While most of the time we use announcements as a way to deliver important news about our platform, sometimes we also make blog-like posts. We do this with the goal to give you a better idea of the logic behind our business decisions. And today we'd like to talk about pricing for our videos, and Darknet Desperation in particular.
As a general rule, we try to have our prices at ~30% of what is charged by the producer. We feel this is a perfect middle ground where the prices are low enough to encourage your using our site, while simultaneously high enough to allow us to cover costs associated with running the site, as well as turn a healthy profit. So when it comes to pricing for individual studios, we try to follow the logic of the producer as closely as possible. The easiest example is Peeing Outdoors with its "Summary" videos. As they are routinely priced at $12, we offer them for 40 tokens, i.e. $4.
However, the situation is different when the content is not standardized, which to be fair is pretty common with voyeur content. For example, RealDroplet forms the pricing on case by case basis, with the number of factors going into consideration - as a result, the prices can be anything from 30 to 70 tokens.
Of course, there are also staged content creators such as Bound2Burst and Water-Detox. They share two characteristics, such as: a) they are less popular compared to voyeur content; and b) the volume of such content is way higher. So for staged content, we streamline it by only having two prices, regardless of how it was originally priced by the producer. So right now for B2B it's 35 tokens for any video with individual model, and 45 for multiple-model videos or compilation. Water-Detox follows similar logic, with holding contest videos priced a bit higher than individual ones.
And then there is a peculiar case of Darknet Desperation, which originated as our site's exclusive. Initially, such videos did not have a price at all and it was up to us to decide them. In doing that, we followed two principles:
- The pricing should be reflective of how good the video is, with better clips priced higher;
- The pricing should respect the existing prices across the site which our members are accustomed to.
As the median price for high-demand content at the site is roughly 40 tokens, it made sense to divide Darknet videos into three prices - 35, 45 and 55 tokens.
When a new Darknet clip is uploaded, we ask ourselves three questions:
- How good is the desperation?
- How pretty is the girl?
- Are there other factors that would influence the price (length, quality)?
Those questions are asked in the exact order as they were listed. The desperation is by far the most important factor, because if she's not putting on a good show then there's nothing really to look at. Secondly, it is always much better when the girl is a pretty one, with great body and wearing fancy clothes. But as long as she's really bursting it's not a big deal if she's not. And finally, a longer video is always better than a shorter one. And it's always a bit disappointing when the video has a flaw of some kind. However, we do not let video duration be the sole factor that dictates the price.
Let's have a look at some examples to better understand how it works in practice:
DD Beer Festival #2 - pretty girl and outfit, crotch grabbing. Easily some of the best content in the category, 55 tokens.
DD Beer Festival #18 - interesting action with many desperation signs and leaving the line to find another place to go, and the girl is pretty as well; so even though it's only 2 minutes long we didn't see it as reason enough to price it lower than 55 tokens in this case.
DD Beer Festival #15 - despite being a 7-minute video with a pretty Asian doing some intense bouncing, it has no sound in the second half of the video. As such, it felt reasonable to price an otherwise great video at 45 tokens.
DD Beer Festival #1 - there's some great desperation in that one, but the girl is on the plump side and a lot of people aren't into that, and the length is under 4 minutes as well, so it felt fair to price it at 35 tokens.
Now that we're on the same page, we can discuss Darknet's latest video, DD Beer Festival #20
At a glance, it's more than twice as long as the longest video in the category, so it might seem like it should be priced way higher than 55 tokens. However, the desperation only really intensifies in the second half - there's no panic, no leaving the line to find some other place to go, no wetting herself in line (although such things are exceedingly rare). For the most part, it's just 18 minutes of a single girl standing in line. And while it's always nice to get a longer video, especially when you get to see some sort of buildup of that desperation, sometimes you may start wondering if she simply wasn't tired from standing and began to move around.
Does that mean Darknet Desperation will always be priced at 55 tokens max, regardless of video length? Well, not necessarily. There are situations where we might consider introducing a new price for such videos, be it 65 tokens or something else. However, in order for us to do so the entirety of that long video needs to be good. Be it a compilation of multiple scenes not unlike PO's Festival Summary videos; or even a single-girl video, provided there is some action going on and the video is fun to watch as a whole, and not just the last few minutes where desperation picks up.
So there we go. You should now hopefully have a better idea about how our prices are formed. If you happen to have questions or feedback about this topic, you are welcome to share your thoughts with us.