This article originally ran in AVNmagazine. Clips4Sale.com is an exhibitor at the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo, held January 21-24 at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Las Vegas. (At left, the Clips4Sale booth at the 2014 AEE)
In a world awash in free porn—some of it stolen, some of it just given away—there’s still a place where amateur producers can go to find buyers for their homemade erotica. That site, Clips4Sale.com, more than lives up to its name, with over 4 million clips hawked in online “stores” operated by thousands of producers covering more than 800 niche categories.
How narrow are the niches? Obsessions range from abs to zits, with everything imaginable in between. And there are microscopic subdivisions: For instance, take your basic foot fetish, and cut it up into 55 narrow slices—from Arab Foot Fetish to Wrinkled Soles. The mind boggles.
And though many of the clips are sexual in nature, Clips4Sale also offers a multitude of footage that features such micro-fetishes as sneezing, tooth-brushing, yawning, flossing, spitting, crying and other seemingly mundane activities. And it’s all ready for instant purchase and download.
In addition to being a godsend for voyeurs, Clips4Sale also offers exhibitionists a chance to make bank while getting their kink on. We asked the Clips4Sale team a few questions about what it takes to get started, as well as some details about some of the site’s bigger success stories.
How long does it take for a newbie to register an account and create an online store?
It takes about 10 minutes to sign up online, and the account will be reviewed and activated within 24 hours.
What do they need to get started? Do they need to come up with a name and a logo? How many clips do you recommend to get started?
To open and activate a new studio a producer must have ten unique clips. Once these clips are reviewed and approved, the producer can start selling the content on Clips4Sale.
What do they need to do regarding 2257 record-keeping?
Since Clips4Sale serves strictly as a hosting company, the producers are responsible for and take care of their own record-keeping.
What are the most popular niches on Clips4Sale? Which are the niches most accessible for newbie producers?
Some of the more popular niches are Foot Fetish, Bondage, FemDom, Wrestling, MILF and Superheroines. Since each producer is different, Clips4Sale has categories for everyone and they can pick whatever niche best suits their shooting style and fetish.
Are there some niche interests that are under-served that you would recommend that producers pursue?
Since each fetish is very particular and each fetishist has his or her own likes and dislikes, we recommend that producers pursue niches they themselves are attracted to as well. It makes shooting the fetish all that much more fun! Producers should not produce content they don’t understand; it’s always best to have an understanding of the “particulars” for whatever fetish a producer wishes to shoot.
Have you seen an uptick in traffic for BDSM-related material since the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy became popular in the mainstream?
We have always had a very strong foothold within this particular fetish. BDSM has always been popular and customers do search out “what’s new” when it becomes more mainstream. Fifty Shades of Grey opened the door for more people to express themselves and perhaps satisfy their curiosity as well at Clips4Sale.
Ashley Fires is one of the performers most closely associated with Clips4Sale. When and how did she first get involved with the site?
Fires answers this question herself: “I first began my career as the Clips4Sale.com spokesmodel in 2006. After being hired a few times as a model for foot fetish clips for a new website called Clips4Sale.com, the producer who hired me asked to give my phone number to the owner, who contacted me and asked me to do a radio show in Los Angeles and talk about Clips4Sale.com.
“I was thrilled to speak on behalf of the most unique website I had ever heard of. The radio show went well.
“Then the owner of Clips4Sale.com asked me to be the spokesmodel. Thrilled again!!
“I began to explain C4S to people as an iTunes of fetish porn, a YouTube of niche content unlike any other website. The concept of buying a clip instead of joining a monthly paysite was appealing to everyone I spoke with, and my excitement for this new website grew. In 2006, however, not many people had heard of such a site; now it has become a well-branded household name and I got to be part of helping Clips4Sale.com catapult to what it is today.
“It has been a wonderful eight years serving as a representative of the most innovative adult website ever created.”
Forbidden Fruits Films co-founder Jodi West mentioned that she had got her start in adult with handjob videos on Clips4Sale.com. Can you tell us about other porn stars or directors who have gotten their start with their own Clips4Sale stores?
We are very proud to be the launching ground for many new and successful producers who started on Clips4sale and are still going strong with us as well. Many can be found in our Featured Studios on Clips4Sale, which promotes exclusive studios on our website. A few names that come to mind are Tara Tainton, Cory Chase and Rachel Steele.
As a flip side to this, can you point to some veteran performers on the site who are purely amateur and sell content only through their Clips4Sale stores?
Yes, you can take a look at studios such as Tara Tainton (c4s.com/21571) and Jerky Girls (c4s.com/2511).
Professional webmasters also use Clips4Sale to sell watermarked and branded clips and images designed to drive customers to their paysites. Can you comment on any specific paysites that have seen success from this marketing approach?
While we do allow for producers to watermark their content as well as reciprocal link from Clips4Sale to their personal paysites, we do not encourage it. We have been able to show that doing so only hurts them in the long run. As a customer of Clips4Sale, that customer knows they are buying clips individually, so when a producer links to their own member website where for the bargain price of only $19.99 they can get access to their whole clip catalog, that only hurts their overall sales. As such, we do try to educate producers on these facts—and in the long run they see that the targeted traffic Clips4Sale has when they update with new clips is worth much more to them than the diluted traffic that may trickle over to their paysites for a one-time membership sale.
