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I don't know if this is a problem for anyone money-wise or if it is due to the holidays.
But the price of credit purchases went up (or at least it feels like it did when comparing past prices). There used to be options outside, but now all bundles are bigger bucks than before. It used to be $12 and up to $300. (two different options on the bundles between those two I mentioned)
Now it's different. I don't know how people feel on the credit adjustment.
Edit: For clarification, here is what I mean. The first photo was from my time on HBC since at least 2020, and the second as of this month (I only logged in today and saw it. I don't know when it went into effect)
If you highlight anything in the first photo at the time, you'd have more options outside the $12 and $300 options. The second photo is what you see is what you get.
Just had a promotional email so I'm tempted to join Prem membership to get 50% off VODs purchased but don't want to have to buy credits - which is a dubious system IMO.
eg (taken from above post) if I buy 125 credits for $16 (rounded from $15.99) so each credit = 0.128 cents
but to buy an example video for 95 credits = $12.16!
yet the cash price for same video is $9.50!
So in normal use, you would need to buy huge quantities of bulk credits to gain any benefits . "Credits" appear to be a scam to make you pay more!
can I just get 50% off the "cash" price for a video or is the 50% discount only on credits?
Just had a promotional email so I'm tempted to join Prem membership to get 50% off VODs purchased but don't want to have to buy credits - which is a dubious system IMO.
eg (taken from above post) if I buy 125 credits for $16 (rounded from $15.99) so each credit = 0.128 cents
but to buy an example video for 95 credits = $12.16!
yet the cash price for same video is $9.50!
So in normal use, you would need to buy huge quantities of bulk credits to gain any benefits . "Credits" appear to be a scam to make you pay more!
can I just get 50% off the "cash" price for a video or is the 50% discount only on credits?
Yes, you can pay with card instead of credits at checkout. Just make sure you are logged into your HB+ member account in order to activate the discounted price.
Regarding the price of credit packages and cams in general, it is true that the current menu makes credits more expensive to purchase compared to what's been the case for the last several years. When we started HBCam in 2005/2006, the max price of Premium chat was $3.99 and the max 1-on-1 price was $7.99. Don't get me wrong, that was expensive then, but we had to adopt market pricing in order to be viable in the webcam space.
We have mostly held the line on that pricing over the years, even slightly lowering the price to 39 cr per minute when we introduced credits (effectively $3.90), though currently we do allow some performers to charge up to 49 cr per minute and some to charge a bit more for 1-on-1. The point is that in an era of inflation and increased input costs (bandwidth, labor, etc), our prices have mostly stayed the same for 15 years. We still sell 80-90% of our company-produced VODs for 60-95 credits each, minus a 25% HB+ premium member discount. We feature mostly just top talent in those VODs, who we are happy to pay more money than we used to pay, as prices of everything have gone up recently. VOD prices have crept up over the past few years, as we try to keep the business model healthy, but you get the point.
We aren't price gougers. We never have been. The price of a HerBiceps membership (HB Plus, not HBCam) is $14.95 per month. In 2002, when we opened the website, the site cost $11.95 per month to join. In 20 years, the price has increased from $11.95 to just $14.95 and we still offer an annual membership for only $99.95 per YEAR. The annual membership price was $89.95 in 2002. We are sincerely proud of that.
So yes, we have effectively raised the prices of webcam credits approximately 4-5% recently, but when you consider inflation, the rising costs of doing business around the world, and the fact that we generally hold our prices down (to our own detriment btw), we hope you'll understand.
As always, we thank you for your longtime and continued support of our sites and we appreciate you taking the time to share what you're feeling. We hope you'll take advantage of the current VOD sale and we will look to organize more promotions in the months and years to come.
On the question of bandwidth, for example I recently bought a Eunice Oh VOD which was 680mb - yet I was able to process the video and get it down to 170mb , with, in my opinion , no noticeable loss of quality on my 32 inch PC monitor. (I sometime re-edit to keep what I consider the best bits)
I get that others may be watching in larger formats, but it always slightly irks me how bloated a lot of "pay for" video feels. Just because more of us have faster eg fibre connections, for most casual viewing, it often feels excessive. And some people are on much slower or even charged by the amount of data connections. People may feel a larger files means better quality that they are paying for , but often the difference in practice on many devices feels negligible. Of course you would want to keep your master copies in the highest quality format. I'm sure you folks are well versed in processing video but don't know how much of a consideration this is in the final product aside from the fact that it all has to be stored on the servers which you will be charged for according to storage taken up.
We don't sell credits on HerBiceps, only on HBCam.
If you want to purchase VODs on HerBiceps, you just add whatever titles you want to your shopping cart, and when you check out, its currently 50% off all VODs and its a straight cash transaction with no credit packages involved. Technically, you can link your HBCam and HB accounts and spend your HBCam credits on HB, but most just check out with a credit card.
So for the example given, if the price is $9.50, the sale price would be $4.75 for a HB member that is active and paying for membership.
Hope that clears up any confusion.
can I just get 50% off the "cash" price for a video or is the 50% discount only on credits?
Ah, I see. Its the same VODs on both sites (except for 50-100 of our titles which are more adult and don't appear on the HB site), so if you prefer to spend dollars, not credits, then you can do that, no problem. Our graphic designer who put together that ad, used credits as an example but it also applies to prices in dollars...not just credits.
