RE: Pay per view: PH Blog

RE: Pay per view: PH Blog

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Discussion

Hungrymc

6,642 posts

136 months

Thursday 31st July 2014
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EggsBenedict said:
1) It says something about the general malaise that this country finds itself in where people expect something for nothing.

2) It also says something when people aspire to earn a decent whack by using their talents to then buy the things that make them happy, and people resent them for that. Just feck off to North Korea if you want some sort of communist utopia.

3) It also says something when people who haven't the cojones to start their own enterprise take a pop from the sidelines.

4) You'll find out how much it's worth only be trying. Same thing with EVO. I don't think it's worth the money compared to other stuff, so I buy other stuff - opportunity cost.
1) I dont think anyone expects it or is demanding it for nothing, just that most people are saying they will opt not to take it.

2) There has been very little resentment of Chris (though there has been some) most discussion has been about the viability of the business model and most posts conclude by wishing him luck

3)As above

4) Thats only true if you feel the need to try it. Its a very different market when you ask people to pay as opposed to funding it via the advertising opportunity that their viewing provides.

In summary, most wish Chris good luck but are unsure of the business model. If you think that indiactes a general malaise... fair enough I guess.

cb31

1,135 posts

135 months

Thursday 31st July 2014
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I won't be subscribing, too many subscriptions already and it's getting a bit out of hand paying "small" amounts many times over. If the content was outstanding then I may do but drifting one supercar after another gets boring quickly (for me anyway), and there is plenty of free content out there to while away the time.

I can understand wanting to earn money out of doing something you love but I think it is destined to fail. Too niche and once the million subscribers are down to 5-25k and people gradually drift away where will the new subscribers come from? The 1m won't hang around to see 90 second adverts of what you can subscribe to.

RichwiththeS2000

443 posts

133 months

Thursday 31st July 2014
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So by the maths on Chris' post. Average cost of a decent shoot is £9k. Let's round that up to £10k on the basis of increasing production values. Say you want to do at least one a month, thats £120000. On the £25/year sub model, you will need at least 4,800 paying subscribers. Globally that's probably not too many people to convince so it will be interesting to see if it works out.

Of course it also carves out a nice gap in the market for someone else to make totally free content ;-)

RacerMike

4,192 posts

210 months

Thursday 31st July 2014
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My issue with the subscription model as it is at the moment is based on this scenario.

Reality:

I walk in to my local branch of WH Smiths. I have a look around the magazines. I see something I like (EVO perhaps), I pick it up and buy it for £3. I'm happy with my purchase, read it because it's interesting and feel I have value for money has I bought something I wanted to read.

/Drive model:

I walk in to my local branch of WH Smiths. I have a look around the magazines. I see something I like (We'll say EVO again), I pick it up and walk to the counter. At the counter the assistant tells me I can't just buy that one magazine for £3, however, I can pay £6 and I get Caravan Weekly, Fast Ford, 911 997.2 GT3 Owner, Camping Monthly AND the Better Homes 2014 Compendum! I explain that I'm perfectly happy to pay £3 for my chosen magazine, but I have no interest or requirement (although I could do with some more kindling for my BBQ) for the other 5 magazines. "But you're getting so much more for your money" says the assistant. "True" I say "But the issue is, I'm paying more for the thing I want, and getting a load of extra stuff I don't want, included".

So I walk out of the shop, without anything, walk in to another shop that will sell me EVO on it's own and, oh look, I see 911 997.2 GT3 Owner has an article on buying a non GT3 997....that sounds interesting. I might buy that.

This is the way that modern commerce is going. It's nice to be able to pick and choose what you want, easily, and without getting a load of stuff you don't want. The reason iTunes and Napster have been so popular (and indeed why illegal downloading has been so popular) is that people can choose exactly what they want. Remember back in the day when you had to pay £3 or so for a single you liked on CD. It usually came with 3 to 5 'excellent' remixes of said song along with the original. How often did I used to buy a single? Once every couple of months. Now, I can go on iTunes, pay 99p for the song I want, listen to it, enjoy it, and then spend another £1.98 on two other songs I also like that aren't rubbish, sorry, I mean creative remixes of a song I already have. How often do I buy a song from iTunes? Probably 3 to 4 times a month. See where this is going? I still think that /Drive would have been far better going for a pay per view model. 50p or so for a video would mean the good videos make money and the bad ones don't. Seems pretty logical to me....

EricE

1,945 posts

128 months

Thursday 31st July 2014
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RichwiththeS2000 said:
So by the maths on Chris' post. Average cost of a decent shoot is £9k. Let's round that up to £10k on the basis of increasing production values. Say you want to do at least one a month, thats £120000. On the £25/year sub model, you will need at least 4,800 paying subscribers. Globally that's probably not too many people to convince so it will be interesting to see if it works out.

