Altporn Gossip

This is part of a response to a comment posted earlier today. It brings up some issues related to why I do this site, and I wanted to highlight it here. Unless otherwise indicated, none of this is aimed at a particular site or organization.

If you want to focus on some drama why not report about how when they tried to start this thing Suicide Girls sued them and tied everything up in court for a few years until SG of course lost for having a baseless suit.

I haven’t actively decided not to discuss that. I’ve known about that for at least two years now, though, and as far as I’ve seen it’s pretty easy to get the info related to that. Generally, I try to talk about things that either aren’t widely known, or bring up perspectives that seem to be missing from active discussions. What I’ve found is that most fanboys/fangirls of altporn sites know very little about how sites are operated, or how the adult industry as a whole operates, and therefore are unaware when people in the industry pull some questionable shit. SG’s the best example of that, but far too few people are learning anything from that situation and applying a healthy distrust to all the other sites and organizations in this genre.

To be clear, because people seem to think that I’m implying shit I’m not:

I am not saying that site A or site B or site C is operated by evil zionist fucktards who hate women, or whatever flavor or capitalist/racist/sexist pig you dislike the most.

I am, however, saying that:

• the vast majority of people who are fans of this genre are extremely naive about how these businesses are run
• the vast majority of people who are fans of this genre swallow a whole lot of bullshit marketing designed and packaged to appeal to their notions of feminist punk rock rebellion. And despite the fact that we already have a huge example of this in this genre, people are still doing it with their chosen flavor of the week.
• you shouldn’t give your trust to anyone until they’ve proven it, and I can count on one hand the number of organizations in this genre who have proven worthy.

And that includes me. Don’t believe what I say, if you like. Just please, don’t believe the hype. Be suspicious and critical.

Holeeee shit, this is good stuff. Go take a minute to read it. I’ll wait.

Done? Good.

First off, if this is the first time you’ve read Cherry Bomb’s blog, don’t make it your last, because she’s a fucking good writer and has interesting shit to say about the sex industry. Wise beyond her years, let’s say.

Secondly, it’s pretty crystal clear who she’s talking about and what site she was working for. Not many alt. sites in NYC have 100+ models and a female front who wrote a chapter in a book about women “changing the sex industry.”

I honestly can’t say a lot about Joanna, other than I do think her band interviews on their first DVD were very tepid. I’ve never dealt with her personally, but the folks that I have dealt with at BA (yes, they were guys) seemed like professional and standup dudes. I’ve certainly heard some things about her, especially since she started jumping into mainstream porn with VCA, and those things are pretty consistent with what Cherry Bomb describes. It’s a shame because it sorta sounds like Burning Angel’s mascot is fucking shit up for what is otherwise a solid group of people.

CB brings up another really good point:

As far as some of the bigger alt. porn sites are concerned, they choose a female member of the team to basically be the mouthpiece for their “mission.” She gets cute and goes on to somehow incorporate the title of the site into her own name, and continuously repeats the story about how she created and runs the company. This is how they eventually get tapped as a “feminist” company without any affiliated person having to utter the dreaded word. Critics find it titillatingly progressive, and women cheer.

People need to stop equating “woman-fronted” – or even “woman-owned” – with “feminist.” Fuck, people can’t even agree on what “feminism” is, so discussions that include it inevitable end up missing the point.

The problem is not whether women run the site or not. The problem is not whether or not a site has non-skinny white chicks on it. The problem is site ops being disingenuous assholes.

Alt Porn Overload?:

· “The New Pornographers” (timeoutny.com)
· “We Want Our Porn and We Want It Now!” (adultvideonews.com)

Will success spoil our horny heroes and heroines? We’ll have to wait and see, but in the meantime we here at Fleshbot are proud to say we knew them when.

Okay, so they didn’t really call bullshit, but they quietly raise some concerns that that the stars of altporn who are carrying the flag of “indie revolution” and planting it in the middle of the Valley are gonna end up just like the rest of the mainstream industry.

Let’s take a look at that AVN article for a sec here:

“They’re always worried about the release schedule and quality control and meeting the release schedule,” [Eon] McKai reveals. “That’s what they talk to me about on a daily basis. I’m making a product, and the moment it stops being a product is the moment VCA stops giving me money to make it.”

