Originally Posted by WEG Cory
3. Talk about your background with adult check.
Back in 1999, I took the spill into the world of Ecommerce. Honestly, I knew nothing about the Internet. The company was venture capitalist funded and provided internet users with up-to-date traffic information. My job was managing the team that called up the DMV centers and asked for information regarding road construction. The team had one person on it: me. I called around 40 state centers everyday and asked them if they were doing construction. In almost all cases, they would get upset at me. So in turn, I would make it up. No kidding, the entire site was based on me making up fake traffic jams. Users logged on to avoid construction sites that were merely a figment of my imagination. And didn't do this via my own accord, I was asked to make it up everytime the center yelled at me.
After about 6 months, the site began to decline and the venture capitalist began to pull out of the deal. I guess they thought creative construction zoning was not very effective. This was consistent with what we all know as the ?ecomm crash? that effected many of you. As the VC?s began to become critical of the business, I made up more construction sites, I wanted to save the day. But it was to no avail : )
Since I was the guy updating the site, I knew I would be the last to go, however certain death was obvious. So I began going through the papers looking for other jobs. I was terrified, I had been a waiter for years and I my strength was dissecting early 20th century literature and working in comedy: not necessarily trademarks of someone on the brink of success in the New Internet World that had manifested itself right before our eyes in a matter of a couple of years.
So I made up my resume and began sending it out to jobs looking for ecomm / project type people. I felt that most of the jobs I would not be qualified for, but I hoped I could get through an interview citing my ability to present a level of ambition that would intice the company to hire me.
Within a week, I received a call from a company in the San Fernando Valley. They were seeking HTML editors that could monitor their sites for basic errors and respond to the webmasters and ask them to fix the site. They set the interview for 2 days out from the call. On the phone, the guy asked me to be prepared to answer questions regarding HTML and Javascript.
Everything was great, however, a few pretty serious problems stood out:
1) I didn?t know what HTML or Javascript meant.
2) I wasn?t sure what the term ?webmaster? meant.
Anyone who knows me well will tell you that I will try anything. It is a part of my character, a part that I feel has taken me places I never would have seen otherwise. With this in mind, I arranged a plan.
I went to the Borders books in West Hollywood for the next two nights and copied all the basic code out of the shelved books and into a notebook. Those books were much too expensive for me to afford, so I had to make due. I booted up my old Compaq laptop and began to work the 250MB of Ram to a challenging extent. I would type the code, right click, save as .html and see what would happen. I stayed up all night each night trying to figure it out.
One note I would like to make here is that I was doing this for a job that paid a starting hourly rate of $10 an hour. I am always baffled at this industry as it seems that opportunist are few and far between.
Before I went into the interview, I wrote down code on my arms to serve me in the event of emergencies.
On that Febuary 2000 morning, I had no idea I was walking into one of the largest Adult paysites online too date. I was not briefed prior, I was only told that they needed a ?project oriented HTML/Javascript support person.?
I was immediately greeted with a cute secretary who asked that I hand over a copy of my resume and have a seat. I was immediately seated next to a cute, darling girl that must have been around age 24. She had her hair slung over her right ear lobe and was nervously focused on her cover letter and an impressive business bag was folded out presenting a series of pens, papers, notebooks and organizational tabs.
I was intimidated as well as hopeful we could both get hired and I would sleep with her at the Christmas party. That thought alone likely separated me from her, and lead directly to the next event.
Within 5 minutes of being called in for the interview, her ?how to win friends and get a job now? smile had faded to a grimace; her walk out the front door had transitioned from upstanding and confident to beleaguered with dissatisfaction.
?My god!? I thought, ?what had happened in that interview room and what does this mean for the Christmas party??
Within two minutes of her exit from my ambitious stage of preplanning for the holidays, I was asked to come back. I was led through what appeared to be a renovated garage, mostly concrete, which was conducive to echoing voices and footsteps alike. A quiet, passive asian guy led me around a corner.
?This is the work area.? He said passively.
Well, the first thing I noticed was dogs walking about everywhere. There were big dogs, little dogs and medium sized dogs roaming between cubicles, slurping from water bowls and wagging their tails in anticipation of peeing on me (I am only guessing on the latter portion of course). Adult Check was very dog friendly, something I always appreciated.
The second thing I noticed was this large, burly bohemian of a man hosting a bag of cheetos on his cubicle table and a big picture of a man sticking his penis inside of a woman?s ass. I am not into anal, so to be honest, this was my first time to experience anal; and that experience came at the helm of a burly man and a bag of cheetos inside a garage in the San Fernando Valley.
Moving on, I was led into an office. The passive asian guy asked me a few very simple questions, I answered them satisfactorily. He then explained things in detail:
?Basically, you look at porn site, email webmaster if picture does not work.?
And I was hired.
The job was just as simple as he explained and I became a lot more experienced in anal as the weeks progressed. In fact, I was the new guy and got to mill through all the gay sex links.
But I wanted more. Not anal, but more from the job, probably less anal would do. So I began making friends with all the webmasters and asking for advice. I began working late hours. I was driven to make myself more than what I was. I had no desire at all to stay where I was.
The path was promising, and gained hope several months later when I was asked to go to a show. Back in the day, Adult Check played host to enormous booths and cash machines. They would bring at least 10 employees just to help with setup alone. I went, people seemed to like me, and my role at Adult Check increased. I would later be promoted and began working along side AVN Edison and Netbabe. I took more of a business role, working underneath of Brad Estes (now with Video Secrets). I learned a lot from him and from the company, without that opportunity, I would imagine I would have ended up somewhere else and not in adult. I traveled the world and eventually headed up the Business Development department.
Working for such a large company put on display what a lot of heart and ingenuity can do for you. The transition to what many refer to as ?the other side? or ?PPS? side was tough, AVS systems ran primarily on revshare. However, it always amazes me that people think that only the PPS models are successful. I am sure that guys like Cyberage Dave are doing more signups than many affiliate programs.
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