why don't we have gay paysites like this?

[basschick]

i just finished reviewing a site for a client. the site is one of several sites in a successful str8 program. let me tell you what i liked - and what i wish we'd see in the gay side of the porn market.

all the videos included a full scene shown at 960x540 with a bitrate of 3 Mbps, and not only was the bitrate and fps good, but the lighting was good, which made the videos look even better. the 20 most recent videos also came with full scenes shown at 1920x1080 with a bitrate of 8 Mbps. and all these videos were downloadable and used no DRM. but wait - there's more!

in addition to a set of vidcaps offered in 2 HD resolutions, each scene came with a set of digital stills shown at 1000x1500 and at good quality. well, damn!

while gay program owners keep telling me over and over that quality like this doesn't allow webmasters to make a profit, i keep seeing more and more straight programs that succeed using huge high quality pics and beautiful vids. and it doesn't surprise me that retention and member rejoins is good at these high quality sites - heck, i feel like joining 'em myself.

the art nude sites like met art and hegre art have been offering their pics at 2000x3000 for a while - and yes, they are good quality and over 1 Mb per pic. face it - we're way behind here.

so when is the gay side of the web going to catch up?

[dzinerbear]

I guess you're a bigger size queen than me. :) I personally don't like overly large pictures. I have a 24-inch monitor, so I like them to fill a good amount of space on my screen, but I hate having to scroll in pictures. UK Naked Men has nice sized pics for me, about 1024 on the long side.

And one big gay program has recently started offering fewer pictures instead of more. They used to offer 9, 10, 11 pages of thumbs and now they're down to 4, 5, and 6. That's a shame. Yes, I know video is where it's at, but I still think there's a huge audience for pictures. I love looking through galleries.

But I definitely agree with you, Patti, in the video department. I'm absolutely amazed at the amount of sites still offering 320 x 240 videos.

I guess the increased bandwidth for larger videos is what's scaring everyone off. But in the gay market, it wouldn't take a site much to surge ahead of everyone else – super larger pictures, large videos, and high quality screen grabs, and no DRM.

Michael

[gaydemon]

Why is the production cost higher with the higher quality, other than a better camera?

Hosting isnt very expensive anymore, atleast not bandwidth..

[gaybucks_chip]

bandwidth isn't expensive, but if you're talking about thousands of members viewing a video that's 4mb/sec... the bandwidth does add up pretty quickly.

When we switched to 720x480 1Mbit for Boyfunk, we did some calculations as to what the cost per user per month would be, based on average number of videos viewed, and determined that it was economically viable. But even at dirt-cheap, bottom feeder bandwidth rates, it would be possible for a heavy user viewing all high-def videos to burn through enough bandwidth to really eat into the bottom line. Not sure how the straight programs are doing it, unless they're heavily throttling bandwidth-per-user.

And while the actual production costs aren't higher per se, the incidental costs of having an all-HD workflow is pricier than you might imagine... between high capacity RAID-5 arrays, gigabit or fiber channel networking to handle the high def video files on a local network, and computer and monitor upgrades to be able to properly edit hi-def in realtime (if you're talking about real HD and not HDV)... we have a fairly basic setup and I think we probably have $15-20,000 just into the network and computers, not including the camera, storage cards and media, etc.

So... it's definiitely doable, but I think part of it is also competition. Until a lot of gay sites start offering real HD (not HDV at 1.5Mbit) I don't think there will be enough to force the programs to make the extra investment.

[MrJD]

imo a program that had content similar in quality to juggcash/perfectgonzo/etc would get so much traffic thrown at it that offering super HQ vids/pics would be a non-issue

[basschick]

i've seen sites that do at least spectacular quality 720x480 videos, and it's not a question of equipment as much as lighting.

bandwidth IS cheap. anyone paying reasonable overages pays less than $2 per member if the average downloads per member is 10 gig per month - which, btw, it never is after the first month. that could easily be offset by additional retention and even additional sales.

the site was from perfectgonzo, actually.

[AlexManifestMan]

There are additional production costs involved. Tiny videos hide a number of flaws, poor conditioning in the models, lighting, locations, etc.

High quality video shoots generally have at least two cameras (with all the appropriate color sync work) two light kits (between 6 and 8 lights) a videographer, makeup, director and location photographer. This stuff ain't cheap. Add in model fees, location fees and you can have 5k tied up easily in an 18 minute video.

As for image size, I don't subscribe to the bigger is better idea at all. Scrolling up and down to look at an image (that if you save it will still require scrolling) or having a saved image compressed to fit on the screen by Windows is not a pretty picture. These images are shot so that the members can save them and enjoy them on their computers or even a slide show they broadcast to their televisions. The are not included so that they can be printed and resold. We have enough trouble with that as it easy. I regularly find our stuff on ebay printed in 5x7 for 5 bucks each and for some insane reason people buy them.

Since we shoot in 16:9 768 is as wide as our videos can be at this point and not force our (mostly European members) to have to scroll to view them.

[Adam Mason]

i've seen sites that do at least spectacular quality 720x480 videos, and it's not a question of equipment as much as lighting.

bandwidth IS cheap. anyone paying reasonable overages pays less than $2 per member if the average downloads per member is 10 gig per month - which, btw, it never is after the first month. that could easily be offset by additional retention and even additional sales.

the site was from perfectgonzo, actually.

I see plenty of customers consume 15GB of bandwidth within 12 hours! But hey, the 8 most recent films are encoded at 2.5mb a second with all the others being available at 1.5mb/s. Now, I asked my members if they would prefer me to ditch the 1.5 files and keep everything at 2.5 - they overwhelming came back and said no!

Go figure... not everyone wants what you think they want.

[marcjacob]

Now, I asked my members if they would prefer me to ditch the 1.5 files and keep everything at 2.5 - they overwhelming came back and said no!

