The first half of 2022 was a good time for the site. I tend to link this to two factors:
- a lot of fresh audience was attracted thanks to banners on PissRIP and generally growing popularity of the site;
- a PayPal solution was established, making for an easy and streamlined payment method.
Second half of the year saw PayPal problems, which ultimately led to adoption of Crypto; and then russian missile attacks on power infrastructure, leaving me barely able to work on the site for several following months. Both those reasons obviously contributed to a drop in activity.
The harsh truth I can't help but admit, however, is even if those attacks did not happen, I doubt it would have a dramatic impact on the amount of content we have right now. What I mean is even though the library was expanded by some 25% over 2022 (no small feat!) this days we pretty much reached the bottom of the proverbial well, and now it takes more and more time and effort for the same or even less impressive results.
The decision to introduce an update schedule of every 3 months is, thus, me coming to terms with the fact it's not really possible to deliver the frequency of updates some might desire, while also maintaining the quality of content which became customary at DesperVids over the years. "Less is more" and all that. Another benefit of the schedule is it gives you fixed dates when should you check for new stuff, instead of keeping you guessing.
One big problem with this? Well, the audience of Vids sites splits into two groups:
- long-term subscribers who form a chunk of predictable and reliable income;
- one-time customers who download what they need and move on.
While PissRIP offers relatively frequent updates of high-demand content and by virtue of that has quite an impressive long-term audience, DesperVids has always found itself in a situation where it couldn't really incentivize commitment and so one-time purchases made up a large chunk of the whole.
As such, the new minimal 6-months plan (much like 3-months plans at other sites) was envisioned as a way to get the most out of the one-time purchases made with the purpose of grabbing a few clips before leaving forever. In hindsight, this decision should have been made a year ago, when the site was more popular. You see, while we operate in the field of niche fetishes, desperation fetish is even more niche than others - making the potential audience limited.
So to sum this up:
- with 3 years of running the site, providing both frequent and quality updates is not feasible at present;
- without frequent updates, there isn't much hope to encourage your long-term commitment;
- even WITH updates (one in March for example) the boost in activity is not that great - leading to a conclusion that a lot of people who could potentially be interested in a site like this already satisfied their interest in it;
- while the forced transition to crypto is certainly also a factor, I still think (the decrease in) demand is key there;
- if there is little demand, there is little incentive for people to use the Bounty System and upload content for others to enjoy - and so the cycle repeats.
Of course, this does not mean I'm going to give up on it and I hope this doesn't give off too pessimistic vibes - it's just my explanation of objective reasons why at the moment DesperVids is not as active as it could be or used to be.