I had an interesting converstaion the other day. The BBW niche is one of the few left these days that has what I would say are as near to 'real' amateur sites as you can get and still be in it to earn a bit of money. Of course how we all define amateur is interesting because at what level is someone professional but I will stick with the term as most understand it to be a one model site where she or her partner are most likely the one doing all the webmastering.
Anyway, there was a sort of group discussion on a forum and someone made the comment that the 'professional' webmasters look down their nose at the amateur side. I tried to explain that from my perspective my job as a webmaster that creates and runs multiple sites is a totally different game than what they are doing. I got the notion that if this was about bands some one would have muttered the term 'sell out' in regards to the professional/mass market side of the industry. It was an interesting debate. It also stemmed into the 'moral' (for lack of a better term) differences between models that do their own sites and ones that just model for anyone. Personally, I don't see a difference - if you are getting naked in front of a camera for the purposes of having those pics distributed then it is all the same.
I certainly don't see myself as looking down on anyone but with that said it is usually a totally different conversation if I am talking to a 'pro' webmaster or an 'amateur' one. Just on marketing techniques alone, there are only a few amateurs that I can talk search engine techinques to and feel they understand.
Are amateur sites like the minor leagues of our industry? When I started doing this there were very few females on the boards, etc that hadn't at some point had their own amateur site - heck I had my own (Tam comes to mind too) - but it seems that has changed a lot over the last few years and even those who did seemed to have shaken them off for the multi-site style of webmastering.
Anyway, it was an interesting conversation and as the singular 'pro' webmaster there bar the host of the conversation I began to feel like 'the man'.
Anyway, there was a sort of group discussion on a forum and someone made the comment that the 'professional' webmasters look down their nose at the amateur side. I tried to explain that from my perspective my job as a webmaster that creates and runs multiple sites is a totally different game than what they are doing. I got the notion that if this was about bands some one would have muttered the term 'sell out' in regards to the professional/mass market side of the industry. It was an interesting debate. It also stemmed into the 'moral' (for lack of a better term) differences between models that do their own sites and ones that just model for anyone. Personally, I don't see a difference - if you are getting naked in front of a camera for the purposes of having those pics distributed then it is all the same.
I certainly don't see myself as looking down on anyone but with that said it is usually a totally different conversation if I am talking to a 'pro' webmaster or an 'amateur' one. Just on marketing techniques alone, there are only a few amateurs that I can talk search engine techinques to and feel they understand.
Are amateur sites like the minor leagues of our industry? When I started doing this there were very few females on the boards, etc that hadn't at some point had their own amateur site - heck I had my own (Tam comes to mind too) - but it seems that has changed a lot over the last few years and even those who did seemed to have shaken them off for the multi-site style of webmastering.
Anyway, it was an interesting conversation and as the singular 'pro' webmaster there bar the host of the conversation I began to feel like 'the man'.
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