Of course it also carves out a nice gap in the market for someone else to make totally free content ;-)
Actually they only get 55% of that because Google/Youtube takes a 45% cut for distribution, payment processing, etc.
Maybe NBC Sports gets a cut too.
They stated that they need 2% of their current subscribers to pay so they can operate and grow... that would be ~28.000 paying subs. I think they may reach that target short term but we will see what happens in a year when it is time to renew those subscriptions...

Kolbenkopp

2,343 posts

150 months

Thursday 31st July 2014
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loudlashadjuster said:
Patreon fees are, I think, 5% (with another ~4% for credit card charges), so I'm willing to bet it's a lower cut that YouTube take for their subscription service?

Any comment?
Sounds pretty good. Pretty sure that is a way better deal that YT does. And even if I could (not available in Germany), I don't really want to give Google money.

Problem with all "as a service" (in this case, "platform as a service") deals is you don't have long term control over your stuff.

The effort put in making the site is in danger if e.g. the platform shuts down, changes terms along the line, or tries to squeeze a lot money out of content creators. And I don't think this is going to be that rare an event. I suppose most of them operate with attractive terms at the start but are loss making. Then they either go tits up or start milking the cows.

I would suggest building up something under their control, in parallel to the existing YT hub. Not *that* expensive. More control, more options of making content accessible to places not covered by YT. If it flies, focus could be shifted away from YT over the years. If it does not, the experiment won't be that expensive.

Sport Coupe

415 posts

197 months

Thursday 31st July 2014
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I enjoy the content but not enough to warrant £25pa. I only watch Chris Harris on Cars and the odd Drive Clean video as the others to my minds eye are irritating or just hold no interest. I also found the camera work a little lazy at times and viewed countless videos where the cameraman filmed using a dirty sensor, this aspect was becoming increasingly frustrating to me. I don't want to watch a dust blob in full HD thank you. Paying for the experience would certainly have me cancelling a subscription.

I'll revisit my decision not to subscribe in 6 months’ time - I'll pay the one off £2.49 monthly fee and watch all the previously published content then. Perhaps that's how I'll approach online PPV content if that is how the future will unfold?


Lefty

16,131 posts

201 months

Thursday 31st July 2014
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Roncee said:
Chris has needed his own regular show for a while and this might just be the ticket. I will subscribe if quality and quantity keeps me entertained.
I could definately see him as a mainstream presenter on TV esp as top gear et al have become stale and boring. Shame no TV execs have employed him......yet
I agree with this. Chris Harris is very watchable and his videos are interesting and fun. A lot of the other content doesnt hold much interest for me though.

I'll maybe subscribe for the first few months and see how it goes.

EggsBenedict

1,770 posts

173 months

Thursday 31st July 2014
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Hungrymc said:
1) I dont think anyone expects it or is demanding it for nothing, just that most people are saying they will opt not to take it.

2) There has been very little resentment of Chris (though there has been some) most discussion has been about the viability of the business model and most posts conclude by wishing him luck

3)As above

4) Thats only true if you feel the need to try it. Its a very different market when you ask people to pay as opposed to funding it via the advertising opportunity that their viewing provides.

In summary, most wish Chris good luck but are unsure of the business model. If you think that indiactes a general malaise... fair enough I guess.
(4) I think Chris' point is that it doesn't fund itself via advertising, or at least not enough to make it worthwhile, or even the advertising revenue doesn't reflect what value Chris puts on the content.

The malaise that I refer to is really in points 1 and 2. I can't be bothered to go through the posts finding examples of where I think this malaise manifests itself, but just 2 pages in there's this one:

mike-r said:
It's not entirely irrelevant, 'We have to pay me X, so the videos cost X+1, I won't get out of bed for X-1'. Obviously we don't have any figures, but my heart doesn't exactly bleed for inflated production costs if the host rocks up in an FF and needs his expenses paying.
Which certaintly seems indicative of my point (2).

Anyway, I've said my good luck, pointed out that I won't be subscribing, and I'll stop there - we'll soon see if the business model works or not.

donteatpeople

831 posts

273 months

Thursday 31st July 2014
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RacerMike said:
My issue with the subscription model as it is at the moment is based on this scenario.

Reality:

I walk in to my local branch of WH Smiths. I have a look around the magazines. I see something I like (EVO perhaps), I pick it up and buy it for £3. I'm happy with my purchase, read it because it's interesting and feel I have value for money has I bought something I wanted to read.

/Drive model:

I walk in to my local branch of WH Smiths. I have a look around the magazines. I see something I like (We'll say EVO again), I pick it up and walk to the counter. At the counter the assistant tells me I can't just buy that one magazine for £3, however, I can pay £6 and I get Caravan Weekly, Fast Ford, 911 997.2 GT3 Owner, Camping Monthly AND the Better Homes 2014 Compendum! I explain that I'm perfectly happy to pay £3 for my chosen magazine, but I have no interest or requirement (although I could do with some more kindling for my BBQ) for the other 5 magazines. "But you're getting so much more for your money" says the assistant. "True" I say "But the issue is, I'm paying more for the thing I want, and getting a load of extra stuff I don't want, included".
Try going into your local WHSmiths and buying one article out of EVO. I bet they’ll refuse your offer and insist you buy the entire months worth of content.

stats007

531 posts

234 months

Thursday 31st July 2014
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One of the Ferrari forums had a £10 annual subscription for additional areas and content - I'd be happy to pay this either on Pistonheads or another forum / website to have Chris' stuff included.

