As Clips4Sale heads into its 15th year, visionary founder Neil is seizing upon the very spirit of innovation that has kept his company in the highest echelons of clips sites.
With endless ambition and thousands upon thousands of custom content sales driving the Clips4Sale kingdom to the furthest edges of unconquered cyberspace, Neil is now diving head first into the live camming market. Not to mention, he is already mapping out the terrain for breaking into the interactive sex toy sector.
The best way to empower producers is freedom ... freedom to let them experiment with new things and new ways to generate income.
But, the road to riches was not a smooth one, and neither was it a simple matter of climbing from point A to point B. In fact, before its incarnation as Clips4Sale, Neil’s site was solely devoted to satisfying foot fetish customers!
Bit by bit, he attracted producers and webmasters to his online venture, adding categories like bondage, tickling and beyond. Now, hundreds of micro-niches populate the Clips4Sale collection, with ever-diversifying subgenres added daily.
To draw inspiration from his journey and his dreams, XBIZ sat down with Neil for this exclusive interview. Pearls of wisdom abound for aspiring entrepreneurs and established veterans alike.
XBIZ: What inspired you to create Clips4Sale?
Neil: Back in 1999, when I was running my own membership site, a few customers wanted to have me make custom videos for them. But, instead of shipping on VHS tape, they wanted to download them. After doing this for several months, the idea popped into my head ... why not offer these same custom clips to other people who might enjoy them? So, the pay per download innovation for porn and fetish was born.
XBIZ: Clips4Sale has deep roots within the amateur producer space. How did you establish such a strong bond?
Neil: When the pay per download idea came to me, I was the only one doing it, and after I saw the success of my own content doing well, I thought to myself … why not see if any other producers/models want to add their content to my site and make a percent off what sells for them? After many, many months of contacting webmasters of membership sites I started seeing people take interest, and they contacted me back to have their content added to my platform.
Back then, it was not Clips4Sale, it was based on foot fetish, so ExtremeFeetClips was the name. It was only foot fetish content, but then a few of those people who saw the vision as I did asked if they could send other content that was related to foot fetish like bondage, tickling and so on. So, I started adding new categories for customers and then started contacting webmasters in those categories to try to get them onboard.
It was a very long, painstaking process, because there was not a lot of trust in the adult industry and that still remains to this day — but once people spoke to me and saw that I was open and honest with them, it became much easier as time went on. Word of mouth spread like wildfire and people were signing up by the dozens.
I always allow producers/models to contact me directly via email or cell phone and I still keep that policy in place today. No other sites will offer this, which makes Clips4Sale and myself stand out.
XBIZ: How is Clips4Sale unique in terms of viewership, product features and so on?
Neil: Clips4Sale is very unique because we cater to not only mainstream porn but fetish content as well. We have become the number one premier site for customers who are looking for fetish, mainstream as well as odd content that they cannot find anywhere else. We have a very loyal custom base who love that they can find what they want and they can contact me if they cant find it.
I will then share their ideas with producers who will then start producing that type of content. Clips4Sale customers love the fact that we listen to them and what they want. We have so many new things to bring to the site in terms of unique features, but I cannot really get into that until they are rolled out.
XBIZ: How do you address piracy to help producers generate maximum revenue?
Neil: Clips4Sale has an open communication with producers about piracy ... we have a DMCA team that finds and takes down content 24/7. If you find it we give you a place to post the links so that we can then go in and get it removed.
We do this 100 percent for free for all studios. I have no problem eating the cost of this because I know how important this issue is to everyone. We have a few more tools that will be added in the near future that will speed this process along and block content from being posted in the first place. We can also find out who posted the content and then we block that customer from buying on C4S.
It’s very important to block these people, otherwise they will continue to buy and post content without any fear. Once they see they are blocked from C4S, they usually contact us and ask why and how can they get back to buying. We make them sign a form, get their ID and address so that if something happens again with that person we can then legally go after them which nobody wants.
XBIZ: Tell us what characteristics your top producers have in common, regardless of the type of content they create, that are crucial to driving sales — whether it’s their copywriting, tagging, frequency of updates, video formatting, resolution, etc.
Neil: The things the top producers have in common is simple ... work ethic! They all work hard to be where they are. They come up with unique ways to market their content and they make sure the quality is the best it can be. They can of course add multiple updates per day of brand new content but most will post one per day or around three to four per week.
It really depends on the producer and how much content they have ready to go. I speak to a lot of these top producers and it’s always enlightening for me to hear ideas as well as ways they go out and bring in traffic. Some of them have very high conversion rates due to the places they choose to market their Clips4Sale studio.
XBIZ: What is your approach to attracting fresh content?
Neil: As far as Clips4Sale as a whole goes, well, people find us on a daily basis … we still have dozens of new signups per day and we really do not go out and market this … the word of mouth is getting people to us. When you hear that there is a site out there where you can make money while you sleep and you can work your own hours, well, that attracts a lot of people in and out of the adult industry. They bring fresh ideas and fresh content with them. Also, the current producers who work hard and come up with new ideas and hire new models are also a big reason that we keep things fresh on C4S.
XBIZ: What are your top-selling genres?
Neil: This changes all the time, but, to list a few, I would say ... bondage, foot fetish, femdom, taboo, wrestling, BBW, blow jobs, ballbusting, MILF, super heroines, humiliation, giantess, transsexuals.
XBIZ: What are the most interesting trends you’ve seen over the years?
Neil: Well ... most things stay the same, but I have noticed more of the BBW content and the trans content really moving into the forefront. Trends come and go as we all know and what’s popular in 2014, might not be as popular in 2017 and vice versa. Maybe it’s the mainstream movies from Hollywood that helps these trends as well … when “Fifty Shades of Grey” came out, we noticed a new group of customers and producers doing things they love to do, so this is a good positive trend that continues on.
XBIZ: What are some of the ways you empower producers to succeed?
Neil: The best way to empower producers is freedom ... freedom to let them experiment with new things and new ways to generate income. I cannot easily tell people what they should be doing, because it’s really up to that person to want to do it and see if it makes sense for them. I honestly think this is the best way to empower not only producers but people in general ... give them freedom and amazing things can happen.
XBIZ: What is your long-term vision for Clips4Sale?
NEIL: Well, we have just added the ability for producers and models to do live cams, as well as run their own social media timelines. Fans of theirs can follow them and or subscribe to their timeline feed and be a part of their daily lives. Not only that, but if you think about cam shows and you’re not really into it, then the social media platform we have created can bring you an instant cam audience, so that you do not have to sit there on cam waiting and waiting for people to come in. You can notify all your fans/friends who already follow or subscribe to your timeline and bingo you have your audience right there.
We have also given you the ability to set up shows that are prepaid instead of waiting to do pay per min shows at random. There is a learning curve to this because producers who are behind the scenes have a new way to make money while they are shooting content … kind of like a voyeur viewer who is paying to watch the production you are doing.
There are many things coming out of the social media/cam platform we are launching. This all went live on Oct. 27, so it’s already up and making money for the models and producers on Clips4Sale. Besides that, we are working on interactive technology so that producers can make a clip interactive and the customer will have an interactive toy that will move with the content they are watching. This will also be a part of the new cam platform. So, many new things are coming in the next few years! Oh, and by the way, 2018 will mark our 15th year, so we hope to make it a big one. 15 years is a very long time when it comes to the adult industry, and we will continue to grow and dominate in the coming years.