Regarding the bandwidth and the size of files, that's not really much of a consideration when it comes to pricing VODs. Our cost of running the operation has certainly gone up over the years, I mentioned bandwidth as an example of an input, but it was a poor choice. The amount we pay for travel, make up artists, models, editors, graphic designers, shooters, coders, heck even meals, are really the biggest parts of our increased costs year over year and of course, over the longer run.
Ah, I see. Its the same VODs on both sites (except for 50-100 of our titles which are more adult and don't appear on the HB site), so if you prefer to spend dollars, not credits, then you can do that, no problem. Our graphic designer who put together that ad, used credits as an example but it also applies to prices in dollars...not just credits.
Regarding the bandwidth and the size of files, that's not really much of a consideration when it comes to pricing VODs. Our cost of running the operation has certainly gone up over the years, I mentioned bandwidth as an example of an input, but it was a poor choice. The amount we pay for travel, make up artists, models, editors, graphic designers, shooters, coders, heck even meals, are really the biggest parts of our increased costs year over year and of course, over the longer run.
Ok, it's not so much the pricing, as the other technical issues I mentioned in processing and delivering the final product.
Ok, we do err on the side of video quality...you can stream the videos, basically, in real time without having to download...but I can see how the downloads would be bulky...680 MB for a 6 minute VOD does sound too big to me also...I'll check in with the editor on those and see if we can squeeze them down without losing any quality...thanks for the suggestion
On the question of bandwidth, for example I recently bought a Eunice Oh VOD which was 680mb - yet I was able to process the video and get it down to 170mb , with, in my opinion , no noticeable loss of quality on my 32 inch PC monitor. (I sometime re-edit to keep what I consider the best bits)
I get that others may be watching in larger formats, but it always slightly irks me how bloated a lot of "pay for" video feels. Just because more of us have faster eg fibre connections, for most casual viewing, it often feels excessive. And some people are on much slower or even charged by the amount of data connections. People may feel a larger files means better quality that they are paying for , but often the difference in practice on many devices feels negligible. Of course you would want to keep your master copies in the highest quality format. I'm sure you folks are well versed in processing video but don't know how much of a consideration this is in the final product aside from the fact that it all has to be stored on the servers which you will be charged for according to storage taken up
I figured I wasn't the only one. I also always thought the file sizes were just unnecessarily bloated
This is a problem I encounter from time to time—I don’t have any specific examples of a right now occurrence but several months ago I had purchased the “Meet Alyssa’s Biceps” VOD on HBC and when I tried to view/download it video wouldn’t play in the player or download at all. Eventually that was fixed but I have had it happen from time to time with site clips. I don’t believe it’s happened with model-generated postings although they don’t have the DL option at all, but those historically have played fine for me
If some other camsites are able to figure out the implementation of a hover-over preview, then surely HBC could too?
This reminds me of when some users proposed adding a feature where you could get an email notification when a model on your favorites list starts broadcasting, and HBC stated that it'd be a terrible idea because they would get marked as spammers. Then when I brought up the fact that camsites like MFC, CB, and F4F were able to do it without that consequence, the response I'd get was just mystified shrugs.
Look, I don't doubt the validity of HBC's concerns when they explain the troubles of implementing X or Y features. But all I have to do is look at some other camsites, see that they were able to implement those exact features in question, and it just leaves me scratching my head.
You have to remember these giant cam sites do 9-10 figures in revenue each year and millions of dollars to invest in teams of coders and programmers. They don’t sell their platforms. We spend a lot of money, for us, on this stuff, but we are small time compared to those big boys.
I don't know if this a problem for anyone before, but something that happened earlier.
For some reason, when I log in with my account, it brings me back to the main page unsigned in as a guest. My password/username are fine (I did a password reset anyway to see), but no change.
On the website, I can't even send a contact help message, because the "rewritten captcha does not match," (you know, the math question?). Mind you, I know my math. So these issues are concerning.
I had to send it through my email instead, but I am concerned either way awaiting a response.
Has this been an issue for anyone before?
Edit: I can log in now, but just wanted to make the issue aware in case it happens to anyone.
There's been a marked improvement site-wide, even if you're not seeing any difference on your end.
Nothing's being deliberately avoided - the data I'm looking at is different from the data you're looking at. Without getting into boring specifics that no one outside of our team cares about, I can tell you simply that the error logs are orders of magnitude cleaner and the number of stability complaints has dropped over 95% from a month ago. I chart these things daily. Neither of those has anything to do with anyone's preferences including what was noted about privacy concerns - that's just raw data.
Like I say all the time, I'm a muscle consumer, too - just bought some VODs from another site last night - so I totally get it: muscle fans want what we want when we want it. But I/we don't have the luxury of thinking only of a single consumer when making decisions for the platform. Every computer, every ISP, every browser, etc. is unique, so the likelihood of any 3 users having the exact same experience at the same time is virtually zero. As much as we'd love it all to be linear with simple A->B solution sets for any issues that arise, that's not reality. It's more like A->(1/∞).
We've got some other stuff to work on now, but we'll keep the feature in mind for possible future development.