So this is our story in the adult biz so far...

[alf6300]

A couple of years ago I started meddling in adult.
I have done several online startups in the past 10 years, but none of them adult - I wanted to try out. In part for biz curiosity and in part for fun.

We setup a first paysite. It was not meant to be more than a side activity or a hobby for me.

The site turned out to be profitable from day 1.

The initial capital investment was 0 (zero) dollars.
(well, ok, I concede we paid the domain registration and a couple of bucks for the initial ignominiously cheap hosting)

The rest was setup by myself in my spare time. I threw together the site in php; I shot the content; the model was friend and business partner.

I had ran profitable businesses before: however, even in the first few months, this business had the best ratio of capital investments (none), effort (some weekends of fun), and profit return (not a goldmine yet, but sufficient to provide a decent living for a couple of people had it been my personal main job).

I guess we got lucky in several dimensions, and we did some things right the first time around. In my business experience, it almost never happens that you get things right the first time around.

So, a little more than one year ago, I decided to focus on this with much more time dedication and a business-rather-than-hobby mindset.

I put a (actually very little) capital in it, ditched or delegated other activities I had ongoing, and decided that this would be my next startup to make grow.

Armed with a back-of-the-envelop business plan, some friends willing to earn a buck in their spare time, and a lot of fun and dedication, we setup more sites. The guiding principle was more or less: what we have fun shooting, it might be fun for the surfer too, and they might buy it.

Everything that we touched turned out to be profitable.

We launched seven sites since then - I hear people complaining all the time about porn being dead, but this has been actually the easiest and most profitable business ride I've taken so far.

We are not anywhere yet in the ballpark of where I plan to be, but we've been growing every single month, >10% per month, with just a few motivated people and more money in the bank at the end of the month than at the beginning. Even more importantly, the growth is growing. And it's fun. I don't plan to publicly share figures, but we are at the point where we are discussing how to best reinvest the money earned. This, coming with no experience at all in the particular industry.

There is no money in porn? That's not our experience. I suspect there are a few other businesses out there that don't comment in the "porn is dead" threads just because they are too busy counting the money.

I am sharing this in part to contribute to the discussion, and in part because in order to truly expand I know we need to start seriously networking in the industry, so here we are.

Good luck to everybody.

[fuzebox]

I suspect there are a few other businesses out there that don't comment in the "porn is dead" threads just because they are too busy counting the money.

Nice post, and congrats.

[TisMe]

Congrats on your success. I've run pay sites since 97 and always made money.

As you grow, automate what you can so that you can multiply the sites without the workload growing at the same rate.

Automate updates, promoting, etc.

Automation is your friend.

[Paul Markham]

There's still money in porn, just not what there was and in the hands of fewer people. Don't believe those who tell you the opposite.

So what do you put your success down to in the harder times?

[Relentless]

Congrats on your success. I've run pay sites since 97 and always made money. As you grow, automate what you can so that you can multiply the sites without the workload growing at the same rate. Automate updates, promoting, etc. Automation is your friend.

Very good advice...

Making your 1st site is a lot of work, making a 2nd site is less work, making your 198th site is almost zero work if you build tools to automate many of the mundane tasks. Where most people get fouled up is they automate things they shouldn't (like site text) or forget to automate things they should (like proper meta page data).

[xNetworx]

Great to hear. Keep up the good work

[alf6300]

Great to hear. Keep up the good work

thanks!

[alf6300]

So what do you put your success down to in the harder times?

Happy to reflect on that, it's helpful for me too. Here comes my list. I am sure there is more than one way to Rome, but this is what works for us. Here's what first comes to my mind.

1. Treating the customers with the utmost respect and consideration. Seems obvious, but my hunch is that some people in the biz got spoiled by a few years of goldrush. I spend a couple of hours a day personally responding to customers emails - including helping the 70 years old guy whose "Windows can't work with videos". People are genuinely amazed by the support level, got answers like "this is support better than Amazon". If we want to be a successful startup, we GOTTA have a support which is better than Amazon. For godsake, customers are more precious for us than for Amazon.

2. Shooting stuff that we consider a turnon ourselves - and have FUN while doing it. Got SO MANY mails along the lines of "in your videos people like what they are doing, that's amazing, most stuff out there is so serial!".

3. Ditching the tired porny tour/members model for a more open, community driven approach. From the beginning, surfers see exactly ALL what they will get once they join. (Also, they can comment, interact with other members etc, even before they get themselves a membership.) Side effect of this, is that chargebacks are almost non-existent. Had higher chargebacks when selling physical goods, I hear this is rather unique.

