‘One Last Breath’ – Anonymous Guest Blogger
Used with permission, from http://jaydenjaymesxxx.com/blog/?p=305
I received the following via one of my social networking site from someone who claims to be an attorney in NYC… A big fan of mine… But had a few things to say about the industry as a whole. I don’t have a whole hell of a lot to comment on because I think that he has done a great job. But feel free to comment and let me know what you think…
“I’m writing this to describe what it must feel like to take one last breath of air before you finally drown. I’m not being literal. I’m describing the attempts that all of the greedy DVD companies are scavenging to any desperate measure to get every little drop of what’s left in the Internet world because they were too lazy to put money into research and hiring the right people, and they had felt that they would rather spend their money showing off to one another with the game ‘Whose AVN booth is better?’ That’s a fun game, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a small piece of advertising space year after year just to show the adult world who has the best placement and who gets their back padded the most. Well, I guess they all finally realized that the party is over, huh?
So you have companies with massive libraries that mostly have shit quality, 640×480, they figured back when HD was first available, ‘Who is ever going to use resolution in HD. It’s too big?’ So they shoot in the lower quality format. And then you have these massive budgets that companies feel the need to spend for these ‘big productions’ which are just wet dreams from wanna be directors that didn’t make it to Hollywood, and so they must make replica’s or parodies of the real thing. I hate to break it to them, but it’s much harder to create than replicate. That’s why you have these parody guys who think they’re hot shit by doing a million of some shitty parodies that nobody is going to watch, and they’re the cool ones that have to wear sunglasses at night at all of the porn events, of course winning awards because the parent company spends the money on advertising. A parody category? Are you effin kidding me?
The funny thing that came to my attention is this other attempt at trying to squeeze a buck out of the internet. Its this thing called ‘mobile’ and you see third party companies that are trying to put together All in One systems, basing their commission off of something like a 50% revshare commission. The funny thing is that you see some really big names on board doing this, basically giving a company who just setup a merchant account and HTML5 formatted templates to sell your product on an outdated ‘.mobi’ site. Can you say ‘Bamboozled?’ The Internet companies are probably pissing in their pants right now laughing because these DVD companies have no idea what the hell they are doing. And you have to feel bad for them, right? Oh wait, these are the same guys that spent millions on showing off. It’s like they were the jocks in high school picking on the geeks, until ten years down the road those same ‘cool guys’ really didn’t have a clue and were stuck in the past, getting fat, and hanging around the old town going to high school football games to hit on ladies to see if they ‘still have it.’ LoL.
You can’t blame anybody for the direction porn is going. Blame yourselves and salute the Internet companies that were smart enough to get somewhere first. You know damn well if Hirsch decided to develop a Tube site, he wouldn’t be wining about anything. He’s just mad he didn’t think of it first and instead he thought DRM and Burn to DVD was the future. Oh, and hoaxing sex tapes with TMZ.
The only way you will survive is to scrap everything and recreate. Most people can’t do that and need that past. And as everyone knows, little by little, each one is falling off, one by one. Don’t trust third party companies to handle your business. Are you kidding me? 50% revshare after you’ve spent all of your time and money into building up a brand along with production costs? Traffic is no doubt king in this world, but there is also a lot of shit out there not worth viewing. So quality surpasses quantity now a days. I bet a lot of companies are also shooting themselves in the foot because they decided to cut back on costs for good photography for each scene. ‘Oh hell, we’ll just do some screen grabs.’ Yeah, good choice there, Bucko.
The tide is coming in strong in 2010 and you’re going to see a lot more companies drowning. Contract girls will fade because nobody cares anymore because there are 4 more girls that look just like them all over the tube sites. Budgets will drop dramatically.
Of course agencies will ride the baloney pony and get greedy to do everything they can to milk girls for what they’re worth, encouraging beginners to do anal and dp’s because they need to cash in while it’s hot. They’ll also try their own attempts of buying the girls’ domain names and making their own websites. Why? Because they’re desperate. This industry is in a downward spiral and only a select few will overcome… Internet companies, Pornstars who are already established on the web as ‘gonzo girls’, and of course lawyers. Everyone else can just bend down between their legs and kiss their asses goodbye. Take a breath now.”
