Feeds & Paysites

While I understand a lot of the benefits of having a series of relevant content feeds in a new paysite, ie it saves you laying out a lot of cash to actually purchase and host the movies and galleries, I'm curious about how some of you rate their overall value.

Do you see members staying longer because they have access to the additional content?

Should the feeds be relevant, or is quantity more important?

How do you decide what feeds, if any, you use in your sites?

If you have exclusive content, do you think bringing in feeds brings down the value of what you've produced in house? Or are feeds a way to offer more content initially while a site matures with its own updates?

some feeds are really well run, they have proper update schedules and give surfers fresh new content. These are gold for keeping surfers.

Others are more "old school" where you use them for nothing more than giving your paysite some bulk video or photo content. Its an easy way to quickly add loads of content but it is not the best bang for the buck.

I've seen some of those that don't update when doing site reviews. Like some actually state their last update was in 2003. I really didn't and don't understand the value of keeping feeds like that available.

What really gets me is why gay feeds are often more expensive than straight ones.

I think it really depends on how much exclusive content you have and how often you update. I think a site like Randy Blue that has over 450 galleries and video clips, and who updates 2-3 times a week, doesn't really need them. I think it can bring down the value of their exclusive content. Same with Corbin Fisher and Fratmen, their content is so good and updated so regularly that I don't know that plug-ins do them much good.

Also, I question the value of the plug-ins when so many sites have them. If they were re-branded for each customer so at least on the surface they appeared different, then fine.

And I think they're absolutely useless if they're not being updated.

Cheers,
Michael

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Originally Posted by Dzinerbear

I think it really depends on how much exclusive content you have and how often you update. I think a site like Randy Blue that has over 450 galleries and video clips, and who updates 2-3 times a week, doesn't really need them. I think it can bring down the value of their exclusive content. Same with Corbin Fisher and Fratmen, their content is so good and updated so regularly that I don't know that plug-ins do them much good.

Also, I question the value of the plug-ins when so many sites have them. If they were re-branded for each customer so at least on the surface they appeared different, then fine.

And I think they're absolutely useless if they're not being updated.

Cheers,
Michael

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And you bring up another point ... so many sites have them. Are you shooting yourself in the foot if you don't have them too? Will the surfer say ok, I can get exclusive twinks at site abc, but I can get exclusive twinks AND 100 feeds at xyz for the same money, so chooses xyz over abc? Do feeds affect the wallet decisions or is it the models avail on site?

The majority of the content on our sites is exclusive and made by us. I think that is the key factor in our really high retention rate. The fact that we have stuff that they cant see anywhere else.

However, we do use the AEBN leased feeds on our site and our members do use and enjoy them. Not that we hear lots of good comments when they are running fine, but let them be down for a bit and we will get some heated emails from our members.

We initially chose them because they have a gay asian feed of 4 movies per month. It was sort of funny this month when I went to check a reported problem with the feeds and found our dvd featured on there.

I do follow the stats on feed usage and was surprized to find the amount of stuff outside our niche the members are looking at. Kind of fun to be able to see which niches are the most popular in planning for future development.

I dont think feeds bring down the value of exclusve content at all. I think they are pretty different things and serve different purposes. I dont see how anyone can expect to put together a site that is nothing but feeds and make any money, and one of those was recently pointed out to me. All I could think is there are so many sites you could get all those feeds plus some real content from the owner of the site, why would anyone stay with a site that was feeds only.

Yea, the feeds only sites confused me too. Seems they'd be traffic dependent, as I doubt they really retain. I can see some old school programs not having to fret so much on traffic sources at this point, but new sites with just feeds and nothing else ... I'm not seeing how they could survive. I think the surfers now want sites that actually offer what the tour is selling, and that's content that fulfills that niche.

Yeah, funny thing was, the site I saw, it looked like they had just taken every feed graphic their vendor provided and slapped them up. These was no meaningful text, so I wouldnt thnk they were getting much search engine traffic. And on top of that the site was still using frames.

What I can' understand is how a site can survive only from leased content alone. One of our most active board members has a site that has nearly every feed available. Each feed costs either X amount per member or X amount per gig of bandwidth. If you multiply those charges for every feed that you have and add in the cost of CC processing, hosting, rev sharing, aren't you cutting your profit to nil or even a negative $ amount?

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Originally Posted by Xstr8guy

What I can' understand is how a site can survive only from leased content alone. One of our most active board members has a site that has nearly every feed available. Each feed costs either X amount per member or X amount per gig of bandwidth. If you multiply those charges for every feed that you have and add in the cost of CC processing, hosting, rev sharing, aren't you cutting your profit to nil or even a negative $ amount?

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I would think hosting fees would be negligible. I mean if you are serving no content other than your tour, how much bandwith could you burn?

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Originally Posted by sukime69

I would think hosting fees would be negligible. I mean if you are serving no content other than your tour, how much bandwith could you burn?

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Oh yeah... what was I thinking? Lol.

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I would think hosting fees would be negligible. I mean if you are serving no content other than your tour, how much bandwith could you burn?

