Adult Site Broker Talk Episode 28 with Chris Rodger of Payze

0 (8s):
This is Bruce Friedman of Adult Site Broker, and welcome to Adult Site Broker Talk, where every week we interview one of the movers and shakers of the adult industry, and we discuss what's going on in our business. Plus we give you a tip on buying and selling websites. This week we'll be talking to Chris Rodger of Payze.

1 (34s):
Adult Site Broker is proud to announce ASB cash, the first affiliate program for an adult website brokerage. With ASB cash you'll have the chance to earn as much as 20% of our broker commission referring sellers and buyers to us at Adult Site Broker. Check our website at asbcash.com for more details. First of all, today let's cover some of the news going on in our industry. The free speech coalition has announced that Cal OSHA unanimously approved temporary emergency standards related to COVID-19 prevention. The order applies to all California employers.

1 (1m 14s):
FSC will host a town hall meeting on December 4th to address the industry's questions and concerns. All employees are required to wear a face covering wall at work, except for specific tasks that cannot feasibly performed with a face covering. One would think performing would be one such task. Every workplace in California is required to have a COVID-19 prevention plan that can be shared with Cal OSHA and employees upon request and a COVID-19 exposure and a California workplace needs to be investigated and documented by the employer. If an employee is exposed at work and needs to quarantine, the employer must continue to provide salary and other benefits while that person is quarantined, regardless of whether they're able to work from home, there are new specific regulations about the cleaning and precautions in employee housing and transportation, which may include model houses, production, houses, and drivers.

1 (2m 17s):
If provided by the production company or studio any visitor to your set, whether an employee, contractor, or vendor has the ability to report unsafe working conditions to Cal OSHA failure to comply with any of these can result in significant fines and extensive litigation. Naked sword will cap it's year long, 20th anniversary celebration with a virtual party on Sunday, December 6th at 4:00 PM Pacific. It will be hosted by founder and CEO, Tim Valenti, and sister Roma, and we'll feature a starry mix of industry and mainstream entertainment guests long-time naked sword director, mr.

1 (3m 0s):
Pam publicist mikes to bill and performers, Calvin banks, Bruce Beckam Theo for Dakota pain and Wesley woods are set to join comedian and drag star, Jackie beat comedian, Margaret Cho, and musician, Jake sheers among others, comedian and activist. Kathy Griffin is also on the guest list. Griffin was gifted an actual sword and dub swords woman of the year by the company. When she hosted an industry event over a decade ago, performer Allum, Wernicke, and directorates Chichi LaRue will serve a celebrity DJs for a program that will include hilarious clips and sexy performances and a special drag performance by miss pineapple, 2020 Gemini di Valenti said, it's incredible to think that naked sword is 20 years old.

1 (3m 54s):
It's amazing to see the company I started growing to what it is today. He said, it's only fitting that we do a party to commemorate this moment and what a party it will be. Lal expo is announced a postponement of its February, 2021 show due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Organizers have not confirmed a new date. We have made the best decision for all the attendees and exhibitors who support us year after year said co-founder and organizer Anthony Rivera. The Corona virus has forced us to change our lifestyle habits, social relationships, and work dynamics. And this includes attending mass events, Rivera added.

1 (4m 37s):
This is why the event in Columbia will not take place in February 21 and will possibly be scheduled for the middle or end of the year. Organizers hope the decision would ensure the eighth annual edition of Lal expo can be held smoothly and all its intended use will fully enjoy the conferences, seminars, national and international guests, exhibitions and parties. The first U S edition of Lal expo in Las Vegas has also been postponed without a firm reap schedule date, or various said. He hopes to have the support of the adult entertainment industry for the first us version of Lal expo, as well as the eighth version in Colombia, the shows are an opportunity for everyone and we've been named working for months to ensure everyone has an unforgettable experience.

1 (5m 27s):
He said, now let's feature our property of the week. That's for sale at adult site broker, we're offering a sex toy review site dedicated to exploring sexuality and sharing and reviewing the authors favorite sex toys. The thing that really stands out as the extremely high quality content used throughout the site, most sites, especially review sites, use junk content. That is very obviously written just to rank for terms in Google. This site is written in the first person and as a joy to read the authors, take the reader on a journey, showing them which toys that they find the most enjoyable and explaining how to best use them. The rankings in Google are high because Google has rewarded this site due to the quality of the content.

