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10 years on GFY - my adult biz chronicles
Technically it's more than 10 years, It was Thursday Oct 20th 2005 when I registered on GFY among with at least about 25 (not kidding) other active adult webmaster boards. It was one day after I officially started working with Big Sister Media, the company running an online broadcasted sex club.
I remember the front page was always filled with threads with replies within 5 minutes max and I didn't want to post much as a rookie because of the strong GFY factor. There were the contests, the pissing matches, the program and TGP owners bravado, the celebrities, the mental moments, the Ambush interviews it was pretty dynamic. Then I got to read AmbushInterviews and I couldn't stop, was so excited said I want to be one of those guys.
As the time passed I made more and more connections, plenty of which in US since I usually worked from 5 pm to 3 - 5 am in the morning and only Americans were still online and that time. I wanted to build an ultimate pay site selling that worldwide unique product. Was studying pornresource.com for paysites and stats, was extensively studying all the programs and sites I could get my hands on. Always admired Nastydollars and what they did as an epitome of paysite business.
Then I went to WMA Amsterdam 2006, my first ever AW trade show, it got all the way more exciting as I could meet many GFY'ers in person. Was pleasantly surprised about the reception I got, almost every program I met I knew in detail, including the sites they ran, the people who run it, their history. So I got me a plenty of good contacts some of which proved to be and still remain golden.
Remembering that at one of the parties in a sort of a fancy club I've actually misunderstood that "homo" on the restroom door sign is not an acronym for "men" (like men as opposed to females). It actually meant a full frontal panorama in the mirrors all around that restroom, with a table full of handy apparel like condoms or parfums in the middle of it.
Plus an after party in our high end club in Prague that included our crew's middle aged men taking over the dance pole instead of the top looking girls exactly at the very same moment when a group of about 15 top VIP Japanese guests were seen in.
TGP's were still going strong back then, remember always checking the stats results from the selected top four of them that were published in AVNOnline.
AEE and Internext Vegas 2007 were my first US shows and I got the full Vegas package including the best dining, the Player's ball with pimps in furs, PussyCash awarding a Porsche as an affiliate bonus and lots of memorable moments including scoring with an ebony girl at one of the after-parties. They say if you haven't been to US you haven't seen the world. The vibe was still up and people were up to do business with you just because they liked you.
In 2007 / 08 the consolidation began with Dee on a buying spree as he bought all the available old school programs he could. They visitied me in Prague scouting for some live cam operation related feedback. Remember I was on the casino boat cruise they rented in Florida 2008 and also their $ 200 PPS promo as a sign of things to come. Those that sold at the time hardly ever regret.
MyFreeCams - a concept that initially nobody believed in changed the cam landscape to become the first branded freemium cam site and one of the most profitable businesses in adult ever.
Mansef / Manwin started with their first acquisitions that usually went terribly wrong right after they took over.
Meanwhile the pioneering tubes such as megarotic or youporn started to get into the game causing uproar and an internet wide traffic migration.
The combination of a card banging renaissance/ hosting prices dropping enough for tube owners to be able to stream full length videos under DMCA and the global financial meltdown leaving many with debt and no money to pay back were a perfect storm and the landscape started to change rapidly.
At the internext 2009 you could still meet many of the old school paysite programs on the showfloor. However, the marketing already became more aggressive. I can't say it would be any different with us as I've brought back from Vegas some viable cross-sell deals. Something we totally refused to do before (still we only did CCBILL cross sells).
From 2010 - 2012, after the ePassporte fiasco, many of the formerly overspending programs were gone as they were unable to sustain the decline in revenues. In some cases you were left to wonder how were some ever able to run a profit generating business in the first place. Plenty of those that I used to read about in their Ambushinterviews either vanished or got caught red handed while at it.
Google's anti spam updates smashed plenty of solid sites along with it (including the sites I've built during my non-compete period making me transfer to cams).
While every attempt to combat content piracy failed right at its infancy. Manwin's continuous acquisition spree resulted in several top brands ending under its umbrella. More importantly acquiring just about every available big tube with solid SERPS. Followed by their aggressive back link building campaigns this won them the unique opportunity to sell billions of impressions daily.
A trend followed by several traffic brokers / ad networks that were able to establish themselves on the market.
Mobile got a major head start and the regulators in many countries became busy instantly trying to catch up with the adult marketer's know how that was pretty much resembling the glory of the dialer era.
From 2013 up until today means the rise of mobile performance networks looking to get their hands on as much preferably carrier traffic as possible, although there is fewer and fewer loopholes to exploit and the competition is fierce. Then there are CPA networks teaming up with product owners to manage ads / returns for their publishers. A most logical step.
The business today may require more tech and math knowledge than before, one can hardly be utterly stupid or have no understanding of money anymore to make a bank. On the other hand one can't also be an MBA trying to manage an actual pornographic website with no knowledge of the market as this usually leads to horrendous results.
No matter how many dysfunctional individuals will yet enter the business thinking they will get rich quick, I guess that, after all, it is still the ability to learn, common sense, guts and instinct that counts.
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