Thank you for your thoughts, Mr. Anonymous Attorney from NYC.
I think Mr. Anonymous hits the nail perfectly on the head. The way I see it, this industry is one that has always changed with the times, has always evolved. It settles into what works, then it changes into something else when that becomes old school and stops selling. Technology is usually the biggest catalyst for those changes, 30 years ago people were still going to seedy theaters to see a porn flick, but there are of course a number of other dynamics at play. There are some things that have always held true though. 1- The forward thinkers and or pioneers will prevail, the slow to see the change,those that insist on beating the dead horse, will not. 2- The evolution will always continue. 3- Porn in one form or another will always be a huge industry that generates massive sales, what people are willing to pay for is what changes. In my view there are three words you need to know right now if you are in this biz. Live and Interactive.
Very well done! Colonel also predicted this a while back and yes we are seeing companies cut back and go under and new adult companies start up for the cheap and cheap talent too!! 2010 sucks!!
3 words…live,interactive and ???
Interesting article.
And Rick, unfortunately I saw this coming a while ago. Porn in its current form, replicating DVDs and distributing through brick and mortar and online stores will be gone in 2 years. Everything is going cable and cyberspace. The business and culture of pornography is devolving instead of evolving.
And Leslie, the third word is: Escorting.
Before I got directly involved in this aspect of the industry, I might have agreed with what the guy was saying, simply because I didn’t know. Like him, however – I would have been talking out my ass.
DVD sales are down, yes – but not dead.
I too for years have been preaching the ways of the internet but then something happened. Web sales took a major nose dive last year and DVD sales started to go up.
Things will never be what they were years ago but that doesn’t mean the entire market is totally dead. Sure over paying fat bimbos who think they know everything to make one scene, sure – that may be out the door, but you can still make decent money on a decent money that is properly marketed. I know this for a 100% fact.
And by marketing, I don’t mean spending $100,000 or even $10,000 on going to some stupid convention. That was the dumbest idea ever and that I’ve been saying for over decade.
You can take that same amount of money and light it on fire and have just as much impact. Conventions — ALL OF THEM, are 100% a waste of time.
There are much better ways to promote your money, none of them however including going to any show in any city, put on by any company.
They just aren’t cost effective.
Anyway, this lawyer or Jayden James pretending to be a lawyer, like always pretending she totally knows everything, needs to focus on their own business and stop pretending like they know ours.
She’s an extremely over-paid for what she does and it is low class performers like her that actually do have a negative impact on the movie business.
Well Mr. Attorney is only about 5 years to late with this article. When I worked at OPD years ago this was lunch time topics. We tried to do the net deal but the first time we did a split and got burned. Then the boss was so leery he would not spend a dime so we had to use DVD content lame. Then it was use html it is cheaper and if the site works I will spend for a real one. So basically this guy talking here is 5 years to late.
I have worked for and with some large companies (adult and mainstreem) every one of them is scared shit less and if they aren’t they are lying. Hirsch has a site who knows how it really dones. No one at this point is even close to Brazzers. But at the same time mega sites and mega affiliate programs are hearing a ticking time clock too. Too much stolen content, costs, same blown out girls and most of all affiliate programs that are a huge lose leader. I think in another 5 years it will be a semi barren waste land.
The only survivors will be Solo girl sites that are extremely well done with unique girls with incredible personalities. Unique fetish’s that are honest and good quality. Plus personality to drive that specific niche.
Sites that take advertising and security of the unique content seriously. This means no downloads at all. No trailers for download very little front side nude content and a site with a ton of words and descriptions for SEO and enticement. I also think pricing will be an issue to no more 30 dollar sites more like 15-19 dollars with multiple udpdates a week. If not daily. With a major update weekly ( very good production value )
The hardest part for the adult community to grasp. Stop being greedy and work together everyone follow the same protocol such as cost, downloading, advertising, uploading of content consistancy. If everyone would stop trying to out do each other and seriously talk and respect each other more people would make money and in all honesty more money. The world is a vast place with vast pockets to pick. All these conventions are just a reason for the site employees to party and do drugs. Reality a good sales person or team leader could do the same thing sitting at their phone.