1 (6m 13s):
It's also a nicely diversified site in terms of revenue. It's from a good mix of affiliate offers. So the business doesn't hinge on only one main program. The site is also very diversified in terms of traffic to individual pages. The most trafficked page on the site only makes up 14% of the traffic. So it's not dependent on just one page ranking. Well, all content is exclusive. Nothing has been taken from elsewhere. Pretty much all of the traffic comes from organic Google results, no ad or traffic buying has ever taken place. This is an outstanding opportunity for the new owner. If they want to further boost the traffic, this outstanding sex toy review site is available for only $225,000.

1 (7m 2s):
Now time for this week's interview,

2 (7m 4s):
I guess today on adults, I broke your talk is Chris Rodger of haze, AKA evil, Chris, Hey Chris, thanks for being with us today on the adult side, broker tough. Hey Bruce, good to hear from you. How are you doing fantastic, Chris? Now Chris is an industry vet who joined the adult business way back in the nineties, and it must make you really old. He has an extensive background in affiliate program and traffic management. We had a hand in launching some of the earliest solar girl sites in the olden days and later managed affiliate programs before entering into the billing space. In 2011, after that he managed the affiliate programs, triple X cash and teen revenue.

2 (7m 50s):
For many years, he also used to have his own forum. Remember those, it was called X nations. I liked that one as a sales director at paise that's spelled P a Y Z E. Chris works with his clients and find some better and more efficient ways to process their high risk transactions. Now, Chris, let's start out with, you have the moniker of evil, Chris, which knowing you for so long. I don't think you have an evil bone in your body. So how did you get that handle on the first place? Oh, well, you know, back when I first got involved with the industry, I worked with a very good friend of mine, whose name was also Chris and his nickname ended up becoming good, Chris, but in the end, I think that, I think that he was the evil one and, and I was the good one, but, but yeah, it, it, it's just, I was the office manager among other titles when we first

3 (8m 56s):
Got started back in, you know, 99, 2000. And, and when you're in that position, you you're the one who usually, you know, sets the rules and makes the decisions and hires and fires. And it was, it was just, I, you know what, I needed a nickname for the boards too. So somebody gave that to me. So I was like, fine, whatever. I, you know, I don't really even use it very much anymore. I still have it at, at, at the expos forums. And I still have it at a, a G F Y, but that's about it now.

2 (9m 31s):
So they still, I know it's the same. So people, the old, old timers like us, no, no, no, it's the same.

3 (9m 37s):
Got it. You know what, there's a producer over at evil angel who goes by the name of evil Chris now, and he can have it, you know?

2 (9m 49s):
No, no, no, no, no. I think we've got a lawsuit here coming from California, man. We Sue with about everything. So I, I think, I think you've got a case here, Chris. I really do

3 (9m 59s):
Well. Here's the funny thing people have hit me up out of the blue saying, Hey, did you do this and this and this, the other for this movie. And I'm like, what? No, I don't do content anymore. I don't produce anymore. And I'm sure it's the other way is true as well that he's been hit up and say, Hey, you look, Chris, you know, how are you doing? He's probably like, I don't know who you are. Mistaking one another. So

2 (10m 25s):
Too funny. Now, I guess this isn't your first rodeo. You've had some, some experience in radio in the past.

3 (10m 34s):
Oh, you know what, when I was in, in the military, I, I did a career in the military and I was in my spare time over in Germany, I would do some radio announcing for the network over there. So cause what they did was they had paid announcers during the day and then they had volunteer announcers in the evenings. And I got involved in that pretty early when I got over there, I thought that was really cool. So I did that and I had a, like a, an evening show once a week. And then I would sometimes substitute for some of the paid guys and they would pay me when I was substituting during the day.

3 (11m 16s):
So yeah. And it was fun. It was, I did, I did an oldies show. I did a, a metal show for a little while and yeah, I enjoyed that quite a bit

2 (11m 27s):
Video. It was a lot of fun. There's no two ways about it. I spent a good deal of my life in it or I should say it used to be like everything else. Now it's all corporate and stay then, you know, it's not what it used to be. Now. Why don't you talk about when you got into the industry and what led you to join the business?

