Yes, it's very concerning. Any other content brokers out there paying attention? Pardon the pun, but there's a hole that needs to be filled.
Dzinerbear
Yes, it's very concerning. Any other content brokers out there paying attention? Pardon the pun, but there's a hole that needs to be filled.
Dzinerbear
You know, I hadn't been paying attention, but now you say it, I miss those Ounique update emails...
I too hope things are OK there. I did worry a bit when Don left...
Convert your female traffic!
Greetings:
I've noticed in the past 6 months that this seems to be an industry-wide trend, not simply an Ounique one.
I was going through my bookmarks of content brokers the other day planning on hunting down some new things to buy up. Not only did very few of them have any updates, many of them were just flat out gone all together...
One Of The Good Things About Being A Photographer!..."Option To Sell" , Most "Content-Providers" Are "Dependent" Upon Photographers And When The "Well" Runs Dry! , They Die!
I'd Like To Say It's "Unfortunate" But Most Likely The Content Provider "Screwed-Over" The Photographer One Time Too Many And The Photographer No Longer Has Dealings With Them...I'm Just Guessing!
If There Is One Thing I Have Learned In This Buisness And That Is To Be "Involved" As Much As Possible In It ( From Production To Completion )
That Way You Are Not "Dependent" Upon Someone Else , Or Make Sure You Have A " Plan-B "!
Sincerely ~ Not Bitter..Just A Bitch!
longboardjim - ounique is great for photographers unless something has changed very radically.
i figure the new guy is the reason for less updates. don worked there for years - the new guy is probably still getting up to speed. he also hasn't gotten back in touch with me regarding an exchange...
I'm Sure It's A "Management-Issue" ( Don! , Probably Took The Damn Executive Washroom Keys!
Sincerely ~ Screw Me Once! , Shame On You...Screw Me Twice! , Shame On Me!
i wouldn't be surprised if less photogs are giving content to brokers.
why let them have it and make half when you can do it yourself and get all the dough.
that's not to say content brokers are bad, it works for some people.
i know this one!
most of the photographers don't have much traffic. ounique has many thousands of regular buyers. i know people who sell there, and they make enough more sales at ounique to make it worth it.
Originally Posted by jIgG
So many different answers here, but here might be a few.
The content business has changed completely in the last 18 months and it could be the reason for the lack of updates.
1) All the free content floating around, simply meant less sales for content producers. The result was the demise of many.
2) The market has gone up in terms of quality some are simply unable to produce it.
3) Ounique used to insist on brokering exclusive content, there is more money for the producer in giving it to 5 brokers rather than 1
4) Gay is a small niche, with the problems many content producers faced last year it could of simply become unprofitable to shoot it. We did some solo boy sets, sales were 1/3 of what solo girls sales were. It's simply not worth shooting them.
Our business is in the teens market is still going strong, in fact sales are climbing and we are updating weekly. Just not doing gay.
Content is KING, because someone has to go out and produce it. The traffic is there and while we produce the content it will always be there.
Thanks for your POV Paul. It's nice to hear from another broker about the situation.
I'm not going to get into the whole "gay is not a niche" argument, especially since you are not interested in brokering gay content. That's really too bad because with Ounique fading away, it would be a good time to steal some of the male content photographers away from them. Just a thought
Hi guys. Very interesting thread here. I just wanted to say please do not see my leaving as deserting a sinking ship. That's not why I left. They didn't have any plans of closing up shop that I know of.
Don Mike
DonMikeCali@gmail.com
ok...well I am going to do my best to explain the content biz in this short space.
I know not everyone is going to agree with me and that’s fine but one thing that everyone needs to agree upon in this business is the fact that this industry is changing in regards to content.
No matter what anyone might try to lead you to believe there is NOT a lot of $$ in content sales. Forget that notion and the sooner you realize that then the better off everyone will be. Now there are some people who have made a comfortable life for themselves with content but the vast majority of those people shoot content where it is much cheaper to shoot then in the continental United States. You can ask Harlan, or any other content producer and they will tell you that witch each year you are in the biz the cost of doing business keeps going up. Models are harder to find and what they want to be paid keeps going up.
