Make Money Selling Indie Porn Clips / Pics

Porn is a huge industry and with the rise of clip sites, fanclub platforms and other networks, indie porn has taken over. Performers wanting to get into porn used to have to go through an agency that would book shoots with studios. Now anyone can start producing and selling their own content, right from their own home! Because the performer maintains the rights to their content, indie porn is also much more profitable than mainstream porn. This guide will go over everything you need to know to get started producing and selling your own porn videos and photo sets.

 

Table of Contents:

• How Much You Can Make Selling Porn
• What’s Required To Get Started
• Selling Videos On Clip Sites
• Running A Subscription Fanclub
• Running A Paid Membership Site
• Selling Custom Content
• Performing With A Partner
• Services to Earn More
• More Resources for Adult Performers

 

How Much Do Amateur Porn Producers Make?

This is a very complicated question with a complicated answer. It’s hard to calculate the lifetime value of a single clip or gallery. That’s because each piece of content has the potential to generate sales and revenue as long as it’s available for purchase. There’s also a lot of things impacting the sale price of a piece of content, such as quality, attractiveness of performers and fetishes catered to.

As for predicting the average monthly earnings of individual producers? That’s also very complicated and varies drastically. How much content is available for purchase, attractiveness of performers, size of your customer/fan-base, how much outside promotion you’re doing and the clip stores partnered with are all criteria impacting the earning potential.

Clips Generally Go For $1 Per Minute: Keep in mind, pricing is completely up to you. How much a video can be priced on is also highly dependent upon the quality of the production. $1 per minute is an “Industry Standard” though. Keep in mind that each customer will have to pay the price before getting the content, and each clip will make that dollar amount with each sale.

Thousands Per Month Is Possible: Earnings will vary from model to model. Keep in mind the industry isn’t for everyone, and some will not earn enough to make it worth it. That being said, earning thousands per month is definitely possible. 10’s of thousands, if you’re really ambitious, put the fight effort into it and you are a good fit for the industry.

 

Factors Impacting Profitability of Porn

Before we try ballparking how much a performer can make producing and selling their adult content, let’s first look at some of the factors that impact the profitability of the porn they’re producing. Unlike mainstream porn, the indie porn industry ins’t based on a set price per scene. There’s a lot of variables involved, which we will discuss below:

 

Quality of the Content

The highest quality the content, the greater the earning potential. There’s a lot of things that go into creating a quality product. The better production equipment the better. Filming angles, lighting and filming location also impacts the quality of the final production. Post-production and editing also makes a huge difference of the finished product.

 

Pricing of the Clips / Photo Sets

You want to price your content to be as profitable as possible. That means maximizing the number of sales, while not selling yourself short on the selling price. How much a video can be priced at depends on the quality, fetish catered to and many more factors. Most clips are priced around a dollar per minute, and discounted for slightly larger clips. Remember that you have compete control over the pricing, however. Lower price means more sales, but less per sale. Higher price means less sales, but more per sale.

 

Amount of Content / Diversity of Content

Having more content will generally result in greater earnings. This is true for a number of reasons. First, having more content increases your visibility on the clip sites. Your content will come up in a great variety of search feeds and different pages. It also allows you to cater to different fetishes, or dominate a single one. Also, someone liking what they see and buying up multiple clips isn’t possible if you’ve got a very limited selection. In general, more content = more earnings.

 

Bigger Fanbase = Bigger Earning Potentia

The bigger your customer base, the greater your earning potential. Your loyal fans are more likely to purchase any new content that gets released, as opposed to a complete stranger. It’s important to build up a strong following on the individual clip sites, social media sites and other networks that can be used for promotion. Make sure your loyal customers know whenever you release a new piece of content!

 

Attractiveness Of Performers

If you’re performing solo, this means you. If you’re performing with a partner, this means you and you’re partners. If you’re trying to go the producer / studio route, that means the talent you’re shooting. You don’t have to have a perfect body to make money producing and selling. In fact, there’s a huge market for “Big Beautiful Women” (BBW) and performers with all sorts of different body types. But attractiveness does factor into content sales and profitability.

 

Type Of Fetishes Catered To

Some fetishes pay more than others. Some fetishes are also less competitive and easier to dominate, although those fetishes might not be as big, meaning less money in that fetish. Keep in mind, that you should always stay within your comfort zone when deciding what fetishes to cater to. You can also choose to dominate a small selection of fetishes, or cater to a large selection of fetishes. Either route can be profitable.