I’ll deal with this guy’s poor moniker choice later, but let’s continue:

“Since watching Suicide Girls [the popular alt-chick Website] grow, I try and promote my product in the same way,” says McKai, who is also promoted by his company, VCA. “One of the first things I did was create a Myspace profile and start talking to the kids, just open that channel. We sent buttons to people, IM’d people, flirted with girls.”

Nice, dude. I’m not sure you want to be hitching a ride on that bandwagon right now, but whatever. Point is, as this confirms, the Myspace/IM/LiveJournal shit that McKai/SG/GodsGirls make use of may give your 18-year-old hairless ass a warm fuzzy feeling, but it’s really just the way that Larry Flynt is marketing to you. He’s tricking you into thinking that this is about feminism through sexuality or DIY ethics. Like disinformation tried to tell you, you are being lied to.

One of your “hot new ideas” is to:

• Pay “commissions” to models
• Have a “street team”

No. This shit will not work. It will not increase your memberships appreciably. It will give you FAR more hassle than it’s worth. How long do you think people are gonna be interested in your site? 6 months for the REALLY crazy, obsessive types. You’re dealing with 18-25 year olds, and your site is definitely not gonna interest them longer than the new Franz Ferdinand album. They’ll be SUPER PUMPED for a little while, but sooner or later they’re posting in their livejournal about the new Fall Out Boy.

Assume no one but you cares about your site. It’s almost certainly true, especially when your site is nothing more than some ideas and half-written html templates that your friend on AIM made for you.

It’s not that “commissions” are a bad idea (I think street teams are a little more debatable, but that’s not something I wanna get into right now). But there are a couple of ways to do them. Here’s how you don’t do commission-based sales:

SECTION 5 - ACTIVITY REQUIREMENTS – YOUR OBLIGATIONS

5.1 Your commissions depend on your contribution to the website, and if at any time you stop contributing to the community, this agreement may be terminated.

Activity is defined as:
a. Updating your journal and responding to member’s comments.

b. Participating in Deviant Nation’s forums by posting new threads or responding to existing threads.

c. Submitting your own new sets or shooting new sets with a Deviant Nation photographer.

Hard to know where to begin, so let’s just start listing the problems here (and yeah, I know this is a “work in progress,” but it’s publicly posted, so public criticism doesn’t seem unreasonable):

• It’s not clear whether you can be doing “any” or “all” of these things
• “Participation” is not quantified in any way. Is one post in the forums per month adequate? How about one journal post a year?
• What happens when your drop out of “participation,” but still have money waiting in rollover (see below)? Is it forfeited?
• Why the fuck should it matter if I’m participating in the forums? If I’m sending you referrals, I deserve a cut. Why do I even have to be a model to earn money on referrals, let alone a “participating” one?

That last point is what really confuses me. Why not just set up a CCBill Affiliate Program? It’s easy as shit, they handle all the bullshit of cutting check and stuff, and you’re probably doing your billing with CCBillanyway, since they’re the only folks left who haven’t assraped everyone in the industry. And it’s FREE with your CCBill account.

So let’s take a look at what we’re getting paid in this commission system:

3.1 Exclusive vs. Non-Exclusive models . Models who wish to be exclusive models of Deviant Nation will be granted a larger commission rate than non-exclusive models. This commission will be agreed upon at the time the model notifies Deviant Nation that they wish to be exclusive to Deviant Nation’s website.

Once again, I don’t see why you even should need to be a model AT ALL to get a commission. The rates for “exclusive” models don’t seem to be defined, but I hope they’re a lot better than what we’ve got here:

(And just to interject here, to clear up any misconceptions: you will NEVER make enough money to live in anything but a cardboard box in an alley as an “exclusive” model doing altporn work. Even the most famous fetish models, who can command much larger paydays, don’t do exclusive work because no one can make it worth their while. Even then, most of them have day jobs or live in far shittier apartments than you would imagine (or go out with Marilyn Manson).)

3.2 Termination of Exclusivity . Termination of exclusivity will automatically convert your commissions to non-exclusive paid commission rate listed below.

