Hi Everyone,

For the next few months I will be offering a massive 50% discount on custom bondage videos… so long as it is a BAREFOOT bondage video. You can find out about our custom videos here.

So if you’d like to commission your own bespoke fantasy, filmed in stunning cinema quality, email me at webmaster@restrainedelegance.com today!

Here’s why…

Website economics have changed since I started the site, and especially they have changed a lot since the financial crash in 2008.

Broadly speaking, fewer people are choosing website memberships than before. For a while one wonders if it is something we’re suddenly doing wrong- but from what I can gather from other webmasters, it’s pretty universal.

Casual viewers and those who just want a quick wank and don’t care about the quality go to the pirate sites and tube sites.

Fans are kind enough to still join, but as spending power still hasn’t got back to the pre-crash peak, everyone (including me) is a bit more parsimonious with their porn pound these days.

The thing which has saved websites is the rise of customs, especially custom videos. I was shocked to learn from US webmasters a couple of years ago at Fetishcon that customs were essentially the only thing keeping them in business: essentially all their productions were now customs.

It’s not at that level for us, but customs are becoming increasingly important in funding shoots for us too, especially on the video side. The economics are impossible to ignore: doing a custom shoot means that someone else pays the models and the shoot expenses. If we’re efficient on shoot days we can get some RE ideas of our own, shot effectively for free. So went the story from the US webmasters.

If we need to take our time getting customs right, we do so. That’s what we budget for. So we end up with a very polished and high production value custom video that we hope will really tick all the boxes for the kind customer who commissioned it. Because we take our time and do it right for the customer, we don’t always end up with time to shoot a barefoot bondage video at the end of a custom shoot day. It’s nice when we do, but I’ve realised I mustn’t bank on it.

The volume of those customs is currently such that it’s dominating the RE update schedule. Since the end of last year and the ATVOD tap on the shoulder, I’ve been scared off shooting too many self-funded old-school RE videos ourselves. I typically run RE with over a year’s worth of content on disk, to help ensure good variety and make sure we keep our unblemished 15 years never missed an update record intact.

I just couldn’t afford to spend tens of thousands of pounds shooting videos that I might not be able to sell.

So as a double whammy of financial incentive and the chilling effect of censorship, I have quite a lot of videos on disk but they are mostly customs.

And I would have no problem with that except for one thing: the custom video customers do not generally want bare feet. They do not have anything like the usual RE levels of barefoot bondage, nor do they have the variety of models we usually shoot (because a lot of people love Ariel in customs and have commissioned to shoot LOTS). So at least for the next few months while we ramp up other shoots again I’m left with an unusual and unrepresentative selection of videos to put up for you.

Who knew that custom video people wouldn’t want barefoot bondage so much? But I have customs with high heels, with ballet slippers, with boots, with stockings, with pantyhose, even one which has just come in with (shudder) socks. (They do get taken off in the end).

I’ve never quite known how many members are here specifically for the barefoot element which runs broad and deep through RE. But I know *I* am here specifically for the BAREFOOT bondage.

My question is- what should I do about this?

I have a few ideas but would be very grateful for your input.

As you’ll see, we have a bit of a “roadblock” of non-barefoot videos coming up in the very short term because we shut down all non-custom video production for a few months when ATVOD tapped us on the shoulder. I don’t want RE to turn into a “barefoot stills, non-barefoot video” site, even if that’s the direction the market forces us via custom commissions.

The first and most obvious thing to do is to go back to shooting more of our own ideas, and make all of those barefoot and play up the barefoot element, so at least the “value factor” of the barefoot videos goes up, even if not every video is barefoot. We are going to do this at our forthcoming shoots. But it is hard to balance this against the “whole shoot paid for” financial incentive of the customs.

Second thing- offer an incentive to people to shoot barefoot customs. So here we are- I’ll give you a 50% discount on any custom commissioned in the next few months which has a strong barefoot element to its storyline, or which offers the chance for plenty of quality barefoot bondage.

We’ve tried inserting barefoot sections at the end of shoes-based movies and making two edits, one for RE and one for customs, but that’s not really very satisfactory (feels like we might be shortchanging both- for example if the tie endurance is the limiting factor of how long the video can be).

Is there anything else you think I should be doing?

Do you, personally, care about barefoot vs. stockings vs. shoes? Are you liking the current (custom, not much barefoot) mix of videos better than the old 100% barefoot mix?

Cheers, Hywel