New Site is live!

fnord · Post by **fnord** » Thu Jul 02, 2009 9:19 pm

Beav'

It's been killing me not to write today, but I'm going to hold my comments "for now" but how about a response to JKNIGHT_2000's post?

Xeran · Post by **Xeran** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 12:55 pm

You certainly didn't hold back in your other responses so I can't imagine what you'd have to say now. such as your review of the site in the main area.

Might as well post it. And the I'm not sure what question your referencing, I've already said I can't afford video. Do you think I'm sitting getting rich from this site? If I can make enough to buy a few pizzas and take my kid to a movie I'd be happy.

foo · Post by **foo** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 1:10 pm

By the looks of things, someone has made some classic mistakes.

Seeing another paysite somewhere that charges $30/month and has lots of users doesn't mean you can do the same. Such sites are premium offerings to the mass market, which have at least two of high quality content, large content volume (that they have paid for - you can't run a paysite on free stuff) and recognition/reputation. They can command high prices because they have these qualities. From what I'm seeing here, Xeran is missing all three - content isn't necessarily brilliant, there isn't that much of it, and there's no positive reputation. Therefore the outrage seems to be entirely justified - this was previously on offer for $10/month, and now the price is $30/month: what changed?

Sympathy votes tend to work when the supplier isn't the one suffering. Fairtrade products net a premium based on the promise that fair prices will be paid all along the supply chain to ensure everyone gets a fair wage. Xeran being unemployed is irrelevant. Having spent 15 of the last 24 months out of work, I know it's not pleasant. There are plenty of business gurus that have written vast quantities on pricing. The core strategies encompass whether you're providing a broad or narrow range of product, and whether it's garden variety or premium product. Being unemployed sadly isn't on any established list of qualities that let you get away with charging a higher price. Put simply, if I'm going to provide a service that others provide at five times the price, I need to justify to my prospects why I'm doing that based on features and benefits. That I'm currently out of work is not a product feature, and it's certainly not going to benefit the customer. Sorry if it seems harsh, but them's the breaks.

Then there's the issue of whether the market needs or can sustain yet another paysite. It's one of those ideas where lots of people can say "Hey, I can do that!". People look at Amazon and say "Hey, Bezos got rich even before Amazon made any money!" set out with a business plan that amounts to "copy Jeff Bezos". They are then surprised when nobody will give them any money - investors will say "If your plan is good, then why should I give my money to you when I can do it myself? Alternatively, I could just plough my money into Amazon instead." Someone comes up with the clever idea of cloning Google with some ex-Google staffers, starts Cuil, which turns out to be a steaming heap. There are a number of outlets serving ASFR folk's needs for a hell of a lot less than Xeran. It's a small and somewhat crowded market, so the prospects are already slim.

It seems Xeran is setting himself up to fail, and will only be upset when things inevitably fall apart. I don't mean him any ill, just a reality check - looks like he's getting a bit carried away.

Xeran · Post by **Xeran** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 2:09 pm

The site is really only 16 bucks a month if you sign up for the 6 months, that's only 6 dollars more a month than the old site. The old site had a lot of content, people would join then quit and join 6 months later. Basically ripping me off at my expense. 6 months of content for 10 bucks, great, then they'd cancel and join later (many many people did this). So now there's the option to that. if you like the stuff, like what the site is about then do the 6 months, that's what it is there for. 16 is a pretty much half the price, like I said it's 6 bucks more a month, it's not much to pay considering and there will be new content on a regular basis and some of the cool things that are coming to the site.

I'm out of work right but I never used it as a ploy for you guys to give me money, I hope it didn't come off like that, if you did that's awesome and I thank you for your generosity. I'm not using it as an excuse and hope it didn't come off that way. Also I am working on that set with the new girl that's on the join page, so expect that soon (should be there Sunday). She gets in a car accident.

