Why I haven't logged into ICQ in years:

This thread on GFY epitomizes all that is charmingly dysfunctional about the special working relationship between affiliates and sponsors.

On this particular issue? I can see it from both perspectives; each person has some valid points AND says other things that are pretty fucked up.

I for one think a program owner is going above and beyond to even BE on icq available to talk one-on-one to affiliates (or anyone else, for that matter). I know that I don't have time for it. It's not that I don't think it's a great idea to be able to respond to affiliate questions, feedback, requests, etc., I just think it's pretty hard to run a business and be on call and interrupted like that at the drop of a hat. You'd think, though, that if the guy makes as much money as he says he does and is so willing to reinvest tons of it back into his business ("noone spends more money than me on updates and on models and on keeping things unique") that he'd fucking hire somebody whose JOB it is to MAKE time to respond to affiliates in a better way and people to make sure the promo content really represents the high quality he claims to spend THE MOST MONEY IN THE INDUSTRY TO MAKE (why do people say such ludicrous things? WHY?). I totally understand feeling run-ragged by affiliate requests, but that's because I don't have the money to hire people to be run ragged FOR me. If I had the kind of money this guy says he has, I would not be sitting on icq chatting with affiliates. Seriously. I'd be making love to my hitachi magic wand on my own private island.

I think he could have handled it better, for sure, but I totally understand not having the motivation to do so. Finding a polite way to say, "I don't have time to customize content for you (or we do not want to give away too much high-quality video or whatever) nor do I have the need to because it has a proven record of converting" is probably not as satisfying from a personal perspective as ripping somebody a new asshole for assuming that just because you are a paysite owner and sponsor that someone can tell you your content is junk and you should JUMP to accommodate their desires, though I don't think what the affiliate said was THAT offensive. I mean, if you are in the habit of being offended by stuff like that, why make yourself available on icq and even give the impression that you care? Of course, not seeing the promo content in question OR any of the affiliate's work it's pretty hard to judge whether either of them has a point. Years ago I posted a guest gallery from one of the TushyCash sites and I thought the content was hot (if the quality was average it really didn't detract from it's worth because of the hotness of the fetish/role-playing); I haven't looked at it much in recent years because I always felt like I had to doublecheck my link codes more than usual because of the way their program is set up (kind of confusing); maybe it's changed since then, though.

I agree with the person who said they're both acting like crybabies. I also have to laugh any time anyone in this industry accuses someone else of not being "professional". For one thing, anyone who levels that accusation almost always has a huge double standard/is a total hypocrite when it comes to their own behavior (usually not professional) versus what they expect from other people (bowing, scraping, and dishing out "the customeraffiliate (or sponsor, depending on who's doing the whining) is always right" nonsense). Mostly I just think it's funny because people want to apply standards of professionalism from OTHER industries to an industry in which modeling many of those standards is totally absurd. THIS IS THE PORN INDUSTRY. If you expect me to not use foul language in my communications with you because "it's not professional" to do so I think you are confused about what my profession is: I am a whore, a pimp, and a pornographer. It would be unprofessional of me NOT to say "fuck" or "cunt" on a regular basis. I make money on my fucking cunt, okay?

Don't misunderstand me, though; I do think it's important to treat everybody with kindness and decency (unless it would be reinforcing or rewarding indecent/unkind behavior to do so), but that has nothing to do with being "professional", it has to do with being a good person to everybody you meet regardless of whether it's at work or not. Working on the internet DOES make that hard, though. Not seeing people face-to-face makes it pretty easy to treat other people like shit. Still, I think there's a difference between being frank and full of a certain amount of bluster/larger-than-life-personality (a good thing, perhaps, when trying to establish yourself online) and being genuinely mean. I don't think anything said by either of those guys is a reason for someone's feelings to be hurt.

Sometimes telling someone to fuck off IS professional when you're an internet pornographer or smut peddler. It's pretty hilarious when people go to a board called "Go Fuck Yourself" to complain about someone telling them to do just that.