4. Having a small team in place which is nothing short of amazing. Fast, 200% engaged, and FUN. It almost happened by chance to be honest, so there's not much credit to be taken for sheer luck here.

5. Being first "the affiliates of ourselves". To be sure, we are acutely aware that affiliates remain very much responsible for the success or failure of an adult online business. Said this, I think it gave us a competitive advantage trying early on to promote without primarily relying on affiliation sources. It allowed us to learn much more closely what converts best, which tools and promos are worth focusing on, and which ones might have been essential 5 years ago but are nowdays nothing more than a nice-to-have.

6. Having a lot of stuff done custom, especially the internal behind the scenes stuff. From one single page, I can now post updates to all our sites with one click, release promos to a network of content partnerships, control the tagging and a bunch of other things. Custom is not always the answer, it's certainly dumb to reinvent the wheel when a script out there does what you want; however, in our case, it made sure that our tools grew with us and fit our workflow like a glove. When we want to play with something new, we release a new version - our short release cycle allows us to experiment a lot.

7. Operating from a country with the right combination of highly skilled workforce, relatively cheap labour, adult-friendly environment, and last bast certainly not least - some of the sexiest creatures on this planet.

8. Business mistakes I did in the past with other ventures - well, some experience with screwing up, certainly helped avoiding some mistakes this time around. I am not saying we did not do any mistake with this business, nor I am saying that we won't do plenty in the future (I know we will). However, I know better some of the typical traps of a fast growing business (stuff like panic-hiring, losing the each-single-dollar-greed attitude, over-complexity, etc, etc.) You can read most of this stuff in any decent business self-help book, but having been there is an advantage.

9. Starting with little money. This is not always an advantage, but sometimes it is, as paradoxical as it may seem. For us, it helped us focus on the real drivers and cut the bullshit around it. It forced us to multitask and learn in detail each area of the business before scaling. Overall, it set an internal culture of hunger and positive greed that I hope to keep alive no matter how successful the business becomes.

10. Being nice. Seriously. Towards customers, models, agencies, employees, affiliates, etc. If there was one rule I'd like to place on the board, that's "be nice". I am entirely aware there's plenty of success stories build on exactly the opposite - but this is our experience and we like it that way. When we don't manage to be nice enough, we apologize promptly

Good luck everybody, from rainy Prague!

[rastan]

Fair play to you brotha. I'm a few steps behind, but on the same track!
There certainly *IS* $$$ to be made in porn!

[StickyGreen]

[Barefootsies]

As you grow, automate what you can so that you can multiply the sites without the workload growing at the same rate.

Automate updates, promoting, etc.

Automation is your friend.

This is one of the BEST investments you can make, and agree 200%!!

Avoid having to hire people where you can. Labor is a major fucking headache. It doesn't matter if it's local, or outsourced darkies. You will find out investing $2000.00 here and $5000.00 there with automation of tasks can save you tens of thousands in labor costs in the first year alone. The long tail savings are insane.

Plus it will allow you more free time, or you can expand as you have more hours in your day now. It is a hard lesson to learn when you are first getting started as you see other things as more important. But it is where you should be investing as soon as you can afford too.

Find out what can be automated, and do it.

[CHMOD]

Great post Alf

it will surelly be a source of inspiration for many GFY readers.

[alf6300]

Great post Alf

it will surelly be a source of inspiration for many GFY readers.

Appreciate, thanks!

[Rochard]

We have to define success here, and then compare that to ten years ago. Two guys working from home making $1k a day slinging porn is in fact a success. However, that doesn't compare to 2002 when you have three guys making $25k a day.

[Sly]

We have to define success here, and then compare that to ten years ago. Two guys working from home making $1k a day slinging porn is in fact a success. However, that doesn't compare to 2002 when you have three guys making $25k a day.

$25,000 a day in 2002 was nothing compared to another date in time. So which date do we use for the comparison?

If you define your own success based on what other people have done, you will never be successful. There is always someone better.

[lazycash]

Refreshing to see a positive thread with great advice that more accurately depicts what can be accomplished in adult now, rather than one of Markham's doom and gloom threads bitching about the onslaught of free porn.

[mce]

Happy to reflect on that, it's helpful for me too. Here comes my list. I am sure there is more than one way to Rome, but this is what works for us. Here's what first comes to my mind.

