That is one of the best and informative posts I have ever read, so thank you for posting it. We resisted offering downloads for as long as we could as I too always knew that would wreck the industry and it has. The post by Ryuhwf also is an interesting post in that someone will always figure out a way to capture content. However, a point I might make is of being careful what you ask for. In his example he cannot afford a $30 video (Ours are all $17.50), which is a sad fact of today's economy. So it's somewhat understandable why everybody wants everything for next to free if not free. However, consider that if you can't support a vendor at $30 they are eventually going to go out of business like 90% of companies have already done. So pick your poison, do you want it cheap or free at the exchange of eventually there will be almost nobody producing material anymore. If a vendor selling $30 videos could sell 100 of them a month that's only $3000 a month or $3600 per year. That's not enough to live on and that's being extremely generous to assume they could sell 100 of them in a month. So there isn't much financial motivation if a vendor makes a video at whatever their cost is only to have possible to be distributed everywhere after a single purchase.
Let me give you another example of how much the industry has changed in 30 years. In the mid 1980's Golden Girls, with a catalog of less than 200 videos, average between $30,000 to $50,00 PER MONTH in Sales. And that was in 1980's dollars. That would be around $150 per video today. So they had lots of incentive there. I'm really surprised that in comparison that anyone is producing videos today as it's a really tough business model. We done well with our business model specializing in rare and harder to find videos, but if I were thinking of producing videos today, I simply wouldn't as it appears to not be worth it.
The one thing we have not tried yet are subscriptions, so I don't know how well others do with that model, but my first thought is that customers who have trouble affording that $30 a month would simply leave after a month and come back every now and then for another month, but I really don't see many customers sticking around month to month for a long period of time. So if any vendors out there would like to share their experiences with subscriptions, I'd love to hear about it
A company that grabs mu attention at the moment is Steel Kittens which was a spin off from Golden Girls in that Belinda Belle saw a good thing and took it to another level and probably did well for years. I don't know if she runs the company today or not given it's now based our of Arizona, but they offer a streaming service for $20 for EVERYTHING on their site. So some who knows how to grab that content can have every video they ever made and some they didn't for only $20 if they have the smarts to copy that content. In my mind that's an an act out of trying to save a sinking ship.....And as these companies go away they make a last ditch effort on clips4sale which many customers probably are unaware charge a whopping 40%, making that $30 video only worth just $18 AND they only pay you once a month.
So fans, I know times are tough on a lot of you and on vendors as well, but if you can't find a way to support them, they'll make the choice for you and go out of business, which is worse than having your favorite TV show canceled.
Xoxo,
Roxanne
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