It began with the foot fetish crowd. "People wanted custom videos," Neil, founder and owner of Clips4Sale, said. "They kept bugging me. I had to upload videos to my home server and then give them a link." But, what started as a minor annoyance rapidly blossomed into a business, and by 2001, Neil had started Clips4Sale.com.
"After doing [the custom videos] a bunch of times for people, I said I might as well put these up for sale, straight up," Neil explained. "I started doing it by myself; I did that for about a year and saw the potential and started getting producers [who were] also into foot fetish." Realizing how well the site worked for them, producers began creating a variety of content for the enterprise, Neil said. Shortly afterward, amateur producers got into the act, eventually becoming the biggest contributors of Clips4Sale’s content.
"Most are amateur producers from home," Neil said. "I didn’t chase after Vivid, Playboy—those guys. I didn’t really feel the need to go after them, because I think regular people produce just as good—if not even better—content than these guys. And, they have obviously proved it, because amateurs are making $5,000, $6,000, and $7,000 a month off their own chick at home."
Clips4Sale earns money by selling video clips by the minute. "A clip can be anywhere from two minutes to an hour [long]," Neil said. "Customers get to keep the clip after the download."
The decision to charge a fee of approximately $1 per minute primarily was based on gut instinct, but that fit with Clips4Sale’s business plan—which, Neil admitted, was nonexistent at first. "Honestly, I’ve taken all the risks myself and put up all my own money," he said. "And, I think I’ve made good moves so far. Smart decisions—that’s about all I can base [an explanation for success] on. I’ve done totally different things, and things have worked out."
Clips4Sale’s first challenge was to capture traffic. "I took a large chunk of money in the beginning and started putting it on websites like [TheHun.com]. You know, places like that, they get a ton of traffic," Neil explained. "By putting a bunch of money into traffic up front, I got a lot of customers in the door. This also helped the producers say, ‘Hey! There is potential here. I’ll keep on doing it.’ This helped get more and more producers, because they saw how many people were making money."
In the six years since Neil founded Clips4Sale, competitors have tried to undercut his prices. "Other people have come along since then, [and they] try to, you know, chop the prices down a lot cheaper," he explained. "But to me, that kind of screws up the whole thing, because you are going to devalue the content. Say, for example, someone comes up with a site to compete with Clips4Sale, and they want to charge a lot less. The producers aren’t going to make as much money, so they are going to say, ‘Why am I going to go there? I’m going to make half the money, whereas I can sell [my product] to Clips4Sale and make the full potential that I need.’ That’s why most clone sites don’t succeed. They are around for a couple months, and then they disappear."
Does Neil still love what he does now as much as he did in the beginning? The answer is a resounding "yes," he said. "See, the beauty of this is, you don’t have to ship anything to a customer—[for instance] a DVD," he said. "You can make it high quality, just upload it, and while you are sleeping, the [consumer] can get the video. That’s the beauty of that."
