Hi Mike,
This is HTMJeff from the comments thread. The company I work for is Hit the Mat on http://clips4sale.com/11587/
HTM got it’s start doing small time customs on Yahoo around 2004 and finally opened a clip store on Clips4sale sometime in 2007. My perspective is that of a male-owned studio, a female model’s perspective and experience can be different.
We grew our fanbase by offering direct customs from the start, and the repeat business guided our direction to where it is today. C4S gives you the option of having your contact information and custom HTML on the top of your store, and producers should absolutely use it so you can interact with fans. Unfortunately C4S has gotten overprotective of their traffic and started making it difficult to link to your own site, even if your site does nothing but supplement your C4S store with bonus content/previews etc.
Traffic/exposure is the major thing Clips4sale has over it’s more modern competitors (manyvids/iwantclips/kinkbomb). The new sites also seem to be far more model/camgirl based, featuring them almost exclusively as opposed to studios (Manyvids is changing here, though). Their niches are also more limited and seem to be strongly femdom based, whereas C4S you can find an audience for so much more. If you update regularly, you’ll likely see traffic from Clips4sale itself getting you some sales where I can’t say that’s as true for the new sites. You have to drive your own traffic to them.
The one “regular porn” niche that seems to do well on most of them (except maybe Kinkbomb) is blowjobs. You’ll find those featured on C4S’s top 50, Manyvids’s frontpage and IWantclips. We haven’t gone that XXX ourselves yet but have been considering it.
My advice to anyone starting out or looking to get in to the clip game is get a presence on ALL of them, just in case C4S falters as it’s showing some signs of weakness. The unambitious redesign, international payout issues, backend issues earlier this year are all signs of some trouble, so it’s good to have a backup plan since no one is on top forever. Word of warning though: If you link to your site from your C4S store and your site has links to competitor clip sites, C4S will likely block your link from their entire site.
If you have any questions or want further clarification, let me know!
Jeff Charleston – Hit the Mat