Quickie on To-Do's

Just a quick post for now because it's been so long since I've made one here; first of all, if you've written to me I'm sorry I haven't gotten back to you yet. YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE I SEEM TO BE IGNORING! Unfortunately we are just trying to do too much for two people which means a lot is left UNdone at the end of the day/week/month/quarter/year even though we are working our asses off.

A couple of the high-priority things I need to work on for WebWhoreBucks affiliates:

*GET REVIEW-READY
I'm glad review sites are eager to promote us; we have a few things to do before we re-submit to them, though, including tightening stuff up in our member areas, writing some guidelines for review sites (especially regarding "reciprocal" links that so many of them are requiring), special tours and links codes, writing ready-made reviews, etc.

*CONTENT/MEMBER-AREA REQUESTS
I'm going to renew access for a few of our affiliates who have had access to our members-only areas in the past, but I also need to think really hard about how we deal with these requests in the future especially now that we are adding new sites to our network that are operated by and feature people OUTSIDE our household. It's possible I will create a form for affiliates to fill out to apply for access to make it easier for me to get the information I need to determine whether or not to entrust individual affiliates with total access to our sites. We really appreciate the people who are willing to do the hard work of selecting content and building their own promos but we also need to be cautious about WHAT content and HOW MUCH OF IT is used.

*****

Of course there are also a million other things on my to-do list for affiliates, but getting review-ready and addressing our most ambitious affiliates' requests are the most important to me right now.

Next week we will be shooting a bunch of content for AmberLily's site and in the months ahead we're working on shooting for a new video site we hope to launch soon: I Make Porno (imakeporno.com).

Blocked Countries

For a long time I've allowed affiliates living in blocked countries to sign up to promote our sites, but I've just switched it back to the default. I just don't have time to police those people and they DO have a way higher incidence of sending fraudulent transactions. Fortunately it was CCBill who caught it this time, but yeah. I don't have time to watch that shit like a hawk.

When the Icon's Ass Has Already been Worshipped

What do I do when I do not want to follow suit by performing a rim job on one of the industry's Holy Men, but probably should? I *disagree*! Just to be contrary!! Because I like shooting myself in the foot like that!!!

Note to newbs: yes, you probably *should* kiss YNOT Bob's ass. Because it's, like, holy and stuff. If I had half a brain I would, too. Still? It cracks me up when girls deny that they have their noses buried between his butt cheeks. Moi? Kiss ass? Never!! It's especially cute to me since I see the same girl kissing SOME man's ass EVERY time I visit that board (which is rare, but perhaps makes it all the more noticeable that I see this EVERY TIME. Seriously though, every thread you go into with B O B posting, there are girls falling all over themselves to give him a virtual rim job. Enough already!!! Or just admit it; YES! I am kissing ass because it's the smart thing to do and/or there's NOTHING smarter than a girl acting stupid(er than a guy).

If you can't beat them, write snarky blog entries about them.

It's hard for me to describe why this trend chafes at me, but it has less to do with the specific instances where it occurs, and more to do with the overall tendency of webwhores to not engage in real discussions with Men Who are Assigned Respect in this industry, and instead to just try to get them to notice them by slobbering all over them and hoping somehow they'll get favors and traffic for exhibiting exaggerated deference to them. In theory I don't even disagree with this method and yeah, some of the guys *are* grand repositories of money, traffic and porno wisdom. But sometimes it just strikes me as grotesque, especially since there's such an obvious difference between the way the boys aspire to be ON the big mucky-mucks' levels and are more likely to engage in real dialogue with them, while the girls almost always do the bowing and scraping and submissive stupid-act. Teach me more, oh wise one! Thou FILLETH me with big lessons I am scarcely able to contain! I am content merely to kneel before you, a naked acolyte rubbing my nipples upon your knees.

Someday I'll give you a link to the thread in which I insulted Steve Lightspeed and explain why. But not today.

My Bitch of the Day

Grrrr . . . this drives me BATSHIT:

Sponsors who suspend webmasters for inactivity.

