Ask HN: How can I grow my porn startup?
I decided my real passion is sex, as well as passive income, so I started a porn startup, with me directing and acting in my own films. I made three films so far, and revenues from each film are growing film-to-film. The high costs of a shoot, however, still mean that I'm in the red, and I actually subsidize my costs with my bartending day job. The sole revenue model is selling the films on clip sites as downloadables.
I don't naturally look the "type," so mainstream work has been hard to find, but I have the technical capability to do the job. A startup is the way forward for me. Eventually, my goal is to build enough content to sell monthly memberships, much like SaaS startups.
I'm getting a little burnt out doing so much at once (i.e. writing, directing, producing, acting, editing, marketing, etc.), and I still haven't figured out distribution apart from my 13k Twitter followers and 1,000-strong organic mailing list. It has also been hard being so frugal just to save up for monthly shoots. I feel like I have to pump out fresh content with regularity to please my customers, who, though are numerically few at the moment, are pretty loyal in purchasing film after film.
I suppose what I'm asking is, how can I maximize the revenue potential of my startup? Failing which, how do I at least keep this going and sustainable so that I can have enough time, energy, and motivation to figure out the next step?