SpeedBall

643 posts

169 months

Thursday 31st July 2014
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donteatpeople said:
Try going into your local WHSmiths and buying one article out of EVO. I bet they’ll refuse your offer and insist you buy the entire months worth of content.
Try scrolling down to read the part of his post (that you mysteriously failed to quote...) regarding iTunes.

Mr Whippy

28,944 posts

240 months

Thursday 31st July 2014
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I still like the idea of it being done for free.

I believe it could be.

If you can make a large fraction of the cost of video production just with basic YT advert revenue then you can't be that far off getting more advert revenue elsewhere.

Perhaps have SD on YT, and then have a website with maybe (cheap) subs with all HD content and more specific adverts there that car manufacturers will pay for.

Double revenue streams all from the same content?!

Don't Amazon do high bandwidth hosting options that scale for video deployment. I know we used to use them where I did videos last.

Dave

donteatpeople

831 posts

273 months

Thursday 31st July 2014
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SpeedBall said:
Try scrolling down to read the part of his post (that you mysteriously failed to quote...) regarding iTunes.
I read it and don’t disagree with it (hence not so mysteriously choosing not to quote it) but that doesn't excuse the very poor analogy above it.

TomSpecs

10 posts

116 months

Thursday 31st July 2014
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It's impressive how many experts on making money from internet videos that pistonheads has.

Maybe JF should have just started a thread on here before he put drive together.


RacerMike

4,192 posts

210 months

Thursday 31st July 2014
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donteatpeople said:
I read it and don’t disagree with it (hence not so mysteriously choosing not to quote it) but that doesn't excuse the very poor analogy above it.
EVO has a general theme of performance cars and generally follow their mantra of 'for the love of driving'. Buying a car magazine is generally about buying a general 'theme'. In other words, it's like buying 50 Chris Harris videos in one go for £3, not 1 Chris Harris video with 49 others about American Muscle Cars, Motorbikes, Tuner Cars, Racing News etc.

Just because you think the /Drive model is a good one, doesn't make my analogy rubbish. You don't have to agree with it, but I think it's pretty clear that the analogy I have used is indeed relevant to the situation we have. Most people's negative comments are directed towards the fact they're paying for a couple of Chris Harris videos and a lot of stuff they're not interested in. If you take it to the individual magazine level, would you buy GQ just to read a car review by Jason Barlow?

RacerMike

4,192 posts

210 months

Thursday 31st July 2014
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TomSpecs said:
It's impressive how many experts on making money from internet videos that pistonheads has.

Maybe JF should have just started a thread on here before he put drive together.
You're sarcasm is indeed correct, plenty of people here seem to think they could do it better.....however isn't that the telling thing? The majority of people on here are the people that watch channels like /Drive, and the majority are saying they'd be happy to pay-per-view but not subscribe? Unlike the usual PH thread revolving around the kind of comment 'I hate that Range Rover, I'd never buy it, I'm happy with my MX5', for once, all the people making the comments are actual potential customers....

EricE

1,945 posts

128 months

Thursday 31st July 2014
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TomSpecs said:
Maybe JF should have just started a thread on here before he put drive together.
Give it two years and JF will think the same thing.

PiB

1,195 posts

269 months

Thursday 31st July 2014
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(Wow just got a forum rules pop up page before I could post - never seen that before)

I just have a few comments. Not going to bash (trying not to) other than I agree with the others that say a lot of the 'Drive' content doesn't interest me and at times is quite annoying - the Americans (myself). If there was another well spoken Europe based commentator (Mark Hales anybody?) that would be appealing but you can't have everything.

What is some of the first new or unseen content that is out now on the pay channel? P1 and La Ferrari uncut clips? I dunno so I don't have a reason to subscribe. At the moment I'm not sure what I'm going to get that will be worthwhile. Right now I'm really enjoying the Xcar channel on youtube for free. And I would hate to see others follow suite like Drive.

NotNormal

2,357 posts

213 months

Thursday 31st July 2014
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Amazed at some of the responses here, to me its pretty much along the simple lines Chris put in the article.

Extract from Chris Harris Artcle said:
..It's a pretty simple choice too: we either succeed in persuading a certain percentage of viewers that our content is worth some loose change every month. Or we don't, and we stop making films..
Common Sense said:
It's a pretty simple choice too: "Internet users" either sign up and watch the content that is being offered. Or they don't, and people stop watching, ultimately demonstrating to /Drive that the idea didn't work.
Signed up, worth a shot, if I feel its worth it I'll continue if I don't i'll unsubscribe. Is it that hard for people to do the same confused