Clip store Activated
If you are totally new to clips4sale or clipstores, read Clips4sale for Adult Newcomers, a Complete Guide first.
Congratulations! You now have a clip store that can be accessed through many urls:
- http://clips4sale.com/studio/00000/
- http://clips4sale.com/00000/
- http://clips4sale.com/studio/00000/Catxxx-categoryname/Yourstorename
- http://clips4sale.com/00000/Catxxx-categoryname/Yourstorename
- http://clips4sale.com/Yourstorename
- http://clips4sale.com/studio/00000/Catxxx-categoryname/Yourstorename#startingpoint
- http://clips4sale.com/studio/00000/yourstorename#startingpoint
Of course you need to replace 00000 with your studio number. You can always replace clips4sale with c4s.
The lower a Studio Number, the older the store
Knowing these urls is useful, because when you edit your clip store, changes won’t immediately show on urls 3 & 4 while they show up quickly on url 2.
So before you wait and hit refresh over and over and nothing happens, use url #2 to access your store and the changes should appear pretty much directly. This will save you a lot of time.
Your studio urls are also important to know when it comes to looking at traffic. The url can tell you how your studio is being accessed.
E.g. links on c4s always use the long urls, never #2.
Money to be made?
All money figures I use are net numbers. That is what you actually get (60% of your sales)
Before we continue, I want to address the reasonable money questions shortly. Pretty much everyone always wants to know how much money they can make (on c4s), which I think is a question that can help decide if you want to start a business at all, although not a thing you should focus on in general (in my opinion).
I want to give a little indication from what I know.
From my experience, clip stores that update often, work hard and produce good, honest quality clips make about $200-$800 in the first month. I am talking about stores that start from scratch, unknown talent with no fan base or prior online activity.
After that, it should continue to grow until a certain point, when people are saturated with your clips and/or various other things happen that we will cover in the advanced guide. Thing is, you probably stop growing at one point.
You will have a fan base of regular customers and hopefully a few new ones every month, but the big orders decrease and the number of new visitors as well.
Like you open a grocery store in a town where there was none. First, everyone is excited and buys lots of your things.
They are all first time visitors and more new visitors come each day until most people have stored up on the basics, seen all your products and only get new things every now and then or buy specific items.
Every once in a while someone new moves to town and buys a lot of stuff to start out, but most of your shoppers are returning customers.
Good thing is, if you sell an absolute highlight, everyone knows where to go.
Earnings usually go up and down. On an hourly, daily, monthly, even seasonal basis. I noticed that I went up pretty fast, then slowly down for several months. Like the grocery store. Now I hope it will balance out in a range where I can pay my bills and food.
My first two payouts
You should know that my niche is pretty special in terms of producing clips. No pee clip without pee. So I can’t just make clips whenever I feel like it. I need a lot of preparation and after a clip, I can’t make a second one right away. Maybe you can.
So you could be able to do better than me, which would give you an income range of $3000+ / month.
The top 50 Studios on the main page constantly change, but to enter on rank #50 you would need about $1400 / week (= the past 168 hours, it’s pretty precisely 7 days) at the time I am writing this. In the past it was easier, at about $1100. That means if you can make $200+ every day for 7 days, you have a chance to be in the top 50 on the main page.
Note: People, even c4s support, keep saying that it’s the past 7 days, without counting the current day. In my opinion, that is not true. At times I knew exactly how much $ I needed to make to jump to a certain rank and it always turned out as I expected. So I stand by my 168 hour model.
Does being in the top 50 increase traffic? A bit, yes. But being high up in the categories and most of all, updating, drives most traffic.
So while my sales decline steadily, the overall money spent on c4s seems to have increased – which is good news for you.
An interesting article on the money topic was written about 2 years ago by a top store owner. He states that he made about $3000 / week when he was #2 on the main top list.
I remember that his store was always high up in the top list when I was there as well. It’s not a top 50 store at the moment, but you can read his thoughts about the top 50 money metrics from back then here.
Knowing that, you can try to estimate how many studios earn enough on clips4sale alone to make a living. Note that people not in the top 50 sometimes make more than those in there. It’s because of
- The 7 day rule. If you earn a lot in 7 days, you could still do bad during the rest of the month. Oftentimes a big order from just one fan would catapult you into the top 50, then, when the order “wears out” after 168hours, you drop out.
- You can have several stores. I once read about a guy that wanted to sell 100 c4s stores that allegedly made him $3000 / month, as each store would make about $30 a month. I think he wanted $25000. I don’t recommend to buy c4s stores. Don’t start by loosing money.
- Costs. Top studios often use professional cameramen + equipment, rent rooms, hire models etc. Those costs can eat a big chunk of the earnings, reducing the actual income.
If you don’t care so much about the top lists but want a personal estimate, here is what I noticed.
Most sales, I’d say 70%, are 1 clip orders. Another 25% are 2 or 3, only 5% are 4 or more clips and that does not mean a lot, as 4 times $2.99 is obviously less than 1 x $14.99.
So I only look at averages. 100 visitors average 1 sale, 1 sale is about $9.70 (see this source, which is a good read as well).
I recommend not being too static about this. It can easily happen that you have 900 visitors and $3.99 from 1 sale. It can also happen that you have 300 visitors and $74.94.
It was actually one of the things that took me a long time to learn and accept. You have to look at the long term averages. One day, even one “bad” or “good” month, doesn’t mean a lot.
