Yesterday we learned that Vesta’s Bondage Divas site is closing after 13 years. On her site, she mentions increasing costs and falling membership numbers as being the primary reasons for closing. We also got an email from another producer, who has been around just as long, voicing serious concern over one of the many tube sites out there that features nothing but stolen content. We couldn’t help but see a direct cause and effect between the two.
Bondage Divas has been around almost as long as we have and it is always sad to see another of the early bondage sites close. Not sure how many of you remember, but 13 to 15 years ago, there were very few bondage sites that were actually producing new, original content. When Imago Studios went live about 14 years ago, there were only a handful of such sites. Most of the bondage sites were just ‘scan sites’ that did nothing more then put up scans from existing magazines. In a few years, the web would explode with new bondage sites, but in those early years, we were a very small group. Unfortunately, over the last year or two, it seem like more and more of those original sites are going under.
In a previous blog entry, we mentioned that we have also seen a decrease in membership numbers over the last few years. While the bad economy may be partially to blame, the glut of stolen material, hacking, and illegal file sharing sites are the main problem. Unfortunately, there seems to be no easy solution. Otherwise honest people seem to have no problem with posting large quantities of copyrighted material to these sharing sites. Perhaps they see no harm in what they are doing. I doubt any of them would break into your home or business or mug you in the back alley, but what they are doing is really no different. It is simply far easier to post and share stolen content, which probably explains why so many are willing to ignore what ethics they may have and do it. Or perhaps they just feel a need to be part of something anyway they can, to get some recognition from others that share their willingness to do wrong simply because it is easier and cheaper than to do what is right & honest. It is not as if these people have actually produced the content, paid for the models or the equipment or taken any of the financial or legal risks associated with the business. But some seem to crave the recognition as if they had somehow done something noble or good. Perhaps a few are simply ignorant of the harm they do – but we sincerely doubt it. Regardless of their motives, it is a very sad commentary on the dark side of human nature, the ease with which people will act unethically and the misuse of social networking and file sharing sites.
With all that is going on, it makes us wonder who will be next. It will be quite ironic if what finally kills off the bulk of bondage websites is the misguided actions of their own “fans” and not the actions of those that despise what we do and push for more government regulation, fees, and out & out censorship. Ironic & sad.
Welcome back!
Just rejoined (for three months) after a long absence. Can only echo what others have said there ARE a lot of competing websites out there. Some are nowhere’s near your caliber (your photos are always top notch)! Some of equal photo quality. I can only echo the other posters that it’s a case of too much to choose from, and the poor economy. Hope my (small) contribution helps!
We cannot speak for other producers and we do not know the specifics of what you are referring to, so it is impossible for us to comment.
You can blame the “economy” but what I DON’T understand is that if a customer does not want “certain things” on his/her computer’s hard-drive and is willing to pay (via credit card) for SOME of the videos to be put on a digital video disc (d.v.d.)
and mailed to him/her WHY would a web-site TURN-AWAY “EASY” money?
The request is ONLY for the producer to himself/herself download the videos he/she
ALREADY has onto a CHEAP D.V.D.-R disc and send it by Priority mail!
The disc and the mailing alone would be ABOUT five dollars ($5.00) and if the producer charged what he/she would charge ANYWAY for their d.v.d.’s they would CERTAINLY NOT be “losing” money! And in THIS scenario, the d.v.d’s would be ONLY be produced “as-ordered” (so NO stock-piling)! And I am sure that there would NOT be THAT many people who would WANT D.V.D.’s, so the company would NOT be bogged-down with requests, BUT ISN’T “money” MONEY? Why would a company turn-away an “easy” dollar? No “production” is necessary as that had ALREADY BEEN done!
This is NOT intended as a comment for YOU guy, just an “attack” on the “industry” IN-GENERAL!
Any thoughts/rebuttals?
@Nick – Thank you for the note, but we believe our lawyer has already had them removed. If you see any we missed, please send us the URL.
Just FYI I’ve seen some of your clips on Dailymotion lately.
Well this site has always kept my interest. Since I was a teenager and stumbling onto bondage websites, Imagostudios will always be my favorite. You guys have always stayed true to your art and style. But I think the lower numbers are due to the fact of piracy, photos getting posted on tumblr or flicker… hell I even saw a couple of images up on DeviantArt. But I think more hardcore sites are getting the bigger numbers… like kink.com
Thanks to your watermark, style and beautiful girls, most bondage enthusiasts will automatically know, “That’s Imagostudios.” You’re like the iconic bondage site, alongside twisted smile and underground.net.
Many thanks to you guys, you’ve inspired me to photograph bondage style pictures. If any girl is interested or curious about bondage, I always tell ’em to head on over to your site, and first thing out of their mouths, “I like it! It’s cute!” Awesome right?
Keep up the good work!
