Originally Posted by Cory W

I am not much of a board person anymore, Hustler and my own projects keep me busy as is; but here are a few observations that come to mind for me, based on your post, Shap. Hopefully it doesn't lend itself to digression of your original thoughts and points.


1) Everything you said, without question, contributes to a variety of failures and breakdowns.


2) A complete and utter lack of realistic expectations and patience.

Shap, I don’t want to undermine the amount of business proposals you have heard, I am sure you have heard more than your fair share. But I can’t tell you the amount of business opportunities that I have been pitched that inherently reveal how short-sighted people in this industry are is without scope. The dynamic of the plan is usually something that was conceived in a car ride home from a Chinese dive restaurant between two former webmasters and a Chinese chicken chef. It’s usually pitched from the fervent randomness that it was conceived with, which is sort of like listening to a monkey chirp on two eight balls of blow. There is nothing written down at the time of the call, but rest assured, details are coming. And when they come, it’s all different. Why? Because when something is written, it’s like a Heidi Montag without any makeup on, all the shit that is messed up comes shining through. Now the new idea is basically a copy of everyone else’s products that they copied from someone that copied…..Why? Because if you can think up an idea at a Chinese shithole restaurant in Van Nuys, it was likely not an idea that hasn’t been thought of before.

Now comes the timeline and Action Items, because without the mirage of these two functions, the plan is still short of a total waste. The timeline is typically around 30 days, and involved in this timeline is a 15 day risk of total and complete change of focus. If the product doesn’t actually work within two weeks, you can pretty much rest assured that it will fall into a half-designed-half-programmed-kinda-functioning-business-cards-were-made-too-fucking-early graveyard.

You might be thinking, but what about the marketing plan? Well, that was started already with the “something huge is coming” post on GFY and the icq logs with Eric covering how much a banner and skin would cost if this ChineseShitholeCash actually got off the ground.

The point in this is that companies and individuals are short-sighted and grasping at straws so often, they fail to realize that if they would have taken some time and attempted to create a true working product, with a unique marketing plan, and some focus, they’d fair way better.

Let me tell you a true story, when I started my “mainstream” portfolio (that’s in quotes for a reason to be addressed momentarily), I told my partners that if we did this, no one asked about profits for one solid year. The only questions I ever wanted to hear needed to revolve around how we could make our sites more surfer friendly, how we could more succinctly and efficiently divulge information to our readers, and how, in a general sense, we could engage our communities and keep them happy. Over that year, we grew slowly, but every couple of months, we’d look at where we were and we’d semi-celebrate the achievement. There was no profits involved, only monthly losses that got greater with each passing month.

We also had a marketing plan. Much of this plan included picking up the phone and calling people to pitch why we should be considered in their lineups for news. Some of it included creative traffic portals. Some of it included flying to places to get content that served us only for viral marketing.

Now, what type of responses did I get at shows?

“Does that shit actually make money?”
“Why don’t you have a Sex Search ad on there?”
“You should at least be feeding them installs.”
“That’s a fun hobby.”

Of course, how much does that change when business takes a dive? That’s the fantastic part, it doesn’t, which safely gives even more validity to what Shap said. Whenever anyone hears un-inflated profit margins alongside a natural business timeline, they are out. When I tell people a year, they are already refocused on the next idea they can come up with while on the way to an Springroll lunch special.

Let’s try this for a second. I am 34 years old. If I could have a long-term product yielding me nice living by age 40, would I take it? The answer is yes. With all the energy and time that so many people have spent going for the quick cash grab, you have to wonder how far along they’d be today if they’d worked on creating a quality product. Something I have preached from day one, if something feels too easy, if it happened to fast, it’s not likely to last. Nothing wrong with taking it, but everything wrong with building your life around it. Eventually they are hauling the boat away, that’s life.

3) An observed contrast between mainstream and adult. It’s all one web, when you disregard morality and delivery issues, you aren’t left with that much of a difference.

I constantly hear people creating this great divide between mainstream and adult. Unless you are talking in terms of delivery of content (regional, work places, age limits), you aren’t left with much of a difference. And really, the aforementioned differences don’t really account for much of the overall transpirations of your business ideals. The only real separations I see are self-applied. Mainstream focuses on longer term plans, as well as solid, creative and unique marketing plans. They don’t give up on an idea in two weeks.

The main differences are the people.

I recently sat in the Adtech opening seminar in San Francisco. They had the President of Marketing from Levi’s Straus give a speech. He broke down several Levi Straus marketing plans, along with marketing plans from various companies. The marketing breakdowns included television, print and of course, social media. With almost every marketing aspect covered, I could invariably not draw a line in the sand between its application in adult or mainstream. Included in these ideas were marketing plans by major companies that were budgeted at 0. Something to think about…


4) The business is over because everything is free now.

I recall the first time it ended, I think it was 2003? Not sure how many of you remember those old dinosaur AVS setups. When those went down, they went down faster than last year’s Versace. One noted example would be Cyberage.com. For those of you unfamiliar with this period of time, the closest thing to an iPhone was talking to your TV while listening to your iPod, Chlamydia still trumped HPV as the socialite bar scene “must not get” VD, The Buccaneers were on the brink of winning a Superbowl, and Cyberage.com was an enormous brand in the adult industry. Of course, if you visit the site now, you will see that the market corrected itself and eliminated it all-together. Or is it? So wait, Dave survived the end of the world? And today's Buccanneers couldn’t beat a high school marching band in pads if they didn’t get a handicap on the line? Say it isn’t so…time sure is a funny thing.

Remember when Shap was annoying everyone with his trademark infringement, I think he sent me a C&D for BROmaster when I used the color canary yellow in my logo. I guess Shap once owned a canary yellow golf shirt and he thought it brought out his tan. Maybe he was foreseeing the turbulent times that are now? Protecting a brand yesterday looks a little savvy today. Or maybe it was just one aspect of a long-term plan? Or maybe Canadian summers cause Canadian people to go to despicable lengths in order to preserve the semblance of a tan? I’m torn, to be honest.
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