It will just affect your mood…
Disappointment ahead!
I just quickly want to touch on a very important topic. Maybe you are all hyped up now, sitting in front of your clips4sale admin area home tab, refreshing the page to see if the Todays Hits count goes up (don’t visit your own store too much, it will count as a hit each time), not to mention the Net Clip Sales.
I think the Hits tab will definitely show some number >0 at the end of the day.
However, it is rare to make a sale the first day(s). Some struggle to make a sale the first week. While I hope I have provided enough inside tips in the previous Guide to spare you this experience, I can’t guarantee it.
This is one of the most crucial months for you. Countless studios quit, because they expected to make a few hundred dollars right away.
Look around the category’s New Studio lists (see the chapter “C4S Internal Promotion”). There are many studios with 5-16 clips that did not update in a long time. If you click on those, you will often find that these are studios that quit right after starting.
They posted the mandatory first 10 clips, then maybe a few updates. Then it stops.
Why?
Money. High expectations, disappointment. And again, money.
That is why our mantra here is
“But Sinna, if I don’t focus on the money, I won’t be making more and more.”
Is that so? You know, first of all, I recommend not wanting more and more. Go for a good income that covers your rent, food and other costs and then let’s you save some. Don’t be greedy. It’s just my advice.
Secondly, think about this: Let’s assume you can’t stay motivated, because the expected money is not coming in. Because you are not motivated, you stop working. When you stop working, you won’t make any money to begin with. So my best advice for earning more money is, to not care about the money.
That way you will be happy and motivated to produce good clips no matter what.
Money desperation can drag your mood down, which affects your clips. It can make you do stupid things, like beg customers to buy your clips, cut your clips up in small parts for more uploads, promote where you shouldn’t or reduce your prices like crazy.
Most of all, it can cause you to do all kinds of things that won’t earn you any money, like sitting around in despair, refreshing your clips4sale admin page, reading hours and hours of articles online on how to make more money or increase sales, endless changing of your clips’ descriptions and studio appearance, re-posting of clips instead of making new ones, searching for bugs and errors on c4s that could be the reason you don’t sell clips and many more things that prevent you from doing the most important thing:
So my suggestion is, forget about the money and let’s get to work. It’s called earning money and we have yet to earn the right of earning. Most of all, enjoy yourself.
Sinna, I don’t like that. I want to make loads of money, that’s all I care about.
Well, then you could be looking at a lot of frustration and make it very hard for yourself to reach that goal. Very hard. You should probably also leave my site and read ‘get rich fast’ kind of guides to make you feel better until you realize that you have to work hard and just wasted a lot of time. Maybe even neglected your business and have to build up all the traffic and reputation again.
Goals
It can help to set (easy) goals. It’s fun and it motivates you. Also set a long term goal.
I would suggest, and this is entirely up to you to take on, these first goals:
1st month: 6 sales
2nd month: 20 sales
3rd month: 50 sales
4th month: 100 sales
If these look like a lot to you now, they should! However, these are easy goals.
By reaching 100 sales / month, you should be making about $1000. Go from there and set new goals. Of course you can set your own goals all the way. I am just making suggestions. The goals I set should be easily achievable with my guides though, which is one of my goals of this website 🙂
My long term goal for you: $1000 / month after the 4th month in business. That is a pretty solid income that can help you a long way as extra income and if you don’t live too fancy you can survive with only that.
Getting you to earn at least $2000 / month after that is another, even longer term goal for this site. If we can do that, you can always increase it by yourself. I think it’s realistic to get there within a year.
If you expected me to say more, sorry. You should know by now that I like to keep it realistic and use a defensive approach.
There are enough people that claim to help you earn $10000 / month. While that sounds cool and very motivating in the beginning, the high expectations can just flush you away after your first month. Very few will make it.
Note that I think due to the tube sites pressure, it’s much harder to earn $10000 / month today than it was 4 years ago. Always look at the date of an article. In any case, my golden rule is:
If something on the internet sounds too good to be true, it is. Get away as fast as you can.
Having said that, $2000 is really the minimum I wish for everyone to earn with my site. I would love to say “guarantee” but I won’t. I also won’t promise anything.
You should neither. At least not regarding your store.
If a customer wants something, don’t promise or guarantee anything. It can cause more harm than good.
Better say you try to make it happen.
The customer then hopes you can do it, but does not expect you to. That way, if you do make it, he is happy. If you don’t – not too big of a problem.
Had you promised / guaranteed and you made it, he would have expected it and just seen it as normal. Had you not made it, he could have been disappointed and not come back. You know, no one chases after disappointments.
Yes, I know that from experience. I invite you to learn from all of my mistakes.
The term ‘Customers’
Talking about customers.
I originally hated the term customers. I rather called them fans or connoisseurs. However, they mostly call themselves customers and if you are not used to it yet, you will learn that it’s a good thing to distinguish like that.
Not being a business woman, I thanked people for their support and did a lot of things that were not good for my business (which means you can learn a lot from my mistakes today, as I made plenty). In the process, I forgot that I make a PRODUCT that people want to PURCHASE.
So when they come and buy my products, it means I do something good for them. They would not get my product anywhere else. I satisfy their need. They should thank me and not the other way round (people actually thank me every day, I just tried too hard on those who didn’t instead of focusing on the good guys.)
