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Porn Costs

Hi

No doubt I will get tons of posts insulting me by those who are incapable of putting forward an argument or indeed have bothered to read my post.

I stated before that it would be interesting to know how many vhs and dvd porn are sold in the UK, I say this because it would also be very interesting to compare this to the amount of copied tapes that are out there.

I am not sure that the question posed by the chap asking why porn costs so much in the UK. Lets face it to make porn is cheap. Girls do it for peanuts. The other day I was told by a girl (who is very well known) that her and her mate did a full day shoot for ?300 (that?s not each, that?s for both of them).

The next question is how much do the films get sold to the shops for as well as what quantity.

Lets say that there are 100 shops in the UK and lets presume all will buy tapes. It would be interesting to know what quantity they buy, lets say 10 tapes at ?10 and 100 shops doing the same = ?1000, which is not a lot, and this is before you minus the cost of the tape, models, time, expenses, and the cost to put it through the film sensor board.

The shops can sell the tapes for what they like, such as ?40, giving them a ?30 profit.

Now what then happens is little Tom, who is currently unemployed thinks, hang on, I buy a tape at ?30 and make a few copies, I can make a few quid. So Tom kicks out 20 tapes at ?5, and sells them. ?50 he gets. So he keeps on going, makes good cash.

Who do people buy from, Tom of course.

One chap said that if the cost of porn came down sales would stay the same??? Not sure what marketing book he gets that from, but sales would go up, if shops were cheaper. If sales go up, the makers make more money. Put it this way, if you are happy to buy a tape for ?50, then you are going to be as happy to buy a tape for ?15, and the chances are rather than buying one you would buy a few. This is basic marketing, if you disagree, then go out and buy a marketing book.

So to answer why is porn in the UK expensive, I would say at a guess that its not the ones making the film making the cash, its the greedy shop owners.

i dont know about the facts when it comes to whole porn cost situation but i do know my maths... 10 tapes at ?10 is ?100, so thats 100 shops spending ?100 each, which is a total of ?10,000..... go buy a calculator to go with your marketing books )

I know, I thought I hit the 0 key more than I did.

Thank you for the correction, still 10k is not a great deal when you take off all the costs:

Models say ?500
Travel: ?40
Cost of vhs tape and covers: ?1 or more per tape
Cost to get it through the censors, say ?2k

Plus you have to get the tapes to the shop.

So you do not make much at the end of it.

I would be interested if anyoe who has made a porn film, could give a break down on how much it would cost to make a film and get it into the shops.

"Lets face it to make porn is cheap. Girls do it for peanuts. The other day I was told by a girl (who is very well known) that her and her mate did a full day shoot for ?300 (that?s not each, that?s for both of them)."

Bollocks!!!

Standard price for a half day (3 hour-ish) BG shoot for even an unknown model is ?250 - ?350 depending on what you want them to do. This should give you about 2 hours of recorded tape. From that you will get about 30 to 45 minutes of usable footage after editing which equates to 1 or maybe 2 scenes.

Then on top of the girls fees you then pay travel, hotels, food and entertainment etc for all the models and crew. If you want to use established (i.e reliable)male models then you have to pay them also - all this for one or two 30 minute scenes.

Then there are also your costs for materials such as tapes and then the cost (or time if you do it yourself) to edit and produce the final content. Add to that certification costs and it all adds up.

I don't call that particularly cheap - I would estimate a typical video cost will probably be ?5000(ish) before its all done and dusted. Add to that I have been offered ?500 per 20 - 30 minute scene from a distributor for exclusive rights and you can see that the producers aren't making much unless they shift a huge volume of tapes.

I am not saying that the successful producers like Ben and JM etc who do shift large volumes of tapes are not making money but I don't think they making as much as people seem to think.

Finally in response to your first comment above, I have no problem with people posting opinions and asking for advice (in fact I positively encourage it) but your posts are really starting to annoy me - you obviously know nothing about this industry and just like to hear your own voice. Most of your comments are either riddled with inaccuracies or are complete bollocks. You have pissed off just about every person on this board at some time or another and as for not taking time to read your posts - is it any fucking wonder when they are all at least 5000 words long?

You claim to be dyslexic (which I have no problem with) but you can't fucking count either - 20 x 5 is 100 and not 50 and 10 x 10 x 100 is 10,000 and not 1,000.

Jason

P.S. Apologies for doing an Allan and rambling on and on.....