 

Selling On Multiple Sites

Selling across multiple clip sites is a great way to extend the reach of your content and result in more sales. Producing and doctoring the content is the hard and time consuming part. Uploading that content after finalized can be as simple as copy/pasting the titles, descriptions, tags, ect. across all the different clip sites you’re a part of. Different sites have different audiences. Being on more sites means you’ll tap into these different audiences, gaining you and your content more exposure.

 

Marketing / Promotion

The various adult clip sites do a lot of their own marketing which drives epic amounts of traffic to their site. This should result in naturally occurring sales for you. However, if you do your own promotion, this will greatly increase your income. This is especially true for sellers with a large customer-base and  following. Promotion can be as simple as keeping a social media presence. It can also be as involved as running your own website, building up email subscriber lists, and leveraging all the other marketing channels.

 

Selling Custom Content

Custom videos go for way more than a pre-recorded clip. That’s because it’s made as per the specifications of the customer. Best of all custom content can be resold later, or remain 100% exclusive to the purchaser for a steep marked-up price. There’s certain networks that specialize in custom content. Custom content can also be fulfilled independently, which means that you can keep more of the money.

 

Ballpark Earnings For Homemade Porn Producers

Now that we’ve gone over some of the factors impacting the profitability of the content, let’s talk ballpark figures. It is feasible to make a couple thousand per month off homemade clips. This is even feasible for beginner amateur porn producers. As you scale up the content, fanbase and find the profitable fetishes for you, it’s possible to scale it to 10’s of thousands. Keep in mind that everything is performance-based, however, and nothing is guaranteed.

Fanclub Earnings Are Lucrative: While we’re talking about ballpark revenue off indie adult content, we’ve got to bring up the earning potential of subscription-based fanclub content, as it’s insanely lucrative and anymore makes up the bulk of many performers revenue (when comparing camming, clips, fanclubs and revenue from other services).

The reason fanclubs can be so lucrative is due to the residual nature and the low cost per subscriber. $15 per subscriber might not sound like much, but at 100 subscribers it’s $1,500 per month. At 1,000 subscribers, it’s $15,000 per month. You can see how fanclub revenue can get really lucrative as the subscriber count starts scaling.

Note: The contrast between clip revenue and fanclub revenue also helps demonstrate just how hard it is to accurately benchmark the earning potential of indie porn.

 

Here’s How To Get Started Selling Porn

Now that we discussed revenue potential, let’s get into producing and selling porn!

 

Requirements To Become An Indie Pornstar

The requirements to start producing and selling your own homemade porn isn’t that much. In fact, there’s a good chance you already have everything required to get started. There’s no hiring process, so anyone (18+) can get started as an indie pornstar, granted that person has all the required equipment. Here is what’s required to get started:

 

Must Be Eighteen Or Older

The only major requirement is that you must be eighteen years old or older. Anyone featured in any content must also be eighteen years old or older. When registering for any of the sites, you will have to submit a digital copy of government-issued photo ID, along with a photo of you holding the ID next to your face. This is something that all site are required to do to stay compliant with “2257 Compliance” (Federal age verification laws). Even though it’s an American law, all companies globally follow the same standards.

 

Performer Name / Stage Name

You’ll also need to choose your pornstar name. Rebranding from one name to another is not the easiest thing, so think long and hard about this. Your stage name is going to be your alternate personality and you’ll spend a lot of time being that person. Therefore, you want an identity that you like and feel comfortable with. Also, you’ll want a real name. Not YOUR real name, but an actual name and not a username. Here’s some things to consider when choosing your performer name:

• Pick a name that’s memorable: You want people to be able to remember your stage-name.
• Pick a non-generic name: If the name is too generic, people Googling for you will find mainstream social media or phone book results and not any of your sites or content.
• Make sure the name isn’t already taken: Not only is this the polite thing to do, but you don’t want people getting confused.
• Google names before choosing: This is to make sure there’s not too many mainstream results that will out rank you (due to safe search filters) as well as to make sure the name isn’t already taken.
• Bonus points for creativity: Especially if it’s a clever enough name to make people chuckle.
• Make sure socials are available: This means the Twitter @mention for the name, ect.
• Make sure the .com is available: Go to a registrar and type in the full name (no spaces or dashes) with .com at the end and make sure it’s available. If it is, register it! We’ll discuss what to do with it later in this guide.

