ethical porn

Pay What You Can: A Ciné Sinclaire First

Today, we are so proud to announce that all original Ciné Sinclaire content will be available on a Pay-What-You-Can (PWYC) basis. You can even go try it out right this second!

We’ve been working toward this since we launched two years ago, knowing full well that our rigid pricing structure leaves many of our films out of the very hands of the people that we are representing.

Pricing starts at $1, which we realize is still a barrier for some people – but this is the smallest amount that our credit card processor will allow us to charge. Users will see a few options at checkout. There is a highlighted green option showing the suggested price of the film, and two other pricing options – half and double the suggested price. These options are meant to be for those that just want to click an option quickly, but there is also the option to fill in a custom amount if you’ve got the time.

Suggested prices are based on performer pay, set rentals, gear, crew, and general cost of production (down to the food we have on set to make sure everyone is energized and nourished). It costs money to make porn – especially porn that makes its performers a priority.

Ciné Sinclaire logo

With this change also comes a streamlining of the checkout process. We’re getting rid of subscriptions, and all films will be streaming-only. This way, you’re on your way to a sexy movie super fast, for the price you can pay.

If you’re looking for a guideline on how much to pay, consider your economic situation.

If you’re the kind of person that can head out and buy pretty much anything that you *need*, you should look at paying more to offset those that can’t pay as much. If you’re someone that can go out and buy anything you *want* at any time, you should probably pay a fair amount more. If you’re someone that has trouble making rent, feeding yourself, doing any kind of social activity, making bus fare/paying for a pass, etc, then you should absolutely pay less.

Our work is queer, our sets strive to be non-oppressive, we’re woman-run, we’re anti-capitalist (while acknowledging we live in a capitalist society and folks have gotta eat), and we’re so ready to step into the pricing system that just *feels right* to us.

Go try it out now!

Paying for your porn is sexy. ❤

Feminist Porn Heaven day 4/7: Conference Time

Saturday morning got started a tiny bit late, with Aaron and I getting slightly lost on the way to to the Feminist Porn Conference. It was being held at the University of Toronto, but we had a bit of a time figuring out just which building it was actually being held in.

Regardless, we showed up in time to quickly get registered and sneak off to Jiz Lee and Shine Louise Houston‘s workshop on affiliate programs. For those unaware of what an affiliate program is, let me give you a bit of a walkthrough.

An affiliate program at the bare bones level lets a person become an “affiliate” of a website, meaning that they put up a unique code on a website that they maintain advertising another site. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll use Cherrystems as our example. Jane talks about Cherrystems on her blog a lot, and she wants to link to us. While it’s all fine and good just to send traffic over, wouldn’t it be nice if Jane got a bit of cash for sending us all that traffic? That’s what an affiliate program rewards. When someone clicks her unique link to Cherrystems, it leaves a cookie in their browser’s cache (cookies are just a text file that gets stored for a certain length of time in your browser’s cache, letting you do things like stay logged in to a website) so that Cherrystems knows how that user originally got to the site was via Jane’s link. Still with me? Lovely!

When someone that clicks Jane’s link *joins* Cherrystems, that’s where the dollars come in. We offer a 20% cut of all referrals on a recurring basis to the general public. So let’s say that someone clicks Jane’s link, then joins Cherrystems on a 3-month term (automatically recurring, or automatically charged every 3 months). That’s $40 every 3 months that that person pays, and Jane gets 20% of it every time they pay. That’s $8 every three months. While that doesn’t seem like much, it adds up when multiple people click through and join. If Jane refers 8 people at that level, that’s $64 every 3 months, and an extra $256/year just to have a little banner up.

Advertising is expensive. Cherrystems has advertised in magazines like Bust, and we’ve sponsored a bunch of events. The thing about throwing money around like that is that it only gets about a 3% return on the investment amount. Affiliate programs mean that a company doesn’t have to pay out of pocket to get advertising space, and that we can pass on actual cash to individuals that help us out.

You can actually find our affiliate program here. For example, here are some of the banners we’ve got:

caroline254x331   Candie234x60   Belinda240x120   adventuress160x320

You would need to go sign up for our affiliate program and get your unique link started up before any of these banners will make you any money, of course. 😉

Anyhow!

That talk was great for me to sit in on, because it made me realize how little the CS team actually knew about promoting themselves and Cherrystems. It’s a new thing to focus on!

The rest of the panels for the day were absolutely great, including one with Jessica Drake, Christopher Daniel Zeischegg, Dylan Ryan, Shine Louise Houston, Tristan Taormino, Carlyle Jansen that really spoke to me. A lot of the issues addressed therein were ones around the experience of being on a porn set. Things that performers like and don’t like, things that are expected, and how to create an atmosphere that best makes your performers feel comfortable.

As a new porn producer, I really enjoyed hearing that talk. I mean, I’ve been working on Cherrystems for most of my adult life now, but having pictures taken and doing video performances of sexual acts are different in a lot of ways. They’re similar, but I feel that an all new level of comfort and safety need to be achieved with the advanced level of intimacy that you’re sharing with your performers.

It was also really amazing to get to hear from folks that have worked on (and do work on) mainstream porn sets, and to hear about what life is like over on that side.

The day passed by all too quickly, and bled out into the night. Aaron, myself, and Bee headed over to Bar Mercurio, where I briefly met Lynn Comella, and Constance Penley, and ended up spending up the night hanging out with a great friend, Kevin Heffernan and Sarah Stevens and her partner. Pizza was had, jokes were made, and the night was ultra relaxing.

I skipped out on the Switch party that night though. The trouble with the Switch party for me is that I’m not one that just jumps right into an intimate encounter at a sex party. There just aren’t enough spaces at the Aslan studio for me to chill out and get to know anyone, and instead I end up feeling and acting super awkward – hah! So this year I just decided that pizza and cocktails and an early night would serve me best. All the other Cherrystemmers, however, hightailed it over there and had a great time. 🙂

And now it’s time for me to go away! AWAAAAY!