The History of Paywalls in Online Nudism
Monetization in the Online Nudist Creator Community
Hello, today we are going to talk about everyone's favorite topic “Paying for stuff”. But in all honesty, this is about the history of monetization in the online nudist creator community. (also a sneak peek at my next Nudistory video)
(Nothing in the article is meant to be malicious or viewed as an attack on anyone.)
Social Media Platforms
The users of any social media platform are just products to be sold to their true customers, advertising companies. The content made for these platforms is just free candy used to attract users. Platforms use either profit-sharing or their large user base to attract content creators. The platforms sell these users’ visual real estate to advertisers. Advertisers don’t want their new house next to undesirables so they lobby the platform to remove them.
Nudity is of course included in the list of undesirables. None of this is done out of prudishness. Advertisers will use sexual content and nudity in the adverts all the time. Rather it is about control. They want to have complete control over the conditions the advert is shown under.
That’s why this Avocado ad can be shown to 200 million people.
But the Bare Oaks’ video on Children in Naturism that was filmed in a similar manner
was hit with an age-restriction stopping it from being recommended in the algorithm and preventing it from being shared on other websites easily.
To be fair you would probably sell less guacamole with that ad if nudity was normalized.
The content of any social media site is on the lowest level of importance in its business model. They make their money selling ad space and user data. That’s why even if the owner of one of these companies is a self-described free-speech absolutist, nudism will still get the short end of the stick.
It's not personal it's just business, kid. That’s why from the beginning of the digital age nudists have been using community support to fund their content.
Past Nudist Media Creators
Some of the earliest sites I could find date back to the year 2000. NudistTV.net and Clothesfree TV were both websites that hosted videos, pictures, news, and a regular webcast. Of course, they existed before the modern social media internet of today, but many of the factors against online naturism existed back then as well. NudistTV.net seemingly went belly up in the early 00s and either became or was sold to enaturist. (I don’t know if they're a legitimate nudist website or not). Of course, ClothesFree TV still exists today.
Both websites charged a premium subscription to access most of the site’s content of pictures and videos. It’s similar to if not the same business model used by most pornographic websites.
Again, I’m not trying to attack anyone with this statement. The people at ClothesFree TV run a top-notch legitimate nudist website. It’s rather that the individuals that operate ClothesFree TV go against the financial incentives of their business model to create an informative news site for the nudist community.
This site-wide paywall monetization model benefits those who “incentivize” the visual component of their paywalled content.
In researching this topic in the Wayback machine, I found a now-defunct pseudo-nudist website called The Nude Review. It was a generic softcore porn site with voyeuristic pictures of women at nude beaches of dubious consent. Nothing out of the ordinary. What makes this decease site interesting is its insistence that it was a true naturist site.
The Nude Review
a non-pornographic celebration of nudism and nudity
Nudistscorp.com (including "thenudereview.com," "nude-people.net," and other associated domains) includes visual, and/or textual depictions of nudity. Nothing on this website is illegal, obscene or inappropriate. Naturists of all ages have the right to enjoy the freedom of going bare without the restriction of clothing or the negative scrutiny of their society. In subscription areas only nudists 18+ are featured. Nudity is one of the simplest human rights. We are all born and die with nothing but our naked bodies carried proudly throughout our lifetimes.
From what information I was able to find, the website’s offices were headquartered at a real nudist resort for a period of time. Were the owners of the nude review trying to make an actual naturist site at some point in the past? I don’t know. The site has existed since 1996 but the Wayback Machine's furthest capture is in 2002.
Blogs and general commentary follow strict guidelines - no "babe" talk or use of derogatory slang, for example. This makes for richer commentary and galleries, though you might think otherwise. - TheNudeReview
These community guidelines don’t make any sense with the content on their site. There is no profit motive in these rules, so it must be ideological. The whole thing is just weird.
Anyway, that’s enough of the past.
Modern Nudist Media Creators
The longest-running and most popular nudist podcast is The Naturist Living Show hosted by INF president and owner of Bare Oaks Family Naturist Park, Stéphane Deschênes.
For most of its history, the podcast wasn’t monetized in any way. It always had some monetary benefits as a subtle marketing vehicle for Bare Oaks, but never enough to compensate the podcast’s editor. So they started a Patreon page. To simplify it their viewer subscribe to give the podcast a certain amount of money per month as thanks for the value they provide. The Naturist Living Show’s Patreon works similarly to a donation with supporters really only getting a shout-out in episodes in return.
Nudist Influencers
Two of the biggest nudist influencers today are Nick and Lins of Naked Wanderings and Hector Martinez. They both use Patreon in their monetization strategy.
Naked Wanderings’ Patreon offerings are meatier than the Living Show. They offer earlier viewing of their videos and behind-the-scenes content. There also sell their own books and merchandise.
Martinez had a poor experience with YouTube. They paid him 12 bucks and a stick of bubblegum for generating over 120 million views with his videos.
So he looked for other ways to monetize his content which led him to Vimeo and Patreon. His Patreon is beefier than Naked Wanderings. In addition to their offerings, his includes monthly online gatherings with fans and exclusive uncensored videos. He also puts his videos on sale on Vimeo. The playwalling of his videos seems to have caused some friction in his audience based on his recent tweets.
We forget that in order to exist in a capitalistic world, things must be profitable in some sense. We’re under the illusion that things like the internet or content are “free” but nothing is free. The internet depends on ads or subscriptions.
