It's been a long time since I've seen one little addition to my biz model produce instant traffic and conversions, and am so happy that I stumbled across this one. Promises to be a Merry Christmas!

I, like all of the other paysite owners in the industry have screwed around for years with alternative consumer payment options, ranging from dialers (EEEK!) to all of the current alternative billing solutions.

The one aspect that I was just plain STUPID about for all these years was adding more "International Friendly" options to pay out my affiliates. "Check Only" was the rut we were stuck in.

But, late last week, I added Epassporte as a webmaster payment option and, frankly, I've never seen so many international webmasters step up to the plate after a small press release! Fantastic European traffic surge with some of the best conversion ratios I've seen since 1998!

Moral of the story? Look at things from the viewpoint of webmasters not in the good old USA. They have a lot of the really good-converting traffic these days, and really appreciate a simple solution that pays in Euros and doesn't take 4 weeks for a check to arrive and clear.....;-)

I read in one of the adult board articles in the last week the opinion of the author that the adult industry has slipped very, very far behind from being the innovators of new technology on the web, to a stagnant pool of pornographers basically doing the least amount of work possible to make the most amount of money possible.

Having been around since the adult internet started, here is my take on that:

Back in "the day" (1990's to about 2001), our industry basically forged ahead with all new technology for web deployment of content. Remember the early days of "video" on the web? JPG push at one frame every 4 seconds as that's all that the pipe could handle. Chat rooms? Wow! We perfected that! Streaming video in 2000? We invented it! In short, the adult industry created the market for Cisco and the the backbone tech providers to create the technology to deliver porn, and that is a big reason why the internet grew up so fast.

But, here we are in 2007. Mainstream has in so many ways surpassed us. The really cool concepts like MySpace and YouTube now come first, and then are cloned by adult versions.

To make it all just worse, many of the best and the brightest graphic designers, programmers, and other folks we have always relied upon have figured out there is a LOT more money in working for non-adult than we can provide based on the shrinking market share and money that comes into adult. I certainly don't blame them for heading off into mainstream, but it is a growing trend for these guys to sign on to much more lucrative projects than what is offered in the adult world.

So, were do we go from here? At present, we have, in my opinion, a stagnant adult content world as far as the introduction of cool new features, faster ways to deliver content, etc..... Perhaps this is just "the way it is" and at this point, the adult content world can just never keep up and should be proud of what it did to build the internet, and continue to spend five times more to convert the same traffic from any source. The unfortunate result, however, is that to compensate for this, the content offered just gets more and more extreme to set itself apart form "the pack", but invites obscenity rulings every step down this dark path to be "special".

I seriously just don't know any way we can continue to be the "for-front" of technology. But, a few things I DO know:

1. For our current business model to work, we need to get rid of ALL hardcore free content sites. TPG's, hosted movies, etc. Compelling text and banner links and softcore tpg's will do the trick. Sorry, but this is what I have been bitching about for the past 6 years. Hardcore content provided by sponsors as TPG material basically is like giving the cow away for free, including the milk. Let the paysites do their thing to do the conversions. If the surfer jacks off and logs off on TGP content, why would he/she buy a membership?

2. The new version of 2257, if enacted, will pretty much end the TGP game for a lot of reasons. Sure, there are a few TPG gamers that make really good money, but the majority make less than $300 a month and it's just not worth the risk for them to face jail and litigation time to defend the house of cards they are working out of to possibly defend a justice department investigation. So, there goes 95% of that traffic if they bail out. These players can quickly adapt, though, to text links and softcore content if it comes to that.

Sorry to be so glum, but I've been around this biz for 14 years now, and the current state of affairs is bugging me a bit!

Cheers, Colin

Every once in a while I stumble across a fun new feaure in the non-adult web. Here's one that immediately caught my eye as a great and funny time-waster. Click on the movie below to see some adult web industry veterans strut their stuff! (you might have to click play a couple of times to get it to play - welcome to the job-jab beta version. lol)





And if one wasn't enough for you, here's another one, featuring Traffic Dude, Bangwang, Tom Hymes and a few more to pick out in this thrilling horror feature just in time for Halloween!

God, just when I thought we had it all figured out as far as driving traffic around the web, along comes "web 2.0" - that mysterious set of new "Myspace" and "Tube" features that are sucking up more free "looky-look" traffic than The Hun it would seem, with conversions being even more of a challenge!

Although it's all fascinating to watch, my main gripe is the amount of infrastructure that needs to be added to paysites to attract this traffic. Last time I checked, over the past 6 months I have added a team of 6 dudes in Albania to manage web 2.0 postings, 4 friendly boys from Manilla to hand 2.0 SEO in the new terrain, and an unusual set of 8 ladies from South Africa that do nothing all day but spew blog postings about what fun they had last night experimenting with butt plugs and electro-stimulation! Oh, let's not forget about my in-house employee that writes erotic poetry all day to submit to Yahoo Groups! God! And I thought TGP's were a pain in the ass!

