Fuck Tom Hymes . . . Read Mike South !

[gonzo]

Heres the State of the Industry as far as Im concerned courtesy of my brother in porn Mike South. The great Grandaddy of Bloggers and you can hear him speak on branding at Cybernet expo . . . and Tom Hymes too if your bored....

Everyone readily admits that porn is in a slump, that DVD sales and rentals are down 30% and more. It seems that the porners answer is to flood an over saturated market with cheap product, thus cutting their own throats.
Whoring out DVDs for a dollar wholesale at this point is doing nothing more than making a bad situation worse.

I walked around my local adult video store today and I asked the customers some basic questions.

1. Are you buying/renting more, less or about the same number of videos as two years ago.
The answers to this question were overwhelmingly "less"
When asked why, the following reasons, in order of most to least were.
A. Everything is the same/All the movies are alike these days.
B. Can't afford it
C. I cant identify with it/It's too violent/too many gay or gay looking guys.
Now here is what surprised me. Not one person I talked to, and I talked to over 20 said that they got more porn on the internet.

So I asked question 2.
2. Are you getting more, less or about the same amount of porn off the internet as you were 2 years ago.
The answer was unanamously "more"

3. Do you buy it or get it for free (internet porn)? The most popular answers were Free, then both.

4. Ever hear of usenet?
Only one person answered yes, and he indicated that he could get any movie in the store in full DVD format, with menus and all on usenet, that he could then burn the DVD and own it. I asked him why he was at the video store, he indicated that he preferred to rent them because he only watched most of them once, that he had no desire to go through all the effort to download a 5-9 Gig DVD then burn it only to watch it once.

5. Are there too many DVDs to choose from?
Everyone answered Yes.

6. How do you make your choice?
A (Most popular) The Box Cover
B. The Company
C. the Director or star

6. Do you avoid renting/buying movies with certain performers?
about 2/3 answered yes, and when asked what performers every single one was male and the answers were kinda all over the place.

7. Do you rentor buy interracial porn with black guys and white girls?
most answered no followed by I dont really care what color the performers are followed by yes.

8. Is there too much, too little or about enough interracial porn? too much followed by about right, nobody said too little.

9. Do you seek titles that contain certain acts or fetishes (including lingerie, anal sex, bukkake, smoking etc)?
Only 2 people answered no.

10. Do you have an HDTV? 50% answered yes

10. Do you have a High definition DVD player? One guy answered yes. When asked if he sought HD porn he answered yes

11. Do you plan to buy a Hi Def DVD player? Nobody answered yes

12. In ten years where will you be buying your porn? Most people answered The internet.

So what do we take away from this? What are we doing right and wrong?

Porn has never been known to listen to its audience, We have taken more of a build it and they will come approach. Over the last 5 years or so we have been targeting certain fetishes more actively but across the board pricing has inhibited the production of more expensive to shoot fetishes.

There is no question that the market is saturated and we have nobody but ourselves to blame. We all agree on that. But ask yourselves...What are we doing to alleviate this probem, the fact is we are doing nothing. Matter of fact we are whoring out cheaper lower quality product thus making the situation worse.

Unless Porn Valley wants to become a tar pit of extinct video companies, we best get our shit together.

[LAJ]

Some pretty thoughtful and interesting questions you asked.

Do you see an overall "walmart-izing" of the adult industry?

[TheEnforcer]

That's good stuff there. Man on the street perspective so to speak.

[gonzo]

Building your Brand

Blogging, board whoring, befriending anyone and everyone... marketing comes in all shapes and sizes. Whether getting the word out on your product, self promotion, or increasing direct sales is your mission, if staying power is what you are looking for in this industry, then building a successful brand will ultimately take care of much of your marketing for you.
Moderator - Darklady (YNOT)
Speakers - Ken (TheBestPorn), Monte (Moniker.com), Lisa Turner (Badpuppy), Mike South (MikeSouth.com), John V. (ARS), Jenni Dahling (PRKitty)

Mike South will tell it like it is!

[SykkBoy]

Great insight into the minds of those actually buying/renting porn...

[gonzo]

Originally Posted by SykkBoy

Great insight into the minds of those actually buying/renting porn...

I think they have special music at the store South goes into when he walks in.

Seriously if he said he did this. He sure as hell did. This is the man that walks around atlanta with a 100% Negro teeshirt on.

[tony404]

if someone is in a video store, then chances are they are not a big internet porn person two different type of customer.Video store porn is dying and its not going to get better,why leave the home when you can get it online and most of the stuff that comes to the porn stores is the same old tired crap.To see whats out there I will rent a few of the avn top ten and most of it is crap,the girl clearly is there to pay the rent and it shows. Also gas prices effect sales, to the guy making 500 a week, paying 60 bucks to fill up hurts. If the choice is watching porn or going to work, work wins.

[gonzo]

Originally Posted by tony404

if someone is in a video store, then chances are they are not a big internet porn person two different type of customer.Video store porn is dying and its not going to get better,why leave the home when you can get it online and most of the stuff that comes to the porn stores is the same old tired crap.To see whats out there I will rent a few of the avn top ten and most of it is crap,the girl clearly is there to pay the rent and it shows. Also gas prices effect sales, to the guy making 500 a week, paying 60 bucks to fill up hurts. If the choice is watching porn or going to work, work wins.

All valid points!

[Jace]

Originally Posted by tony404

if someone is in a video store, then chances are they are not a big internet porn person two different type of customer.Video store porn is dying and its not going to get better,why leave the home when you can get it online and most of the stuff that comes to the porn stores is the same old tired crap.To see whats out there I will rent a few of the avn top ten and most of it is crap,the girl clearly is there to pay the rent and it shows. Also gas prices effect sales, to the guy making 500 a week, paying 60 bucks to fill up hurts. If the choice is watching porn or going to work, work wins.

yeah, personally, I don't know anyone that goes to video stores anymore other than to get lube or toys.....

[gonzo]

Originally Posted by Jace

yeah, personally, I don't know anyone that goes to video stores anymore other than to get lube or toys.....

I know Cornetta's Customer of the Decade!

[Jace]

hell, does anyone under 35 rent or buy dvd's anymore?

any time we ever did the feature shows or dvd store signings we never saw anyone under 35, it was all older guys that grew up on vhs and moved to dvd, very rarely did we see the younger crowd showing up

[ScottMcGowan]

Ya know, Mike is a friend of mine and most of what he says here I can agree with. However, Mike's little survey here is pretty worthless.

I mean, c'mon guys. Let's paint this picture.

You're a (reasonably) normal guy browsing a porn store in Atlanta and some middle aged guy with a slight limp wearing a baseball cap with the word "ASSHOLE" emblazoned across the front of it comes up to you, tells you he makes porn for a living and wants to ask you some question about your porn viewing habits. Are you going to feel completely at ease and be likely to tell the complete truth? Probably not.

Second, anecdotal statistics like this are meaningless and Mike knows it. He doesn't take into account tons of variables (age, race, geographic location, income, marital status, etc.) that can skew his findings all over the graph.

My point is that Mike certainly has the market pegged on Bukkake, Atlanta, GA, and especially Bukkake in Atlanta, GA. I'm not so sure he has his finger on the pulse of the general porn consumer (or the wide variances therein) throughout the nation, however.

[softball]

I read between the lines. It wasn't so much the dvd issue that interested me, it was the content. I think that was pretty accurate.

[gonzo]

Originally Posted by rhetorical

I read between the lines. It wasn't so much the dvd issue that interested me, it was the content. I think that was pretty accurate.

Thats what I was able to draw from. Plus the fact that Mike is in the business and Tom just watches.