A change is in the wind

[davidnorth]

I realize what is happening in the world with the economy and the ability of people to indulge their passions (although more on that below), but there is a trend that is a little troubling. I have mentioned it before, but I think it bears another airing. Apart from a couple of Alba's and Kate Austen's videos, sales of bondage videos over the past couple of months has been slowing down in general, despite a lot of new titles being released. In particular, Jasmine's videos, which used to do very well, are now selling no better than (or even less than) recycled content being upscaled and re-presented. For example, The Unsuspecting Realtor and The Bikini Seller have both sold the same as (or less than) Taylor's "Careless Thief", Star Nine's "What Are The Odds?", Autumn Bodell's "She Keeps Trying To Escape", and Tilly McReese's "The TV Repairman". These recycled titles cost me nothing but time (and a little electricity), whereas new content costs hundred of dollars per title to create. The incentive to do so is obviously less for me, so with a few recent shoots, I have not included bondage at all, but focused more on the Bound2Burst content.

Which brings me to this point. I'm not even sure I can use the economic argument because Bound2Burst sales have been exceptionally good over the same period, with the sale of some titles rivaling those of a decade ago when things were more vigorous overall. So, maybe its the fact that the bondage videos don't contain multiple tying positions, or exciting capture scenes. If that's the case, it's not really a problem I can solve, because I can't perform most of those things now, either because of censorship or because of my own great age making too much physical activity difficult. Bondage videos also take quite a lot of time to film compared to other genres, and with sales of new material so slow, it is becoming uneconomic to produce such content.

I'm not sure where to go from here. For the moment, I am going to focus on ungrading older content from 720p WMV files to 1080p MP4 files, giving them a new lease of life. By not paying out for new material too often, the economics of running the site may be okay. That said, Dreamhost recently increased the cost of some of the servers I use, and not by a little either, so I will be transferring the bondage store and its videos to a server with less RAM to significantly lower the overheads. I hope this won't have a negative impact - the Bound2Burst Archive store is running on a server with much less RAM and it seems to be working fine, so I don't anticipate too many issues.

[GB2691]

My (largely uninformed) viewpoint, on which you, Dave, or others more knowledgeable than I am, may be able to correct me:

I would suggest that the market for bondage content is still large, but that Beauties-in-Bondage has to compete with many more sites / producers / models than it once did, some of which offer things you don't, so your market share might expect to fall...

On the other hand, I think the desperation field may be smaller, but Bound2Burst is pre-eminent, so your sales there can continue to hold up, in the face of less stiff opposition.

I do hope that you will continue, as I still consider your recent bondage output to hold up well, but naturally you must do what's best for you, financially or otherwise.

[davidnorth]

My (largely uninformed) viewpoint, on which you, Dave, or others more knowledgeable than I am, may be able to correct me:

I would suggest that the market for bondage content is still large, but that Beauties-in-Bondage has to compete with many more sites / producers / models than it once did, some of which offer things you don't, so your market share might expect to fall...

On the other hand, I think the desperation field may be smaller, but Bound2Burst is pre-eminent, so your sales there can continue to hold up, in the face of less stiff opposition.

I do hope that you will continue, as I still consider your recent bondage output to hold up well, but naturally you must do what's best for you, financially or otherwise.

Your points are certainly valid. A 17-year-old bondage site can hardly hope to compete with the slew of new stores which have opened up in recent years. This accounts for a long term trend. However, the most recent one has started fairly suddenly a few months ago, and is affecting both this store and its Clips4Sale counterpart. It may be a case of less money to spend, so customers are focusing on what they most want to see. I am certainly not churning out content the way most others are doing, such as Borderland Bound which always does well. However, I believe they publish every day, sometimes twice a day, so their overheads must be very significant too.

[NYTapeFan]

I'm sorry to hear that the economics and market shifts have made you call this enterprise into question. We here on this forum would gladly be happy paying customers of your work, though unfortunately that is not enough.

[Dazroped]

My (largely uninformed) viewpoint, on which you, Dave, or others more knowledgeable than I am, may be able to correct me:

I would suggest that the market for bondage content is still large, but that Beauties-in-Bondage has to compete with many more sites / producers / models than it once did, some of which offer things you don't, so your market share might expect to fall...

On the other hand, I think the desperation field may be smaller, but Bound2Burst is pre-eminent, so your sales there can continue to hold up, in the face of less stiff opposition.

I do hope that you will continue, as I still consider your recent bondage output to hold up well, but naturally you must do what's best for you, financially or otherwise.

I agree with both of you if it goes though we loose Jasmine' and as long as she is willing to continue i just couldn't see her going anywhere else.

[Harty]

On the other hand, I think the desperation field may be smaller, but Bound2Burst is pre-eminent, so your sales there can continue to hold up, in the face of less stiff opposition.

I used to wonder why those videos outsold the bondage stuff but eventually came to the assumption it was because the number of bondage producers far outweighs…erm…bursting ones.

[davidnorth]

On the other hand, I think the desperation field may be smaller, but Bound2Burst is pre-eminent, so your sales there can continue to hold up, in the face of less stiff opposition.

I used to wonder why those videos outsold the bondage stuff but eventually came to the assumption it was because the number of bondage producers far outweighs…erm…bursting ones.

Absolutely. Still, the difference is pretty staggering.

pie-chart.jpg (42.04 KiB) Viewed 1147 times

[Harty]

And there you have it, an overwhelmingly large piece of the pie.

[Strike1993]

Thats quite shocking that its such a large slice of the pie.