@Kao – Yes, we fully agree that the large increase in the number of sites has made it far more difficult for any one site to survive. The increase in the number of competing sites has been dramatic. And the poor economy factors in as well, as well as the overabundance of free material – not stolen material, most of it is posted by the webmasters themselves on sites such as FetLife (which is another pet peeve of ours, but that is another issue). If someone is rotating memberships between their favorite sites and can only join one or two per month, the number of times they will be a member of your site in a given time period has dramatically decreased over the last few years because that person has so many more sites to rotate through.
And we agree that the overall quality of rigging has increased , but we are not sure it has really increased all that much. What constitutes good rigging is obviously subjective and based on personal taste. A lot of what passes for good rigging is often just excessive ropework tied tight – the tie them till they can’t move or you run out of rope approach. It may be quite effective and nice to look at (hell, we love the excessive rope look and use it often ourselves), but it’s not really “good” rigging as it requires no particular skill as almost anyone could do it. For example, the work done by John Savage years ago was great to look at and had a certain ‘vibe’ to it, but there was really nothing particularly great about it (note we purposely avoided naming any current riggers as not to offend – LOL). There are a large number of current riggers that fall into this category and several of them we really like. There is something very appealing to seeing a girl tied with a few hundred feet of rope so she can’t move, even if it is technically easy to do. So yes, the number of sites with sloppy, loose or completely ineffective ropework has decreased, but we would not necessarily call what has replaced it “good” rigging.
We must also admit we have fairly specific standards has to what constitutes “good” rigging and we are biased (slightly) toward the Japanese style. In our opinion, the best rope instruction convention in the US (if not internationally) is ShibariCon. But in our many years of attending/teaching at it, we have only seen two other webmasters at the event. Both are very good riggers, and one’s work we really love. But most western riggers just don’t bother to learn or understand different styles. Which is fine, as we said, we like the tight & excessive look too.
It’s a multitude of factors. Freely available pirated material has always been around since the dawn of the internet. Even the old dial-up BBSes had it! I don’t doubt that plays a role, but I would be hesitant to say it is a be all, end all scapegoat.
Like you pointed out, a long time ago there was less sites. Today, there are more sites. That’s a good thing, but like any business, when you get lots of competitors in the marketplace, ultimately you will find that your market (and their money) is split amongst the sites. Going super niche can be helpful if your niche is large enough to support a site. For the broader, more varied sites, you tend to need material that differentiates you from the rest. High production values, well known models, or edgy material can be good ways to stand apart from the crowd. Creativity and interesting material is another. Of course the trick is to keep people subscribed. My personal interest is fairly narrow in the scheme of things (Mummification), so the only site that has kept me more or less as a constant member for a long period of time has been said website you mentioned not in name that deals pretty much with only mummification. For other sites, if I notice that an update comes along that contains material that I’m interested in, I may subscribe if it seems good enough. If it seems somewhat borderline, I might hold off until there’s another update so I feel I am getting more value for the sub cost.
I think one thing that’s important for sites is make sure you have accurate info for update history. I can’t count how many sites I’ve visited where they have an almost non-existent update history feature (maybe it only shows the last 2-3 updates) and their preview section has maybe 9 images. If your customer doesn’t see anything interesting in those previews, and the limited update history he happens to see doesn’t have anything interesting, they might just move along, perhaps not realizing that the website does in fact have content that they might like, but it wasn’t advertised. It also doesn’t hurt if you actually allow customers to search by interest (and actually label it properly). Over at clips4sale, I can’t count how many times by complete accident I’ve stumbled over content that was in my interest, but the content provider didn’t once mention some manner of keyword that would have brought me there via search that would have been typically used to find said content.
Ironically enough, some of the pirated/reposted content that is being lamented, say in a place like tumblr, had actually BROUGHT me to some websites and got me to subscribe because I had absolutely no idea they even had that content. There’s not many reliable or trustworthy TGP sites anymore for bondage, and the content on them can cycleed out so fast, it’s very easy to miss things that may have brought you to the site that produced said missed content.
It’s too bad that so many sites are closing. I’m sure that the influx of pirated material has something to do with that. I really appreciate the variety of bondage and models on Imago Studios, you guys have never gotten stuck in a rut! I really hope that you will be able to continue producing quality material for a long time.
I actually thought Vesta gave up on her site awhile ago. I would check on it occasionaly and it didn’t look like any new material had been added in a long time. The same goes for another site I liked, Bindher. It’s still there but I don’t think they’ve added anything since like forever. I am finding more and more sites like that, they still exist (and you can still join) but there is nothing new to see. I can think of two right now where one says its last update was in December 2011 and the other says its last update was in January 2011.
I think it´s not only the problem of stolen contend and the many tube-sites.
At the moment the mainstream Bondage focuse is on a wave we hadn´t before a decate.