3.4 Multi-Month Subscriptions . You will receive 25% on the 1st time subscription when your web site visitor signs up via your referral for a multi-month subscription. You will not receive Monthly Commission as defined below on multi-month subscription packages because the user is not on a monthly payment subscription. Multi-Month Subscriptions commissions are defined as:

a. 3 Month Subscription ($23.99) = $6 Commission

b. 6 Month Subscription ($35.99) = $9 Commission

c. 12 Month Subscription ($59.99) = $15 Commission

3.5 Monthly Commission . You will receive 50% of the members first month’s membership dues. After the first month, you will receive 10% on the member’s monthly membership dues for as long as your referred member remains a paying member of Deviant Nation. Monthly Subscription commissions are defined as:

a. New Sign up one time payment ($9.99) = $5 Commission

b. Re-occurring monthly membership dues ($9.99) = $1 Commission x # of members referred. (100 members referred = $100 a month in commission)

Okay, so that’s 25% on multi-month non-rebilling plans, and 50%/10% on monthly plans/rebills. That’s quite low compared to most of the CCBill affiliate programs I’ve come across, even for tiny sites. Most pay at least 50% on all their plans, and at least 25% (usually 50%) on rebills (see: Spookycash, Inkygirls, DarkPlay). And once again, anybody can participate in the program - not just models who are “active.”

But still, that’s not to horrible, right? At least you’ll get a little bit of money here and there. Well, not exactly:

4.1 Payment . Commission will be automatically calculated in real time, and you can login to your account to check how much commission you have earned. Deviant Nation will mail checks by the 15th working day of each quarter, if the balance is equal to or greater than $100. If the balance is less than $100, the balance will carry over to the next quarter until such time that the balance is equal to or greater than $100. All amounts are stated in and all payments will be made in US funds.

You know what the standard rollover is on a CCBill aff. program? $25. Here, you get paid less than average, and have to wait 4 times longer to get a check cut… if you ever get a check at all (again, no explanation about what happens if you drop out with money in your commission account). I’d be very surprised if more than 25% of the models can ever earn more than $100 with these rates. If the site were enticing and properly promoted so that it could get more signups, they could pay a lot more than this. Under this agreement, models would be better off just signing up for some other sites’ affiliate programs and pasting those links into their Myspace bulletins.

I know this looks like I’m picking on DN here. I’m not - they may be very well-meaning people, and they at least are trying to introduce a bit of transparency to their process. Lots of folks in this niche have crappier terms. But when you boast about your great new idea, you’ve gotta make sure that it’s actually both “new” and “great.”"SG doesn’t do it” doesn’t qualify.

…and all the tiny fish get a little ballsy, boasting about how they’ll bring down the great SG empire, and the crowd cheers, and nothing – not a thing – will change.

It’s not like I don’t take some glee in seeing those lying fucks at SG be forced to eat shit in the media. But it’s sad to see how quickly the disillusioned youth who bought the SG Media PR campaign will jump on something else with no track record, and that seems even more transparently a put-on.

“Godsgirls” is a site that doesn’t even exist yet, but somehow has become flavor of the month with the forlorn youth of Myspace and Livejournal. The claim is that it’s run by a girl who is either 21 or 19 (she admits to lying about her age, but doesn’t specify what’s accurate) whose parents apparently own a bunch of porn sites. Annaliese apparently was lent the money to start God’s Girls by someone she says is on the board Offworld Media Group. Offworld operates site like:

• http://www.twinks.com/
• http://www.olderwomen.com/
• http://www.bigolderwomen.com/
• http://www.ajarchives.com/
• Raves.com (I’m guessing Annalee Stone is Annaliese).

The company Godsgirls LLC isn’t even in her name (Public Records). Annaliese claims that Offworld doesn’t “own” Godsgirls, but that “we leased our domain from them.” Of course, one might point out that 1) you lease a thing from the OWNER of the thing, and 2) who the fuck leases a domain? I mean, was “GodsGirls.com” such a fucking awesome name that you just couldn’t use anything else?

Does any of this sound like the foundation on which to build your personal war to “take back the porn?” Does it make ANY sense that the lesson so many seem to be taking from getting burned by SG is “put your trust in a kid with a wad of borrowed money?”

Dude. Godsgirls might end up being cool. But anybody who doesn’t have more than a handful of pictures and a splash page slapped up on a server needs to expect that their claims of changing the world are gonna be taken with a mouthful of salt. And people who aren’t doing so have missed the whole fucking point.

The point is that talk is cheap, and with good PR you can trick a LOT of people. And so far, all we’ve gotten from Godsgirls is talk and PR. Hey, it worked for SG, so I can’t blame them for doing it, but don’t act surprised when some of us aren’t impressed. I know a lot of guys and chicks like Annaliese who talk a lot of shit, and about 1% of them actually amount to anything. Shut up, put the time in, let your actions speak for a while, and then get back to us. If it’s awesome, we’ll give you all the credit in the world.