What Dibble was referring to was the concept of elasticity of demand. Products vary in this respect. However cheap bread becomes you still won't buy more of it. I'm not sure that this entirely applies to porn, but there's a limit to the number of porn videos one would want to watch in a given time. (Before someone else says it, I know that I exceed this limit!)

Where Dibble's argument falls down and where yours stands up is that by making legit copies cheaper, then people are less likely to buy pirate copies.

With cheaper porn total sales revenue to legit suppliers and pirates combined would not necessarily rise, but it would still be better if the legit suppliers and therefore the producers got all of the cake between them (how they divide it up is another bone of contention). However, by definition legit producers and suppliers cannot compete with pirates on price because their costs are higher - see Jason's post (though I agree that licensed sex shops outside Soho hardly even try). In addition, pirates reduce the volume of sales of producers and thus make it more difficult for them to achieve the economies of scale which would enable them to lower their pirces. Therefore anyone who wants to see more porn being produced should be prepared to pay more for legitimate tapes.

Allan seems not only to be dyslexic with words, but also with facts. But maybe he's not as divi as he makes out? Maybe he's just trying to wind us up? He's certainly wound Jason up.

Allan was criticising Officer Dibble?s marketing manual, But Dibble?s never had one. He speaks from 10 years of (fairly successful) retail experience. He?s seen it, done it, and tried it all. He has to get it right, or he doesn?t eat. I would therefore venture that his opinion on these matters carries a little more weight than anyone on Civi Street, even enthusiastic amateurs.

I would beg to differ with Alec that making legit copies of videos cheaper would make all that much difference. Punters buy from pirates for all sorts of reasons apart from price - pirates usually offer a more interesting and varied selection. Pirates sell by mail order - so if you?re a sensitive soul you don't have to suffer the embarrassment of crossing the threshold of a sex shop and that's worth a few extra quid. There's also force of habit. Once we get into a routine of, for instance, buying from a particular pirate dealer, and you get what you are paying for, then you are loathed to give yourself the hassle, stress and heartache of trying to get material from another source. Even if it's a few quid cheaper.

Dibble.

Fair enough about 'elasticity'.....although if I hit a site selling a particular title I want at ?25, I'll buy it and go my merry way.
If the site is selling it and others at ?18, I'll often buy four or five.

I agree with both the above posts, although they seem to contradict each other, but there are some consumers who have posted here to the effect that, I quote, "?20 is far too much for a one-hour tape" (I leave aside his misunderstanding about the length of most tapes); so *some* (it may well be a minority of) punters, especially those fairly new to it, may be swayed by price.

I also note that many mail order suppliers - and I get a lot of catalogues - offer very much the same fare. Price may well be one factor which decides which one will get your custom, ceteris paribus, as the economists always say. Though of course porn punters are not known for their patience and self control and it is unlikely that they will wait to accumulate several catalogues and 'comparison shop' before reaching for the cheque book. This is the other side of the coin to the "my order didn't arrive by return of post so am I being ripped off?" syndrome.

So I suppose I agree that price will have only a very limited effect.

Of course, it may well all boil down to the "High St." marketing syndrome - "10% of brand names, etc."
Whilst I abhore pirates I can of course understand punters being attracted to them.
However, no pirate has access to a Master Tape and consequently his product degenerates with each copy.
If a punter is happy with an inferior product, so be it.
Furthermore, as has been said, if the practise continues less product will find its way to market.
The moral I suppose is that buyers of pirate material are destroying their own pleasure in the longer term.

Most people who copy tapes, buy the real one and use this as a master. All tapes are then taken from this, and thus the copy is only second generation.

With the birth of DVD copies are 100% the same.

Before anyone says dvd's cannot be copied, I have seen copyed dvd's selling for ?10.

Also a lot who sell copies sell from a home address as most people do not want to send money to a po box address. The chaps as I said before have a big tv, so people can see the films before they buy.

In this way, not only are the tapes cheaper, the person is going into a home rather than a sex shop, he or she can sit down in comfort with a cup of tea, relaxed view tapes then buy them.

It has been noted that since the UK law changed this has no doubt had an impact, as before that when you could not get legall hard core uk porn, pirates were all over making big bucks. I know a main stream shop in Leeds city center that sold such films under the counter.

But unless the cost of 'real' vids come down in shops, then people will spend there money with the pirates.

I would sugest that if you charge more than ?20 then people will buy pirate tapes. Charge under ?20, then people are more likly to buy the real film plus more at the time.