Totally agree with both David and Tony.

I'm not trying to imply that DVD producers are all in the dark ages; they know their craft well and do it well and make good money off of it. And many of the web-only people who are brilliant online marketers are probably equally inept at producing DVDs.

The reality is the two areas are just totally different. The appeal is different, what makes the customer buy is different... in many cases even the way the content is edited is different.

Both the DVD people and the online people do their jobs well. I think Brian's point was that some of the DVD studios act like they're the shit and having a model on a DVD is a huge big deal when, in fact, a lot more eyeballs will see a well-marketed model from a popular website. And for whatever reason, a lot of the DVD people simply don't get that.

We've been lucky enough to develop a lot of visibility for our DVD lines (18 West Studios and Cuteboyvideos) but it's come through a LOT of hard work (mostly on AJ's part), trial and error, some dismal mistakes... not to mention the whole issue of having to warehouse 10,000 DVDs, dealing with manufacturers who are sloppy or late, cranky authoring software, etc. David may make it sound like a walk in the park, but that's because he's been doing it a long time and knows the ins and outs. For someone coming from an online background, there are a lot of pitfalls, in the same way that someone coming from physical product will find a lot of pitfalls in the online world.

I think that both areas require a lot of skill and knowledge, and we're definitely still learning both sides of the business. But as AJ and I have told many people, if we were starting over from scratch today, I would probably skip content creation entirely and focus on traffic. A lot less hassle, total flexibility with scheduling your time, no cranky or flaky models to deal with.