I am still struggling with that today, but think about it: A fan would buy anything from you at a certain point, no matter the quality. Princesses, goddesses and brat girls, they have their fans, but most of us don’t.
We have customers. Calling the customer customer just means that you stand behind your product, deem it worth buying and are proud of what you make. And that’s how it should be. I learned that customers like to be customers. It makes things easy and straightforward. It also warrants a certain distance between you and them.
Don’t get too personal
When I started, I was sad to see how many poor guys were robbed of their money by fake pee models, so I tried to change the world. I would be different and fight against the mean business world that treated people badly…
I was trying to get to a friend-like relationship with my fans (not calling them customers), that I indeed had with some, but ultimately, it cost me a lot.
A lot of time, writing pages and pages of emails and in the end a lot of visitors, because as it turns out, personal information is off-turning.
They started to see who I was. Human. A normal girl with problems. Menstruating, having a headache. Having a sick dog and a newborn and whatnot.
It destroyed their fantasy. Whichever fantasy they had – and I think everyone had a different, yet idealized picture of me – it would get replaced more and more with reality. And reality is not what turns them on. Their fantasy is.
One of the biggest lessons for me cost me very good customers that never returned. Set me back on all levels. They were sweet enough to tell me that I had taken their fantasies and they could not get off to my clips anymore. And they were sorry. Yes, we were friends and not producer & customer. My dream had turned into a nightmare.
I recommend learning from that.
You are a fantasy they can’t reach. You are not human. You are ideal in every way. Leave them that illusion, it’s a win-win. You can still be nice and treat them with respect.
What has been seen/told can not be unseen/unheard. So choose wisely what you reveal about yourself, it could have major consequences.
Click here to read my article about all kinds of customers you should know
C4S internal promotion
Now we need to find a way to make yourself known to those customers. Our next big topic is c4s internal promotion. Before you go outside of c4s to promote, use all the possibilities you have on the inside!
Since you just got activated, you get the newcomer promotion. This is a one time thing that only lasts for a short time, so I recommend using it as good as you can.
What do I mean?
When your studio goes live, it’s name (linked to your store) is automatically posted on the main frontpage of clips4sale.com and in the category you started in. Links to your clips are also being posted in up to 6 categories (Your main category + the others you chose, up to 5).
You get a lot of exposure.
Here is the “New Studios” list on the main c4s page. Obviously you drop down as new studios register after you, until you drop out. However, due to the two columns, you will be in the “#1” spot two times. That’s awesome.
The New Studios list on the main frontpage of clips4sale
At the time of writing this, studios can expect to be in the main list for about 8-9 days. The main list has 50 spots, two times 25.
Your categories have 50 spots as well, but due to a reset in April 2015, none of the categories is full at the moment. Not even the big ones. You will remain there for several months.
The two columns are being filled so that both columns have the same length, if possible. The left column is the dominant one. That means if there is an uneven amount of new studios, the left column has 1 more entry than the right one. (e.g. 11 new studios, 6 will be listed on the left and 5 on the right)
See a few examples.
New Studios is the Squirting category
New Studios is the Amateur category
New Studios is the Ironing category
But Sinna, there is no “New Studios” list in Ironing! Yes, that is right. No ironing studio has opened since at least April 2015. If you just opened one, the New Studios list will appear and you will probably sit on the first spot there for a while 🙂
So, your studio name has just appeared on two spots of the main c4s page and up to 7 spots in the category pages (You appear twice in your main category, in the Recently Updated as well as the New Studios list + in the Recently Updated List of the other categories you chose, which could be up to 5 different ones)
Sinna, you said that it’s unusual to make a sale the first day or even week. Now you say that first promotion is good for me?
Yes. It is. It will get you noticed, put you on the map. People don’t always buy straight away, but they saw you now and they might come back. You know when you see a dress that you like but you don’t buy it right away? Sometimes you can’t forget it and come back later.
That is why we need to stay on top of our game now, to greet these potential customers with new clips and a great impression when they do come back.
We created a diamond (our clip store), now we polish it to increase the value, make it sparkle and attract more attention.
So..what to do with that initial boost? Enjoy it, let it work for you while we keep the momentum going.
Making a sale on your first day, even with this exposure, is still rare. However, we can further increase our chances and work at the base of our business foundation.
Banner
It’s not a well kept secret, but it is somehow buried a little. Towards the end of the instruction page (you can find it in 
) or access it through this link:
https://storeadmin.zapya.com/members/instructions.php (log into your admin first)
you will find a very important piece of text:
Click on the Banner Generator in your admin Home tab:
Home -> banner generator
This page will open. Click tutorial in the right upper corner:
Click on tutorial to play a how-to video
Create your banner 468px x 72px and save it as banner.jpg. Then don’t forget to upload it to your images folder. Beware of a common mistake:
Now that we have uploaded your banner.jpg it will be displayed in the main site rotation.
But what is the main site rotation? Basically one of the three 468px x 72px banner spots on the clips4sale main page. The prime spot is obviously the one in the middle, while the two in the footer are still nice. It’s the main page after all.
A different story when you are being displayed in a category footer. These can be pretty useless, like my banner at the bottom of the “Games” category:
But also pretty nice, like my banner on the middle spot at the “Struggling” category:
How do you get your banner to display on the category pages?
Your banner won’t be displayed on the category pages unless you have added a clip to that category once in your store’s “life”.