Anyways that's that,

jknight_2000 · Post by **jknight_2000** » Sat Jul 04, 2009 1:12 am

I knew this was going to happen. Don't misunderstand my comment, Xeran. It is great that you are bringing back the old site. I was just stating something that others at this group won't say. The fact of the matter is, honestly, Xeran was it is the membership drop that caused the site to go down or was it the demands on you to create new and innovative content. Most sites of this type, have the same common failing -- consistent membership. Hell even, one of the most beloved porn sites, Danni.com has a brief membership drop, during the last twelve months. This is the reality of the world and economy that we live in.

As I said previously, I wish all the success in the world to Xeran in his endeavor, I just made a simple suggestion -- that would further guarantee the success of this site. If you haven't figured what I meant, I was thinking that joining forces with an another site who generating similiar interests as yours.

Best wishes,
Jknight

Xeran · Post by **Xeran** » Sat Jul 04, 2009 6:52 am

Is there a site you were thinking of?

Thanks man,

Xeran

fnord · Post by **fnord** » Sat Jul 04, 2009 12:16 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmH4-kKwbkg
with heart felt,...
For insperation

foo · Post by **foo** » Sat Jul 04, 2009 4:35 pm

Xeran wrote:The site is really only 16 bucks a month if you sign up for the 6 months, that's only 6 dollars more a month than the old site.

You still need to find some way of justifying what is effectively a 60% increase. "It was $10, now it's $16. What gives?" is a question that many people will have. In any case, the price still seems a little high. I've seen sites advertising at the $25-30 level, but they are the sort with near-continuous record of weekly updates going back ten years or more, and the resulting volume of content. You're also looking at a shrinking market (yeah, thanks for that, Lehman ...)

As always, people are fickle. As I'm sure you've seen, your customers can turn on you, and it's much harder to win people over a second time.

The old site had a lot of content, people would join then quit and join 6 months later. Basically ripping me off at my expense.

I'm confused. Surely you were getting $60/person for this. How were you being "ripped off at your own expense"?

I'm not having a dig, but do be careful, and make sure you know what you're doing. I've seen people that have ploughed substantial lay-off payments into businesses that looked profitable on paper, but failed because they got the pricing and the market wrong. I've seen people go bankrupt and lose their homes because their otherwise profitable business had all their cash tied up.

Remember - it's only going to be worth it if it puts cash in your pocket. Tread carefully, and good luck.

Xeran · Post by **Xeran** » Sun Jul 05, 2009 5:43 am

Fnord, are you serious, it's like your a 15 year old child? Did you find your moms credit card or something? Your insight is nothing more than that of a child so don't take any offense if I don't take your comments for anything more than a joke now. Clearly the way that you've been personally attacking me is that of someone who doesn't know how to control themselves or act like an adult. I hope you're not crying right now and if you are, I'm truly sorry. It's okay not to like something, get it over it, move on, I told you I'd refund your money. I don't know what else I can do for you?

Seriously I've treated you with respect and listened to some of your issues, but this is just sad and ridiculous. Grow up, be an adult and deal with things, instead of over and over and over again the ramblings of a child. The only conspiracy in your name(Fnord) is your attitude.

Thanks,

Xeran

Xeran · Post by **Xeran** » Sun Jul 05, 2009 5:56 am

foo, the people I was referring to basically did a check and dump. It's a known thing that a lot of pay sites fight. Basically a person will join for the lowest dollar amount then check out the stuff or download everything. Then cancel their preview account and then wait another 6 months and sign up again and repeat at the lowest priced subscription and cancel same day.

As far as the price, everything has gone up, price for image content, price for hosting and the price for subscription services and the development costs. It's like paying for gas, it's the same gas you and I had 6 years ago but it costs more.