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I *think* Xstr8guy is referring to the feed bandwidth bill, like with AEBN...I imagine it would get pretty expensive if the only thing you had to offer was AEBN feeds and getting billed at their rates from the bandwidth.

Hmm, yet another calculation to consider for what it'd cost to use them. I'd glossed over the additional BW costs above and beyond what the monthly fee would be.

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Originally Posted by dannyz

I *think* Xstr8guy is referring to the feed bandwidth bill, like with AEBN...I imagine it would get pretty expensive if the only thing you had to offer was AEBN feeds and getting billed at their rates from the bandwidth.

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Actually, I meant bandwidth to be in addition to the cost of the leased feeds. But you did remind me of a subtopic involving feeds.

Is it more cost effective for a paysite owner to use feeds that charge by bandwidth useage or per member charges?

Frankly I think per member would be more cost effective as some of those guys can sure burn the bandwidth. THough I have to admit, I am not knowledgable about feeds and plugin, I got enough headaches trying to update a bloody newsletter or something.. :honest:

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Is it more cost effective for a paysite owner to use feeds that charge by bandwidth useage or per member charges?

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I think feeds that charge by bandwidth are more fair then charging per member. I know that many of our members don't even look at the feeds since we give them so much other content, so for us paying per member would not be a good deal.

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Originally Posted by Xstr8guy

Actually, I meant bandwidth to be in addition to the cost of the leased feeds. But you did remind me of a subtopic involving feeds.

Is it more cost effective for a paysite owner to use feeds that charge by bandwidth useage or per member charges?

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I would say that it depends on how many members you have. For people just starting a site with little to no members it would probably be more cost effecient to pay for the bandwidth you use(per gig). For larger programs i would say that being charged by the member would be better because with high quality, updated feeds you will never have to pay the $2 a gig your members use.

Given how cheap bandwidth is, makes one wonder why the overage is so expensive... :rolleyes:

i had one paysite - a straight one - and we used hostedcontent as our entire movie collection. since you can link to each movie directly and use your own background, page layout, headers and footers, it worked great. at the time i did not know how to encode videos, so i found hostedcontent to be a real blessing.

i think one could pretty much do almost the same thing with feedsnow as long as they let you have multiple consoles.

as far as other feeds, i think these days your best bet unless you're planning to lease a LOT of them is to go with feeds that are entire sites. that way, you can call them bonus sites instead of feeds, and members seem happy about that.

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Originally Posted by basschick

i think one could pretty much do almost the same thing with feedsnow as long as they let you have multiple consoles.

as far as other feeds, i think these days your best bet unless you're planning to lease a LOT of them is to go with feeds that are entire sites. that way, you can call them bonus sites instead of feeds, and members seem happy about that.

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Ok, must be a dense day for me, as I'm not following the multiple consoles concept here? You mean something that can be brought in like a page include for each niche?

Yea, I had a feeling full site "feeds" would be received/perceived differently if presented as bonus sites.

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Originally Posted by gaystoryman

Given how cheap bandwidth is, makes one wonder why the overage is so expensive... :rolleyes:

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exactly! if your plugin provider is charging overages change providers. You cant
track how much bandwidth is being used anyways so who's to say how much you really used.

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Originally Posted by gaystoryman

Given how cheap bandwidth is, makes one wonder why the overage is so expensive... :rolleyes:

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For the same reason you can buy 1000 minutes of cell phone airtime for $40 and then you pay 40 cents a minute for overage... it's a profit center :)

We have several different servers, each with a large base bandwidth allocation, and we have our content split so that we don't run over on any one server. As the traffic increases, we can further split the traffic onto other servers. I just wish I could do that with my cell phone :)

One argument I haven't seen here is the issue of assets.

If you spend $12,000 a year on feeds, at the end of 5 years, you've spent $60,000 and have nothing to show for it.

If you spent the same $60,000 on buying exclusive content or paying models and shooting your own, you'd have between 50 and 200 sets of content that you own. The value of that intellectual property is a part of the net worth of your business, should you ever decide to sell it. If all you have is a domain name with a bunch of links and a monthly bandwidth bill, you won't have much, other than the traffic to the domain and whatever membership goodwill value to sell.

Couldn't the advent of feeds simply be that many are simply in a hurry to generate revenue, and are taking an easier road than shooting their own content? I would think someone would have to spend a lot of time shooting enough content to keep the same attention span that numerous feeds can deliver. :coffee:

Hello people,

Boyfunk, i think you made a great point about the long term costs of feeds vs. shooting/owning your own content. You know, you can live and die by feeds. I actually think they are sort of old school in themselves now. The branded content sites are really pulling away from the pack by offering original content and updating at least weekly.

I think it is always better to have your own content and will have something to show for it like BoyFunk pointed out. On the other hand there is only so much you can shoot and update. That is why we decided to mix things up with exclusive content and leased feeds and give members the best of both worlds. It seems to work really well but you have to pick your feeds carefully. We expect the feeds to have regular ontime updates and have good content. Our members really like the exclusive content as well as the leased feeds. I hope that helps. :)

Mark

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Originally Posted by boyfunk

One argument I haven't seen here is the issue of assets.

