I was amazed!! Why did you stop? I love the combination of your old band.

I started in late 2006 and for a year 1/2 let my partners build shitty-ass websites. LOL When I finished filming like 30 girls I stopped, looked around, realized nothing was getting DONE and I wasn't making a fucking penny, I decided to do everything myself.

I built shitty-ass sites that converted well with amateur traffic for about a year, learning HTML myself and building everything in Notepad, by hand. LOL Amazing when I think back on it but I learned everything on my own so I only modeled what I knew made money. I started making around $1,000 a month almost right away, and stayed there, for months! No matter HOW hard I worked, no matter HOW much traffic I sent to my sites sales were steady. That's when I knew the company I was with - an unnamed network of amateur/reality websites - was ripping me (and many, many others) off big time. On the one hand, it was easy money (relatively) working with them and they took care of all the things I knew zero about, like hosting, updating, yada yada. But on the other I always wondered how many sales I was really getting, and dreamed of the money I could make as a program/paysite owner instead of being a glorified affiliate (which is what I was, no offense meant to actual, hard-working affiliates).

I had been a journalist in the music biz for years before this, and had done some investigative journalism along the way, too, so while I am no Woodward & Bernstein I smelled a rat. So in January of 2009 I launched Mister Peabody World and dived head-first into the deep end of the Paysite pool. I had six sites then, now I have 18 (with four more coming next month) and today have gross revenues (network-wide) exceeding 1/2 million. Not bad for 1 year doing this full-time, and for being a one-man operation.

Did the two+ years of fucking around, getting screwed (and not in a good way) etc help/prepare me for this new adventure for Mister Peabody? Yes and no. But it's taught me that with never-ending effort, focus, HARD hard work, learning curves, a vision for how/when things will 'get better', an adaptable plan to help get you there and support from friends & family (as corny as that sounds) can still lead to success beyond one's expectations. Now, I live in NYC - no cheap place, tho my apartment is extremely reasonable at $1400 a month (1 BR) - and if I lived in Indiana or Arizona or Florida I would be living like a King. Here, I now merely have 'cash flow' (what a concept) and can pay my bills and order Japanese food every other Tuesday if I so wish. LOL But it will take success five-eight times my current level to 'free me' to where I can get back to doing what all this was intended to finance in the first place: the writing of my second screenplay and/or my first novel.

Meanwhile, I get tax-free sex.

So will I be able to work only, say, two-four hours a day, 2-4 days a week, someday soon and spend the rest of my time doing whatever the fuck I want to? Yes, absolutely, otherwise...I'm outta here. That's right, I'm giving myself a certain time-frame and if the Adult business doesn't get me there then I'll do something in mainstream, employing the skills I've learned during this adventure, to get me where I want to be. I've been successful (enough) with anything I've ever wanted to do in life so I know it's possible. We're not talking "I wanna retire when I've made eighteen MILLION DOLLARS" shit. I'm reasonable. 3/4 mil a year will do fine.

Anyway, it's all possible, even now, that's all I'm saying.

Your success, DigitalDivas, btw, is inspiring in its' own right. When I was looking at total monthly revenues of $853 and had to swallow my pride to ask my mom for three hundred bucks so I could eat and pay the Cable/Internet bill, and ask other friends to lend me a hundred bucks each just to pay my rent, I searched out stories like yours to inspire me, and keep me going. Congratulations on your success!

(And I did not leave journalism, journalism left me when the magazine I was working for let 90% of it's staff writers go, including me, and the blogosphere replaced much of 'old school' Fourth Estate institutions like the one I worked for. This was in 2003. I floundered for a couple years until I decided to shoot homemade porn. LOL The 'Mister Peabody story' bullshit I spin on the sites is actually fairly close to the sad, sad truth...)

In 1999 or so, I put up a hot banner for a big teen sponsor and got listed #1 in adultchecks search engine. Was self employed for 2 years.

Since then i've never looked back. Incorporated since 2001.

Thanks misterpeabody! I feel like I have only begun the journey. I don't have huge amounts of traffic for the sites in my sig, or the sites that are not in my sig. I do have a boatload of passion. I am a lifestyle foot fetishist. Beautifulfeetonline is from the soul. Digitaldivasonline.com will someday revolutionize the way that people look and surf for niche based adult content. At least I hope so. It is a beautiful index. Just as my sponsors are so deserving to have a home on the net such as the Digitaldivasonline Network. And it is still not complete.

Pretty humbling that you went from borrowing money from your friends to where you are now. I think if you remember where you came from that you will be fine and someday have your screenplay and or novel. I will also be sure of that and if I get "Big", I will never be "that guy". To be humble is always key. I will never be too cool to return email or talk to someone starting out with that same passion in their eyes.

The network is a work in progress, but I do intend on attending more conventions to meet more of my peers in the industry face to face. Because as this thread shows, we all have so many different and unique stories as well as many different drives to keep our noses to the grindstone so to speak. I think our collective new concepts, banter and passion is one of the things I admire most about this industry. Sure it's a scary time, sure everything that we thought we knew is an ever changing flow of technology. But, in some way or another, we are all in it together and thats pretty cool in my book. Especially with some of the talented people that are on this board, if we all banded together, and became one community, there would be nothing we could not accomplish, imho. On the internet or otherwise.

whats going on up in here?

since we are on the topic of feet, can you critique my foot vid?

https://gfy.com/fucking-around-and-business-discussion/952942-barefootsie-review.html

not really my thing mcfadden, but make the window bigger and I would do the data rate at about 4mbps, the increased data rate will compliment the increased window size quite nicely :thumbsup