3 (11m 48s):
You know, it was pretty simple. I, I was still serving and you know, in my spare time I was goofing around on the computer that I had and I ended up buying a modem at one point, this going back to like, I don't know, 95 or something. And I just got involved with some local BBS, you know, call in services, get to chatting with people and make some new friends and play some online, simple online games. And, and that was it, you know? And I, and I met a couple people who were putting up these, you know, adult oriented types type pages and home pages, which were starting to do really, really well.

3 (12m 30s):
And when we got together, I came up with some good ideas for them and one thing led to another and you know, we all started making money at a certain point there, back in the late nineties. And I just made a decision, you know what I'm going to, I'm going to go into business with, with this guy and, and, and we're gonna make some money and see where, where it leads us. You know, it felt like it was an opportunity that I couldn't pass up. Sure. So that's about it. And you know, that lasted for a few years, we had a really good time. We had, we had some great success with that. And then, you know, the company kind of went in different directions and I went into a new direction.

3 (13m 10s):
I started managing affiliate programs and, and some affiliate traffic that went on for many years. And, and eventually I landed in the building vertical with, with the guys at pace. And I've been doing that for going on 10 years now.

2 (13m 29s):
Yeah. You kind of joined some old friends there, didn't you?

3 (13m 33s):
Yeah. You know what the pace team is comprised of of certainly certainly industry veterans and, you know, a good amount of our guys come, came from the old CC bill days and, and some others are some seriously successful webmasters from days gone by. So it's a very knowledgeable group that, that really knows the industry very well. And so we do all right. I CA I have to say there are a great group of guys to work with and work for.

2 (14m 12s):
Now, you have the title of sales director kind of led me into my next question or one of my next questions. The people there are such as you say, veterans, how, how much management do you actually have to do? And then what are your as sales director? What is besides placing people into merchant accounts yourself? What are your duties?

3 (14m 41s):
Well, the title itself is just that a title, you know, I mean, we're, we're really, we're all, all of us sales guys in the end. Right. And, and, and so what that means is that we're always looking for new clients to place and, and work with and get their own merchant accounts for them. So, yeah, my, my duties is, is just to get out there and go to shows, generate leads, meet new people, and, you know, target those who I think would be a great fit for what we could do for them. Right. And just close accounts and get people set up at banks.

2 (15m 24s):
Now, what, what would be the advantage of working with Pais over say some of the other companies out there?

3 (15m 35s):
Yeah. You know, that, that could be a simple question to answer or a complicated one and I'll, I'll try not to overcomplicate it, but what, what having your own merchant account is great for is having a lot more control over how you bill for your goods, right? So you, you know, some people do prefer to have a third party involved to take care of all their billing for them. And some people like to have a very hands-on approach when it comes to their billing, the control, and the, the, the ability to change things quickly on the fly without having to request it and, or to not have to wait for your, to get paid based on how some, you know, the schedule of someone else paying you.

3 (16m 27s):
There's, there's really a ton of things evolved. And, and, you know, there's different scripts and things that we, we can offer to our clients. Certainly those who are on NATS, we have a very good relationship with, with John over at knots and their entire team. In fact, our core team is based out of New Jersey, just a 15 minute drive from, from the guys at NATS. So it's cool. We've worked very closely with them over the years

2 (16m 54s):
Now, beyond having your own merchant account, you and I both know that there are a lot of options for people out there. Let's say you're talking to a merchant and they're talking to, you know, billing process or grant brand X and billing processor brand. Y what, in addition to those scripts, you talked about in the end, the relationship with gnats, why else would they do business with you?

3 (17m 26s):
You know, billing always comes down to relationships and trust too. There aren't a whole lot of people out there who will do business with a complete stranger, certainly where their money is concerned. So, you know, we pride ourselves on, as I mentioned, being veterans of the industry that most, everybody knows somebody on our team and certainly, probably many of us. So there's that to keep in mind. But we also look at the individual situation of the, of the client. Where's their billing coming from? What kind of traffic do they receive?

