Content fuels profits, yet content costs money.Dictated by an abysmally brief "product life-cycle" and the changing demands of consumers, acquiring content is one of the key challenges when establishing a presence in the online Adult sector. In order to attract and retain customers, Web sites must remain fresh by commanding new and constantly evolving content, whether new galleries, streams or links.
Options are many when it comes to content acquisition, but with cost effectiveness the ultimate key, the recurring costs of buying and leasing can be an ongoing burden in and of itself. Meanwhile, the autonomy of creating your own content and eliminating the middleman sounds idyllic – but what is the reality of shouldering the expense of a large production department?
As a rule, and in order to cater to the whims of selective consumers, today’s site owners need to be armed with a constant supply of new and hopefully exclusive content. Many Adult pay sites and networks use leased content and many use bought content, but at the end of the day whether to buy or lease is the core argument, as is the common algorithm facing the site owner, the ratio of one to the other.
Decisions, Decisions
Hosting is also an issue; for bought content, the purchaser must serve that content on his/her own hosting platform. For leased content, a provider is the host. For a pay site, content leasing is simple, yet for a free site, finding an Adult leaser can be problematic.
When it comes to content, thematic originality also comes into play, as site owners need to take into account the uniqueness of the purchased or leased content. Like most pop culture outlets, there are fads and saturation points constantly pushing and pulling a fickle consumer base hobbled by an innately short attention span.
Like a quick edit, hot model or glam packaging, eyes are drawn to exclusivity. Market leaders and profit makers are generally the innovators who constantly pioneer new trends and ideas, and though trends come and go, the clever (or real) marketers know when the market will be receptive, and when it will not.
Whether flash heavy Web sites, quadraphonic stereo or glow in the dark yo-yos, timing and research has paid off for a surprising number of sex content trendsetters A look, perhaps, more appropriately at the recent “reality content” craze, might be significant.
Until recently, reality content has been the flavor of the month, with a host of amateur girls strutting their stuff to a keen consumer base. Over the past year or so, a glut of such content on the market has seen a downturn in consumer interest, which now seems more focused on the old world high-production, porn starlet-type content.
Technology too is a big issue. With some vision and forethought, the right tech mix can transform content expenditure, but with sites becoming more advanced and interactive, increased complexity raises surfer demand and expectation.
Content re-purposing is an obvious step. A video shoot can spawn screen grabs, still images for print, a webcam feed, audio outtakes, action highlights, calendar pics or a DVD compilation. Once the domain of the big hitters with hefty budgets, live video/chat streaming is now even affordable for smaller sites, with new software meaning overheads can be quickly recovered from a rapidly expanding customer base.
Meanwhile, standards, such as JPEG, TCP, Java, and J2EE have allowed developers to write to standard interfaces and protocols, creating much more powerful programs in record time.
Various software options can also automate content management. More comprehensive content management software solutions can cost thousands, while cheaper versions are available. The bottom line dictates that surmising your programming and technological capability to manage content is imperative.
Multi-Purposing
According to Gregory L. Clayman, president of VideoSecrets Media, Inc., the key factor influencing his decision towards content acquisition is what purpose the content will be used for. “If a webmaster needs to add 5,000 pictures to create galleries,” says Clayman, “purchasing content will most likely be the most cost effective and time efficient way to accomplish this. If a webmaster is looking for pictures or video to add to an ongoing Web site theme, or is creating a new Web site and tour that is theme-based, creating your own specific content would most likely work best. Finally, if a webmaster is looking to add additional marquee content that would be impossible for the either the webmaster to create or purchase outright, then leasing such content would make the most amount of sense rather than going without.”
Clayman says VideoSecrets currently use all three content business models in order to cater to different types of needs. “We create our own content for projects such as our flirt4freevip.com Web site that solely revolves around the exclusive content for flirt4free and nothing else.
“As far as the VideoSecrets.com mega-site goes,” he adds, “our goal here is to provide the end user with as much content as possible. In this situation, we create our own, use our own leased content, purchase content and also lease it. And even though we lease content ourselves, such as from JennaMaxxx, Totally Tera, and Private channels, we still lease other companies’ content to make sure we have all of our bases covered.”
To Buy, Perchance to Lease
Mike Price, owner of affiliate program SilverCash, says he doesn't believe there is a right or wrong model for acquiring content, as long as it pertains to the particular needs of the company. ”We go whatever way we need to depending on the project at hand and the content available,” says Price. “However if I had a choice I would always prefer owning the content outright over leasing, for a few reasons, including 2257 [federal labeling] requirements and exclusivity.”
