so...uh exactly how do you start a paysite?

[JoeSchmoeProductions]

Register a domain....select a host...upload content? Im kinda confused..Im thinking Id like to have a site to sell my amateur vids on...But dont know exactly how to do it..Can you guys help me out with advice?

On a side note...Ive read that people think.. that surfers prefer VOD over subscribing to paysites...They mentioned things like recurring billing, and surfers concerns over frequency of updates, accuracy/exclusivenss of the content advertised, and other things.. What do you guys think about that?

Thanks
Joe

[MaxPower]

I sent U a PM, sure we can work on some of that too. BTW not sure NOw is the best time to open a site IMO. But sure others will not think so

[Gaystoryman]

Register a domain....select a host...upload content? Im kinda confused..Im thinking Id like to have a site to sell my amateur vids on...But dont know exactly how to do it..Can you guys help me out with advice?

On a side note...Ive read that people think.. that surfers prefer VOD over subscribing to paysites...They mentioned things like recurring billing, and surfers concerns over frequency of updates, accuracy/exclusivenss of the content advertised, and other things.. What do you guys think about that?

Thanks
Joe

The smartest move you could do is to talk to Basschick or Abostonboy who mod this forum, THEY can provide you with lots of answers that are honest, and truthful. There are also many others on this forum who will chime in, to help, that are experts, or at least successful.

I don't do paysites anymore, not for years, but i'd rely on Basschick for some good starting points, and abostonboy too.

my 2 cents

[Relentless]

First start an AFFILIATE site. I say this for 2 big reasons:

1) If you can't generate your own traffic your paysite will suffer.

2) If you don't see things through the eyes of your affiliates you wont know:
A) When yer being scammed
B) What motivates them
C) How to work with them so you both make more money

When you are a successful affiliate many people will offer to "partner with you" on a paysite. Tell them No politely and build your own. Them asking is the same as them telling you they think you are ready to run one.

Good luck :)

[Adam Mason]

I think the problem now is that the market is saturated and we are seeing new paysites come and then go bust - or at least not updated frequently enough. This makes surfers wary and even when I started, it took a whole year before my site broke even on a monthly basis. How did I manage - I sold my house to raise the money to keep things going and it could easily have gone the other way!

I guess that before anyone can comment further, we would need to know the kind of site you're planning (do these vids feature you, twinks, muscle etc) and what you business model might be (updated once / twice / three times a week?) I spent 6 months planning and projecting before I committed to setting up BLAKEMASON!

[abostonboy]

On a side note...Ive read that people think.. that surfers prefer VOD over subscribing to paysites...They mentioned things like recurring billing, and surfers concerns over frequency of updates, accuracy/exclusivenss of the content advertised, and other things.. What do you guys think about that?



If you actually sell amateur DVDs then VOD is a good investment. Depending on the brand you have and how hard the VOD company pushes you will depend on how much revenue you generate with a VOD company.

There is a transition going on now in the VOD vs Paysite model. The traditional paysite model is healthy and will remain so. I believe in a few years you will see traditional paysites also offer VOD in some way. It maybe a hybrid VOD/paysite.

[JoeSchmoeProductions]

I Sell DVD's and stream on AEBN right now...Just want a bigger peice of the pie...It kills me that AEBN makes more than I do off my stuff. Plus, I fiugre if I sold my stuff on a paysite, I could have "looser" rules regarding acceptable content, Plus make more of the money...

Im not sure what an "affialiate" is...Promote paysites? Where and How? I use xtube to promote my own vids right now...Is that what an affialite does?

Told ya...had a zillion questions...Dr. Bill from ingayporn sent me...

Joe

[gaydemon_jr]

An affiliate is someone who promotes someone else's product in return for a slice of the revenue. In this case, a paysite offering commission to someone for referring a customer.

[Adam Mason]

This could well be an interesting thread... I had no idea what an affiliate was either when I launched! Learnt real quick though ;-)

[MaxPower]

I think the problem now is that the market is saturated and we are seeing new paysites come and then go bust - or at least not updated frequently enough. This makes surfers wary and even when I started, it took a whole year before my site broke even on a monthly basis. How did I manage - I sold my house to raise the money to keep things going and it could easily have gone the other way!