 

Camera (Anything From Smart Phone To DSLR)

You’ll also need a camera. The higher quality the camera the better, but you don’t need a Red 4K to mkae it as an indie porn producer. It’s actually possible to get started with a smart phone, and there’s actually good money in selling selfie nudes. This is especially true for the fanclubs and phone sex services.

That being said; for clips being sold in the clip stores, the higher quality the production the better. This doesn’t mean that you can’t get started producing and selling clips on the clip sites with your smart phone, but it’s highly recommended that you upgrade to either a camcorder or DSLR as soon as possible! Keep in mind that you can always put a new camera on your wishlist and there’s a chance that someone will spoil you with upgraded equipment!

 

Computer (PC or Laptop) and Internet

You’ll also need a computer. The computer is used primarily for editing and uploading content. Some content (fanclub, social media, ect) can be uploaded directly from your phone, but the major clips will be uploaded via computer. You’ll also need internet to accomplish all this. The faster the upload speed the better, especially if you’re syndicating a lot of content.

 

Suggested Additional Equipment

Everything mentioned above is the absolute minimum requirements to get started producing and selling porn. Outside of the bare minimum requirements, there’s some other suggested additional equipment that will make your life much easier, enable better quality content and ultimately lead to a much more profitable career. Here’s the other equipment that you should acquire.

 

3-Point Lighting System

Good lighting can drastically improve the quality of the produced content. Some locations might have adaquate natural lighting, but that’s not always going to be the case. There’s plenty of lighting systems available on the market. If you’re bootstrapped, a DIY lighting system can be put together insanely inexpensively.

 

Tripod, Upgraded Microphone and Other Camera Accessories

There’s a number of camera accessories that can make producing the content much easier and drastically improve the quality of the content. Camera accessories include, but aren’t limited to; tripod, upgraded microphone, lenses and the list goes on. Anything you can do to increase the quality of the camera will increase the quality of the produced content.

 

Sex Toys

It never hurts to have a large collection of sex toys. If you’ve already got a large collection, great. If not, it’s something that you can build up over time. It’s also a good idea to keep a wishlist and add all the toys you want as wishlist items. Adult stars often get spoiled by their fans via wishlists. This is a great way to build up your toy collection without investing a dime.

 

Lingerie / Cosplay / Other Outfits

It’s always good to have a large closet full of lingerie, outfits and cosplay costumes. Even if your clothes aren’t going to stay on for very long, having a large collection adds variety to your clips and photo sets. If you’re into cosplay, that type of content can perform very well. Having a wide range of costumes and other outfits allows for different type of role-playing and can help to increase the diversity of your content and target different fetishes and niches.

 

Where To Sell Porn Clips / Photos

Now that we’ve gone over all the required equipment, let’s cover all the places to sell the content and the different ways to monetize it

 

Selling Porn Videos On Adult Clip Sites

There’s a wide selection of adult clip sites that performers can upload content to. Simply upload, choose a title, draft a description, set the price and indicate any relevant tags / categories. Once uploaded, the clip site handles the payment processing and delivery of the content once purchased. Most these sites have tons of traffic and a large member-base. Simply by being a part of these sites, you’ll organically get visitors to your profile page, followers and sales.

 

Tips For Making The Most On Clip Sites

Just uploading content to the clip sites creates potential for sales and revenue. That being said, there are some things you can do to drastically improve the performance of your video sales and clip site profile:

Fill Out Complete Profile Information: A lot of sites use this information for model searches and other queries. Having a complete profile also helps potential fans and customers learn more about you and the content you’re producing. Be sure to include any social media or camming site and personal website links if allowed and applicable.

Providing Free Promo / Teaser Content: Many sites allow performers to upload free / teaser content. This might either be photo, video or both. Giving out freebies demonstrates the quality of your premium content. Some sites have categories or sections for teaser content, which helps gain exposure.

Produce and Upload Content Consistently: Performers who produce and upload content consistently generally get more sales and revenue. Many sites will feature newer content higher in categories and search. Once you build up a solid customer-base, they’ll be looking for new clips to be uploaded. Constantly producing also allows you to diversify your content and cater to a larger audience.

