ARE OUR SHOOTS WORTH IT?

Details and insights from our two day shooting spree:




S T A T S :

Created:
906 photos in five different galleries, 45 minutes in 3 JO (jack-off) videos

Costs:
$186 - room
$110 - four pairs of inexpensive shoes
$100 - legwear and hosiery accessories
$170 - other bargain-hunted clothes, panties, and bras
Total: $566


Average approximate cost per photo: $1.60

Note: these are all approximations. I didn't account for the cost of our cosmetics, lights, camera, camcorder, memory cards, tapes, luggage, or time. The total number of pictures is inaccurate since we won't actually use all of those photos; some of them will be junked. Considering these factors, the average cost per photo is actually grossly underestimated. On the other hand, many elements of our "costumes" will be used over and over again, or have already been used in other shoots, so figuring in their total cost for this shoot is an overestimation. I also didn't average in the video production, although the videos probably have greater potential for sales.


V A L U E :
Of course, I think the amount of money we spend to make porn is "worth it", otherwise I wouldn't do it. Some people would say we spend too much money on our shoots, others not enough. Some people would say we don't shoot enough content, others would say we shoot too much. To really measure whether or not what we spend is "worth it", we'd have to know how much we'll earn on each photo set and video, or how many sales we'll make or memberships we'll retain because of each one. This is next to impossible to determine. There will probably be someone who loves Delia's satin panties so much, and specifically seeing HER in them that he'll buy a membership if he sees a sample photo, and keep his membership in hopes she'll shoot MORE satin panty stuff. But there's no way of figuring out how many of these people are out there.

In the final assessment we have to look at each photo gallery and video as one small piece of a large body of work, since most of the money we make comes from selling subscriptions to access it as a whole, not per photo set or video (though we do a little of that too).

If forced to figure out the potential earnings from just this block of content we produced over the past couple of days, I have to first say that THERE IS NO LIMIT. We could sell these photos and videos to a billion people, barring a legal disaster. Of course, that (selling a billion memberships) probably won't happen. The photos and videos will also probably decrease in value as time goes on due to overexposure, leaps in technology raising acceptable quality standards, etc.

If REALLY forced to figure out how much we'll make in the short term off of these photos and videos, I'll lead you through this explanation:

1) Monthly memberships to our sites currently cost about $20.
2) After processing fees (15%) and affiliate payouts (average of 23%), we average about $12.40.
3) That doesn't account for any of our other business expenses like

*hosting costs ($399 a month)
*electricity to power our computers and provide us with light and heat while we're working (maybe $75 a month avg.)
*cable AND dsl (about $140 a month) to run our 10+ spycams, do our shows, upload our content to the server, etc.
*taxes (jesus FUCKING christ)
*software, scripts, smaller hosting packages, domain names, blah blah blah (at least $50 a month)
*time
*health insurance (which we don't have)
*gym memberships, hair coloring, and all those things we do to try to make ourselves pretty (at least $150 a month on average)

On the very low side, not counting our rent, food, time, taxes or any of that, those expenses I mentioned come to about $800.

So how many memberships do we need to sell to pay the very bare minimum of our expenses for two months (eluding the tax man all the while) plus pay for a photo shoot costing $566 that will provide just one of our websites with about two months of updates? We would need $2,166 just to break even. At $12.40 per membership, we'd need to sell 174 one month subscriptions or 87 per month. That is 174 different joins or 87 different people who stay on for two months.

Fortunately, we do that and more. The part that makes it "worth it", though, is not actually having to go through these calculations every day (or even every month or quarterly) to know what we do is valuable. I know very well that THE POTENTIAL money we can make off our content vastly exceeds what we spend to make it. We don't vastly exceed it right now -- NOT EVEN CLOSE -- but I can't describe to people how incredibly exciting it is to have NO VISIBLE CEILING on our potential to make money. There's no top of the pay scale, and that rocks so hard that I keep on trucking in spite of my hideous debt load.

F U N:
How much fun we have making porn is almost as important as the money in determining the value of our work. Some of you might be horrified and turned-off by my money talk and haven't even made it this far into my calculations, but what we do truly is fun. No, I don't mean my panties are soaking wet every second that I'm working, but our work is fun and rewarding on many levels.

