Thanks for the plug, I'm glad people are liking the content :)

Anytime :thumbsup

I've lived in order:

Washington Township, NJ
St. Petersburg, FL
Ringwood, NJ
Dunedin, FL
Greensboro, NC
Olympia, WA
New Port Richey, FL
Clearwater, FL

I also frequent / have done extended stays in

Las Vegas, NV
Joliet, IL
Phoenix, AZ
Orlando, FL
Boston, MA

\mm/

Fuck yeh, girl. I watched Against Me! Sunday in TN, just before the Dropkick Murphys set (I was bouncing between Regina Spektor/ Against Me! then the DM/ Ween sets).

I hope to someday meet my Tampa neighbor! Hit a sistah up chicka! (Great interview btw)

Thank ye kind ladies!

Liz- Dropkick are good. All feelings aside, I'd watch Dropkick over Against Me anyday, but then again I don't get into Dropkick shows for free so they are much more a treat for me. ;)

Entering the dating market you're not just setting out to slay giants, but I would say at this point you're up against titans. There was a time a few years ago where I would have asked anyone looking to break out a new brand the same thing, it seemed if you didn't have a database with a few million members strong you were sunk, but right now I feel the timing couldn't be better.

The market is shifting and there is HUGE opportunity emerging, to sum it up to one word I would say "oversaturation". The proof is all around, if you look you can see it happening in recent break off / spin off sites and re-branding efforts.


I feel Swurve's strength lies in what makes it different, Swurve is not a white label, spin off or feeder site of any other dating property. To be frank I even hesitate at calling it "adult dating". The aim of Swurve is to not only grow as a company but to expand the market and make casual dating more socially acceptable. Changing social perception is an ambitious goal and not something I expect to happen overnight, but I believe by following the course we are on and catering to creating a satisfactory user experience focused on both sexes, we may be able to get there.

Surfers are getting smarter, you can't keep feeding them more of the same. I strongly believe that the quality of the community is where the focus is going to need to be moving forward. Putting it straight if you increase the number of active females using your service you increase the quality of the user experience for your male population, you need to make adjustments to your UI to attract and retain straight women. That's what we've done with Swurve.

I feel Swurve meets a need by offering users a unique connection building platform through which both men and women can embrace their sexuality and explore their desires in a judgment free environment. In developing Swurve we took a back to basics approach, focusing on functionality that fosters one on one connections rather than continuing with the social networking route where users build networks of friends. Swurve is sleek, clean and easy to navigate and I feel it has the mass appeal needed to expand the market and take the game to the next level. Everything we've seen since our launch seems to support that with card swipes coming in from users across all demographics, from the 18 - 24 age group as well as 55+.

bump for moar!

how was swurve funded? did you write the business plan yourself? how were your timeline estimates? how long has swurve been in production?

hope it's ok to ask these, feel free to tell me to fuck off if these are inappropriate questions.

Moar is comin! :thumbsup

No, these questions are totally cool.

Swurve is a partnership, but it is partially funded by myself. I don't want to throw around numbers but I will say that I'm in it in the 6 digits. Besides financial resources the partnership also provides the advantage of sharing resources with other holdings such as legal and accounting staff which helps keep Swurve running lighter and leaner, fitting a start up.

It was one of those opportunity meets planning = good fortune scenarios. I associate with some business owners in luxury markets which were experiencing a downturn due to current economic conditions and wanted to further diversify themselves. Additionally, a large internet marketing company that had holdings in the dating space was shedding (and is still shedding) some amazing personnel. Even though I was approached to start the company, I did write out a business plan. I think its important to always have one.

Did things go according to plan? Absolutely not, lol! :1orglaugh Do things ever? I think we're actually about 2 1/2 months behind where I wanted to be at this point in time, the affiliate program wound up getting off the ground a little later than I had hoped due to a last minute decision to change from 3rd party to proprietary, but even though there have been setbacks in the time line from the affiliate program's beta launch to date we have been meeting all our growth targets, and slightly exceeding them at this point.

As we built the site the first traffic we started with was small ad buys that I know from experience to be very safe / profitable sources, small PPC campaigns and such with smaller networks. That was followed by incorporating traffic from trusted partners, really I should say trusting partners because in the very early days they were relying solely on us to report stats back to them. Having to switch gears with the affiliate program was rough, but in the long we have a solution that better fits our business model being a dating property and having different needs than content sites, it also cut a recurring expense and it allowed us additional time to further fine tune the site and traffic funnels so when we launched I knew without question that the product we were presenting to the webmaster community would convert competitively with current offers. :thumbsup

One of the brightest women on this board.