3 (18m 7s):
You know, what's their risk level and so on, right? Some people out there will look for a certain kind of client and not hesitate to take them on regardless of the risk involved. And then there are others who just look at the overall picture of their company and go, well, you know, I don't know if I can, you know, safely handle 300 chargebacks in a month from you, you, you see where I'm going with this absolute, there are just some, some people out there based on, on the, the type of business that they, they they're doing that, you know, do I really want to take something like that on, and I'll tell you, I look at the content as well, certain types of content.

3 (18m 58s):
I just won't go near, right?

2 (18m 60s):
No, I get it. I get it. Now you got to be selective. There's been two ways about it, especially in billing, because things can blow up very, very quickly. And, you know, you talked about your team. I won't, you got guys like Hank Freeman and Doug Wix as the owners. I don't think it gets any more solid than that. Those are, those are two fabulous standup guys in our industry.

3 (19m 22s):
Absolutely. Absolutely. And the prospect of joining that team about 10 years ago, when I ran into Hank, out of Phoenix forum, I was very excited to, to, to possibly join that team. And about six months later, it, it became a reality and I was, I was very happy, so yeah. And I continue to be fantastic.

2 (19m 46s):
Yeah. I don't, I don't see people leave there. I just don't see people leave there. How about we talk about billing in general and how it's changed over the years.

3 (19m 55s):
You know, the, the big thing about it is in the earliest years of, of the industry, most people were using, you know, whatever third-party service that they could get them on board with. Basically the SIM, the simplest answer was, was the best answer for them. And as time has gone on, you know, more people are using a combination of third-party billing plus their own merchant account. And that's the kind of scenario that I would, I recommend for most merchants out there is to take a healthy combination of the two certainly should have more than one billing mechanism in place.

3 (20m 37s):
Yes. On top of other things like alternative billing, which we never used to have, you know, there was checking and, and, and that was considered alternative billing back way back when, but now it's, it's, you know, more or less considered more normal, but there's cryptocurrency now and there's, there's debit. And, and there's a, there's several other things that people can use. So I think how it's changed the most is kind of twofold. Now you have way more choice of, of how you want to bill and who you want to build with. And just the, the, the, the rules for, for billing are much more stringent than they used to be as well.

3 (21m 26s):
So there's, you know, there's, it's, it's not that difficult, but you know, you still have to have your ducks in a row and you have to be serious about, about what you're doing to be able to do it right

2 (21m 42s):
Now. Like everything else it's matured.

3 (21m 45s):
Now, now

2 (21m 46s):
Some of the challenges online payment companies face these days, I can say that, is it still the traditional stuff like fraud, chargebacks, et cetera, or are there, is there anything else that is a real challenge right now for companies like yours?

3 (22m 1s):
You know, what you just mentioned are, are two, the big ones, right there, fraud is a big deal and, and charge backs are another. And people also look to us for advice on, on traffic as well. Now, I, you know, you did say that I manage traffic and traffic programs back in the day. And those were very different days. I really, in this age of the tube, I don't have this really don't carry the same knowledge when it comes to that. Because by the time the tubes really hit, I was out of the affiliate, you know, management position. And, and I was on two different things.

3 (22m 42s):
Good battle, good band too, by the way. Hey, you know what, that's funny you say that because the very first concert I ever went to was the tubes.

2 (22m 52s):
There you go. You know, you know what, my first concert, my first concert was, you want to see what a big one, an old fart I am,

3 (22m 59s):
Glenn Miller, ah,

2 (23m 2s):
Fuck. You know, the monkeys.

3 (23m 6s):
They weren't even a band as a TV show.

2 (23m 9s):
So you were talking about traffic before I threw you off base there, we were talking about challenges. I mentioned you were talking about the tubes and how that's changed.

3 (23m 21s):
Yeah. And just that actually you'd asked me about the challenges and what you said made perfect sense would fraud is a big one and there are different services out there to prevent and actively fight against fraud. You know, there's, there's content theft, another one, which a lot, a lot of content producers worry about or are looking at every day. And chargebacks are always something that certainly we at at pays and other billers look at constantly just to make sure that their clients are, are not, you know, exceeding those thresholds.

2 (24m 14s):
Yeah. And the thresholds in recent years have gotten more stringent from the, from the card companies.

