best sellers and award winners. Build tour pages with box covers and well-produced trailers and show a few reviewer quotes and award icons beside each title. Make your site sell itself.
5. Showcase that you have the kind of variety only a studio can offer. The easiest way to do this is to display a list of all your different series—both current and from past months, years and decades—along with a brief description and a list of niches covered.
There are millions of people online every day, many of them with credit cards and many of them open to the idea of buying adult content if it’s presented to them in the right way. When faced with an endless number of buying options, many consumers will immediately seek out the comfort of the old reliable brand that’s familiar to them. This is where you come in—but you have to give them what they want. Do this in a way that appeals to the wants and needs of your modern customers, and web sales will continue to flourish.
AJ Hall is a 13-year adult industry veteran and the co-founder and CEO of award-winning adult software company Elevated X Inc., a provider of adult CMS software. Hall has spoken at industry trade shows and is a contributing writer for several trade publications. Elevated X powers more than 2,000 leading adult sites and has been nominated for 11 industry awards for Software Company of the Year.