I guess that before anyone can comment further, we would need to know the kind of site you're planning (do these vids feature you, twinks, muscle etc) and what you business model might be (updated once / twice / three times a week?) I spent 6 months planning and projecting before I committed to setting up BLAKEMASON!


Yep really a bad time right now :bang: I just sold my Car :no:

[gaydemon_jr]

I couldn't get my head round how someone could make money as an affilate. I thought that people would surely go directly to the seller, but increasing the placement of the product seems like sound business sense and you often can't do it all on your own.

[abostonboy]

Joe,

I am not familiar with your videos at all. But any content that is both good and exclusive will sell well if done right. To start a paysite is a huge investment in both time and money. But if you are dedicated and have the resources, the rewards can be great.

On a "technical level" you will need the following:

1. Good brandable domain name.
2. Good host. I would not recommend a virtual host or the cheapest dedicated you can find. Find a good host that will offer you the tech support you need. Plan around $200 a month for starters. Give or take.
3. A good designed members are and tour. Prices vary depending on what you want to do.
4. You will need to decide if you want a Content Management System or not. A small site can survive without one, but an initial investment in a CMS can save you a lot of time later. Off the shelf CMS range from $400 to $3000+. You could get one custom made for under $2,0000.
5. You will need to decide on a biller. I would recommend CCbill as they allow cascading and it just seems easier to recruit affiliates w/ CCbill. Unless you decide to use a third party like Nats or Mpa. That maybe overkill for a site just starting out.
6. Figure in Visa fees.
7. Talk to an attorney about 2257 and how to implement it in your site.
8. Decide on the delivery medium of your videos as well. If you choose to stream versus progressive you will need a license.

Ok. So now you have the site. At first you will have a limited amount of content so your retention will be low at first. However, since you are new, you may convert good as you are new.

Now you need traffic. There are two ways to get traffic.

1. Direct traffic. This is traffic that you buy or create on your own. Creating on your own maybe from TGP galleries, blogs, free sites. Ad buys get a little complicated as you have no idea of what a member is worth. (Gross per member). So you maybe buying members at a CPA (cost per accqusition) at $30 only to find that member is worth $28. But this is all fun actually as many of your traffic buys will get you affiliates. So it's hard to place a value on that. Meaning you may do an ad buy and it will cost you $30 a member, but webmasters will see your ad and signup as an affiliate. Priceless. In fact the more you can get your site exposed, the more members you will get and the more affiliates. But, during the first six months, don't expect to make money. Think BUILD BUILD BUILD.

2. Affiliate traffic. Most affiliates will market a new site as during that time it is fresh and converts. So you will have a "honeymoon" period. After that you really have to make sure you have a site that converts and retains. You also need to start marketing to affiliates and really assure them that you are on their side.

You seem to have one thing that many new paysite owners don't - exclusive content.

If you feel that you can swing the time and money involved in a paysite, then I would say go for it. There are many that will offer advice on various parts of the process.

[abostonboy]

Yep really a bad time right now :bang: I just sold my Car :no:

I just bought a new one. :)

[JoeSchmoeProductions]

Thanks for that abostonboy...appreciate it. Our vids seem to have a few fans..considering I havent really promoted them that hard apparently..We had over 1300 hrs viewed on AEBN for Feb.. They charge 10 cents..I make less than 2 cents per min...so I cant help but think that I'm leaving some money on the table...It's totally exclusive..and Really amateur so I figured If I had content nobody else has...might be worth it?



What would you guys do.. I want to buy a new car also, and have money for gas. LOL

[abostonboy]

What would you guys do.. I want to buy a new car also, and have money for gas. LOL

The REAL question is do you have the money/time to commit to creating a site.

I would guess at the top of my head 5k to start. maybe less since you have your own content. Plan about 6 months of not making money.

[RottenRay]

Joe,

Abostonboy covered all the important nuts and bolts in http://www.gaydemon.biz/showpost.php?p=2109&postcount=12 - I won't even amplify them.

But here's a bit of philosophy...

1) Regardless of how you plan to promote your site, start making friends with lots of directory folks long beforehand - reviews and mentions in bLogs will count for a lot, 'specially with a new place.

2) Hire a webmaster who will actually do the work you need - and if you search a bit, you can find one or two who will work for a low percentage of sales. This is much better than hiring someone who works for a fixed salary or charges per event/update - they'll be much more inclined to see you succeed.