1. Treating the customers with the utmost respect and consideration. Seems obvious, but my hunch is that some people in the biz got spoiled by a few years of goldrush. I spend a couple of hours a day personally responding to customers emails - including helping the 70 years old guy whose "Windows can't work with videos". People are genuinely amazed by the support level, got answers like "this is support better than Amazon". If we want to be a successful startup, we GOTTA have a support which is better than Amazon. For godsake, customers are more precious for us than for Amazon.

2. Shooting stuff that we consider a turnon ourselves - and have FUN while doing it. Got SO MANY mails along the lines of "in your videos people like what they are doing, that's amazing, most stuff out there is so serial!".

3. Ditching the tired porny tour/members model for a more open, community driven approach. From the beginning, surfers see exactly ALL what they will get once they join. (Also, they can comment, interact with other members etc, even before they get themselves a membership.) Side effect of this, is that chargebacks are almost non-existent. Had higher chargebacks when selling physical goods, I hear this is rather unique.

4. Having a small team in place which is nothing short of amazing. Fast, 200% engaged, and FUN. It almost happened by chance to be honest, so there's not much credit to be taken for sheer luck here.

5. Being first "the affiliates of ourselves". To be sure, we are acutely aware that affiliates remain very much responsible for the success or failure of an adult online business. Said this, I think it gave us a competitive advantage trying early on to promote without primarily relying on affiliation sources. It allowed us to learn much more closely what converts best, which tools and promos are worth focusing on, and which ones might have been essential 5 years ago but are nowdays nothing more than a nice-to-have.

6. Having a lot of stuff done custom, especially the internal behind the scenes stuff. From one single page, I can now post updates to all our sites with one click, release promos to a network of content partnerships, control the tagging and a bunch of other things. Custom is not always the answer, it's certainly dumb to reinvent the wheel when a script out there does what you want; however, in our case, it made sure that our tools grew with us and fit our workflow like a glove. When we want to play with something new, we release a new version - our short release cycle allows us to experiment a lot.

7. Operating from a country with the right combination of highly skilled workforce, relatively cheap labour, adult-friendly environment, and last bast certainly not least - some of the sexiest creatures on this planet.

8. Business mistakes I did in the past with other ventures - well, some experience with screwing up, certainly helped avoiding some mistakes this time around. I am not saying we did not do any mistake with this business, nor I am saying that we won't do plenty in the future (I know we will). However, I know better some of the typical traps of a fast growing business (stuff like panic-hiring, losing the each-single-dollar-greed attitude, over-complexity, etc, etc.) You can read most of this stuff in any decent business self-help book, but having been there is an advantage.

9. Starting with little money. This is not always an advantage, but sometimes it is, as paradoxical as it may seem. For us, it helped us focus on the real drivers and cut the bullshit around it. It forced us to multitask and learn in detail each area of the business before scaling. Overall, it set an internal culture of hunger and positive greed that I hope to keep alive no matter how successful the business becomes.

10. Being nice. Seriously. Towards customers, models, agencies, employees, affiliates, etc. If there was one rule I'd like to place on the board, that's "be nice". I am entirely aware there's plenty of success stories build on exactly the opposite - but this is our experience and we like it that way. When we don't manage to be nice enough, we apologize promptly

Good luck everybody, from rainy Prague!

Solid tips. Most would apply to any business. It's all about the CUSTOMER. Good work and more success to you guys!

[alf6300]

Solid tips. Most would apply to any business. It's all about the CUSTOMER. Good work and more success to you guys!

Truly appreciated, mce!

[Paul]

Fuck me, two business threads on GFY in one day. WTF!

Congrats on the success alf6300

[CaptainHowdy]

Congrats and keep it up !

[Rochard]

$25,000 a day in 2002 was nothing compared to another date in time. So which date do we use for the comparison?

I picked 2002 as a bench mark because it was "ten years ago" and in the range of the "good years" when making money was rather easy.

Clearly what is defined as a success today vs what was considered a success ten years ago is two different things.

If you define your own success based on what other people have done, you will never be successful. There is always someone better.

I am not looking to define my success based on anyone. I'm not driving a Ferrari, but obviously do my weight I'm not going hungry either.

[Zuzana Designs]

Great to see a positive thread about people making money. Keep up the good work and congrats on your success.

[L-Pink]

Nice post.

.

[alf6300]

Nice post.

Great to see a positive thread about people making money. Keep up the good work and congrats on your success.

Congrats and keep it up !

