Market for Softcore Photo sites?

[carnalx]

Is there still a market for softcore photo web sites like met art? especially for new sites. How much would you have to spend on shoots/exclusive content for a new site, before expecting anyone to bother subscribing?

It's so easy to find naked photos of girls on the web. Does anybody care if the photos are high quality?

I know this sounds just like a rant, but I am hoping for thoughts from people who've been in the industry on either side of the camera for a few years, and how they've seen things changing.

[Peter]

A guy I work for who does websites as a fulltime profit making business reckons he needs to spend about ?30,000 on content before launching a new site. I'm sure other will dispute this figure, but you need top quality models, photographers and locations if you're going to aim for met-art style.

The average British tattoed geezer bird shot in a travel lodge just won't cut it.

[Floydoid]

carnalx wrote:

> Does anybody care if the photos are high quality?
>

I do for one... give me quality artistic photography any day - think of the content of MetArt, 18 Magazine and Amour Angels as a benchmark to aspire to.

[Dave Wells]

Nope, no money in stills anymore at all.

[Daz Savage]

I suppose it depends what you are looking to make from each site... what your aspirations are.
Let's take another industry as an example.

QUESTION: Can a small corner-shop be successful?
Some will answer that there can't be money in it because there are:
A. too many already
B. huge supermarkets that have killed them all off.
Nevertheless there are still plenty around that thrive through hard work, good placement and good customer service.

People will argue about there being money in anything but I would say that the only deciding factor is whether you want to run a business properly or take on the whole world from day one! One is about hard graft and the other is more about vanity and impatience as far as I'm concerned.

Actually I ran a string of shops once (and I started with one tiny crappy one) and the growth and success I had was down to the fact that I didn't give a damn about what anyone else was doing but just got on with the business of giving my customers what they wanted.

The same is the case with the adult industry and all the big names being mentioned here. They didn't start out with huge budgets, most came from nowhere at all - small setups where the main direction was actually just doing what they wanted to do and keeping on doing it. Their businesses were given the chance to develop because enthusiasts have just that - the TIME. Businessmen have no time at all and think only in terms of financial returns ASAP so they place (often) unrealistic time-limits on success and throw money at problems that actually require talent... and time.
We're all talking about MET like it sprang up yesterday on a ?50,000 budget - this is ridiculous. Art sites like MET (and many others that have enjoyed a good measure of success) came from nowhere and earned their returns by staying in the game for the long-haul.

Look at your business ideas seriously for a moment... Putting a large sum of money into a new site with no associated traffic will either require you to be affluent enough to not care (not sounding good already is it?) or you'll need big returns quickly to repay your second mortgage (still not good news).
People think that money is the key to a good site but the fact is that longevity beats money hands down every time. Yes, you need some cash because things are not done by magic but spend what you can sustain for a long period and allow the business to grow.

Jump straight into the fight in the middle of round six and start punching away at Met, Hegre, Femjoy and the rest and you'll get thrashed.
Quietly get on with what you do and do it well - bollocks to the rest... Never mind being jealous of someone else's site, models or income. Don't let your smaller setup interfere with your comittment to what you do and just keep your nose to the grindstone.
And if you can pay the rent every month then it's a success... Ignore the wankers that insist that your site should keep you in caviar and Ferrari's. Most of the people flaunting that attitude at industry events and on the forums prefer burgers anyway and since the recession their Ferarri's having to go back.

I have quietly sat in the background for years and made no waves, attended no events and just done small stuff quietly on low budgets whilst some people take the piss.
My house is now paid for outright and business is steadily picking up.
Can the same be said for Playboy?