3) Start with enough content to keep folks happy for a while. I realize this is very subjective - so you might want to email Allan at DIXter (webmaster@dixter.com) and talk to him. His site is new, and he's doing things right, so advice from him might be valuable.

4) Decide up front where most of your promotions are going to come from. A growing number of sites don't offer affiliate programs - they simply upload branded video shorts and photos to the Tube sites and the newsgroups, and, apparently, they do fine. This might be a good approach if you don't have a ton of content you feel like giving away - and you can set aside some time a few times a week to self-promote.


I won't give this a number here, but I think the most important thing you can do is have fun with it - owning a paysite puts you in an elite minority worldwide, and although it is TRULY going to be more work that a 9-5er most of the time, you have something that is honestly and purely your own.

In full spite of how silly this industry has become, it really is just about the best to work in. I can't think of anything I'd rather do.

...

[basschick]

i'm going to disagree with everybody :D

i think it can still be a good time to start a paysite. it really depends on a few things - if your content is microniche, that's always a good thing. if it isn't, you need either a heavy budget, a moderate budget and patience or a moderate budget and a good affiliate rep.

how many hours your videos do on aebn doesn't matter. why? because that's aebn's traffic and their affiliates' traffic. you won't have that traffic. assuming you make a good, useable site, you'll still need traffic. you can create your own by making free sites, blogs, galleries and tying it all up in a hub. you can learn to play the search engines and buy trafic. you can rely on affiliate traffic.

here's the catch - it requires a lot of kniowledge to start a paysite or else someone (perhaps a project manager) who really knows their stuff to work with you on it. or it requires patience. because guaranteed that EVERY new paysite owner without years of experience is avs sites - and even they sometimes - make huge mistakes or errors in perspective. a few common ones include only low quality videos or small ones wanting to save bandwidth or just because they don't know any better, too much interaction with members on the member home page (after a certain point, make a blog or forum - your members are there for your content) and not enough updates, which falls into several categories.

and then you need a functional site that is comparable to other sites in the niche. and believe me, many of my clients run into trouble right there! not only that, they have a certain way they want to do things that runs counter to how it works - because your surfers are the boss unless you're very good at upsells, and most people aren't. and once the site owners get these things in their head, they won't list. i've worked with clients who have spent over $100,000 and ultimately went out of business because they did EVERYTHING wrong and i've worked with clients who spend under $10,000 including content and succeeded because they had realistic expectations and either the budget or the patience and were willing to listen.

[abostonboy]

Patti,

I think we agree. :)

If someone has desirable content, then I think they should start a paysite. They just need to realize that there is a lot involved and that days of making your money back in 3 months in the gay market is long over.

I would suggest that Joe goes and looks at the reviews that sites have gotten that he feels will be his competition on gaydemon and maybe join a few to get a "feel" for what he is up against.

[Mickey]

There is a transition going on now in the VOD vs Paysite model. The traditional paysite model is healthy and will remain so. I believe in a few years you will see traditional paysites also offer VOD in some way. It maybe a hybrid VOD/paysite.

I agree with this, offering both VOD and paysite on the same site will get the surfers that do not want to "commit" to a membership to put some money in your pockets as well...

[basschick]

but if you do that on the tour, better make a separate tour for affiliates - otherwise it's a traffic leak.


I agree with this, offering both VOD and paysite on the same site will get the surfers that do not want to "commit" to a membership to put some money in your pockets as well...

[AnthonyDeAngelo]

after we had released a large number of DVDs into the market, we decided to take that content and cut it up and put it up on a new site - we launched a site called barebackMasters.com and have kept to our word of udating with a new episode every week - we also both write entries to post in our bareback blog every week and have added other goodies like a new series of out-takes and a travelogue, etc. to keep people interested, recurring and coming back... the member site model was new to us since we had been into producing videos for many years so... we read a lot about the pros and cons of the various site models and then went to The Phoenix Forum where we met a lot of people that contradicted each other and told us all kinds of things... We ended up surrounding ourselves with the best possible people in the biz (Patti among them) and developed a plan launching our member site on January 1, 2007. Since then, we've moved into another area and are developing another couple of sites, here and there. The bottom line is this, no matter which way you look at it, there's a huge amount of work in them to make them unique and stand out from the rest and it is essential that you do what you say you will do and deliver. Its a FULL TIME JOB for the both of us and our crew... but we love it so much and so do our fans...