I did, however, come across what I would say is about the best platform I've seen recently released today. The fine folks at AEBN have launched a beta version of a social networking site for the "Kink" surfers and webmasters called Social Kink

But, aside from that sunny note (which I suspect I am going to have to hire and assign a new staff person to manage), web 2.0 is just a pain in my ass. Maybe I can just give my traffic managers that handle google, Yahoo, AOL, etc paid inclusions my credit card and tell them to "go for it"? Sigh.......

Back in "the day", I, as a busy webmaster, had a very nice repertoire of little companies that brokered adult content that I could purchase to put on my paysites to augment our original content.

Those days are, sadly, mostly over.

90% of the content guys have gone out of business over the past 3 years, mostly due to the new trend of webmasters creating their own content, and the big sites purchasing DVD rights.

Sure, the failing DVD-producing studios are dumping their own inventory onto the internet faster than a goose can poop, but that doesn't really help, does it?

Yes, there are a few Internet content providers still out there, but they are struggling against the tide of the big studios dumping their video libraries onto the web at a breakneck speed.

But, here is an opportunity: If you are running a website, please do your best to support these small businesses. You can find the few of them left them in the Service Directories of all of the main adult boards. It's sometimes fresh, it's hot and good (and, it's DIVERSE and adds a different style to your content offerings). And, most importantly, you are supporting "Old School" folks that have been around in the internet side of things since it started.

Colin

Just a little rant today about model/actress safety. I learned a few weeks ago that yet another model was murdered during the course of a shoot. Although the details of this particular one make it sound more like a saga of domestic violence between partners gone bad, I did my thing for the community and posted the news to several of the popular webmaster forums.

As expected, a lot of webmasters and content producers posted replies expressing horror and regret. What I DIDN'T expect was a flood of somewhat mean-hearted and cold posts by photo and video content producers that basically said it was the girl's fault.

To make it even worse, several pro-shooters came into the fray and were adamant that models and actresses should never be allowed to bring along a male escort to a shoot.

This attitude is inexcusable. Any model, male or female, that is booked in to show up with an unknown shooter really MUST have some sort of escort in tow for the first shoot, even if it's her sister or the studio's makeup artist. I know that some shooters will get all high and mighty on this topic, spewing "artistic freedom" themes, but let's face, it: for every 10 legit content producers out there, there are another 10 that simply want a POV blow job and don't even have film in the camera. The problem there is when a model is presented with a dangerous situation and attempts to shut down the production and leave. And then gets raped and murdered.

Our actresses need to feel safe when they arrive on a new set, and an escort or studio staff person is a good idea. That person provides a feeling of safety for the actress, and a degree of protection for the producer as there is a physical witness to what occurred.

Once they get to know and trust the shooter, it's a whole 'nuther ball game.

Today while doing my usual checks of adult industry news, I came across a fascinating article about John Stagliano by John Stewart about the entire Gonzo topic. I've been producing content for our websites and DVD releases for about 12 years now and this really is a hot topic from a producer's prospective.

On one hand, it is very compelling for me to produce top notch films that include interesting little bonuses for the viewer like scripts, dialogue, good acting, and the like. This is the hallmark of such current directors as Michael Ninn and Max Candy. But, hard (and expensive) experience has taught me that the "porn industry" has no easy way to promote this sort of feature film product. On the other hand, Gonzo is a fast and cheap product to produce, and so many internet surfers just love it. Hats off to the Bang Bus boys for picking up on "reality TV" programming and taking it to our industry.

The math is pretty easy. A typical Gonzo video shoot over two days runs around $3,000 to cover airfare, catering, talent payment, and the like (On the cheap side, "True Gonzo" can happen in a 4 hour period and cost a whopping sum of $500). Post production takes about a day and 5 to 7 scenes are ready to upload.

A typical Feature Film shoot over 16 days runs around $200,000 to cover the large cast, crew, catering, location rental fees, hotels and the like. Post production takes about 6 months and involves professional color correction, massive amounts of editing time, music composers, DVD box cover art, DVD replication, and distributor negotiations.

Here is the balance I've worked out for Wasteland.com: We produce a ratio of 90% gonzo to 10% "feature films". Gonzo is easy. Bring in some good BDSM talent, and with no real plot or scripted dialogue, just let them beat the tar out of each other. The members love it. It is cheap and easy to film, and gives lots of good original content for paysite updates.

Feature films are more difficult and expensive, but very fulfilling on an artistic level. We produce several of these every year and, although they have limited market value and revenue due to the collapsing DVD market, are our pride and joy.

Gonzo helps underwrite more serious film making efforts. Serious film making feeds the artistic soul.

It's all about balance.