It’s my observation that whilst some models are more popular than others, it’s not the main thing people are voting on when they rate sets.

All models who have been on the site enough will have some sets which are poorly rated, and some sets which are very highly rated. You can’t tell anything about this until you’ve got a decent number of sets to look at- typically this means that the model has worked with us many times, enough for us to have tried some ideas which worked brilliantly AND some ideas which didn’t work out so well with her, and start to see the overall effect of the model’s popularity coming through.

It’s only when you start looking at all of a models’ sets and averaging all the votes cast for all of them that you start to see that some models’ sets really do have a significantly higher average rating than some others.

But with small statistics, the effects of say shooting more nude in metal sets on the first shoot with one new model than with another new model will overpower the model effect.

Sets with nude girls and metal bondage remain statistically by far the most highly rated sets on the site: average rating is 4.3 vs average for all sets of 3.6, all nude sets of 4.0, and all metal sets of 3.8. (Nude in rope gets 4.0 – popular, but not devastatingly so). The Nude in Metal effect is clear, it shines out every time we look at the votes, and it can be stated with confidence as the numbers of sets involved are large. No other keyword or keyword combination comes close to the instant popularity that a nude in metal set generates.

There are other systematic effects- more recent sets have a higher rating. I’d like to think that’s because we’ve got better, but it might also be that people rate sets lower when they first see them in the archive than if they first see them as new sets.

It’s not a small effect: the average rating of Sophia Smith’s recent sets is a breathtaking 4.4 whereas the rating for all her sets is 3.9 and the rating for archived sets only is 3.7. Average ratings for individual sets range from a stellar 4.8 down to what one would think was a “they all hated it” 2.5 for the first shower scene video we did with her. But even that one had five people who loved it and gave it 5*- just many more people who hated it and gave it 1*.

The pattern is similar for the other models who’ve been working with us for a long time, although one has to note that only models who are great to work with get to work with us for a long time, so there’s a selection bias there too.

(I’ve always said I’d rather be shooting sets which were all rated 1* and 5* than stuff which no-one cares about and gives 3* to all the time- even if most people hate it, for the people who liked it, if they REALLY liked it, I think we did good.)

All of which is a very long winded way of re-iterating that I’ve learned not to place too much reliance on set ratings, because people are looking for and voting on different things. The best they can do is to guide us in some general directions when setting the overall balance and strategy for the year for the site.

Once one has pulled out the few very strong trends, it’s best to let go and not give in to the temptation to delve, big-data style, into the numbers too far 🙂 🙂 🙂 And I do get tempted, but I’m aware that despite the hundreds of thousands of votes cast, it isn’t really a big sample- it’s a few hundred people voting a thousand or so times each.

We don’t slavishly say “and then there must be the hogtie with a ball-gag and a satin blouse because that is what the members like 6th best, and then the nipple clamp frogtie that the members like 5th best”. That would drive me mad- after 15 years shooting bondage at a set a day, I’ve learned that inspiration is too delicate to squash flat with a check-list. By all means have a list of jumping-off points, sparks of inspiration for the shoot- but often the very best sets come from a synergy on set finding a story that we want to tell.

Cheers, Hywel

• This reply was modified 8 years, 10 months ago by  Hywel.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 10 months ago by  Hywel.