Originally Posted by PersianKitty
7. Why did you create Persian kitty? When? talk about the early days.
I bought a PC for my home in early 94. It had Compuserve software loaded on it. I logged on one day to check it out and stumbled onto their real-time chat. There I was sitting at this login prompt asking for a nick name. Never thinking about the fact I could change it anytime I wanted to, I stewed over this for some time and finally typed in ?PersianKitty" because my Persian cat, Smokey, was staring at the monitor also. The nick name stuck and luckily I didn't choose something like Hellacious Hanna or I might not be here today. Over the next few months I developed some really kewl friendships with people on Compuserve chat. I spent a heck of alot of time and money I didn't have at the time there. No $20 dial up accounts for Compuserve at that time. In early 95, Compuserve added Internet access to their services and I started cruising the net. I had a long-distance boyfriend who had peaked my interest in softcore porn, so we'd surf together sometimes just for something to do. At this time I was totally burned out at my job. In 4 years as Accounting Manager, I'd gone through two complete systems changes and it looked like the company was getting ready to downsize. I needed a break. I decided to take a few months off and play stay at home mom with my two boys. Something I had never done.
In August of 95, Compuserve raised their rates. Myself along with what would end up being over 100 people from the chat channel I frequented found ISPs for dial up and moved to the Undernet of IRC for chatting where I have a channel (I rarely go there anymore). $20/mo was a lot better then $400+/mo. About a month later I put up a little personal webpage. Nothing fancy. I didn't know html except from viewing source code on things I liked from sites I ran into. Whenever I saw a piece of a website where I liked how they'd done one thing or another I'd save a snippet of code in a file to review later and figure out how they did it.
With my little personal page I was fascinated with that fact that people from all over the world at all times of the day and night could be visiting something I actually put on the net. I decided I wanted to put something up that would draw some traffic just to see how many people I could get to my corner of the web. At that time the major 3rd party counter was Digits.com. The highest ranked sites on their list were Adult Link sites (NaughtyLinx and For Your Eyes Only). I decided since that seemed to be the way to get fast traffic I'd try an adult link site.
The first page went up on my personal ISP on October 1, 1995. It had 3 sections about less then 80 links. It only made sense to call it Persian Kitty?s Adult Links since that's what I was known by to my cyberfriends. I would hunt for links myself by visiting other link sites everytime they updated and looking through their listings for sites I liked and (cringe to think of trying to do it now) by reading Usenet postings about adult websites. Whenever I added a link I'd email the webmaster and let them know about it and tell them about my site. I didn't require a reciprocal link until March, 1998, but lots of people linked me back. I believed in running the site like I'd want to see a site I visited regularly run. That meant daily, sometimes several times a day, updates.
In late October, my site got added to Yahoo and traffic went quickly to about 20K uniques a day. My personal provider said "Pay or take it down". I wasn't doing the site for money, had never dreamed that someone would actually pay to advertise on it, so I replaced the page with the details of why I was taking it down. I emailed everyone on the listings also. Within 24 hours I had 3 offers for sponsorship (one was from the man who is now my server guru, another was from the people with Spice Entertainment). Each would allow me to run my site for free in exchange for an exclusive "sponsored by" ad at the top of the page (I only had one page at that time). Being stubborn I was searching for ways to do it myself. I found a host in Texas, Hypercon, who agreed to host me for a basic rate. I'd told them exactly how much traffic I was doing. After moving my pages to them (still not on a domain.. I had no clue what Internic was) and spending 3 days chasing down sites with my link on them to ask them to change the URL, Hypercon removed my site. Even though I'd been upfront with them and they hosted a few other adult sites, they tried telling me that their "board of directors" had decided they wouldn't host adult sites. Yet the other sites never got removed.
I immediately contacted one of the three sites that had offered sponsorship. The man who was to become my server guru extraordanaire was running a site called Secrets of Speed Seduction. He set me up with an account, registered persiankitty.com (under his name at the time.. boy to think if I'd fallen in with the wrong person). I again contacted all those people who had links to me and asked them to change the URL. PersianKitty went back online with a text ad for Secrets of Speed Seduction. I'd had a total of 4 days downtime between all of it. Well there was a weekend in there ;)
I continued to hunt for sites to list and started having people email me to be linked. Back then there weren't all the tricks around so finding sites to list wasn't too hard. I added a weekly pose picture so that I draw in some traffic that way. By February of 1996, the site was seeing over 80K uniques a day. I was being contacted alot by people wanting to advertise on the site. Because I wasn't paying for hosting, etc. I turned them all down, telling them that it wouldn't be fair to the person paying for my hosting. A couple got very persistent. I told Lewis, my server guy, about them. He asked what they wanted to pay. I hadn't even bother to ask and I had no clue what to charge. Well the most persistent of all was Webpower (Amateur Hardcore at that time), I asked the owner what he would be willing to pay and the number he came back with was more than twice in a week then I'd been making a month at my old job. I was floored. He wanted to do a week trial, paid in advance. Lewis and I decided that we'd change our arrangement. He continue doing the server upkeep, etc (PK was on part of one machine, a P85, on a shared T-1 at that time) for a percentage of the ad revenue. The trial week went great and Webpower has had the top position on my site since late February 1996. Within a month Intertain Online followed as a second full time banner. They paid 3 months in advance to start with. The owner of Intertain Online later partnered with Dean (The General) on Unfaithful and other sites. Danni started bugging me for an ad placement in the summer of 96. She was very persistent. I didn't want to ad more bandwidth by loading a second banner on the pages (webpower?s ad at the time was text only and Intertain's was a banner). She agreed to host the banners on her side at that point. In August of 1996, I added Danni's banner underneath Webpower?s. All three of these advertisers are still with me today. IEG hooked me for a 12 month contract for my second page banner spot. An experience that was less then pleasant but I got through it. I can't believe I was ever that naive.
By this time also, PK was running on two separately located machines through parts of two separately located T-1s. Eventually this number when to 4 machines on 4 separate T-1s. I added the double stacked rotating banners in September 1996 mainly because I had so many people asking to advertise and the 4 sponsors I had weren't going anywhere. Also most people at that time couldn't afford a full time slot so it made since to break it up in smaller more affordable pieces.
Persiankitty.com today runs on two beefy servers with more connectivity the most ISPs have. I've been very very lucky to have aligned myself with a server guy who cares about what he does.
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