3 (24m 22s):
Yep. They sure have

2 (24m 24s):
What what's been. What have been the repercussions of that? There've been a lot of people who've been checked out. No,

3 (24m 31s):
But you know, people have had fines, you know, due to, due to excessive chargebacks and they'll have, you know, they have to take measures to prevent further charge back issues. And you know, it can happen due to, you know, when there's many different reasons why you charge backs can go up or, or hopefully come down, but there are services out there that can help you with, you know, taking a customer, be it to, you know, a real true reason for a chargeback or, you know, some kind of friendly fraud charge back and you know, not make it go against your thresholds.

3 (25m 14s):
I recommend,

2 (25m 17s):
Oh yeah, absolutely. You want to do everything you can to keep things clean. What's a typical five, by the way. I hadn't heard about that.

3 (25m 25s):
Well, it varies on, you know, on the, on the risk assessment, but it just depends. Okay.

2 (25m 33s):
Okay. What's the, what's the largest fine. You've heard of

3 (25m 36s):
$25,000. Ouch.

2 (25m 40s):
Okay. That's a fun, wow.

3 (25m 44s):
One I've heard of, but that's, that is a big one. It is.

2 (25m 47s):
Yes, it is. Well, I guess the company's big enough. It's pretty easy to absorb that. If we're, if we're talking about, we're talking about a mind geek or somebody like that, and they get a $25,000 fine, they take it out of their side pocket. So, you know, deal if it's a mom and pop that's and that's another thing. Is there anything new coming up at Pais that our listeners should know about?

3 (26m 12s):
I'll tell you at the next show. Oh, come

2 (26m 14s):
On the next show. When the hell is that going to be,

3 (26m 19s):
When do you think it will be? Oh God, no, to be honest, they think it'll be

2 (26m 24s):
Late 20, 21

3 (26m 27s):
Really late 20, 21. Okay. You're not as optimistic as I am.

2 (26m 32s):
No, I'm actually, I'm being realistic because of the, the situation, especially with the United States and Europe is getting worse again, as, but because of what's happening in America. I mean, I, as an American citizen, I probably won't be able to go to anything. And if I leave Thailand, when I come back, I ask this, I have to go through a 14 day government quarantine. It's insane, but you know what? There's no, COVID here. We can talk. We can talk all day about that.

2 (27m 11s):
I'm actually going to be, I'm actually going to be working today on an article for medium about COVID in Thailand versus the way the U S has handled it. So should be very interesting. I'll let you know when it's done

3 (27m 28s):
Know you

2 (27m 30s):
Used to be very involved with sites and affiliate programs. And now you're on the billing side. Talk about pay sites and the affiliate model. And I've heard some of our industry say that both or either dead or dying. Tell me what you think.

3 (27m 44s):
Well, they're not dying and they're not dead. There's still lots of affiliates out there, but it isn't the huge amount that there once was. Okay. But there's plenty of affiliate programs out there that are still to be joined and you can promote this and that, whatever you like, people are a lot more savvy right now. I'll give you an example. So I was prospecting around for some clients. It was on a tube and I saw a site that I hadn't heard of. And I'm like, Oh, what's that? And I wonder, well, maybe it's, it's a part of a network, you know, of a, of a mega program that's out there.

3 (28m 26s):
So I typed, I just typed in the URL and it popped up on and only fans page interest. I thought, Oh, that's, that's interesting. No, it redirected somehow from the URL to the same page, the promo page, I'd only fence. So I thought that was pretty interesting way of, of promoting, you know, someone promoting themselves, whether it was probably a paid spot, you know, on the, the, the tube I happened to be on.

2 (28m 60s):
That is interesting. That's very good.

3 (29m 3s):
Got to get creative now, you know?

2 (29m 5s):
Yeah. But I mean, where do you see pay sites versus where they were five years ago?

3 (29m 13s):
I mean, they're both there, they're still in line with what they were five years ago. I mean, pay sites are still very popular when somebody wants to see something, you know, specific, right. They're willing to pay for it. And you know, and that's true for all niches. Of course, you can go to a tube and see a lot of free things, but you're limited to what the tube offers you. And I know there's a lot of content on them, but you know, if you want to see very specific, highly produced content, you go to a pay site.

