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.

Broken Link

My apologies to all, but I broke the "enter" link on Delia's clean tour entry page a few weeks ago when I "improved" it. I am so sorry, but wanted to let you all know in case you noticed a decrease in conversions recently. It was my fault, but I fixed it today. Thank you to A. for discovering it and taking the time to write to us so we could fix it. All should be well now! By the way, his blog is a good example of how to write entries designed to convert so check it out for inspiration.

One of the challenging things about running our own sites and affiliate program is exactly this: we are doing so many things that it's very easy to overlook little problems. Many times I begin a task only to be distracted by another, and when that happens? Sometimes proofreading or double-checking links can get shoved to the wayside. While I do look forward to the days when we can hire people to proofread, build galleries, etc., I know that mistakes are still bound to happen so I'll try not to be too hard on myself. ;)

Mother's Day

Definitely a bad day for sales, but I'm kind of glad.