10 years ago there was no clips4sale and such a tiny group of really good bondage websites with good rigging (binding and real good gags).
There was so much soft bondage stuff.
But not today.
Today you see so many extremely good riggers and so many of this stuff that was rare 10 years ago.
There is to much content and everyone wants a piece of the cake. As a customer iam totally overwhelmed. Like in a candy store.
Thanks for giving us such a detailed response to this issue =) Its nice to see that others do take notice of the issue of producers only producing for themselves. While you have admitted that there are things you like doing as well in terms of fetishes and such your site offers more than enough content to make the average consumer happy. Yes, there are those who’ll never be happy but they are probably the same kind of people who hate puppies and kittens, LOL. I also agree on the garbage sites who are successful, those are possibly the most annoying ones out there. There has to be something said when a site that has been around a long time produces amateurish type photos that I can take myself! I’ve taken plenty of photos of my wife tied up and shown them to like minded friends who say one of two things, 1, the photos I’ve done myself are better than some they’ve seen on certain sites, or 2, they are on par with such sites. I myself do not see what I do as any better but what I do is free. What these sites do is for money and they invest money into their business and they are creating stuff I can do with no budget, which speaks a lot to their content, their motives, and their bottom line. Anyway, this has always been a topic I feel strongly about and its good to see that there are others out there who agree!! =)
Lots of interesting comments.
A few thoughts of the boredom-lack of variety statements:
We fully agree that many sites do the same thing over & over and, as UC & Mike noted, many producers are producing just their fantasy. Actually, most producers are producing their fantasy (including us – more on that below). But that can be both a pro and a con. There are many, many, many (you get the idea) bondage lovers out there that just like one particular thing or one key element or one specific scenerio, be it pantyhose, barefeet, handcuffs, girls stashed in trunks, or whatever. They do not want to see variety, they just want to see that one thing that turns them on. Many people fixate when it comes to fetish related fantasies. Some of these “niche” elements are more popular than others and it is economically feasible to run a ‘one trick pony’ website if it is aimed at one of these very popular themes. For example, there are some successful sites that feature only woman in blouses, handcuffs or mummification. It is also possible to have an economically viable site producing for an extremely narrow niche, but that is another issue not relevant to this discussion.
More on the variety issue & change:
For many, when they find a website that they really like, they do not want to see it change or experiment with new things, even if those changes are slight. Over the years, we have received many notes from members who have complained, sometimes loudly, anytime we have ventured outside what they consider, or should we say WANT, Imago Studios to be (many of these statement are on this blog or on the members’ message board). People have complained when we have done mummifications, used hoods, experimented with Shibari, incorporated more nudity, done tape bondage, dressed models in fetish attire, worked with too many ethnic models, etc., etc.
Of course, anyone who has been with us more than just a year or two knows we have always experimented with new things and that we like variety. We have said it many times on this blog and the members’ message board – we have a very wide range of interests & tastes and we get bored doing the same thing over and over. Our general feeling has been you cannot please everybody all the time, so don’t even bother to try. Like other producers, we also produce what interests or excites us – we just happen to be very kink people with wide and ever changing interests 🙂 However, while some people may say they like variety, we know fully well that there is a limit to how much new stuff we can introduce, or how much experimentation we can do, within the Imago Studios framework. So there are a lot of things we would like to do, but never will, on Imago Studios.
A few comments on quality & change:
We have some strong opinions on this and it may get us in trouble, but here it goes. We fully agree that there are many really BAD sites out there and that they do not seem to show any interest in improving. We sometimes look at them and wonder why they even bother.
In general, we think the bad sites fit into two categories. First, there are what we call “hobby” producers – those that are producing mainly for themselves and are not treating the site like a true business with PAYING customers that have certain reasonable expectations. We imagine their attitude is something like this: “I like tying up pretty girls but it cost money. If I shoot some stills and video and start a website or throw it up on clips4sale, I might make enough money to hire the next model to tie up.” It is the perfect scenario for them. They get to tie up pretty girls and hopefully make enough money to keep doing it. There is really no incentive to improve as long as they cover the cost of living out their fantasy.
But that doesn’t explain the other group of bad sites – those that have been around a while and seem successful, yet still produce garbage quality material. We will call “successful garbage” sites – LOL. These sites have always perplexed us. For what these producers are spending on model fees, we have always wondered why they didn’t invest some of that in better equipment and perhaps take a course on how to use it at their local community college. We will not name any sites, but we are sure each of you can think of at least one “successful garbage” site – the ones that put up every photo they take with no editing, even if it is out of focus and whose videos are underlit, the camera constantly shaking with overly fast zooms and enough noise that you would think to operator was dancing on the microphone! And some of these sites are very successful and very highly though of. Over the years, we have seen several explanations as to why these sites stay the same and still succeed. One line of thought is many people like the less polished, amateurish look because it feels more real to them. Another is people will put up with crap quality IF the product contains that one thing they really like (again, do people really want variety?). Which brings up the issue of how important is quality vs actual content. But that is a whole other subject we could right a book on and we have photos to edit!
