This thread just jumped to a therapeutic level. :)

Mike, what you don't know could fill a blog ... Oh, wait; it already has.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

You monkeys need to get your stories straight. :upsidedow

You didn't get it -- he's so far off of the mark usually, this wasn't pulled entirely out of his ass. :thumbsup

That's cause the ONLY people who know the real "story" are JT and whoever the hell runs Pirateville...er, I mean "MindGeek" :1orglaugh

Everybody else is just guessing (including Mike).

Makes for good board drama I guess. But as I said before...I prefer a closed business.

iwantchixx told me that I was wrong about that.
Do all other businesses have blogs that basically make them look like the biggest pieces of shit in the world to the public?
Really?

My brother is a car salesman for instance. I know what goes on behind the scenes of a person buying a new or used car. It's incredibly crooked and shady. But you don't see the auto industry writing huge blogs for the general public to read revealing the art of the "deal" to the general public.

You don't see Google employees writing blogs that tell all about the inner workings of Google. That is about as secret as it gets. lol

NO industry gives out it's secrets. NONE. Even fucking KFC keeps the Colonels recipe in a locked vault. :pimp

That's what I meant when I said I think this should remain a CLOSED BUSINESS. Has nothing to do with the mafia or any other dumb cliches.
It's just good business to NOT let out all industry secrets to the general public.

I don't think that the kind of stuff that Luke Ford used to do or that Mike is doing now helps anybody (except the people writing it because it brings traffic and ad money).

And they certainly hurt the business overall by giving the public the perception that we aren't worth spending their money on (as if full scenes for free all over the place wasn't already enough to keep them from spending money on porn)

I don't know about totally "closed," but for sure, much, much, much more difficult to get into. When the bar became non-existent, that was the beginning of the end and the start of total devaluation of the product. The bar should be very high and you should have to work your ass off to be able to be involved. I'm also in favor of showing up to someone's office with a ball bat if they don't pay you.

I didn't mean closed to opportunity.

I meant...closed to revealing what's behind the curtain.

Google doesn't let ANYBODY give out their secrets. Just ask an SEO guy about Google algorithms...nobody really knows shit. lol

Or the formula for Coca-Cola. It's a secret, kept in an actual physical vault.

We create FANTASY. People should think that a porn star girl actually wakes up in the morning wearing perfect makeup and high heels and ready to fuck.
Everything we do to pull the curtain back and reveal how things work destroys the very thing we are trying to sell: A sexual fantasy.

That's what I mean.

Our industry gives out it's own secrets of business.

Look back at The Beatles for instance. When they came out, everybody thought that they all lived together in some kind of clubhouse and wrote songs all day while they ran from screaming hordes of women. lol
That was pure GENIUS of marketing.

Nobody in their organization was allowed to go to the press and tell the reality behind the scenes. It would have been a dumb move.

And I am of the opinion that it's a dumb move to pull back the curtain on our industry to the general public.

Just not aware of any other industry that does that to itself. :(

well, isn't that the end result? sure, it costs almost nothing to start in adult, but at the same time fairly hard to be profitable and 'make it'. Free market is the way to go

50 partners

This thread, right here....



.

Well, it's all about control in the end. The Beatles, Coca Cola et al could control their image and marketing much easier both in terms of when they were being established (a much differant, non-Internet world) and how they went about it. With porn we are not talking about a single entity, like Pepsi or The Stones. We are talking about a largely Internet-based Industry (which translates into a mostly anonymous Industry) hyper-focused on each individual's own outcome. So despite the shows and meetups, and despite companies doing business together, in the end you cannot control another website or company. So this means you bob and weave and compromise and bend and strive to work together with people. All that back-and-forth is bound to lead to some 'secrets' being let out.

But also, WHAT 'secrets' exactly? Building a website, building an online business - much of it is translateable to 'mainstream'. What I mean is that even if you never saw a naked woman in your life you could still build the infra-structure of an Adult business (website, affiliate program, billing, scripts, etc). The only real differance is the content. Now, that content is powerful (sex sells) but, in the end, ther'es no 'secret' to selling porn. Some can do it better than others but it is not rocket science. LOL

Which leads to another basic fact (as DWB mentioned): ANYONE can start doing this shit. Look at me, starting in my mom's basement with $0 and not knowing what a "jpeg" was. So of course you are going to attract desperate, short-term-thinking fucktards out for a quick buck who don't care how they git it.

