Welcome Erotola, this board is a great place to seek advice. The folks here are friendly and trusted webmasters with much experience. I have just recently entered the boards myself and have found Gonzo and Oprano to be a good source of solid advice.
You guys sound like my partner Jill and me ... we too have been involved as amateur content providers, but we've been doing it for about 10 years now. We started out with a 7 cam voyeur house website in '98 and have been "experimenting" ever since. I try every new site that launches as a distributor for amateur content. I've tried the ones you mentioned and many more. In my opinion, this is where it is all going. How many of these sites will the market support? I'm not sure ... but we're content producers and I put our product on the shelf at every 7-11 I can
. I do agree with you about the aversion to placing our stuff with programs that only offer 20% ( you know which VOD sites ) The split just seems offensive when it's your own naked ass in the stuff, LOL. Do you run "replays" at Ifriends? Just curious. Back in '99, we ran 7 rooms at Ifriends on their replay system with a 2 hour VHS tape looping the feed and pulled down about $100 a day. Ah, the good ol' days, hehe. It doesn't make that good anymore of course. Mostly because they changed the replay system to VOD style with uploaded movie files. It does amaze me how little money the VOD sites charge for movie viewing. I'll run the same movie clip as a replay at camsites and not only get a better split ( usually 40-50%), but also charge a MUCH higher per minute charge and get it ( .69 per minute). I just wish I could set up 100 computers running replays!
The advantage to being an amateur content producer is you can create more content at no cost. I think you're on the right track by seeking as many outlets for your content as possible. I would recommend you launch websites too. My current portfolio has 8 membership sites, 2 TGP's, 1 toplist, 15 clipstores on three different platforms and 1 mainstream music site. Jill still works live cam on 2 platforms under 6 names ... and we're still expanding. Since my involvment with C4S and the single file download sites, I have adjusted how I run my websites. It has given me a value now for my content that had never been established before. Neil set the bar, as far as I'm concerned , at $1 per minute for video, and I really appreciate that. My websites have about $400 worth of content by the C4S measure, and I always update with enough content to make the member rebill a value to stay. I do retire content with each update too.
Not sure why your money has dropped at C4S. You need to analyze that. I have made steady money with them for 2 years. Very consistent for me. How many stores do you run? How often do you update? How many niches do you cover? How many movie file formats do you post? Review those things ... C4S makes as much money for me as my websites each month. I'm trying to improve my website money though, because the cost is only 14% instead of 40% ...
Again, welcome to Oprano! Listen to these guys about building websites. Maybe we will learn together