2 (29m 55s):
Absolutely. Now, what do you see the effects from COVID-19 having on our industry short and long-term

3 (30m 3s):
Well, short-term, it's been, it's been good for, for the industry. Overall numbers, numbers are up this year just about everywhere. And if they're not, you know, I don't know what you're doing wrong, but you know, people are doing well. Now that a lot of people are saying, well, it's not going to last and be, you know, w you know, people get ready for the crash, but I don't know if there's going to be a crash per se. It may, you know, slowly go down to, you know, regular levels. But overall it's been, it's been an okay year for people in the industry online.

3 (30m 45s):
How about long-term regarding COVID, long-term, it's hard to say, yeah, it is. I don't even want to venture a guess, other than saying the bigger numbers probably won't stay that way. They'll probably, you know, eventually come down slowly to more regular levels.

2 (31m 7s):
Yeah, I know. It's I know it's really put a crimp on, on, on people's production that's for sure.

3 (31m 14s):
Yeah. I can see that. And at the same time, I don't have any numbers on this, but I would, I would guess that a lot of new cam models have come online during COVID.

2 (31m 27s):
Oh yeah, absolutely. No. It's I can, I can confirm that from talking to some of the camera operators, you know, another thing that's, that's kinda, that's kind of interesting and it, it's interesting to hear you say that you haven't seen the crash, or you haven't seen things come down. There are so many people out of work in the United States, especially, but all over the world, you know, industries like the tourist industry have been decimated here. My God, I live in a tourist town. It's it's like a ghost town, which for somebody who lives there, isn't really too terribly bad to lay on the beach.

2 (32m 10s):
Like I did yesterday and not have anybody there except me and a woman giving, giving me a foot massage. But I've kinda surprised. And I would imagine you are to that with a lot of people, not having paychecks and not even getting relief from the government and the States that things haven't come back down.

3 (32m 34s):
Yeah, you're right. And it's affected, you know, a lot of different sectors, hotels, restaurants, you know, I'll, I'll suffering quite a bit. I, I tell you what, I haven't had this much takeout my entire life. I see it as a good way of supporting, you know, my favorite local restaurants through Uber and other services. So I'm, I'm happy to do that. We here just went back on like what we w they're calling a code red boat. Oh, I dunno. About three weeks ago, we went back to code red. But before that, the restaurants were open with limited seating, you know?

3 (33m 18s):
And so I, my family and I were able to get out one time for dinner. So that one time was the one time since March, that the three of us had gone out for dinner and it was a Friday night. And we went in there and it was about 10% capacity, even though they were allowed to go way more than that, the place was just really dead and quiet, which we didn't mind. People are worried. People don't want to die. Yeah. So that, that was that. And then about a week later, everything went back to red again. So they, they weren't even allowed to let anybody in. So I'm actually glad we got a one time, but I know yeah.

2 (34m 3s):
Devastating for the restaurants. It's really terrible. I might, you know, my heart goes out to all those people all, all over the world or, or gone through this, but I see it here. So many places, shuttered, it's not even funny. They're dependent on tourism. And there is no tourism. There hasn't been any tourism since March. So imagine that it's

3 (34m 23s):
God, it's like the live entertainment industry has taken a massive hit now, too. You know, sports, all that stuff where we're large gatherings are supposed to take place. I've got concert tickets on my, in my phone right now in my Apple wallet that I don't know how long they're going to sit there, but you know, the band has said, they're gonna, they're gonna reschedule. So I started with what band? Pearl jam. Oh, cool. Wow. Yeah, my son and I were supposed to go last March. Oh, how cool. How old is your son? 17. Oh, that's so cool. To be able to share that with him.

3 (35m 4s):
Yeah. That would have been his first Pearl jam show.

2 (35m 7s):
Oh, shit. Right on. That's cool.

3 (35m 10s):
We'll get there. I'm optimistic.

