Clipvia Payouts – An apology and explanation- Updated 2-5

Ive gotten many DMs about the shady business practices of Clipvia, each time I’ve emailed I’ve been ignored..Today a reader left this comment:

For reference, even now in February, ClipVia STILL hasn’t paid the models due back funds. As a matter of fact, we were told that if we already deleted our content and refused new sales that we would be put ‘at the end of the payment line’ and have to wait longer. To the best of my knowledge no one’s received a dime yet. I certainly haven’t, and no amount of angry emails has made any difference. They’re continuing to run a very profitable site without paying their models anything past due.

Ive changed the publish date on the post to reflect today, this PR was originally posted on Apr 7, 2015 @ 18:23

 

Hi Studios,

First I’d like to say that this is Jimmy, the owner of Clipvia. Last month we sent out an email with the same title to unpaid studios. We sent the email mid-month. This month I’m sending it to everyone. The reasoning is the same, but this is a different email.

First things first, I want to let everyone know we typically and historically have scheduled payouts on the 4th. We’re in the US, which means that banks don’t move much on the weekends. If we schedule something on the 4th and there’s a weekend or holiday involved, it typically gets sent the next business day or up to the business day after next. Sometimes this results in payouts arriving as late as the 8th or 9th. This has always been the way we’ve done it, and we’ve faced a lot of accusations about “always being late”. We can’t guarantee what day the banks deposit money or move it around the world. We can only guarantee the day we schedule it.

That said, I’ll start with a high level summary of this months issue: payouts this month will again be late. How late depends on the income that comes into Clipvia and the arbitrary method by which we pay out what we can afford.

As mentioned in the last email, we have a cashflow problem. We’ve always had a small but manageable cashflow issue, but the success of Clipvia in the last 6 months has magnified it. Our payment processing company holds 10% of all income for 6 months, or they used to. This used to result in a 6 month delay on about 7% of our total income. It was a larger problem when a majority of our payouts were for 90% tributes. We actually lost money on those, as our credit card company takes a 13.5% fee on top of holding that 10%.

As of late, we’ve been doing an increased amount of business. Our payment processing company has decided to change how reserves are taken. In summary, they’re holding on to a lot of our money. They’ve been storing about 10k a month that goes into a chargeback reserve, and I’ve been told that money will just sit. No more 6 month hold, it’s just a hold. This has resulted in about a 10% loss per month. That loss has compounded to a point where payouts have gone from a few days late on average to now up to 3 weeks at its worst.

We’ve begun talking to investors. We have a deal on the table but since the investor had a prior obligation we can’t move forward with it until later this month. I can’t promise we won’t have payout issues next month, but I can say we will get a handle on this situation as soon as possible. We’ve also signed with a new payout processor who is going to give us lower rates and a much better reserve policy. We are doing our best to remedy this issue, but as you’re aware, doing business in the adult industry is not as easy as it is for everyone else. We’ve been unable to secure any kind of loan from a traditional bank, #becauseboobs.

On the plus side, everyone has been paid on the month they’re due, with a few one-off exceptions like international payout data not being communicated back to us, etc.

I wanted to clear up a few rumors I’ve seen on Tumblr and Twitter.

• We’re not broke. We’re behind.
• We’re not overspending or taking anyones money and running off with it.
• This is not a sob story. I’m simply letting people know what’s going on with our site.
• Our bills are late, too. I’ve personally taken financial hits and credit-impacting hits.
• Our staff has taken decreased/super-late pay.
• We always put our studios first.

That said, I am sorry for not getting this email out sooner. We were told we’d have a cash influx before the 7th from our investor. We were only informed yesterday about the deal being delayed, and we were holding out hope that we would have better news to relay.

I’m also extremely sorry that this has happened to begin with. While not “messing with peoples money”, we’re still responsible for the financial obligation we’ve promised to uphold. I can tell you personally this whole situation makes me sick to my stomach. I’ve never been so stressed out as I am over this situation. I’m fully aware of the financial responsibility we’ve been entrusted with, and right now we’re failing at that.

So what happens now?