The Curious Case of Offbeatr
Offbeatr was launched as a “Kickstarter for porn,” intended as a place where independent adult companies could secure funding for potential projects. Almost a year after its launch, Offbeatr has proven successful — but the projects it has funded haven’t been quite what the founders originally imagined.
Since its launch in 2009, Kickstarter has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in crowd funding — and inspired more than a few clone sites, like the film focused IndieGoGo, the charity driven Crowdrise, and, most recently, Offbeatr, which brings the joys of crowd funding to the XXX set. Anyone with a dirty dream and a budget outline can create a proposed project on Offbeatr; fans in search of hot new thrill can peruse the offerings and pledge money to support the projects that wet their whistles.
Offbeatr was born as a response to the problem currently plaguing the adult industry: piracy. After hearing numerous members of the industry complain about decreased sales (and the resulting reduced work); Ben Tao, Eric Lai, and Barry C concluded that connecting directly with fans might be the best way for the adult content creators to fund their projects. And when they realized that existing crowd funding sites strictly prohibited all forms of adult content, they decided to enter the crowd funding fray themselves, with a brand new site solely focused on connecting adult content creators to their fans (and their fans’ funds).
To many, the business model of “[popular social media site], but for porn” sounds like a recipe for effortless success; in truth, most attempts at creating social media sites that run adult content have largely met with failure (the web’s numerous XXX YouTube clones being one notable exception). The reasons why are pretty simple: the social interactions that drive sites like Facebook and Kickstarter don’t always gel with the largely private nature of porn consumption. And, popular as porn is, most people aren’t interested in dedicating a substantial amount of time to site that’s trying to duplicate, say, Digg but in a XXX context.
At first glance, Offbeatr might seem like yet another victim of the social stigma against public discussions of sex. Almost a year after the site’s launch, many projects are still struggling to get the votes needed to advance into the funding stage (unlike most crowdfunding sites, Offbeatr requires project creators to collect a set number of votes before they begin soliciting donations as a way of proving the viability of the project). Even some promising projects created by talented, experienced people seem to be floundering. “Come to Me When You Are Ready,” a film by the award winning adult filmmaker Erika Lust, has received a mere 17% of the votes required to move on to the fundraising stage; Mormonboyz.com’s campaign to fund a film scheduled to debut last fall is similarly stalled.
But to dismiss Offbeatr as a project doomed by social stigma would be to miss a very important aspect of the site’s story: namely, that some projects have been successfully funded through Offbeatr — and their experiences offer some very telling insights into the future of adult crowd funding (and, perhaps, the adult industry at large).
To date, thirteen projects have been successfully funded by Offbeatr. Most had modest goals, which certainly helped their success (though it should be noted that one project managed to raise almost $200k). And many of them were created by established artists with loyal fan bases — a hallmark of quite a few crowdfunding successes, adult or not. But there is one thing that sets Offbeatr’s successful projects apart from those found on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or Crowdrise: the majority of them have come from members of the furry community.
If that last detail surprises you, you’re not alone: even the founders of Offbeatr were caught off guard by the popularity of furry projects on their platform. What is it that makes the furry community so perfectly positioned to take advantage of XXX crowd funding?
For one thing, there’s the fact that it is an established community, period. As a niche interest with a passionate following, the furry community has developed a strong web presence — one Onta, who has spearheaded two successful Offbeatr projects, has put to good use.
In talking to Onta, what I heard was a story similar to any crowd funding success story. Before launching his first campaign, he did lots of research on crowd funding, investigating what sorts of things will make or break a crowd funding effort, and gave a great deal of thought to what sort of rewards would compel fans to become donors; once the project was launched, it was advertised to an audience of thousands across numerous platforms, including Twitter, Tumblr, mailing lists, Onta’s own site hardblush.com, and community sites like Deviant Art and Fur Affinity. As far as crowd funding goes, that’s all pretty par for the course. What’s significant here is that Onta was able to tap into a social network where discussions of sex and kink aren’t just tolerated; they are, in fact, actively encouraged.
But can this success be replicated by projects outside of the furry community, where discussions of sex might be a bit more taboo? Perhaps, but it’ll likely take quite a bit of effort. Offbeatr’s four non-furry successes are made up of three adult video games and a mural in San Francisco — a bit more mainstream, perhaps,but still not the standard porn fare originally envisioned by the platform’s creators. If more mainstream porn fare wants to find success on Offbeatr, its creators might have to rethink their ideas of how their industry works.
Or, as Offbeater’s Ben Tao told me, “Adult film companies and producers need to invest time into building a brand and following. It might have worked in the past where you could film two people having sex and then have it sell like hot cakes. However, the majority of porn videos have become a commodity. If you can’t watch these two random people having sex then you’ll just go on to the thousands of other videos out there … We see crowdfunding as a way for content creators to experiment with projects or ideas. The more they experiment the better chance they’ll have finding the next thing that interests their community … and then maybe consumers will open their wallets.”
