So it's been 1 year since I made the move from
FreeOnes to
PayServe. From free site to pay site. Not sure if anyone cares but for the people who do here is a review of my experience so far on being on the other side of the fence. A lot of people didn't understand why I went with PayServe but what most people don't know is that PayServe is part of a holding (Sansyl) and they offer a lot of different things in adult. Broadcasting, licensing, hosting, billing, pay sites, DVDs, magazines (yes still) etc we got it all. So there is a lot going on and that's one of the reasons I said yes when they approached me.
When I started at PayServe it was clear that there was a lot of work to do. A lot was still stuck in 2010 in regards to billing, feel and user experience. Besides that there were some things in regards to management, employees and projects I needed to take care of. I was used to very strict ways of working at FreeOnes, lots of meetings, lots of notes, lots of ideas, lots of time consuming things which at times hold us back too much in a fast changing environment. Now at PayServe things were way more laid back. A bit too laid back imo so we had to find a proper balance there. Where do we want to go, what do we need to do, have a vision, etc. Things that we worked on and I think we have a good balance right now. We can move pretty fast and things get done in a timely manner. We are hiring people and things are looking ok right now. Far from perfect but with the current team we achieved quite a lot in the past year so I am happy.
Now first thing on the list was redoing
ClubSeventeen. As one of the major European brands it's our flag ship site and there was quite some work to do. We started with the easy part, a new tour. After implementing we continued redoing the complete member area making sure all was more user friendly, more up to date and more geared towards selling. Some say the site lost it's "unique" look but if you ask me this "unique" look was mostly due to the site being old in terms of design.
Besides the layout we also added the mentions on the site that all our girls are 18+. I am very aware of the sensitive name the brand has so we needed to at least make sure people know it's a brand and not the age of the girls. Besides that we also launched
ClubSweetheart. Same content but with a different less sensitive name. Affiliates can choose whether they like to push the old original ClubSeventeen brand or go with the ClubSweethearts one. This works out well specially on north American traffic. So in March of this year we launched our new ClubSeventeen member area. The platform for it is all custom build and we can easily clone it and use it on other sites.
While working on the ClubSeventeen site we worked on the side on the live cam platform we have.
SeventeenLive is our own premium cam platform geared towards member area traffic. We of course push this pretty hard our self from our own site but we also have WLs in other member areas. We work mostly with exclusive (Eastern European) girls so the member gets to know the girls, falls in love and well... spends money We added 1 click up sales of credit packages in general and in the private chat for when the member runs low on credits. All basic stuff which makes a nice difference in regards to usability and revenue. We upgraded the cam stream quality and size of it. Working on the live site is an ongoing thing as it is one of our main money makers. Working out promos for it is fun, especially when it pays off.
Along the way we launched brand new fully responsive tours for our other properties
BeautyandtheSenior,
YoungBusty,
MySexyKittens,
PackofPorn and Redlight/
AmsterdamSexTrips.
During the summer we did a "big" production, next to our regular productions, called Teeners From Holland. I am aware of the need of exclusive content and we are working hard towards updating with only exclusive content again. Right now we update ClubSeventeen with 24 updates a week. about 60% of that is exclusive. Content for sites like
JimSlip,
LarasPlayground,
BATS,
RedlightSexTrips,
ElegantRaw is almost all exclusive.
Also this summer we started accepting free joins to the Club. Not the "free" (49 cents is charged for processing fees to get the CC in) join we introduced at the beginning of the year but a true email confirmation only join. So people can create an account with just a valid email addy and can enter the Club. Inside they can browse around but when they get to the actual content we hit them with the upgrade pop. So people get to see exactly what they get before they join. This is a process in the works but so far I would say that 30% converts to a full membership and about half of those are taking the year offer. We are still working and tweaking on this but so far I think we are on the right way.
So I mentioned the "free" join with CC option above already. We charge a 49 cents processing fee to get the card on file and we rebill into a regular membership after 24 hours unless they cancel. We first tried it with a true free option (still with CC) but charging the 49 cents worked out way better. Guess it makes sense to people as to why they have to fill in their cc info and pay for the processing fee.
Something I inherited from the former CEO were projects like SexyOnes and an App they had custom build. Both projects did cost a small fortune but both projects are gone now. The content for SexyOnes matches ClubSeventeen a lot so that will all be used there. The App is just a write off. Things like this happen. When I can not fully be behind a product I find it hard to try to make the most out of it and in that case I rather write it off than keep it on and do a shitty job on it.
As some of you know we run partner ships too. Sites like JimSlip and BATS are good examples of them. The producers are on a % and they just have to worry about the production of content. We do the rest, from affiliates to billing and layouts etc. So we both get to do what we are good at. 2 months ago we got Nathan Blake onboard which brought us ElegantRaw. Before the end of the year we have 2 more sites coming up. 1 of them being one of the biggest amateur producers in Germany. That one will be interesting since it will open us up to the massive German market with a proper product. So stay tuned for that if you have a lot of German traffic.
In 2015 we?re going to focus a lot on the
Tainster network which we neglected a bit the last year. This is going to be an exciting project as the content on it is great, we just need to put some work in it. Sites like
PartyHardcore and
SlimeWave are perfect examples of the great content they shoot. The way it is put online can use some work though so that?s going to be a big one next year.
Affiliates. Now this is something that didn't surprise me much as it works in most business like this. 20% of our affiliates make 80% of our revenue. Among them review sites, discount sites, tube submitters and of course tube sites. We are uploading to tube sites too as they are a great way to get traffic. Would I like them to be gone? Sure in a heartbeat. But let's face it, things are not changing anytime soon so better to make the most out of it than just go on the boards alll day long and whine about the old days. 90% of the bigger affiliates we have are hardly ever asking anything. It's the small timers who need a hand a lot. At one point I don't care and understand a small timer can get big one time but on the other hand I do think it makes sense to put more energy into the big guys and tweak and work closer with them. Right now we are trying to do both with mixed results as we only have so many hands in the office.
So what is the biggest difference between running
FreeOnes and running
PayServe you ask? Well I?m Dutch and at FreeOnes I hardly ever needed to pay for a drink, lunch or dinner. Now at PayServe that's the other way around and it just doesn't feel right haha. In all seriousness, there is not much of a difference. It's marketing we do and even though it's a different market it still comes down to gaining trust and giving the users what they want and expect. It's not easy but in my opinion that goes up to any part of this business. Hard work still pays off and it shows. October was the best month since March 2012 and overall this year will be a good one.
Do I think adult is dead? No, it changed. We still sell DVDs, we still have magazines. Not doing the numbers we once did but still (and specially on DVD) a good product that's different still works.
Thank you for reading. If you fell asleep half way through than fuck you.
Up to 2015. See you guys in Vegas!!! :thumbsup