Go figure... not everyone wants what you think they want.

Because we dont all have massive connections to the interweb. I used to be on Virgin Medias 20 meg and wanted really high res video. Now Ive moved and Im stuck with a 1 meg connection, and to be fair, many sponsors paysites are a pain in the ass to collect movie content from.

I would say that EVERY site should offer dial up sized videos, just for those thos who cant get broadband or cant get high speed internet, and therefor dont want 250 meg downloads for a 20 minute video.

[AnthonyDeAngelo]

the math is easy...the straight market is significantly larger than the gay market -

[basschick]

it's true that not everybody wants pics that big or videos that high quality - and that's why those sites offer multiple size options.

two years ago there were some straight sites with 720x480 vids at 1.5 and at the time everyone on gww told me that was unaffordable and would mean no profits or even losses due to bandwidth useage. now a bunch of the gay websites i know have videos like that.

saying the straight market is bigger doesn't seem to be a factor to me or we wouldn't even have paysites. besides, the straight market is bigger, but there are hundreds of more sites in each of the larger str8 niches splitting that larger amount of traffic.

[RottenRay]

while gay program owners keep telling me over and over that quality like this doesn't allow webmasters to make a profit, i keep seeing more and more straight programs that succeed using huge high quality pics and beautiful vids.

and


two years ago there were some straight sites with 720x480 vids at 1.5 and at the time everyone on gww told me that was unaffordable and would mean no profits


Once again, basschick is right on the money... And she's set me off on tirade!


Most of the folks (including the ones I work for) haven't realized just how easy it is to videograph something in your living room and share it with a friend.

We porn folk are dropping the ball at the moment - we've always FORCED technology to keep up with us in the past, but currently we're sort of sitting around going "you want QUALTIY??"

Of course, money is the prime consideration...

But if you're shooting, how the f*ck can you expect to sell something which is far lower in quality than an average Joe (or Jill) can shoot in their own homes?


Aside from the occassional Wachovia check not passing muster at your local bank, here are the major mistakes being made:

1) Dogshit models - not everyone willing to undress (or f*ck) in front of a camera is qualified to do so. You would think we would KNOW this. This didn't sneak up on us. You can walk down any city street and see guys who should never take their clothes off with the lights on - but so many of them are becoming "porn stars" it makes ones' head spin.

2) Dogshit production quality - many sites (well, most) are producing videos and still photos which are inferior to what the average consumer can do with an off the shelf camera.

3) Dogshit marketing - we have sites like C24, in which the image of any college has never been seen. We have sites like Fratmen, which shows men who most likely never attended college. And we have sites like Military Classified, which supposedly presents straight guys - but are filled with gay actors in orgy scenes.

So, when you look at it, the gay market isn't reallly even trying to "play" for their audience.

It's past time for the so-called producers to get off their asses, and start producing something worth watching.


Holy sh*t - if William Higgins could do it almost 30 years ago WITH FILM and LOTS OF LIGHTING, why can't gay producers do it NOW?


....

[AlexManifestMan]

To use "dogshit marketing" and Fratmen in the same sentence seems way off to me.

[abostonboy]

Why would any paysite want to offer pics in that size. That is PRINT quality. They will just show up on Ebay for $5-$10 a pop.

As far as the video that is being talked about, it's damn near high def. The market for this in the gay sector is much smaller than the straight. You would be creating content that at most maybe 5% (or less) of your members would use. Trust me, we have 2.5 mb encoded films and few bite. An 8 meg encoded film. Ouch!

You could make money filming these, but paysites have to crunch the numbers and see if it's worth creating. An 8 mb encoded film is hd, needs hd camera (3 for a good fuck scene), makeup artists, some amazing editing, etc. If you have multiple sites it will actually need another full time editor as well.

Can you make money? Sure. Is is worth the extra cost? Maybe a year from now when there is a decent size market in gay for it.

Keep in mind running a paysite is a numbers game. We fight like mad for a 1% drop in processing fees. To add to the costs in content is only worth if it affects your bottom line in a positive way to offset the additional cost of content, editing, and bw. I just don't see it.

[Adam Mason]

Can I ask, if you were downloading films at 1920x1080, how did you watch them on a standard monitor? I am looking at offering this as we're about to move to HD... but I can't see it being very consumer-centric!


i just finished reviewing a site for a client. the site is one of several sites in a successful str8 program. let me tell you what i liked - and what i wish we'd see in the gay side of the porn market.

all the videos included a full scene shown at 960x540 with a bitrate of 3 Mbps, and not only was the bitrate and fps good, but the lighting was good, which made the videos look even better. the 20 most recent videos also came with full scenes shown at 1920x1080 with a bitrate of 8 Mbps. and all these videos were downloadable and used no DRM. but wait - there's more!

in addition to a set of vidcaps offered in 2 HD resolutions, each scene came with a set of digital stills shown at 1000x1500 and at good quality. well, damn!

while gay program owners keep telling me over and over that quality like this doesn't allow webmasters to make a profit, i keep seeing more and more straight programs that succeed using huge high quality pics and beautiful vids. and it doesn't surprise me that retention and member rejoins is good at these high quality sites - heck, i feel like joining 'em myself.

the art nude sites like met art and hegre art have been offering their pics at 2000x3000 for a while - and yes, they are good quality and over 1 Mb per pic. face it - we're way behind here.

so when is the gay side of the web going to catch up?

[HunkMoneyLuke]

Basschick, you are totally right. Last month, we increased the quality of our new videos (both the download and the flash streams) and so far the reaction has been all positive. We also moved from mpeg to wmv for video downloads (based on Bjorn's polls), also resulting in positive feedback. I will tell you in another month or so if that equates to longer rebilling :D