One last comment. We don’t want to give the impression that we think most other sites are bad. Hardly. There are many sites out there with exceptionally high quality material, regardless of the actual nature of the content (which is a matter of personal taste). We just wonder why there are still so many bad ones! “-)
I agree that sharing copyrighted material is both unethical, and shortsighted. It is probably the main reason sites go under, and I can only imagine the frustration site owners must feel about this. Having said that, I agree with Martin’s comment – lack of variety is a very big problem too and, unlike piracy, it is a problem the site owners can fix. It’s hard to believe that most of the bondage websites are serious businesses at all. Many, perhaps even most, produce essentially the same product over and over again. The same type of model is bound in one of a few positions that the producer has fixated on. Most sites NEVER have any type of gag-talk; apparently the thinnest cleave gag renders the model unable to do anything but moan or whimper. Pantyhose will either always be present, or never be present. The lighting is always the same. The clothing style is always the same. Bondage sites almost never improve with time. If you see a site with sloppy, loose rope-work, that site will ALWAYS have sloppy loose rope-work. If the videos were poorly encoded, with terrible sound when the site opened in 2002, it’s a pretty safe bet that the product in 2012 will be just as shoddy. Do these people really think they have a viable business model producing their own pet fantasy image over and over again, at the same quality level, for years?
I think the bottom line is that people will steal anything anytime as long as they can remain anonymous. The internet gives the average person perfect anonymity which makes stealing content easy. My biggest peeve is the people who take photos from bondage sites and post them on a photo site as their own gallery, like they took the photo themselves without any recognition to the original producer. It even bothers me that people raid the free sample galleries of websites and post the photos all over the internet. Even though the photo may be in the free section still doesn’t mean you shouldn’t feel at liberty to post content wherever you want. I know the photo wasn’t free to produce. People are just opportunists by nature though and being an anonymous opportunist benefits internet users quite well it seems.
I do agree with Jim’s comment on boredom as well though. Too many sites are just dull to to look at, same poses, same models, same thing for years. In my experience, many sites put themselves into a niche, only use a certain kind of girl for a model, and only seem to be making content to feed the ego of the producer. They fail to realize that many people like variety, that we love seeing different kinds of girls as models, not just the ones with that “model” look. I won’t go off about egos as that is a different topic all together, lol.
Either way, I’m glad to see Imago adapting and sticking it out for the long haul!
If I see any of Ray & Dianne’s work outside their own sites, I will definitely let them know immediately, and I strongly recommend this procedure to everyone who’s a loyal member of Imago Studios, so Ray & Dianne can do sth. about it.
Like JW, it makes me sick (and angry) too, to know that obviously there are members who post Imago material on the web.
I agree with the above comments. It is a shame to see so many peoole stealing all this content. I have seen. Imago’s work around the web over the years and let Ray & Dianne know. It is almost like a leaking boat. I can only asure you folks, I have never shared your content anywhere and as a loyal member of you site for many years, it sickens me to think that some members are here just to grab you content to post I on the web. When I first saw the title of this post, it got me worried that you folks were closing down. That would be too much to bear. Please continue to provide top quality work and your true fans will stick with you. Unlike other bondages sites, you have adapted to the times and provided more readily available content, like the warehouse. Some of those sites that have gone, never adapted beyond static photos of the same scene over and over. I hope you folks are feeling better and know that there is a loyal fan base for Imago that enjoys and appreciates all that you do.
I agree, that the bad economy isn’t the main problem for decreasing memberships and failing sites. The illegal file sharing of stolen copyrighted material is most probably, if not certainly the big problem, which unfortunately can’t be prevented one-hundred percent. And yes, this material is equally stolen, as if you would go into a store, put a (e.g.) CD in your pocket and leave the store without paying. The people, who make stolen material available have obviously no sense of guilt. They think it’s “only” digital web content, a cluster of ones and zeros, they don’t see the costs behind the production (well, I’m not sure they don’t see it, they just don’t care).
One word to the subject of “boredom”, mentioned by Jim: It’s right, there are sites, without any real variety, with the same models you can see on almost all other sites too, and this can lead to decreasing memberships too. In the past this lack of variety let me cancel memberships on a few sites within a month after joining. Actually Imago is the only site, where I have been a member for more than a single month, and I will stay a member in the future, as Imago is simply the best bondage site in the internet.
I think the poor economy is a minor part of the problem. With so much free stuff (mostly stolen) available, people feel less encouraged to pay for material. I think another factor could be boredom. Some sites haven’t changed models or styles for years. Imago has done a good job of staying fresh. It might not be enough, but it helps