It actually has a lot to do with what you mentioned, more and more people are going the custom, exclusive content route these days because they beleive that is the only way they will get sales.

Unfortunately most dont realize that feeds can add to a sites retention if there isnt much content in the members area anyway, im actually not a big fan of licensing feeds myself, have never used them except for freebies i get given every now and again and, whilst they do increase retention somewhat, i simply cant justify the cost of the feed vs. licensing a few new DVDs or photo sets to be used permanently in my members areas.

i spend around $400 a month right now on new content and whilst that doesnt buy a lot, its better than spending a couple of hundred bucks on a feed for content ill never own.

For live feeds, i offer my members the choice of a livecam upsell and that seems to work quite well and makes me money in the process, i dont see why i should cut revenues and actually spend money on a feed, live or otherwise, when i have nothing to actually 'show' for it that i own myself.

Id rather not offer a feed and make a couple of $50 upsell sales, than offer feeds and have to pay an additional $100+ a month.

Also, keep in mind in the past 12-18 months we have had an explosion of those companies who do use exclusive content offering that content as... Yes, you guessed it, feeds.

Platinum Bucks, TopBucks, SilverCash, etc, etc.. These are all companies with huge market saturation and branding, you are no longer competing with 2 or 3 feed providers like you used to but with massive corporations trying to maximize their profits from every exclusive shoot they have created, whether that be using the content in their members areas, relicensing the content via brokers for others to use, dvd sales or, offering exclusive feeds.

Sales on Rainbow Content have slowed drastically over the past 12 months, where we would get between 10 and 20 bulk orders a month, we're now getting 5-10 max, thankfully thought smaller orders have remained unaffected but, content purchases overall are definitely down, except for those producing exclusive content.

Regards,

Lee