Optimize Titles, Descriptions, Tags and Categories: Having a good title and description gives potential buyers more information about the clip and also can help the clip perform better in search. Properly tagging and adding categories will feature the clip on those pages and also help the clip appear in search.

Use Awesome Video Thumbnails: The thumbnail is one of the first things potential customers notice while browsing uploaded clips. Having a great thumbnail will result in more clicks and purchases.

Increase Exposure By Selling On Multiple Sites: It’s possible to sell content on multiple clip sites. Doing this can increase your exposure by reaching multiple member-bases on the different sites. It’s worth noting that some sites are more vanilla while others are more fetish. Tailoring your content to the preference of the site’s member-base will help clips sell.

Offer Custom Content Requests: Many clip sites support custom content requests. Custom videos go for much more than recorded clips. Customs can also be resold once completed. Many models find that customs tend to perform very well when resold, and provide inspiration on video ideas not currently available in their clip store.

Take Advantage Of Any New Model Bonuses: Some clip sites offer a bonus for brand new performers. Be sure to take advantage of this! It’ll only last a limited time and it’s a great way to get some followers right away!

Complete In Site Contests / Promotions: Many of the clip sites host regular contests and promotions. Participating in these events gains you exposure via contest pages, social media and other places. If the contest supports paid votes, the performers will earn a percentage of revenue generated from the paid votes. This means that competing in contests will actually generate revenue as well.

 

Uploading Pics / Vids To Fanclub Sites

Running a subscription fanclub is another route to monetizing the content you produce. Fanclubs also have the potential of being one of the most profitable services an indie pornstar can offer. This is because fanclub subscriptions have the ability to scale indefinitely. Once the number of subscribers get into the hundreds or thousands, the monthly revenue can get into the 10’s of thousands of dollars monthly. As long as you’re able to retain the subscriber-base, the revenue is fairly residual and has the potential to keep scaling up with each new subscriber.

 

Tips For Making The Most From Fanclubs

Fanclubs can be a challenge to get started, especially for newer performers who don’t have as many regular customers, as large of a following and as much existing content to work with. This is especially true on sites that don’t provide as much exposure for performers. Following these tips can help ramp up your subscriber-base:

Have Content Uploaded Before Promoting: It’s smart to have content uploaded before announcing the launch of the fanclub. This way any initial subscribers will have a good amount of content, while you continue to build the amount of content available.

Consistently Upload New Content: You’ll want to regularly upload pics and clips to keep the fanclub content fresh. Daily is optimal. Most fanclubs have schedulers that allow you to queue up content. Scheduling daily uploads will ensure consistency, even if you’re not around or able to produce and upload on that day.

Run Discounts To Drive New Subscriptions – Many of the fanclubs supports discounts and deals. On the sites that don’t, models can still manually lower the price for a duration of time. Hosting discounts encourages potential subscribers to join.

Post High Quality Content: The quality of fanclub content isn’t as important as clip site content. In fact, selfies and similar pics and vids perform just fine. That being said, quality is still important and the better the photo and videos, the better the retention.

ShoutforShout and Cross-Promo: Finding other models on the same fanclub platforms to provide ShoutforShouts and cross-promotions can help drive exposure and subscribers for both performers.

Fair Pricing On Subscriptions: Pricing is important to retaining subscribers and attracting new ones. Optimal pricing can depend on a number of things, including amount of content available, rate new content is added and quality of the content. Better pricing will result in more subscribers. The average monthly subscription rates range from $7.99 to $14.99.

 

Running A Paid Membership Site

Another way to monetize the content is through a paid membership site. This requires a little bit more work setting up than many of the other routes. Building the site isn’t complicated or expensive thanks to two website builders that are designed specifically for indie models and producers. ModelCentro and AdultMemberSites are two website builders that make it easy to build fully functional membership sites, all with zero upfront costs. The platforms work on revshare business-model and has everything you need, including payment processing, right out of the box. Only investment required is a domain name, which you can get for $25 annually with WHOIS protection.