That’s right. In my opinion, a lot of traffic used to come from being smart about these. Studios like tara tainton, who posts on basically every category, have a slight banner advantage.
Her banner is scheduled to appear nearly everywhere.
However, the banner advantage is not as huge as it used to be, as a lot of studios know about the banner.jpg nowadays and it’s pretty crowded in some categories:
My banner has not been displayed in foot worship for over a year
On top of that, if you don’t have the content, your banner might attract a visitor that can’t find anything to buy.
So I still recommend what I said in the rookie guide. Focus on one category and go from there.
But Sinna, why is your banner being displayed in “games” and “struggling” then?
That is because I once added clips to these categories as a sub-category to my main: Pee.
Like a pee game, pee holding game etc. or struggling with a full bladder (also known as female desperation), struggling because I am tied up and need to escape to use the toilet etc.
You can be creative and find ways to access other categories while still staying true to your main. In fact, let’s get to that right now:
Updating your store
Before we update, let’s make a twitter account for our studio.
Go to https://twitter.com/ and open an account. Try to get your studios’ name for it or something that let’s people recognize it belongs to your studio. Remember the branding from the rookie guide.
Now you have to decide if you want to enable auto-tweets or if you want to tweet manually when you activate new clips in your store.
I manually tweet, because sometimes I don’t want the gif animation to show on my twitter stream or I want a recent update to be on top a little longer. My homepage also posts my twitter updates, which means I don’t always want to override the current post with a new one, e.g. a big movie I just promoted should not be replaced by a tweet for a 2 minute clip.
I want to decide for myself.
If you do the same, a clip activation screen will look like this:
Clip add successfully screen when your c4s account is not linked to twitter
You can then tweet on c4supdate’s timeline and a green button “retweet” will appear. Click it and the tweet is also posted on your timeline. Don’t click it if you don’t want to post about that particular update, see my reasons above.
If you want to enable auto-tweets and connect your c4s with your twitter account, go to 
in the clip store tab. There you find:
Link c4s to twitter
Click it, then accept and your accounts will be linked. You can always unlink them at the same location.
Now, when you add a clip, the news about your update will be auto-tweeted to your own twitter and you can also tweet them to c4supdates.
Clip added successfully screen when c4s and twitter accounts are linked
If you do that, you can then re-tweet as well.
In my opinion, that would be redundant. After all, you just posted the tweet yourself
Updating by publishing clips
I already wrote about the basics of adding a clip in the rookie guide. Now we get to use those other file versions. This will soon be replaced with a new system, but as long as we have the current system in place, here is what I suggest.
Make use of your 4 file versions
When you add a clip, add the other 3 file versions (see section ‘encoding’ from the newcomer guide and the section about the banner display further up this guide) at different times and if you wish & they are eligible, to other categories.
Clips are eligible to be posted in categories, when they contain 1/3 of the fetish. So if you posted the HD .mp4 in your main category (which you want to be dominant in), you can use the other file versions for other categories.
Example:
You are smoking while bouncing on a balloon, wearing ballet flats and a skirt that sometimes reveals your panty. We assume smoking is your store’s main category.
Post the HD .mp4 in smoking.
Post the SD .mp4 in ballet flats.
Post the HD .wmv in balloons.
Post the SD. wmv in upskirt.
Don’t post them at the same time. This is a common mistake that even the top studios make. The current #5 studio just posted a clip in two categories (two different file-versions, like we do) within 2 minutes:
Clip posted too fast
Why is this not good?
You loose valuable main page exposure, because your studio can never be in this list more than once at the same time.
When she posted at 10:03 pm, her name appeared in the Recently Updated Studios list on the main page:
Recently updated studios on the c4s main page
It appeared at the top* of the list. Then, depending on the server capacity*, her name appeared again after the 10:05 pm update. Chances are that her name had been on top anyway that minute. If not, her name would be at the top again but her former update would vanish from the list.
You can never be in this list twice with the same studio.
So not only did she eradicate her own Female Domination update, as her studio now shows only a Humiliation update, she also missed out on about 18 minutes more front-page exposure. See the notes:
*Note: When traffic allows it, your store updates are posted live there. That means the list continues at the top of the left column 1 clip at a time, while stores drop out at the bottom right 1 after another. From entering the list to dropping out, it usually takes about 20 minutes.
When the servers are used to capacity, the system switches and updates show in bundles, as to allow everyone some time in the list.
So when you update during rush hour, don’t be surprised when your studio name does not appear right away. It will probably appear in one big list change, where e.g. 15 studios at once are added to the top of the left column and 15 studios drop out at the bottom right. Then it stays like that for a few minutes, until the next batch comes through. If you are lucky, you “survive” a few batch-updates longer than others, e.g. you are the one that is last in the list after a batch update.
Guidelines
A good way to prevent double updating at the same time is to schedule your updates.
Schedule your updates
So, with the 38 clips you have left (if you read my newcomer guide before this) you can now start to seriously get some visitors to your store.
- Schedule updates at least 20 minutes from each other, to get maximum front page exposure.
- Update in different categories, if your clip allows it
However:
- Don’t forget your main category. If you drop down the update list in your own category too far, use one of your file versions to refresh yourself. i.e. post not only the HD .mp4 in your main category, but use another version of the clip to get on top of the list again a few hours later.