I don't know if that helps but that's the explanation.

fnord · Post by **fnord** » Sun Jul 05, 2009 8:38 pm

Fnord, are you serious, it's like your a 15 year old child? Did you find your moms credit card or something? Your insight is nothing more than that of a child so don't take any offense if I don't take your comments for anything more than a joke now. Clearly the way that you've been personally attacking me is that of someone who doesn't know how to control themselves or act like an adult. "And the free images you speak about will get you sued faster than you can blink an eye.----Beav'" Quote
"I hope you're not crying right now and if you are, I'm truly sorry. It's okay not to like something, get it over it, move on, I told you I'd refund your money. I don't know what else I can do for you?
"You can cancel your membership and I'll give you your money back. On to the nice nice stuff. Hey Beav' I'm also out of work I understand times are stuff. At first I thought about the refund, well how about a complementary month after this month is over? I figure this will give you some time to get your site up to snuff. Guess you could consider this constructive reinforcement show me what your really capable of I know you have it in you just bring it out. When and if you do improve I will not think twice about writing a review and maybe even eat my hat Come on Beav' show me what you really can produce! (or if not let me know how to cancel ) Never answered???????????????????????????????
Seriously I've treated you with respect and listened to some of your issues, but this is just sad and ridiculous. Grow up, be an adult and deal with things, instead of over and over and over again the ramblings of a child. "You certainly didn't hold back in your other responses so I can't imagine what you'd have to say now. " Beav' -Quote The only conspiracy in your name(Fnord) is your attitude. " Nothing is for free and when you think it is it bites you."--Quote Beav'

Beav' to use your own words "it's like your a 15 year old child? Clearly the way that you've been personally attacking me is that of someone who doesn't know how to control themselves or act like an adult. Grow up, be an adult and deal with things, instead of over and over and over again the ramblings of a child."" Talk about Freudian slips, is the stress taking that much off a toll? Hate to see you when It's time for an update, oh ya that's why the first site went down right?

RoxxyRobofox · Post by **RoxxyRobofox** » Mon Jul 06, 2009 1:04 am

Great, another classic example of two morons shouting at each other so loudly and insistently that they don't realise how stupid they're making themselves look.

The review of the site was truthful (if not a bit harsh), but when it gets to the point where you're posting badly done Weird Al animations in protest of Synthgirls, it so clearly shows your ignorance that denying your own immaturity becomes the worst kind of hypocrisy. As if killing your credibility wasn't enough, you continue to persue a "Nuh uh, YOU ARE!!!11one@#4316" mindset with your responses. If anyone here has truly proven themselves to be pathetic by thier actions, it's you.

On the flip side, you also can't say that you're open to suggestion and then explain away all the faults people are pointing out, and there are a lot of them. If times are as tough as you say they are, then why are you even trying to make this site work? If it's really about your artwork that you care so much about, then post it on Photobucket, which has the advantage of being free to run. Obviously that's not the point, it's about the money, and because it's about the money you can either change what you're doing to better suit the needs of your target consumers or sit around and wonder why you can't hold subscriptions down.

I'm suprised no one stepped in and called bullshit earlier.

jak · Post by **jak** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 5:41 am

[POST REMOVED]

jknight_2000 · Post by **jknight_2000** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 11:44 pm

But the problem with the low-end membership costs is threefold

Number one - $3.99 memberships are cheap-key samplers. Lots of site provide the three-day memberships from 1.99 to 3.99. The problem is that a lot of these people are one-time members and are undependable for a consisent cash flow for any business.

Secondly, I would assume that Xeran is looking to more that the active member of the FBC. (Noidguy can attest to this.) The number of active members of the FBC are outnumbered by lurkers by at least 10:1 margin. This would mean he would have to pull new clients to make a profit.

Thirdly, people who like spoilers.

Spoilers are snippets that pretty much ruin movies or websites by giving the ending away for free. This will kill any early memberships a new site would get.

Now I do have a suggestion but I don't want to pass this through this forum. Contact me thought my PM on this site, and I will explain further. I think it can work and make you and another member of this site some serious cash.

jak · Post by **jak** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 12:47 am

[POST REMOVED]

jknight_2000 · Post by **jknight_2000** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 6:54 am

Jak, I understand your point, but what I was speaking of was simply the pros/cons of the trial membership idea. Any the idea is to draw and maintain membership.