I'm not talking about ME of course. :)

The "secrets" are the fantasy

We ask people to suspend their disbelief when looking at porn.

If they are suddenly reading stuff that says you are a piece of shit and the girls aren't sexy in "real life"...you sort of take away the entire fantasy.

People don't need to know how things really are. It's not really a "secret", but it's also not something you want to shove in their face.

You may KNOW that the hot girl you want to fuck has to defecate every day. But you don't want to be TOLD that and think about it while you are licking her ass and pussy before fucking her. lol

And it doesn't matter that anybody can do porn. Anybody can pretty much do ANYTHING they want to try.
What matters is who is creative enough (or in the case of a lot of people...crooked enough) to make a living at it.

The cream will rise. The crap will sink.

I just don't see where giving out inside information on an industry to the general public does anything to make sales.
Which is why no other industry does that.

And in the entertainment industry (which we are a part of)...companies work hard to NOT let bad things get out to the general public.
A night out partying for Miley Cyrus is made to look like she is "out of control". When it's really not much different from any other young woman's night out at a club.

Putting a negative slant in a story can make anything you do look "bad". And I don't see where that's a good thing for the adult industry because we are already perceived as "bad" right out of the gate.

That's just my opinion as an entertainer and businessman.
If it's such a great idea for an industry to air it's dirty laundry to it's own customer base...then I guess every other industry in the world is doing it wrong except for Adult.

MindGeek has a secret to ruin Playboy videos:thumbsup

If you want your videos to look like theirs just ask me, I've cracked their secrets and it will help you to reduce your sales :upsidedow

I understand what you are saying Robbie. Porn is an Industry where the old adage 'There is no bad publicity' does NOT apply. LOL But mainstream entertainment is filled with rags who proclaim this or that about Miley or Beyonce or whoever is hot at the moment. The papparrazi are always on the hunt for the next celeb scandal.

See, I look at it the other way. I am not so protective about the Adult Industry in general. Being "bad" is not "bad" it's "good". LOL The badder the better. So pornstars take drugs? Pornstars have wild crazy sex? Pornstars hang out with rock stars and celebs and are dirty, filthy little sluts and whores? Wow.....BRING IT ON BABY. This is what they are here for!

Also I do not see the insider secrets being discussed openly with the public as much as you do. I see Mike South as no more than a porn version of Rona Barrett (for the youngins out there - Rona WHO?). And on the actual business side, I can read Business Week or The Wall Street Journal to learn all kinds of insider things about Big Finance and Wall Street, for example.

I wonder if they will really "run" things. Their sites convert like crap so I can't wee where JT would give them any control over that part of it. I can see where his sites are sort of one trick ponies in some cases and might be over the hill. Fake Taxi has a shelf life. But the major keyword followed by .xxx was doing well for him or so he said.

Somewhat accurate is fine if you want to write "personX sure is handsome' when in fact they aren't all that handsome. However, when you want to claim impropriety or advance your own narrative about the way the industry works... somewhat accurate is far worse than silence.

Why is it that those who know the least always know it the loudest?

Overcompensation.

Ah, good call. :thumbsup

I'll take Clement giving you a big :thumbsup as the man himself verifying that its just a cross sale deal like any other cross sale deal...
But then tossing VideoZ into the story may get Mike a few more page views...
And we all know how hard it is to find Clement contact details :error and ask him before just attaching him to a story.. Who needs fact checking...

Mike did get 1 part right "You won?t read THIS on AVN or XBiz?.." Because well you know fact checking and stuff...

Mike don't tell me you are calling yourself a reporter again after admitting you are not one on this very board not so long ago.

:1orglaugh

"If you look at MindGeek/Manwin sites you see that they are cross selling videosz via epoch/segpay. Thats because they have the same deal with videosz. Ditto Streamate."

Biller deals does not automatically means anything regarding % of revenue sharing or shareholdings or so. Streamate bills via ccbill in some sites like met-art this does not mean met-art owns Streamate or that the % should be different than other deals where Streamate uses own billing gateway.