Industry News

Talent Rates

Kurt Lockwood blogs:

Hey Myspace Friends

I get a lot of e-mail from people interested in the adult business. One of the most common questions I get asked is “How much do performers make?” Well, here’s the current breakdown as of July, 2007:

For Girls:
Well, in general, it goes like this..
For a BJ a girl gets like $300, the same if she does a solo masturbation or a handjob scene.
If she does a girl/girl scene she can get about $600-$900 depending on the girl and if toys are used and where they are used, etc.
If she does a boy/girl scene she can get anywhere from $800 to $1100 (some stars get $2000-$2500 but this is very rare).
If they do anal boy/girl they can get $1100 or $1300.
If they do multiple guys it’s their boy/girl rate plus $100-$200 extra dollars per extra guy (if you can believe that one!).
Gangbang rates are negotiated on a per scene basis with the starlet.

The business has changed a lot in the almost-six years I’ve been performing. Girls used to get paid for a “solo strip/tease masturbation” before the scene. Now it’s pretty much expected to be included in the boy/girl rate. Another trick these days is if a director is shooting a boy/girl/girl scene they will have the girls begin with a girl/girl and have me enter about fifteen minutes into it, which means the girls just performed a mini-girl/girl scene for free which you can guarantee that the company will cut up later and use in an all girl compilation even though the girl was only paid to do one boy/girl/girl scene. (This happens to guys, too. I’ve seen myself on the receiving end in bj movies where they just took the oral part of a previous boy/girl scene I had shot with the same girl as in the bj scene and then cut to the pop without any of the sex and called it a “BJ movie,” haha. In mainstream, you would get paid double for a second release of your footage, but NEVER in porn.)

For Guys,
it really depends on your status in the industry, really, what your relationship with the company/director is like, your dependability, your likability among the girls you work with, how much time have you been in, how many scenes, how many AVN Awards, what’s your NAME recognition, how many units you will move being in the movie, and yes, dick size. Guys get paid anywhere from $100-200 per scene for begining “load” guys for like gross bukakke scenes and stuff on up to $1000 a scene which generally the higher rates are for “features” which take all day (upwards of 16+ hours) and have dialogue. A guy gets a flat rate btw, nothing extra for extra girls if it is a multiple girl scene.

The interesting thing to note is that over the last year or so, girls’ rates have gone up considerably while guys’ rates have gone down somewhat. There are a lot more internet companies shooting these days. They are run generally by people on the East Coast who are not on the set every day. They pay the higher rates for some of the more high profile girls thinking that it will bring their site added hits but I think it may be a case of over-doing it because I really don’t see the ROI (return of investment) is there in paying any girl $2500 vs. the sign-up’s you’re gonna get from her scene no matter how hot, but hey, if a girl can get that kinda dough, more power to her.
The guys’ rates going down is because the aforementioned website owners keep thinking they can go all out on the girl and then cheap on the guy. But they keep getting all these new guys from God-knows-where and these new dudes end up failing miserably. I can’t tell you the number of scenes I’ve done recently because the website owners forced the director to use a cheap, unknown guy and the guy couldn’t get wood and perform and they had to call me on the quick to rock the scene out in record time because by now, the production cost has just increased (which lowers company profits) because of the location which is rented by the hour and the director just wasted two hours waiting for the new, cheap dude to get wood, plus the girl is now pissed off because she’s been waiting for 4 hours (including hair and make-up) and getting offended by the dude not getting wood around her. Just to save a buck on male talent the companies have now charged themselves in production fees way more than if they’d just hired a well-known, dependable guy whose been around longer than a minute and has a proven track record. It’s dollars and sense, and like everything else in life, ultimately, the website owners get what they pay for.
Male talent rates have also been going down because there are just too many of us now. Too many guys are shooting their dicks up with Caverjet because they can’t get wood naturally, but not even with Viagra either. So instead of the “natural process” telling some guys to move on, some well-known male performers are injecting their penises daily (with medication meant for cancer patients), putting themselves and their female co-workers at even higher risk of catching STD’s by putting an open hole in their penis before having un-protected sex. So these guys “stick” around…cheating.
Plus, back when I first did my first scenes (before the days of Viagra) you had to EARN your way in through 100% success ratio scenework. One wood-less day and you were done. Now it seems like every steroid case that walks into a certain agent’s office, gets a gig. And no matter how many times they fail, they are sent right back out again.
There is one particular Caverjet user in particular who won a major award last year and is now asking for $1000 a scene no matter what scene he does. This is a joke. For guys, scene rates are not commensurate on you but the scene you are doing. Girls rates are steady across the board. But if you are gonna be out in two hours for a gonzo scene you can’t, as a guy, really charge the same as you would if are gonna be on-set all day for a feature. But this certain guy tries to get the same rate for both. I hear he’s not working very much these days because of his new policy.

Anyway, that’s the latest as far as rates in the biz go… What do YOU think? Leave me a comment below, I’m interested in your thoughts….

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