Hi there 🥰,
In today´s blog, we continue with our mini-series with episode 3, My failures ( learnings ) with Distributing adult films from Emule.
Passion Market Fit
So here we have our Passion Market Fit model.
Distributing adult films from Emule
Desirability: Well, we might not need an explanation of the desirability of the adult film industry. I was serving a market of customers between 12 and 16 years in the ages where they are discovering their sexuality. My markets ranged from my high school which is catholic ( and where I also had competition from my dear friend Quintana 💪 which in fact was my inspiration to start the business, thanks man ), to neighbors and the people from my school transportation.
As the adult film industry was taken as "devil-made" films and taboos, the demand was even higher.
I was distributing adult films in different video formats, customers were paying me between 4 to 6 dollars ( 2021 calculated USD) instead of paying for 11 dollars for a new CD.
Additionally, as adult films were literally impossible to purchase by a teenager, I had lots of returning customers, to the point of serving a customer even 4 times a month. The average monthly purchase was around 14 USD per customer, and I had around 50 customers buying monthly. Nice right?
Feasibility: Same as distributing music from Napster and Kazaa, adult films are an already "built" product; I wasn't writing the scripts, recording the scenes, hiring the staff, or producing the films by myself, I was just distributing it.
My business model was feasible as I controlled the flux of films within my customer circles, besides, it costs me almost nothing because I didn't pay for the internet (it was my dad), I just bought the CDs and DVDs to burn which cost me around 20 USD the tower of 40 CDs, like 0.5 cents per CD or 25 USD for a tower of 20 DVDs, like 1.3 USD per DVD (Those DVDs were expensive as hell). Service was feasible.
Viability: The same context as candy and the same issue as the music distribution, the context in which I was wasn't suitable to have a thriving business.
First and foremost, what I was doing was totally illegal, distributing adult films without the approval of the producers and studios was illegal, so any chance of scaling up was already scratched since the beginning.
Second, I was limited by school regulations, and I couldn't simply break the rules because I was just going to be expelled. Which in fact almost happened 😱.
Third, same as the music distribution, the number of households in Colombia with fast Fiber optic internet increased, which allowed my clients to download their own adult films 🙃.
Survival
So, why did I fail?
Well, I can say that it was the same as my music distribution business, they happened in the same year range, the increased range of households with fast internet. If it wasn't because of that, I could have served my audience for a couple of years more. And of course, the demand for my offer was controlled by regulations which made my service fully illegal.
Even though I failed with this, we can see that the adult film distribution model is totally possible, you can go several ways in this industry. From director, producer, actor, actress, staff, editor, content aggregator, photographer, camera person, lighting person, etc...
At that time I even thought I could recruit a couple of people to be my actor and actress, record it, editing and distribute it. I still see that possible. I am not going to scratch that idea actually. We have seen is a market that moves billions, just check our Only Fans or live streaming with Adult webcam services.
On the other side, making the whole film might be heavy, but aggregating the content is almost possible. Just check Pornhub, they simply organize all the content and distribute it.
But yes, in the end, for my case in particular at that time, the effect of the increased internet range decreased my demand drastically. So, I failed.
My learnings
Sexuality is human, understanding your mind, body, and desires and how they fit in your daily life is something that will always generate demand. Furthermore, making sexuality a taboo makes the demand for these products/services even higher.
I am not scratching the idea of returning to this industry. I have seen the potential and also got hands-on already with an idea to serve adult content. I aim to combine both adult content and also help middle-aged women to generate extra income. That is my niche. Women who don't feel nervous about showing their bodies on camera ( as they are already doing it on Instagram or Tik Tok) and earn additional income. In fact, I own the domain for my own agency www.morenamodels.com.
Scaling up is possible, I will give it a try. 🧡
Thanks for reading,
Note for me: “You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” - Marcus Aurelius
Big hug,
Andres