- Don’t abuse this. Posting “old” news (like a different version of a clip you already posted) too often in the same category will annoy customers. They think there is a new clip, but when they visit you, nothing changed (as your other file versions are at the back of your store).
- Don’t participate in update wars. There ARE studios – and yes, it’s really annoying -that keep spamming updates (even after the recent change in # of update rules). Maybe you have someone in your main category. It’s a real pain, but don’t go fighting an update war. Even if you can come out on top more often, you will just waste so many of your files on the same category, while posting them in other categories would have brought you fresh traffic. Instead, let them have that first spot and focus on the sweet spots.
The sweet spots? Yes. In my years of updating 3-5 clips daily (unique clips, I worked up to 90 hours / week) I found some regularities in regards to update times. I might give you the full guide on that in the future, maybe advanced or expert level.
For now, just some rules of thumb:
Pick your spots wisely
Observe your visitor count. We will set up google analytics soon, until then you can use your c4s admin. There are times of the day when visitors increase. e.g. at night, when the guys can sit in front of their computer. Relative to your timezone, find out when that is true for Europeans, Americans etc.
Most visitors to c4s come from: USA, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy. I forgot where I read that though, which is a shame.
It can still help you.
Find out when it’s between 9 pm – 2 am there, relative to your time. That is a busy time. Busy means, when you update, more people will see your studio name. Of course it also means more other studios will update as well. You have to find the best compromise.
Smart timing
See my screenshot above? Never schedule at full hours, like 3pm. Everyone does it. So we are smart and choose 3:01pm. That way we get in front of everyone who scheduled at 3pm.
Since there are other smart people, I schedule my updates at 3:02pm. To get in front of those as well. There is also another reason:
Depending on server delay, even a 3:01 update can sometimes show up before a 3:00pm one. Don’t ask me why. So to be safe, I use a 2 minute gap.
After publishing this guide, I will probably have to use 3:04pm though :p
You can schedule your 38 remaining clips for activation now. If you schedule ahead a day or two, don’t forget to edit the day and not only the time. Otherwise your clip could be posted right away. At the end of a month, you obviously also have to edit the month. These are easy traps that you can fall into when you are tired.
Keep the ball rolling
Now that you published / scheduled all your clips, you need to keep making clips and updating your store. Post in different categories etc. Keep the ball rolling. Once it stops, it’s difficult to get it going again! You only have 1 starter boost. You just used it. Now:
Stick to the plan
What plan? You never mentioned a plan, Sinna! You are right. Good question. The plan is:
Update your store every day. If you can, twice or three times. Always use all updates to the full potential, wait at least 20 minutes between updates and post them at times when most people look for porn (= at night).
Use unique clips and all 4 file versions for your updates.
Increasing updates by all means is not recommended. If you can’t make more than 1 unique clip, so be it.
Don’t make only short clips, you need longer ones as well. Longer clips cost more money so you depend on those to survive. I would not advise you to make a great clip 2 minutes long. Add something to it, make it even better and most of all, longer. If you can, more than 8 minutes.
In fact, very short clips should only be used at times when you need a push to the top. Have no clip in the top 10 of your main category? You could “sacrifice” a great clip and make it only 2-4 minutes long. Those get bought more easily and you know by now that
The header of the Top Clips list on c4s
are based solely on # of sales. Not money earned.
I know we only make great clips anyway, it was just to make things clear. You understand, right?
Don’t cut clips into parts if it’s not necessary. Only make parts if the clip poses a length or size problem (see clip length guide) or if it’s better for the relevant categories.
E.g. You smoke while sitting on a balloon, but halfway the balloon pops and you masturbate instead. Cut the clip in half to post it in balloon and masturbation categories and keep the customers happy with category relevant clips.
You really need to update at least once / day to reach my $1000 / month goal. If you know that you won’t be able to update on a future day, work more when you can and schedule ahead.
If you have a few clips and are in doubt when to post, always go for an even spread.
E.g. you have 4 clips. Instead of posting 3 on one day and 1 another day, post two updates on each of the next two days or one update on each of the next 4 days.
On a side note: Don’t ask me how the top stores can just post 1 clip every second day and still be up there. I guess my niche is too special. To me, it’s an illusion to become a top store with those few updates. Be aware that it’s not the amount of clips. I have more clips than many up there.
Do ask me how you can get into that top list: Update 5 times a day with great stuff. I did it for a few months, before I had the kids. I was always in the top 50.
So how do the top studios survive up there with less than 5 updates / day? A few reasons are:
- Great content.
- Lots of promotion (tube sites, personal newsletter).
- Fan base.
- Dominating several categories (being #1)
- Using popular categories (at the moment, if you do anything “Taboo” it’s the jackpot. A few months ago it was female training, before that it was tickling, before that it was domination. Before that it was BBW and before that it was Feet. If you keep yourself up to date on the development of the main top list, you can see & feel the trends and make use of them. I don’t do that. I mostly just pee :P)
- Having a lot of clips that customers can buy
- …
- as I said, I don’t know
- okay honestly, I think it’s mostly promotion.
Actually, I think a lot of studios could do much better / did better in the past but then started using their time and energy on different things than making good clips and updating often. And they sucked at those other things, like promotion.
No, I don’t speak from personal experience.
Okay you got me. I do.
As much as I screwed up from a business point of view, I also lacked the social marketing skills (and sometimes still do). I just loved making pee clips and that brought me pretty far. In fact, the reason I still dare to stand before you and offer advice is the solid base I have. My clips are great and I do well. If I were to master promotion, extraordinary things would happen.