Oh, one more thing you can block the ability of users from DL'ing stuff off your site. That's not a very difficult operation.

foo · Post by **foo** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 8:27 am

I notice that some places work on a sliding time scale - so there's $x/month but subscribers must pay the first 3 months in advance, non-refundable.

However, I still think you're making the mistake of top-slicing a niche market. Mainstream sites have a large target market, so a small share is still big money. In a niche market, it's the exact opposite - a large share is often still small change. In niche markets where prices are generally higher, the volume of demand caps off much more quickly.

The argument that your costs are going up is moot, because your costs are almost entirely indirect. The only thing that scales in proportion to the number of customers is the commission on the credit card payments. With this exception, none of the other costs are variable with customers. If you serve twice as many customers, you don't pay double for your hosting, you don't have to pay your models and photographers twice as much (because they don't need to do twice the amount of work), and managing the small number of accounts takes up twice very little time. Hence, you could probably drop your price and get more customers. Drop to $15/month (standard price, not promotional or discounted) and you'll need twice the customers, but you'll probably take more than this if I've read the market right. I think it's abundantly clear from what people are saying that you're pricing yourself out of the market.

foo · Post by **foo** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 8:32 am

jknight_2000 wrote:Oh, one more thing you can block the ability of users from DL'ing stuff off your site.

No, you can't. If it's appearing on my screen, my browser must retrieve it somehow. If it's in memory, it can be copied to disk. Also, doing this is a surefire way of killing your retention rates.

andoroido · Post by **andoroido** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 9:27 am

The facts are simple

There are thousands of manipped photos available for FREE.
And hundreds of those are very high quality.

Who would PAY to get a few dozen more, even if they are of the best quality? (Xeran does great work)

To charge membership fees, you have to provide something UNIQUE and not available for free.

Video sites can do this because nobody (as far as I know) is providing robo-video clips for free, and Hollywood and the mainstream porn industry aren't providing much 100% ASFR content.

To keep members you have to keep updating, no excuses.
When you start making excuses, your site is already dead. Too many people have been burned by monthly membership sites that stopped updating but kept collecting money each month while they made excuses related to their terrible trailer-park lives.

If you update very often, more people will probably stay as members, eager to see the latest stuff, not wanting to wait 6 months or a year to do another 1-month membership and capture everything.

Japanese heroine sites have been doing monthly membership for a year or 2 now. For 3000 yen a month (which works out to almsot exactly $30 now) you get access to hundreds of full-length DRM protected video and/or streams. (Very few have any ASFR content, though)
They usually add 2 or 3 videos a week, usually stuff originally put on sale on DVD a couple years earlier. This system seems to be working and catching on. Some people do 1-month memberships and watch as much as possible. Others keep up their memberships because of the steady updates, and because it's extremely tricky to save anything to disk.

If you're only updating a little bit each month, you shouldn't be angry if people don't want to stay members.

It's like an all-you-can-eat buffet
You don't go at 3:00PM.
Why?
Because the only stuff on the smorgasbord at 3PM is the luke warm stuff nobody wanted at lunchtime. There are no big food updates at 3PM.
You wait until 5PM when theres a lot more good stuff.
And the restaurant does not charge you extra for coming at 5PM, nor complain that you should have come at 1PM and 2PM and 3PM and 4PM too.

It's kind of too bad that photo manipping is kind of inefficient.
In 1 hour an amateur fetish video maker can make 4 shitty 10-minute clips for clips4sale sites and sell each for $10 per download. She should at least profit $100 if there are any fans at all.

In the same time Xeran can probably make just 1 good manip.
Though I'm interested in whatever the "other" content is going to be.

Maybe Xeran could make some zip files every few months and sell those. Put some unique ID info in each file (or even hidden in one or two of the photos in each set) so he can figure out who did it if anything leaked to the mass audience.