 

Tips For Running A Membership Site

Running a membership site can be difficult for a couple reasons. First, it requires more configuration than just setting up a profile on a site. Because it’s a website and not a network, there’s no network traffic to take advantage of. You’ll be required to generate all the traffic and sales. The advantage of having a website is that it helps gain valuable exposure through search engines. Here’s some tips for running a membership website:

Learn Search Engine Optimization: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the act of optimizing a website to make it more search engine friendly. By tapping into search engine traffic, you’ll have a steady stream of website visitors. You can learn more about SEO by checking out the link.

Membership Sites Require More Promotion: Websites require more promotion than promoting a profile on a clip site. We’ll go more in-depth into promotion further down this post.

 

Promoting Your Services and Building An Audience

Doing your own promotion is a great way to ramp up your customer base and get more sales. There’s tons of different ways to promote your content and services. Some, like social media, are easy to get started with. Others, like web development, might require some setup, knowledge and investment. Here’s some of the different channels that you can use to promote your services.

Make More Money With Custom Content Requests

It’s also possible to make money off custom content requests. Customs can be very profitable. The best thing of all: You can resell the customs after you produce them! It’s also a great way to build up your clip store. The item being requested is obviously something you don’t currently offer, and something your customers are interested in. Some models best-sellers are clips that were originally custom requests.

Learn More: Make Money Off Custom Adult Videos

 

Performing Solo Vs Performing With A Partner

It’s possible to be a solo performer. If you wish, you can also perform with a partner (or multiple). There’s a couple of considerations when performing with a partner. The first being who you are going to perform with. Is it going to be your boyfriend/girlfriend? Other pornstars? Are you finding them through some other methods? Either way, there are things to consider when filming with a partner.

Age Verification / 2257 Compliance – Just like you need to submit age verification documentation to the clip sites and other networks, anyone you’re performing with will have to do the same. You’ll also want to keep these records on file yourself. Make sure you get a copy of their ID and a face shot of them holding it. Everything required for 2257 Compliance.

Testing and Sharing Results – Although it’s not technically required (like it is in mainstream porn) staying on top of testing is the best practice. This includes making sure all partners are tested, as well as getting tested yourself. Make sure to have test results available and that anyone you’re performing with has theirs available. If you’re performing with a boyfriend/girlfriend, this isn’t as big of an issue.

Rights To The Content – Who has the rights to the content? Are you paying a performer to be featured in the content, but retaining the rights? Are both the performers able to upload the content on the clip stores? Are there other terms that need to be negotiated? It’s important to plan all this and make sure to get it in printed copy

Traveling / Meeting Up – Assuming the person you’re performing with isn’t in the local area, some traveling is going to happen. One performer might go to the other’s city, or they might meet up at a hotel somewhere in between. However it works, there’s things such as travel expenses, making sure there’s enough to time collaborate and other planning that’s required.

Privacy Concerns – Make you trust the people you’re performing with! If they’ve got the rights to use the content themselves, they’ve got your personal information in the form of model releases and 2257 Documentation. For this reason, make sure that you only work with people you trust!

 

More Information On Performing With A Partner

 

Offering Other Services

Amateur porn isn’t the only service you can make money offering. There’s tons of other services that are insanely simple to get started offering. Just like selling content, there’s no hiring process and anyone eighteen or older can get paid offering these services. Here are the other main services you can get paid offering.

 

More Resources For Porn Producers

If you’re looking for more tips and tricks for producing and selling content, you’re at the right place. This site is full of helpful information for new and experienced performers alike. Here are some other resources that are worth checking out:

How To Research Fetishes – There are so many fetishes out there. More than you’d think. Your most popular fetish might not be something that you even knew existed. Katy Churchill gives some tips on how to research fetishes and sub-fetishes.

Getting More Custom Content Requests – Custom clips or galleries go for a higher rate than pre-recorded clips. These videos can also be resold after being completed. This makes it a win/win. Aerie gives some tips on getting more custom content requests.

How To Build A Website – A website isn’t only a valuable marketing tool. It can also generate it’s own income. Building a website is easy and there’s some platforms out there designed specifically for adult performers.

Telling People That You’re In Porn – There’s a very good chance that people will find out you do porn. Whether you keep it a secret or decide to come out of the closet, eventually you’ll have to talk to people about your profession. Aerie gives some tips on how to do just that.

Promoting Your Services – Marketing is very important. Our marketing section contains tons of helpful resources and articles on how to promote your products and services.

Webcam Startup YouTube Channel – Our YouTube channel contains tons of great resources, including our weekly live hangout series.