Fuck me, two business threads on GFY in one day. WTF!

Congrats on the success alf6300

Solid tips. Most would apply to any business. It's all about the CUSTOMER. Good work and more success to you guys!

Refreshing to see a positive thread with great advice that more accurately depicts what can be accomplished in adult now, rather than one of Markham's doom and gloom threads bitching about the onslaught of free porn.

Great post Alf

it will surelly be a source of inspiration for many GFY readers.

Fair play to you brotha. I'm a few steps behind, but on the same track!
There certainly *IS* $$$ to be made in porn!

Wonderful to hear nice words from all of you guys.

Following this thread, I also got a couple of emails with proposals for partnerships and the like.

While at this point we don't plan to find strategic partners nor raise external capital, it is still encouraging to receive unsolicited ideas: it appears that the market is lively, despite the conventional wisdom I occasionally read about. And it looks like one single post is sufficient to raise some strategic curiosity from people in the industry.

That is good news for everybody around here.
We'll keep doing our best

[lucas131]

Good luck everybody, from rainy Prague!

cool didnt know it is prague out there, moravia here and sunny and hot last few days, happy that i am leaving to swiss alps at night

[alf6300]

cool didnt know it is prague out there, moravia here and sunny and hot last few days, happy that i am leaving to swiss alps at night

Yup, was in moravia too, yesterday
"have luck" in the swiss alps

[Phoenix]

nice read...keep it up

[ilnjscb]

He is very much #10 - several times he has given me good advice with no hope of gain. Thanks for the update and keep rockin!

[Bill8]

is there a reason you don't post any info about the sites?

maybe its in your sig, i have sigs turned off - I figure sigs are bullshit.

I also notice you dont mention traffic generation, other then the mention of being your own affiliates.

[MaDalton]

cool stuff!!

hope to see you at the Prague show - or let me know whenever you come to Brno

would be nice to chat

[Klen]

Nice,i still remember zuzinka intro here on gfy,one of funniest intro threads,it was like teencat before teencat :D

[Django]

congrats and thanks for share positive notes about porn industry
negative people are boring

[MaDalton]

Nice,i still remember zuzinka intro here on gfy,one of funniest intro threads,it was like teencat before teencat :D

yeah, i remembered that when i discovered that site was part of the program

[Harmon]

I picked 2002 as a bench mark because it was "ten years ago" and in the range of the "good years" when making money was rather easy.

Clearly what is defined as a success today vs what was considered a success ten years ago is two different things.



I am not looking to define my success based on anyone. I'm not driving a Ferrari, but obviously do my weight I'm not going hungry either.

2002? 96-98 was like what the fuck... seriously. When my first checks arrived I thought it was going to be cut in half from what I saw in the affiliate area only because the amounts seemed too good to be true. Also, I never expected them to even arrive never mind clear the bank.

When the checks started rolling in I couldn't even believe it. I was hooked ;)

Also, fantastic post to OP

[alf6300]

is there a reason you don't post any info about the sites?

maybe its in your sig, i have sigs turned off

Hey Bill8, that's correct, it's in my sig. Here it comes for the ones who have sigs turned off.
The list of our sites is here

I also notice you dont mention traffic generation, other then the mention of being your own affiliates.

I fear I have not been clear enough about this, sorry.

We DO have an affiliation program, and we are very grateful for the ones who choose to promote us.

We simply did not begin things relying on affiliation traffic, in part because we were new to the industry.

We got our initial traffic push through a combination of things like social media, promo content partnerships, some forum activity, some casual SEO etc. (although SEO is currently really not our area of strength, i.e. we rather thank Google when it occasionally blesses us, rather than optimizing for it - we hope to do better in the future ).

I'll be more specific.

Currently, we have what we call "vertical" and "horizontal" growth drivers planned for the next 12 months.
Horizontal, means that we will be regularly adding more sites.
Vertical, means that we will work to build more traffic sources to the network.

Because of our history, affiliation is clearly at the moment the most underused opportunity, and an area where we will put major efforts in the months to come.

We are humble here, there's know-how we have to acquire, but will certainly work hard to gain trust of affiliates who want to promote us, and treat each of them with gratitude and all the support that we can.

Does this answer your questions?