Reminder: I address all topics from my point of view. You can do with that information whatever you prefer. Ignore it, take it as advice, something in between. It’s entirely up to you.
External Promotion
While updating with new clips is the #1 factor to success, you can speed up and assist the process with external promotion. If you know how. I can cover some basics to get us started.
You should also build up your fan base externally, as c4s does not really offer much place for interaction. I am fairly good at that.
You have a twitter account. That’s one important thing. Sadly, I don’t know how to use it or get the most out of it. I also don’t know how effective it is. If you have 13000 followers, does that make a difference?
I have about 1000. When I asked them to vote for me, no one did. So I guess followers = people waiting for free pictures.
Same goes for “friends” on tube sites and most forums. However, every niche has a forum where the core of fans meet. If you are genuinely interested in that community and participate, it can give you a lot back. Not only in terms of sales, but also motivation and back-up.
My tumblr is starting to work for me. I just noticed that some traffic comes from there. I think the magical follower number is around 7000 for it to start having an effect.
My personal homepage cost me a lot of time to make. I had so many ideas and it was fun, but programming and building websites is harder than it looks. Also, most people really just like to buy clips and stay out of anything else. At least when it comes to getting aroused by pee. It’s kind of a taboo topic you don’t want people to know about (as are many other fetishes obviously)
As much as a personal homepage sounds really cozy, think about your own safety:
It would also destroy the customer’s fantasy, remember.
Accounts additional to c4s
So let’s get to this promotion stuff. Note, sometimes these display your location, like google+. Make sure you disable all options that reveal your privacy.
Don’t use amazon wishlist for that reason either, unless you live in a big city.
Get accounts at:
- tumblr.com
- google+ if you use gmail. In fact I just saw that I am on the first page of search results when googling “pee” with a google+ post I made. I should give that more attention..
- facebook if you have really harmless content and are ready to get banned anyways.
- youtube – same as Facebook. Huge potential but you mostly get flagged and removed. Most models I know gave up on it. You can still use it in a sneaky way.
- Fetlife.com it’s fun and you won’t get banned for promoting yourself. Make sure to join the clips4ale producers group. I am there as well.
- google your fetish / main category. Join the biggest forums. Don’t promote yourself like crazy, just participate. Make sure your profile indicates that you have a clipstore. Have fun and be fun!
- google analytics.
- Imgur – picture host that you need to post on reddit
Do I need to mention that I don’t use facebook for work anymore? I can’t stress enough how careful you need to be if you do live your c4s / fetish life in the shadows, like me.
Anyway, after you posted a clip, twitter it. Then go to your tumblr and post about it. Also upload the .gif you made. You can have a look at my tumblr to see how I do it.
Note that the gif can not be bigger than, I think 1.5Mb. Otherwise it won’t play and will just be a static image.
Make a nice picture from the clip. Make sure your watermark is on the picture.
To take a picture, play the video and pause at a nice moment. Hit the print (screen) key on your keyboard. Open your picture program (get IrfanView if you need a cool and free program) and press ctrl + v. Your picture should appear. Drag a frame of what you want to use (cut out the media player frame etc.) and press ctrl + y. Everything outside the frame get’s cut off. Ctrl + s to save.
Now post the picture on twitter, as an answer to your re-tweet from the c4supdate.
Post it on Fetlife and upload it to Imgur, then post it on Reddit in a sub-reddit that fits your niche. There is a “share on reddit” button right there in imgur.
Read here if you are just thinking: What on earth is Reddit?
If, however, you are thinking: What are you doing, Sinna? -> Leave a comment including your promotion, marketing and social media wisdom. It would be much appreciate and, upon testing, could make it into this guide. Giving full credit of course.
Google analytics
Head over to http://www.google.com/analytics/ and make an account.
Create a new property for clips4sale. Actually, I don’t know how I did that, but if I managed, you will as well 🙂 There are tutorials for it if you get stuck.
Once you got it set up, log in. Go to Admin -> Property settings -> Tracking info -> Tracking code. Copy the code and paste it into your 
Paste it into the analytics code field
Don’t forget to save!
The next day, you can go to your google analytics dashboard and look at some statistics. Most important are the number of visits and the bounce rate. Also pages / session and avg. session duration are a good measure.
It’s fun to look at the real time overview. It can also help you understand your visitor crowd at different times of the day. See the timing chapter!
Use Acquisition -> overview -> all channels -> traffic to see where from people come to your studio. Sometimes there is a website / forum there. Type it into your browser and see what is going on! Maybe there is pirated content of yours, maybe there is a nice community just loving your latest updates. Either way, it’s worth checking out.
Your Journey begins
It was an honor to guide you through opening and establishing a solid foundation for your clipstore on clips4sale. In 20.000 words, I tried to take you all the way from considering opening a store at all to promotion and basic analytics. You just got promoted from rookie to beginner.
You should be able to reach all goals with what you learned, making an adult income of at least $2000 / month in the long run. On top of that, by reading my guides, I would claim that you know more about Clips4sale than most studio owners on there.
So your foundation is solid.
Be sure to stop by this site to get more insights to improve, but also to get help if you struggle. My advanced guide will probably cover equipment, first investments, more customer relations, more promotion etc.