I know by looking at trends over the past year one thing I have noticed is that people tend to be doing two things in the paysite biz……relying on feeds solely or shooting their own content. I don’t know why a lot of webmasters don’t compromise a bit and have their own updated galleries both video and photo but most just do not. They either do one or the other.
As far as content………..Everyone has their preferences. Let me go on the record by saying that I DO NOT CARE FORTWINKS……………now with that said my team and I have worked very hard to build a large portfolio of DIVERSE content. There is mature and there is hairy and there is Latin and black. There is military and muscle and toy content. I would venture to say that we are building the largest video collection of any other content company. But yet we are still limited to what our producers bring to us. They have to shoot what makes them money!
I cannot even begin to tell you how diverse peoples tastes are. I have people who beg me for specific small cock content. Now how many small cock photo sets do you think I can sell? Yes I know some people want mature hairy men content but when we do offer some things on our site it quite frankly does not sell. Do you know how many $30 sets we have to sell to cover the costs for the photographer and for ourselves? Believe me there are not that many people who want the same type of content and are willing to pay for it. NO matter how many people say they would buy “This kind of content”. When it comes to pulling out the pocket book and doing it they just do not.
I know its difficult when you have a niche that works for you and you cannot find the content you want. The bottom line is you have to offer content that will keep your surfers happy but on the other hand there is a photographer who is not even covering his costs because the sales are just not there. After a while they just give up or shoot content solely for themselves.
We are always growing our portfolio and there are different niches we realize we are not covering as well as we should but finding the photographers who can shoot it and deliver it and make money from it make the job more difficult.
I certainly understand that "mature hairy men" content (for example) does not sell well. But there is a demand for it by surfers. If very few webmasters want to utilize this type of content on their sites, well good for me... less competition.
But here is a thought, Randy... Ounique used to sell a lot of photo sets covering MANY different niches. Maybe your lack of success selling "mature hairy men" had to do with the fact that Ounique had a monopoly on that type of content in the past. Ounique seems to not be interested in doing many updates, so there has to be a lot of photographers with a backlog of photo shoots and no way to sell them. Maxpixels could be the hero and offer them a new outlet!
Oh hey! I just remembered, isn't there a brand new content broker that just opened shop? Something called rainbowcontent.com
Hmmm, where do they fit in to all of this? Do they have any interest in picking up the slack?
Hi Y'all,
Just to throw my 2 cents worth into the thread here.
Ounique has been (and I suspect will continue to be) one of the premier content providers around. They may be going through some problems at the moment, I don't really know, but the guys that run it know what they are doing and I'm guessing they will be around for quite some time.
There are others, Max Pixels has been mentioned alongwith a couple of others. We also sell content, and all of our content is strictly gay. As one of the guys mentioned, their really isn't a lot of income in selling content, and when you restrict yourself, as we have, to ONLY gay content, the income is even more reduced.
We shoot our own films and stills while making our videos, so when we decided to launch Gay Adult Photos, http://www.GayAdultPhotos.com it wasn't with strictly profit motives in mind, but rather to try to generate some additional income from the content we alread had. The majority of our income comes from the sale of our films to the retail public who buys our films.
Gay Adult Photos has now grown to the point that other photographers are now sending their content to us for resale, and we are always looking for more photographers so if you know of any, send them our way. We are currently negotiating with several gay photographers to purchase their entire inventory, if these arrangements work out, we'll be adding very shortly many thousands of new pics to the site.
Our content covers the gamut from twinks, to bears, to muscle guys, to euro guys and much more. We also feature everything from solos, to the very hardcore action stills and clips including FF and watersports.
So, if you haven't checked us out, or haven't checked us out lately, come pay us a visit at http://www.GayAdultPhotos.com We do our best to add new gay content weekly but unless you sign up as a Gay Webmaster on the site and request to be added to our mail list you wouldn't be aware of the site because we really don't do much in the way of advertiisng....it's mostly just word of mouth from one webmaster to anothter.
Thanks,
Bill
http://www.GayAdultPhotos.com
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