Take this photo shoot as an example. My panties WERE indeed quite wet (though not exactly "soaking") while I shot Delia. Especially while seeing her in those satin panties. Aside from the obvious stimulation of watching Delia pose for me, there's the added bonus of pondering the "end users" who will enjoy the content. I like thinking about what they're going to do to themselves when they see the photos and videos. I like thinking about individuals (in a shadowy and anonymous way) who have very specific tastes and imagining I'm shooting at least a few shots that will wind up favorites because they have a nice photo of someone special/different (Delia or me) exhibiting something in particular they can just never get enough of (panties, nylons, precum, snappy garters, bare feet, cleavage, upskirts, hairy pussy, freckles or whatever).

It is FUN to capture beautiful, sexy images. It's fun to be the one saving and sharing it, knowing it will elicit little utterances of pleasure from people all over the world. It's also a challenge, and challenges are fun, too.


P H O T O G R A P H E R -VS- M O D E L :
We only shot one Trixie set/of me, and the rest of the time we shot Delia. Sometimes I enjoy my shoots, particularly ones involving videos with role plays. Often they are interesting from a technical perspective. Most often, though, I enjoy shooting other people. Sexually I get off on shooting other people more than I do by being the "model". When I do get off on "modeling", it's usually because I am imagining someone *else* getting off on the end product.

This time around I wasn't feeling very sexy about being in front of the camera, partly because my body felt like dead weight; posing for (good) pictures is pretty demanding on your body so being in good shape is kind of important. I'm not. Anyway, I was totally in dirty old man mode. I wanted to see Delia in all her different outfits and take as many good jack-off-worthy pictures as possible, and lots of good, taunting build-up to those ones. Plus, Delia is a great model. Still, I enjoy bossing her around and giving her directions. I'm sure I annoy the piss out of her sometimes, but I like it.

As the Delia shoots went on, I started feeling groovier and groovier. My body felt great and I felt really productive, like we were on a roll. When I am behind the camera it's almost as physically demanding as being in front of it, but way more fun because I DON'T HAVE TO LOOK PRETTY. I'm on the ground, then I'm climbing on furniture, then I'm holding my guts in an isometric contraction. I'm bending over, stretching up high, and holding as still as possible when shooting with low light (we never use flashes or speedlights; I'm not saying they're bad, we just haven't invested the money and time in buying the equipment and learning to use them properly, and we hate the way that stuff looks when done without effort). Anyway, my body warmed up and started working in a way that felt efficient, smooth, and electric. Delia looked so hot and I felt so good and alive, it was fantastic fun. I felt truly amazing inside, and utterly blessed.

*****

We wound up coming home instead of spending the second night in the room. It was a nice room with a cozy bed, but we packed and crept out before midnight to go back home to our dog. I also really wanted to see what happened with Heather on America's Next Top Model, but our DVR only recorded twelve minutes of it for some reason. Fortunately they run a repeat on Sunday since a) I *hate* missing an episode of any shot I actually like to watch, and b) I *hate* watching television on the computer so I don't do that. It's not an option for me to waste time sitting upright at my machine trying to find some crappy bandwidth-eating stream of a tv show somewhere. That's not my idea of relaxation (though I understand why people with different jobs and better setups do it that way and someday I'm sure I will too).

*****

I think we do a good job of balancing professionalism and productivity on our shoots with healthy personal-fulfillment. We don't shoot in a way that feels unpleasantly like an assembly line the way most porn is shot. I'd say 90% of the time we spend actually shooting (not including prep time which can be a big drag) we enjoy it and if we start getting sick of it? We can quit, do something else with our time, and look forward to the next shoot when we'll be in a sexier mood. After not shooting as much Trixie content as we planned, I actually feel really amped up with ideas, like I have a whole treasure trove of naughtiness to explore. I love anticipating shoots in that way, and I also love that we have a nice stack of Delia stuff shot so that we can spend a day, for example, focusing all of our energy on shooting just one scene that requires more creative energy than our shoots that are more photo-focused on fetish attire (nylons, panties, etc.) rather than video-focused on a role play, or shot outside and require having a whole day open to feel out the weather, pick a spot, etc.

Ideally we will have and maintain a large backlog of efficiently-shot content so that we can do more spontaneous and/or creative shoots that need the time and space to do RIGHT, by preparing properly and also having the leeway to be leisurely about it so that it feels less like a big plan and more like something exciting we've been looking forward to doing. In other words, plan well enough and have enough free time so the plan feels NATURAL and doesn't involve stress like hurrying to clean up part of the house to shoot in, buy/create props, wash the right clothes, charge up camera equipment, set up lights, etc.

Labels: money, PHOTOS, PORNOGRAPHY, webwhore insights, work

posted by Trixie at 10/04/2007 06:03:00 PM -