I will write more guides and articles all the time, especially when the feeling in my fingers returns. Haha 🙂 My guides will also constantly be updated and improved. So you might want to read them more than once 🙂
Speak to you soon, now get to work 😛
XXX
Sinna
written by Sinna 26-30jun-2015
©www.adult-income.com
WOW well-done girl! You are a wealth of knowledge. Thanks so much!
I disagree a little bit. You have to be money minded in this industry. We are all here (other than hobbits) to make money. That said your totally right that, selling fetish / homemade smutt if not a “Get Rich Quick” scheme. You need to really give it the ol’college try (like 2-3 months of solid updates), not just pop up a few clips and sit back and rake in the cash. You need to give something enough time to start working but also know when to call it quits and try something else. For me at least, both these factors are money motivated. So in 2-3 months of updating, if the income isn’t starting to roll in at a steady clip, its time to adjust course and abandon ship, unless your happy clip sales being a hobby job.
I also think good content (even great content) will only get you so far. With the vast amount of studios on C4S its easy to get lost in a sea of other good/great content, if your not working just as hard on promotion as clip production.
Also while top studios may bring in more money than small time studios, I also think the percent of their income that goes to over-head is much higher. My over-head is 10% or less in most instances (I do have one spendy category that is closer to 25% but makes up 50% of my income). While I’m guessing top studios over-head is closer to 30-75% (model fees, camera man, production fees ext) Once again meaning they need to spend more time on promotion and decrease their production fees to really make a profit. (Though this is just a theory)
Hello Anika,
I was happy to approve your good comment. What I actually try to prevent is that newcomers give up when the big money is not rolling in (right away). From my experience, expectations are way too high. When I say “don’t focus on the money”, it sounds like money is not an issue at all. Of course this is not true, as you could not keep running a clip store without income, even if it were only a hobby.
I will probably re-write some passages because of your comment, because it certainly is a business and you run it to earn money. I just want to make clear that if everything revolves around money and expectations are high, the reality can affect all areas of your life and shut you down really fast.
My approach is not money centered, although it’s aiming at making my readers earn money. It sounds ambiguous, but it’s an approach that is more resilient to misfortune and lack of success and will help you through downswings, so that you can stay motivated and keep working hard – which will eventually get you on the road of success. In my opinion, nearly every c4s start-up starts with a sort of downswing.
In my experience, many good stores stop too early, just because they expect too much money (in the beginning).
I will take your advise on board and try to come up with some guide that helps people decide when “its time to adjust course and abandon ship” as you so beautifully worded it.
However, my “system” aims at positivity, being motivated to work and getting money as a side-effect, because I think it works better than worrying, being discouraged by low sales and stopping too early because money does not come in right away. Being happy and confident also makes better clips in my opinion, and you can use those especially in times when it’s not going too well with sales, to come back strong.
Having said all that, I am maybe a rare type that is not money-minded and thus has not maximized profits at all in the past. I often find myself thinking differently than other store owners when it comes to money..
What a great article! I’ve been in a slump and it’s so motivating to read your site. The tmi rule is so true! Whenever a guy asks my real name, I tell him he would get my insecurities, rants, and emotional baggage. Even long term fans who know my real name call me my fake name because they know it keeps me in the mood.
I’d also recommend Instagram for promoting. I’ve gotten some notice by cigar smoking blogs and hope to be featured on one in the next few weeks.
Also, it helps to have a non adult or nonnude site to watermark with, which keeps it acceptable on YouTube and other places. I make about 20 a month from google ads.
I’d also make a private Facebook profile To run your Facebook page… And use separate browsers from your mainstream stuff!
Facebook and Instagram are not good about privacy so you need to be very careful if you link Instagram to Facebook.
Do you think it’s realistic for a studio to eventually drive $800 to $1200 gross revenue per month if they have high-quality content and solid marketing (i.e. only non-paid marketing via relevant social networks & forums), but only release two clips per week after posting the initial 10 to get started? That would imply posting 4 clips (HD MP4, HD WMV, SD MP4, SD WMV) per week across 2-3 categories.
It can be done. It depends on your content and the length of your videos. Generally speaking I would say no. Most studios won’t be able to make that amount with two unique clips / week.
Thanks for the reply, Sinna. What I’m getting from your posts on updating frequency and promotion is that the internal C4S traffic is the most critical factor with regard to hitting the $1k threshold.
So in terms of content: I’m assuming you mean it must be good content in an under-served niche with motivated buyers, right? What about length? My plan was to only shoot videos in the 10 to 15 min range with $0.99 per min + $1 pricing. You think that makes sense if you’re only updating two times per week, or would some other strategy make more sense to you?
In general, I love reading your stuff because I can relate to your approach. In our case, we’re not interested in doing this for the money, we’re doing it because we love our fetish (footjobs) and because we’re not happy with the quality of the content that exists, despite its relative abundance. We think we can do better.
Though this would be purely a hobby business for us, there is an opportunity cost to producing videos and we determined that minimum we need to earn is $800 per month. That said, we don’t want to earn more than $1200. At the $1200 mark we would stop trying to grow our revenue and focus on our other interests/goals.
I need to to think hard about a strategy that will allow us to defy convention and still hit the mark. I’m glad to hear someone with experience believes it can be done. However, I’m still not clear how to make it happen. Might just have to start, try, and either sink or swim…
Hello Pes,
sorry for the late reply, I was away for a few days.