The “this should be free” mentality has several negative consequences. For one it’s a form of gatekeeping, allowing the participation to only wealthy people who can afford to work for free on a specific cause. Which is one of the main reasons nudism is an elitist practice.
This obviously puts many people off because they feel they aren’t “good enough” to charge for their creative work, or the time they invest on a cause (naturism for example). It limits them to only invest what little time, energy and resources they have left after their 9-5.
In the long run keeping something unprofitable slows its growth and sustainability. It’s fragile because it depends on the will of those absorbing the financial burden of keeping the ball rolling. This is why we’ve lost so many beaches, clubs, resorts, news letters and events.
This doesn’t mean you should pay for everything naturist, of course not. But if you like something, you want it to grow and remain over time. Money is one of the best ways to support it. Profitability is the best way to guarantee it’s prevalence over time.
Through out different stages of our lives money becomes a scarce resource we must prioritize, which means we can’t pay for something. This is why as a whole our community should also focus on generating public places where nudity is allowed.
FUTURE of Nudist Media Creators ???
Attempts at a Netflix-style subscription service for nudists have been floating around lately. A streaming nudist media company would earn revenue from its subscribers, who pay a monthly fee to access the service. The company would use the revenue to pay for the rights to stream content made by nudist creators on its platform, and it also would invest in producing its own original content.
Nudist activist, Ton Dou, gave a shot at the concept with his BBFRTV (Bare Body Freedom Reality TV). BBFRTV was on all of the major smart tv apps.
Due to poor and unclear marketing, BBFRTV failed to gain a large enough audience to support itself. The website closed down in late 2022 only a year after its launch.
Another company currently planning to launch a subscription-based streaming service is Nudism.TV. This self-funded venture boasts that it has enough financial resources to see its project through for the next 5-10 fiscal years. They’re offering $800/hr sponsorships (licensing rights) and a GoPro to nudist content creators who sign up for their platform. Nudism.TV’s funding comes from leveraging its early cryptocurrency investments.
I’ve seen some nudists online criticize NTV for its marketing. The majority of the people in its advertisements and interviews happen to be either nude models and/or nude photographers. NTV says that they promise that all content will only be used by Nudism.TV to promote family-friendly naturism and address any mature-themed subjects in a culturally-sensitive, educational manner.
Substack
One of the BEST newsletters on Substack, Planet Nude, announced earlier this week that they are adding a paid tier for those subscribers who want to support them. But you can read about that on their own Substack.
In writing this article, I’ve thought a lot about this topic. Over this past month, I’ve been trying to get a video about Frances Glimere and the Tropicana Nudist Country Club out for Black History Month. They were a group led by black nudists who tried to create the first nudist resort in the state of Georgia in the 1960s and 1970s while being attacked by every authority figure in the state.
Only tiny pieces of their story exist on all the websites, magazines, and newspaper sites I visited. Even nudist libraries like the great Naturist Education Foundation Research Library only had a few articles that mention the group.
I used some new techniques (for me) to acquire more information, such as going through the State Governor’s inbox to find the letters they sent to the office in the 60s. I sifted through archived news footage from WSBTV, the local Atlanta news station, looking for any references to the nudists. Despite some initial dead ends, I ultimately uncovered invaluable footage of the campgrounds and interviews, which had yet to be digitized. This week, I received the final batch of digitized footage, some of which had not been viewed in half a century. Now I have just enough to piece together this important story that was seemingly lost to the passage of time.
Throughout this project, I realized how difficult it is for a layman to find Nudist/Naturist history if it hasn’t been well documented by others. I don’t want to have great history like this locked behind a paywall. Nor do I want my original videos (uncensored versions of my YouTube videos) under a paywall either. I don’t want to work under a business model that incentivizes content that’s opposed to the ideals of naturism. I never want Nudistory to be thought of as a place that celebrates nudity, female and male but primarily the former. And I’m pretty sure you probably agree as well.
But I also want to be able to devote more time to doing this research and delivering you this content.
Big Announcement
I’m turning on paid subscriptions. As I mentioned before all videos, historical articles, and archival stuff will remain FREE.
What you get with paid membership
Access to exclusive community polls deciding the topics of future videos
Access to Q&A on various historical topics
Access to more personal and opinionated articles on nudism
Higher-tier Sun Club members will be able to commission a video of a topic of their choosing. (This may take a while to complete.)
Supporting the research, preservation, and publication of nudist history
Paid membership will be an ever-evolving thing as I try to find new ways to add value to it that fit with the community.
Thank You So Much for your Support and Thank You for Reading Nudistory!
I appreciate substack’s model as a strong alternative to the ad model, which truly incentivizes maximum clicks as opposed to meaningful engagement. I have yet to find an example of someone who has gotten rich from this specific type of content. The nudism niche can give the content creator a boost, but it’s also somewhat limited on the other end. At the end of the day, I support nudist organizations because I value them, and I see the value they add. Some “content creators” add real value in the form of information, storytelling, or advocacy, and I try to support those ones too. With others, at least for me, the value is less clear. Still, they’re providing a value somewhere, because many of these creators are remarkably popular.
With that said, I see the clear value of the work you’re doing, so I’m excited to go paid. Kudos and good luck!
Very interesting you hit all the important points and questions except for one or two content creators it remains to be seen whether the current monetization model actually works or just brings naturism online closer to being like the soft porn industry.