ASFRites have generally been pretty good about protecting independent producers.

fnord · Post by **fnord** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 11:18 pm

How to save copy protected images/ videos/ flash on websites

http://www.techpavan.com/2008/07/28/sav ... -webpages/

WilloWisp · Post by **WilloWisp** » Sun Jul 12, 2009 12:20 am

Fnord, your signature says that you're now getting your $30 worth, but you still seem to have a slant against synthoids. In what way are you getting your money's worth?

fnord · Post by **fnord** » Sun Jul 12, 2009 12:56 am

WilloWisp, to answer your question, since I still have not received my refund as I was promised. I figure the entertainment of watching old Beav' have a break down is the only value I'll get for my $30.00 .

By the by his big update was 2 pictures and one voice file, big whoop, what a rip off! All that time not working and he can only make 2 crappy pics and a 30 second voice file. The Weird All vid was accurate, and had better Art than. It takes less time to go through his entire site than to watch the above vid.

In thinking it over my be I will change "NOW GETTING my $30 worth" to
I GOT RIPPED OFF BY XERAN @ SYNTHGIRLS.CRAP

Xeran · Post by **Xeran** » Sun Jul 12, 2009 1:05 pm

First there's an update posted to the site, new images.

Now Fnord:
Actually I refunded fnord the day he asked for a refund, in "FULL", it's been cleared by PayPal since last Tuesday so I'm not sure what "CRAP" as you would call it you are talking about. Also there have been updates ever week since it opened. I've actually asked you how else I can help you other than give you your money back. In truth I am tired of responding to your replies, but feel I have too. Fnord I've been around on this board probably before you were born given your attitude, so the only break down you see is the one you're having by feeling compelled to keep pushing your own buttons, by publishing image hijacking methods and updating your footer.

So I'm not sure how or where this all went wrong. Since you're actually out nothing and got a chance to check out the site for free since you've been refunded. I certainly don't think your footer is warranted and it's not really appreciated. But there's nothing I can really do about that.

An the update you speak about was 2 sets one of 2 images and the other was of multiple images. There's just no pleasing you... lol seriously. Please.

Hope you find your way, your actions certain haven't found it for you.

Xeran

fnord · Post by **fnord** » Sun Jul 12, 2009 4:27 pm

Xeran Beav' IS A LYING SACK OF SHIT I HAVE NOT BEEN REFUNDED ANY THING! My posts are as a warning to others concerning Xeran's RIP OFF site! My last post was to answer WILLO's question.
For academic interest if Beav could have answered legitimate questions instead of throwing red herrings around, playing on emotions "out of work" and clear Freudian self projections on others, aka childish behavior, maybe a lot of the back and forth could have been avoided.

Looks like old' Beav's buttons were pushed again considering the incoherent ramblings. LMAOROTF

jknight_2000 · Post by **jknight_2000** » Sun Jul 12, 2009 6:23 pm

You don't like Xeran site, I think that's abundantly clear, and since you don't errors in oration, I make this clear.

If you don't like something make one clear statement and stop. Don't bash the issue into the dirt. Secondly, I can't make this any clearer than this. A review tells what something is about without giving away the plot, what you did to Xeran was the equivalent of a hatchet job. Rush Limbaugh and FOX News would love you for that job.

I honestly thought this site was about bringing people who have a particular fetish in common and building new bridges in the genre. But, in your case you have turned this into a personal vendetta.

If you don't believe that Xeran gave a timely refund, complain to him directly and don't use this site to spew your venom over a NEW site that is only one month old. (And if that doesn't work, this is always small claim court, but I doubt you will want to describe what your point of contention is to a judge.)

Last time,
JKnight

New Site is live!

I'm not sure I understand

Missing a few point

Damn it.

Any suggestions

Re: Missing a few point

Fnord

Might of not

Nice thought

Last time

Re: Last time

How to save copy protected images/ videos/ flash on websites

Actually fnord and Update

Ok Ok