We use nothing but exclusive content on our site, and don't offer a single plugin feed or piece of licensed content. For us, that's what our members have come to expect and what we've become known for. Exclusive content is a major ingredient for our particular recipe for success.
However, this obviously introduces some issues others might not have to deal with, several of which have been mentioned here.
- Cost of producing content can be quite significant. We pay our models well, and we have production staffers to pay, along with production costs (studio, travel, equipment)
- Time involved in the entire process - from recruiting the models to scheduling shoots to the actual shoots themselves, processing the videos and photos etc.
- Legality aspects, as far as records keeping, checking, double checking, triple checking.
- Health and safety concerns.
- Policing piracy and copyright violations can be somewhat time consuming, but we've not found it to be debilitatingly so.
- As Chip pointed out, personality issues can sometimes come about. Oddly enough we don't deal with that as much as some other companies might. Most of our models are straight, and most of them aren't really involved in the industry as a whole. They have no involvement in the industry whatsoever beyond appearing in some videos for us, and that's that. They then go on to do something else entirely with their lives. We're their first and only point of contact in the industry. But occasionally we'll get models, gay or straight, that are very much involved in the industry "scene" and might have an agenda or conflicts of interest or even personal interests and agendas that aren't entirely compatible with our business.
I'd say that a considerable degree of the cost of producing the content is offset by the benefit of absolute ownership. That is our content, and ours alone. We can do whatever we wish to do with it, and the overhead involved in its production ends once it is produced. As opposed to, say, constantly paying a month to month fee to someone else to lease, plugin or license their content and never acquiring any equity or ownership of it. Once you stop paying, that content ceases to exist as far as you are concerned. Say you're paying $500/month for a certain feed... at the end of the year you've spent $6000 for something you have no ownership of. Whereas we would rather spend $6000 to shoot some video that we can offer up on the site, and hold on to for alternate medium release down the line (VOD, DVD, mobile, or even licensing it out in turn). It's ours to do with as we wish, completely and totally.