Brazzers

After my bitching in my last post, I feel the need to say something positive about a big sponsor, so here we go:

I FUCKING LOVE JUGGCASH.

I *love* Brazzers content. The roleplays are hot/funny and the production value is great. Their stuff is exactly what I think great mainstream porn should be. When I complain about corporate programs that fritter good money away, I'm not talking about these people. I love what they do with their resources (judging from the content I've seen). I absolutely adore it.

I don't follow the boards closely enough to know if there's any drama attached to them, nor do I make my living as an affiliate so I guess my opinion is very surfer-like, but hey -- the surfer opinion is the most important one as far as I'm concerned.

A Bitter Sigh of Relief?

I constantly stress out about slacking over releasing new promo content, especially hosted galleries, for affiliates. I always think that the big corporate sites have so much more to offer (and indeed they do, in many ways).

But now that I've been collecting sponsor galleries to use on my tgp area on Trixie.com I no longer feel quite so bad. Just a little bewildered. So many programs with so many sites I've heard make so many people so much money that are talked up so much on boards? Many of them haven't released new galleries in three months, six months, YEARS even. What the fuck? And it also seems like it's often the best sites, the sites that are supposedly our competition (solo girl sites) or the ones that have really great concepts (if only the gallery builders wouldn't write such fucking retarded sales text) that are stagnant or have grown cold.

I'm not saying that I want to be like those sites or that I think it's fine or serves me well to not release more promo stuff (if I had two of me, I'd totally be getting it done at least on a weekly basis), it just amazes me how much we do with TWO PEOPLE. Me and my partner. And we're IN all the content and SHOOT it all ourselves. Contrasting that with these big programs with money to throw around skinning GFY and shit and it just frustrates me. If we had one tenth of those people's resources to hire just one helper and sink the rest into better equipment, locations, costumes and a third talent wheel every so often? Oh my god. We would fucking ROCK. I'm not saying this as someone just months out of the gate in this business -- I've been in it since 2000, and seriously since 2002 so I *know* what we could do with just an extra $25k to $50k a year. Toilet paper money for some of these programs.

SIGH.

It really kills me that there are so many dead sites out there, not updating or rotating old content, and they get so much play. They even get good reviews on review sites. It boggles my mind that sites with no interaction, only about 15% of the content we have, and no real updates for months manage to get scores close to ours when we do live shows every week, have 24/7 spycams, REAL blogs, etc. I honestly think that maybe we offer TOO much and it reaches a ceiling beyond which people cannot even measure or grasp what it is we do. Maybe they think we're lying about doing all that stuff, since most sites promising interaction don't really have anything except maybe some cam upsells with Eastern European girls in fishtanks.

It's so easy to believe the hype on the boards about the big programs and thinking they have superior products. In some cases they do (Raven Riley's site comes to mind), but in most cases? I just don't see it.

I have got. To get. Me some. OF THAT MONEY.

Do I have the most unprofessional sponsor blog in the industry? Inquiring minds want to know.

The Usual Argument (but Smarter)

I came across this interesting thread on Gay Wide Webmasters. The "too much free porn is ruining sales!" argument is an old one, of course, but usually when you see it brought up on most adult webmaster boards it winds up that whoever suggested the possibility there's some truth to that is verbally lynched by the angry straight webmaster mob.

I like GWW because the people who can present coherent arguments actually outnumber the idiots. In fact, it's very rare you see complete troll-like morons on GWW. Actually, I don't think I've seen ANY trolls there. A couple dummies every so often, but no bonafide trolls. The ethics of the webmasters on GWW also seem to exceed those of the average straight webmaster you see spouting off on GFY, etc., and they all tend to be much more conservative when it comes to what porn "webmasters" should be able to get away with. It's truly refreshing, except for the part where you have to sacrifice an infant every three months to stay active on the board. Okay, I'm joking about that, but it IS kind of annoying how they have post requirements to keep your account from being locked down on that board.