Eric Matis, Director of Marketing at Adult.com, sees a combination of buying and leasing as being the common tactic. “Generally this is the best for us; we lease but also have in-house photographers, and we re-purpose our content. It’s generally the best mix for us to use every avenue available in order to ensure content exclusivity. Our content creation and leasing is similar in that it is reality styled and driven. We’re creating a larger environment in terms of content in order to retain a longer pace.”
Having had several years experience in realms of content creation, Matis has learnt much about the process. He cautions, “Starting out, people can generally get away with purchasing content, though it’s a common mistake to think they can keep doing that, because eventually they have to think about retention.”
For Suze Randall, President of Suze.net and one of the storied erotic photographers, content creation is the key. “We produce over 95 percent of our own content for Suze.net,” she says. “Although this is enormously expensive – an average of about $6,000 per shoot – we feel that it gives Suze.net both class and exclusivity.”
Suze.net licenses all content through their affiliate program, Pics4Clicks, which offers free content in exchange for traffic, at www.suze.net/webmasters.html. “We made the change because we are looking to increase webmaster participation,” says Randall.
Bulking Up
Jonathan Silverstein, owner of contentblowout.com, is all about bulk content sales. “I come from a slightly different space in the content business. I am the sales and marketing arm for several content providers.” He also claims to be the “go to” source for all webmaster bulk content needs, and extols the virtues of purchasing in volume.
“There are huge benefits to selling bulk packages as opposed to selling by sets, in my opinion,” Silverstein says. “First and foremost is the magnitude of the deal. Webmasters get an enormous amount of content for pennies on the dollar, and though they don’t make purchases as often as webmasters who buy sets, they usually come back and purchase any “blowout” package I offer.”
According to Silverstein, blowout packages also usually come with a more liberal license than most. “The majority of the packages I sell allow for unlimited domain licenses and free hosted webmaster image and movie galleries,” he says. “These are incredible motivators for individual webmasters and large program operators alike.”
Silverstein also believes that from his own business perspective it makes more sense to sell in volume. “I’ve sold literally hundreds of packages over the past two years and the prices per package range from between $750 and $5,000 each.”
Ownership Society
Asked about his decisions regarding particular acquisition models, Greg Clayman says that shooting original content allows for the creation of highly specialized content, but that’s not the only upside. “You also own it and its respective copyrights, so unless you sell or lease it, it is exclusive to you. The main con of producing your own content is that it can be expensive.”
Clayman says buying content allows a Web site to have an abundance of postable material almost overnight without having to go through the cost and hassle of creating it. “The cons of purchasing content is that you almost never own it outright and are just licensing it. Also, since you don't own it, you can't sell it. Finally, unless you are prepared to pay big money, the content that you purchase is most likely being purchased by other webmasters as well, which cuts into the exclusivity factor.”
On Leasing, Clayman says there are many stars, Adult film companies and excellent photographers that will never sell content, with the only remaining option to lease. “This is a great option when you want a star like Jenna Jameson, Tera Patrick or a company’s content such as Wicked Pictures, Private or the Falcon Models for your Web site,” says Clayman, adding, “Most leased content comes in a nice package coupled with marketing graphics. The only real con is that you don't own the content, but since almost all of the available leased galleries or content consoles that are this type and style of content could never be purchased for any amount of money anyway, if your members want it this is usually the only way to get it for them.”
The Future of Content Acquisition
Both Mike Price of SilverCash and Eric Matis of Adult.com believe 2005 will see more content being shot in-house and kept exclusive by the creators and fewer cookie cutter-styled sites. As far as leased or purchased content goes, according to Greg Clayman, “Prices will probably continue to drop as content becomes more abundant throughout the industry. On the other side, creation of content will never fall below a certain cost level, since it involves labor.
“Leasing content will never go away,” adds Clayman, a belief he attributes to the fact that some content will never be available for sale and can never be created or re-created. “I see the future of content leasing adopting some new models. I see webmasters having two options with leased content.”
The first involves having the webmaster pay the bill and then giving the content to their members for the cost of their membership. The other and more innovative option would be for content producers to provide content packages to webmasters for free with teaser pictures and video and then pass the cost onto the end user if they are interested in viewing the specific content using a micro-transaction.
“Many webmasters will take content if they can offer more options to their end-users, pay nothing to provide it, and receive money as a commission based upon their customers’ usage,” says Clayman. “The best example of this on a large scale is flirt4free.com for live content, or a VOD Web site for recording offerings.”
Also looking forward, Suze Randall believes content for some niche markets will stay cheap or get even cheaper because of the exponential increase in amateur photographers. Her solution is a time-honored one: shoot to excellence. “To keep the quality the best on the Web, we have chosen to go in the opposite direction, spending increasing amounts of money,” says Randall, “because top models have become increasingly expensive, as have make-up artists, costumes, props and set designers.”