HEHE nice ambush Shelly is a real nice person to talk to over ICQ and from the biz side of things she is fantastic and always keeps to her word.

super, thank you. :)

I feel cheated, halfpint...

Sorry Captian... I still think of you when I go to bed though :) and I will always wuv you deep in my heart

I had a mystery GI ailment that lasted a little over 2 years.

In late 2006 I sneezed walking across the house, when I sneezed- even though I wasn't feeling queezy at the time- I vomited, which if you've ever sneeze vomited it sucks in and of itself.

I thought it was just a one off weird event but from that day forward I started to get progressively sicker. I started having more trouble keeping food down, even smells would set me off. It started off as kind of a joke, everyone around me thought I was preggo and had some form of morning sickness, but I wasn't knocked up and it kept getting worse.

Everybody who knows me knows that in my natural state I'm a bit of a chubby panda, but by 08 I was getting too thin-

http://c3.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/i...e8da846a0a.jpg

They tested me for everything under the sun. I had ulcers but I didn't have h. pylori, my gall bladder wasn't functionint correctly but I didn't have gall stones, it was just a disaster. I could't even go to the movies- even if I didn't eat all day someone would inevitably walk in with a hot dog and send me into dry heaves.

At one point they came to the conclusion that I must have a rare form of pancreatic cancer, but instead of running a test and then telling me later, they decided to just tell me this right up front, before they even got insurance approval to run the test. What a fucking nightmare.

Luckily I did NOT have cancer, but there was a period of a few weeks where I didn't know if I was going to live or die. Turned out after all the tests and all the hoops and all the sickness, the reason for everything was antibiotics. I had a massive GI infection caused by overpersciption of antibiotics which killed all the good bacteria in my body and let the bad bacteria flourish.

I'm doing alot better but I may never be 100%. I have friends with Crohns so I know I am really not that bad, but my gall bladder still acts up and I'm probably going to have to be put on thyroid meds soon. More meds :disgust , isn't that what got me here in the first place? :Oh crap

that sucks - antibiotics get subscribed far too often nowadays. :(

i try to avoid them like a plague, the last time i got them i was shitting blood after 2 days.

Methinks she's of the brightest people on the board period.

Card swipes? What do you mean?
What do you have into development so far? Who owns the company?
Did you budget more for affilliate payouts and marketing or development?
:)

Card swipes as in paid premium memberships. With the dating market the majority of paying membership is usually generated from the 25 - 34 and 35 - 54 age brackets, so reaching outside that is very positive. I was a little concerned the site design might skew a little too hip and alienate the 55+ crowd, but that has not been the case.

The company is a corporation, it's not owned by one person individually.

From the onset more funds were allocated to development but as each month goes by marketing spend increases and by the end of the year more money will have been spent on affiliate payouts, marketing and paid advertising.

Feels like that part in Casino, "Would you say that you're the Boss?"

http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/j...002/Casino.jpg

Let's just call me the Food and Beverage manager :1orglaugh

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Let me flip these around- #12 than 11.

My Pop was the greatest. He was my father figure, he was the end all be all and I was the apple of his eye. :winkwink:

Pop was a hustler, a real sales guy. He was an entrepreneur, always working for himself and always hawking the next new thing. Anyways, I grew up in my grandparent's house and he was the center of my world. He was the reason I moved back from Washington State to FL. He beat lung cancer but wound up with COPD. At the end of Jan 2003 we took him to Vegas, where my uncle was liging at the time so he could go out in style.

We lost him 2 weeks later in Feb. It was a real good passing. As well those things can go. We were all there for him, it was in the house not in a hospital. It was hard, but I am very greatful for the circumstances.

I don't know if I will ever know the names and faces of all the players involved, but my uncle was killed a few months later, in May of that year, by two gang members in North Las Vegas.

It was a robbery / homicide plot. A girl called a female friend he was with and said her boyfriend had beat her and left her on the side of the road in a bad part of town, knowing the friend didn't have a car and my uncle would drive. When my uncle met the girl and unlocked the doors to let her in he was car jacked. The two gang members got in the car and at gunpoint had him drive to a remote location behind a shopping plaza, where they robbed him and killed him.

The plan was for the gang members to return to to girl and the other co-conspirators (non gang members) and turn over the car and the keys and they would go to his home and rob the house, but the gang members stiffed them and just kept the car, his cash and his cards for themselves.