[alf6300]

cool stuff!!

hope to see you at the Prague show - or let me know whenever you come to Brno

would be nice to chat

Very much looking forward!
Also, I still owe you a couple of beers for the laser thingy - well, if I don't go blind, that is - got my appointment on Aug-8

[MaDalton]

Very much looking forward!
Also, I still owe you a couple of beers for the laser thingy - well, if I don't go blind, that is - got my appointment on Aug-8

i can say that i am healing nicely - even reading my laptop screen is now close to 100% fine

[TheSquealer]

The official line is "There is no money in porn". You will be getting a C&D from the Bro Club within the next 72hrs and your prompt response will be appreciated.

[alf6300]

The official line is "There is no money in porn". You will be getting a C&D from the Bro Club within the next 72hrs and your prompt response will be appreciated.

I hastily declare unconditional surrender to the Bro Club and to Dear Leader.

[lazycash]

I always had a feeling there was an untapped market for Alf porn.

[RyuLion]

Its about never giving up, and using the skills that you have EVERYDAY.

[Imortyl Pussycat]

thank you for sharing and congratulations on your success i whole heartedly agree with your customer service philosophy. customers want a connection to the site they belong to and to feel like they matter. that is their hard earned money and they could have spent it anywhere but carefully selected your site to give a piece of their income to. treating them with kindness and respect will not only grow the site but retain those members for a long time. looking forward to meeting your group in Prague this Sept.

[MrPotatoBread]

Have you had any issues running everything on wp as a paysite? Congrats on your success!!!

[sojproductions]

great read! loving the positive post, first one in an age on here haha.

Seems like we followed a similar path albeit we started in '06. 10% growth month on month for many years, keep your foot on the gas! I got a bit complacent at one point and figured it would just keep trending upward, it didn't, had to get back to basics and re-focus and thankfully managed to pull everything back where it should be.

Good luck with your future plans!

[Sophie Delancey]

It's so nice to see positivity on GFY! There's still so much room to grow in this industry if you're motivated and creative.

[The Porn Nerd]

Your story is similar to my own, and look what happened to me (my own network, growing sites, expanding, etc) so I agree with you - there IS money in porn...

The issue for many when they say 'there is no money in porn" is their definition of "money". Example: $100,000 per year is not "money" to people who say that. No, $10,000,000 is "money".

But "real people" know full well that 100k a year is "money" for most people in this world....

Anyway great good luck and continued success! If I can ever be of assistance just reach out.

[CurrentlySober]

Bump 4 poo...

[alf6300]

This is one of the BEST investments you can make, and agree 200%!!

[...]

Find out what can be automated, and do it.

Very good advice...

Making your 1st site is a lot of work, making a 2nd site is less work, making your 198th site is almost zero work if you build tools to automate many of the mundane tasks. Where most people get fouled up is they automate things they shouldn't (like site text) or forget to automate things they should (like proper meta page data).

Congrats on your success. I've run pay sites since 97 and always made money.

As you grow, automate what you can so that you can multiply the sites without the workload growing at the same rate.

Automate updates, promoting, etc.

Automation is your friend.

I couldn't agree more, thanks for the tips!

[alf6300]

Have you had any issues running everything on wp as a paysite? Congrats on your success!!!

Hi MrPotatoBread

In fact I think choosing wp was one of the things I believe we did right.

There's a custom script on top of wp that makes the actual content available only to those who paid, and changes the theme slightly for members - removes joins links, adds the "welcome memberX" and some goodies here and there. Other than this and other than making the content available, the rest of the sites is the same for members or guests.

There's also a custom script that centralizes the video repository and posting - basically video editors upload everything to a blind ftp using some naming conventions for the files.

A script checks what is available there and lets you post the content on each site, without ever needing to login in wp. In practice, wp is a frontend but nobody ever needs to even know the credentials to login in wp-admin, as everything is done with our custom tools.

This was a total overkill when we started, but saves a TON of time now - automation automation automation, as some of the wise guys said previously in this thread :-)

[Bill8]

it's a nice story. The sites are sweet. it's a nice piece of work, that does remind us all of the period between 1998 and 2003.

but, it's a very specialized business model, with a lot of specific conditions (country of origin, content accquisition, costs profile, traffic costs, etc) that are not easily met.

I think you folks saying this is evidence that "there IS money in porn" are over-reacting, without placing his work in context.

I'm just pointing out that it's not in itself a business model that tells us much about the porn business overall.

if you folks think it is a copiable business model, then go ahead, copy it. there are clearly a few interesting ideas there that could be used. I'd say it's not very copiable.

it's not like this is the first time someone has come to the boards with a story about success in creating their own semi-private paysite system.

I'm not downplaying your work, man, you should be proud of it, and congratulations.