If you spend $12,000 a year on feeds, at the end of 5 years, you've spent $60,000 and have nothing to show for it.

If you spent the same $60,000 on buying exclusive content or paying models and shooting your own, you'd have between 50 and 200 sets of content that you own. The value of that intellectual property is a part of the net worth of your business, should you ever decide to sell it. If all you have is a domain name with a bunch of links and a monthly bandwidth bill, you won't have much, other than the traffic to the domain and whatever membership goodwill value to sell.

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I understand what you're saying, but in a startup situation, I can see a couple hundred bucks a month for feeds buys a lot more movies the members can see than I could buy for the same $200 in real content. Eventually, membership revenue reinvested into actual on site content would be the better value, but at what point, if ever, do you then say no more feeds if you had them to begin with? Or does it then go into the "cost of doing business" column just like the hosting fees and studio production costs?

You make a really good point... and one of the issues is, once you add a feed, you'll end up pissing off at least some members if/when you later remove it. From our perspective, at the point we drop a feed, we'd want to be able to add a bunch of new content, or a super discount to a new site, or something to replace the perceived value lost from dropping the feed.

But for a new webmaster, I could see that it's a lot easier to cough up $200 a month than to put up $5000 to get enough exclusive content to launch a new site. Perhaps one alternative would be to start with some semi-exclusive content, some exclusive content, and some non-exclusive content, then add as much exclusive and semi-exclusive as possible... I've never done the numbers, but it would probably be fairly easy to make that financially viable.

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Originally Posted by gaystoryman

Couldn't the advent of feeds simply be that many are simply in a hurry to generate revenue, and are taking an easier road than shooting their own content? I would think someone would have to spend a lot of time shooting enough content to keep the same attention span that numerous feeds can deliver. :coffee:

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It's not just a matter of being easier Ian, but more feasible on a limited budget. Not everyone has 5-10 grand to drop on the table for exclusive content when first starting out.

I'm looking to see what's the best balance of purchased vs feeds, how the feeds help or hinder in the short and long-term scenario, as well as trying to get a sense of what surfers expect from paysites these days. I have a pretty good idea of what will probably be the ultimate ideal, and that would be a few feeds that provide niche relevant content, along with on site content that is exclusive and semi exclusive, with regular updates. Which means a pretty intense production schedule, and a crew to handle it.

I'm also seeing more and more gay programs offering multiple sites with one pass on the gay side - which was a pretty common thing to offer on the str8side. But on the flip of that, a lot of the str8 programs have one common content pool and multiple doorway tours. Bottom line, it didn't matter which site you joined, you saw it all anyways. On the gay side, that isn't necessarily the case. With say five sites, all different, no cross-sharing of the picture pool ... and giving it all out at one membership fee ... what's the bonus? Longer retention?

LOL Perhaps I should save that for another thread.

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Originally Posted by boyfunk

One argument I haven't seen here is the issue of assets.

If you spend $12,000 a year on feeds, at the end of 5 years, you've spent $60,000 and have nothing to show for it.

If you spent the same $60,000 on buying exclusive content or paying models and shooting your own, you'd have between 50 and 200 sets of content that you own. The value of that intellectual property is a part of the net worth of your business, should you ever decide to sell it. If all you have is a domain name with a bunch of links and a monthly bandwidth bill, you won't have much, other than the traffic to the domain and whatever membership goodwill value to sell.

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This is an EXTREMELY good point, but I think it really depends on the feeds you are talking about. Some feeds are worth it because they update and keep things fresh plus offer a huge amount of content instantly for a cheap price, but most are just videos that you can buy for the same price of the feeds for 6 months.

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Originally Posted by IntenseCash.com

I think it is always better to have your own content and will have something to show for it like BoyFunk pointed out. On the other hand there is only so much you can shoot and update. That is why we decided to mix things up with exclusive content and leased feeds and give members the best of both worlds. It seems to work really well but you have to pick your feeds carefully. We expect the feeds to have regular ontime updates and have good content. Our members really like the exclusive content as well as the leased feeds. I hope that helps. :)

Mark

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Glad the feed are working out well for you Mark:)

Joel Kapp
http://webmastercentral.com
joel@webmastercentral.com
ICQ# 347983177

feedsnow lets you have only 4 videos per page or "console" as they call it. so it would take several to really build up a site. the good part is that you can choose which movies to put on each console - you could choose them by niche or have a "just added" page or anything you like.

it's really a shame you can't have more videos per page. that would make their feeds a real benefit to any site, and would make them more money.

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Originally Posted by Bec

Ok, must be a dense day for me, as I'm not following the multiple consoles concept here? You mean something that can be brought in like a page include for each niche?

Yea, I had a feeling full site "feeds" would be received/perceived differently if presented as bonus sites.

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Thanks for clarifying Patti -- I just wasn't picturing what you were describing.