Both gang members and the girl who made the call and said she was beaten are behind bars. There were other people involved but there isn't enough evidence to convict anyone else at this time. The major "action" players are locked up, the individual who came up with the scheme is not, and that burns pretty bad.

There have been some changes in Nevada State conspiracy laws that have allowed for appeals. On the bright side there has also been additional evidence uncovered so new charges have been filed and at present we're looking at a new death penalty trial set for October. The DA out there, Pesci, is really fucking good to me and Judge Bonaventure is a tough old bastard, I hope he hasn't retired. I'm sure he sucks from the other side of the table but when you want justice its a different story.

So that is that, 2003 was a shit a year, lost half my immediate family.

On a lighter note...

http://hphotos-snc3.fbcdn.net/hs619...._2837058_n.jpg

:thumbsup

tough chick ;)

Drink more post more :glugglug

i just woke up and dont remember what ahppened last night ... this is weird lol

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh...

I didn't know Greensboro was the place to live, LMAO! The last 2 interviews both have lived here.

is your ass sore? if so, we might be able to give you a few ideas about what happened.

nice glasses

Moar! Moar!

So far I've only been invited to speak panels for two shows, but hopefully that will change in the future (COUGH COUGH) :winkwink:. For Quebec Expo I spoke on a dating industry panel and Cybernet Expo had me for their online marketing panel and their show sponsor's panel the year they did it in Tampa. I've also been a talking head in both Xbiz and AVN Online a few times over the years.

I try to bring value to the panels I've been on and try to be open and honest and share knowledge about the subjects at hand. I don't just stick to talking points and I try not to use it as a platform strictly to promote my own product or service. I think just being on the panel is promo enough, and I know as an attendee I appreciate when other speakers do the same.

http://www.adultwhoswho.com/data/adu...2657b6de51.jpg

I think this is from Xbiz, rocking my old hair.

One of my former employers had a 2 door benz, I want to say it was an sl500 I'm not sure and if he reads this and it was a nicer model- sorry dude. We always used to pull epic pranks on eachother, I don't even think this was the best I ever got him, but it was certainly the one that pissed him off the most, which I'm sure is why this is the prank still being talked about.

The interior of the car was very small, which is what made it such a perfect candidate to be filled with peanuts. I didn't do the actual dumping / filling of the car, but as the mastermind I was the one who's name was cursed every time peanuts came out from under the seats. Months later peanuts were still working their way out, attaching themselves to clothes, flying around when the top was down or spilling out into the parking lot when the door would be opened. :1orglaugh A good sense of humor is vital to a healthy work environment :thumbsup

LOL :1orglaugh I don't know if I ever really went any farther than anyone else.

There was a time though when I was getting threatening phone calls from Chris DeWolfe and Myspace "Tom". :1orglaugh I remember when Tom got on the phone for the first time I almost died laughing, I couldn't believe he was a real person. Up until that point I thought he was a ficticious personality.

http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Page...on-myspace.jpg

Sometimes at shows I get teased and called Mama Duck / Mother Hen because if I have a crew at an event I'm going non stop trying to make sure everything runs as smoothly as possible. I'm italian, I can't help it. Its like an instinct kicks in and I'm making sure everyone's getting along, is well fed and is staying out of trouble. Its not that I'm uptight or that I don't like to have fun, but shows are business functions too and my employees are my responsibility.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3214/...7c00df4a_o.jpg

I have a t-shirt line as a hobby. Steve from Ghost HUNTERS is a customer. I never really get to put alot of time into it, I just sell it retail primarily through Etsy and at local conventions / shows and I wholesale to a few vendors, just did a pretty big order to someone out in Japan.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1273/...735a969435.jpg http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4045/...37fd280e64.jpg

I think having a T-shirt line is kind of like trying to start a record label, it's one of those things you justhave to try your hand at and get out of your system.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4015/...8b356fb707.jpg http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4061/...6e31030e9b.jpg

The kids line is my favorite thing, they don't sell as well as the adult shirts but I think if I put a little effort into it they would surpass them. Its just one of those things, I'm not unrealistic about it- I don't think the designs are the hottest out there., but they have a market and it could be a decent business for someone, it's just hard to dedicate time / resources to it when that same time and resources would make me several times the return putting it into my core business.

Shelly Crash is an anomaly in the adult industry---we've been doing business with her for years, and she is always prompt with returning icq's and emails, super friendly, attentive, honest and active in the business relationship. It's truly a pleasure to work with her, and if you haven't, you should. ;-)

Thanks so much, Andy! I appreciate that!