You see, it is certainly possible, because there are studios that do earn that amount with very few updates (like Daphne’s Fantasies). So I can’t say it’s impossible to do. That would not be true.
However, most studios won’t achieve that.
In terms of content, it should certainly stand out (but that’s no news to you) and be exciting. So exciting, that people tell others in their communities about it. That’s the best marketing.
The pricing you chose is the same that I have in my other studio. I actually think it’s not that good. It seems to be better to charge less, the “default” or even 3-4$ more. I have not found out why, but it could be that people feel cheated when you ask just that 1$ more. So they think “why squeeze out that dollar?”. You know, most people on c4s know the default price and don’t want to pay more.
You have to try and see what the best day and time for your updates is. It can make a huge difference (in my opinion). I don’t know your niche, I only know it’s popular, so you have to find your spots. High traffic spots that are not overposted already (so you would instantly drop down the list, which would be bad).
It’s good that it’s a hobby for you, that way you can take some weeks and just try things. Keep track of what seems to work and what doesn’t. Try something that seemed to work again after a few weeks, see if it really works.
Be careful about your descriptions. I know that lot’s of top 50 clips have very poor descriptions. I personally think they would do even better if they had great descriptions. There is a store called Natasha’s bedroom. I think she does a great job with her descriptions and it’s no surprise that she made top 50. (She also serves all the niches that sell really well at the moment.)
I will write more articles soon, now that I am back 🙂
Good luck with your store, I like that you want to produce great content!
Dear Sinna,
you’re great! I was really happy when I discovered this website. You’re giving tons of useful advices! This is exactly what I was looking for.
Besides, you write in a very entertaining, funny (yet honest and authentic) way. So please go on with your blog, I love it!
Vincent
Hello Vincent,
I am glad that you found some useful information here 🙂 I’ll keep writing whenever I find the time!
Hi Sinna! Thank you so much for this incredible guide. I refer to it at least twice a day while I’m getting my c4s store up and running. Question about the banners? I made one, named it banner.jpg and uploaded it to images, but it still hasn’t appeared in rotation, at least as far as I can tell it hasn’t even been scheduled yet. It has been about 5 days since I added it. I’ve posted clips in multiple categories, not just the heavy traffic ones, so I was hoping my banner would have shown up at some point already. Any insight you could offer would be insanely appreciated!
Hello Candy,
I am honored that you find my guides helpful. I uploaded my banner.jpg several years ago and never changed it, so there is not a lot of insight I have. What I DID notice is that banners seems to appear in categories that people actually never posted in. There is a buggy category at the moment that no one posted in, yet there are banners being displayed there. However, that could also be part of the bug in the category, so I am not sure if banners really show up in categories other than the ones you posted in.
My advice would be to ask the studio support about it. studiosupport@clips4sale.com. I can imagine that it’s an issue of waiting until the server has processed your banner and added it to the queue. There must be thousands of banners.
Please note that I think the banner is not THAT important nowadays. I had my banner on the main page a few times and monitored the live visitors to my store while it was being displayed. I could not notice any unusual traffic increase.
I also noticed that, when the admin backend tells you that your banners is being displayed at some category “right now”, it’s not always there when you visit the category. Most of the time, it is, but not always. On top of that, remember how my banner has not been displayed for more than a year on some categories? Well, having your banner up for a minute once every two years probably won’t make or break you 😉
So, ask support about it but don’t stress out, there are many more important things that you can do to increase traffic.
Ok… so I read this article with the hopes that it would provide me with some new insight as to what I’m doing wrong.
What I found is that I am already doing everything listed in this piece.
From day one (my store’s been open for 18 months) I am averaging $20/month in sales. Not $200/month or $200 a week. $20 per month. I biggest month was a whopping $50.
What are you doing that you haven’t told us about here?
Hello,
your store looks great! I think you have a great foundation to make at least $1000/month. However, you are not doing the most important thing, which is mentioned several times in this article:
“Update your store every day. If you can, twice or three times.”
“You really need to update at least once / day to reach my $1000 / month goal.”
“Do ask me how you can get into that top list: Update 5 times a day with great stuff.”
It’s really the last step you need.
You opened in October 2013, so your store is 25 months old with 177 updates of two file versions each (good that you put the SD version at the back).
That means you post an average of 3.5 updates a month. As much as I wish that would get you to my goal, I have clearly stated that it’s important to update more often than that. About 10 times more often at least.
I can’t change the fact that it’s more and harder work than we all would like. I hope by keeping the link to your store in this comment, you get a little more exposure.
However, you did not do everything listed here, you forgot the most important things.
Having said that, your twitter looks great. The only letdown is that you are promoting old clips over and again and it is really key to provide fresh content to keep people interested.
By the way, I like it better that you only have 2 file versions as opposed to the 4 that I suggest, because that system is bound to change. It would have given you a little extra exposure though.
If I had your niche, after increasing updates to at least daily, I would start registering on as many influencial spanking / domination boards as I could. Start with the biggest, then enter some conversations. Don’t advertise your store, just fill in your profile with the url or at least some text so people could find your store if they wanted.
Actually, if you manage to increase your updates drastically (cut down on everything else for now. The top priority now is making more content) you should easily reach $1000 / month within a few weeks.
I didn’t keep any information to myself that would magically increase your sales. You need to produce and upload more content, it’s really that “easy”.