2 (35m 13s):
You gotta be, you gotta, I'm optimistic, but I'm also realistic. So when you asked me before we started this, when I thought we'd see shows, I'll actually, it was during this, but I know when you, when you asked me when I thought we'd see shows again, I'm trying to be optimistic because for instance, the European summit keeps moving their dates back and I think that's going continue. I really do. It's. Yeah. Thank God. There are now approved vaccines. I don't know if you heard about the Moderna one, which is there's about 95% effective, which is there's a wet dream. That's crazy. Cause they said, if it's 60% effective, it would be great.

2 (35m 57s):
And they're talking 95, which is incredible. So that's the beginning of the end of this thing. Hopefully, hopefully it will metastasize and mutate or whatever the word is and it gets mutate and how the new strain that makes the vaccine you enough work that would suck. Where do, where do you see this business going in the long run, Chris. Now, many people predicted this demise. We talked about the tubes, actually two sites, not bans when they became all the rave, we knew that didn't happen, that it killed the business.

2 (36m 38s):
So what do you see ahead?

3 (36m 40s):
You know, it's hard to see too far ahead, but what something I believe is going to happen is, well, right now, you know, what we've seen is a lot of models going online and taking care of their own business. Right? And so, you know, most of them, quite frankly, to limited success, but I think what we're going to see in the future is, is companies that are gonna pop up that are going to be able to manage those models and help them to make more money, be it by, you know, live shows online and getting more eyeballs in front of them or helping them with their content sales.

3 (37m 24s):
And, and that's a little bit of a throwback to the very beginning of the industry, how I got involved, where, you know, we, we were managing a lot of girls sites because I don't want to exclude guys, but I'm just saying we manage these amateur girl next door kind of sites where, you know, all they really had to do was create their content and put it online. And we did the rest. Now, there are some people out there that do this now, obviously, but I think that's going to increase a little more and certainly from a marketing aspect where, you know, these models are going to get more eyeballs on their, on their stuff, which ordinarily they wouldn't be able to get on their own without spending a ton of money on, on a marketing budget.

3 (38m 9s):
So I do think that you'll see more of a, of a, of a managed service coming in the future. Interesting where models will be a little more receptive to letting someone else take over their marketing and, and whatever. It could be some kind of shopping cart where yeah. Take care of my billing, take care of my, my content management, take care of my marketing, you know, all of that for whatever fee that comes up because it's tough. It's tough to do it all by yourself. Yeah. Yeah.

2 (38m 44s):
I understand. Especially if you're a model, you're probably not a business person. There are exceptions there I've talked to some exceptions, but I've had some contact me through my general consulting company that were acceptions, who said, Hey, I want more help. It's for the most part they're models, they're not business people. So,

3 (39m 6s):
I mean, I'll give you an example. There's up here, you know, you've got someone like, like Kenny B, for example, who, who runs your pay side partner. Right. I think that's a, that's a great business model. This is very helpful to, to, to those who come to him. He helps out with a lot of, a lot of the heavy lifting where websites are concerned and, you know, marketing and billing and content management and site maintenance and the list goes on. So somebody like Kenny and, and your pay site partners is a very good example of what I'm talking about, work with, with regards to management, where people just want to get involved, they want to make money and they don't really want to worry about, you know, a lot of headaches or what they consider maybe headaches involved.

3 (39m 59s):
Sure, sure. Yeah. And he does a great job with it. So if anybody out there needs that kind of a thing, check that out.

2 (40m 8s):
Absolutely. Does he, does he handle individual models?

3 (40m 13s):
Yeah. Hey, sites, individual models. Sure.

2 (40m 17s):
I like people with only 10 sites.

3 (40m 20s):
Pardon me with only one people with only fans pages that I don't know, he shows cause only fans in itself is a sort of, they do limited management. Right. Limit limited. Yeah.

2 (40m 37s):
Yeah. Very limited. I think those, those platforms all, I think for the most part, they're just a consolidators. Okay. Now let's now let's get to the most serious topic we've talked about so far, we've talked about the industry talked about COVID we've talked about a lot of things now, Chris, I know you're a huge hockey fan being from Toronto. You've come upon it naturally. I think, I think when, when Canadians are born it's mommy, daddy hockey, or maybe it's mommy hockey. Daddy. I'm not sure. So you're a fan of your beloved Mayfield maple leaks.

2 (41m 17s):
No, I know they were doing really fantastic for a while. When the cup, I know you were really happy when the cup didn't they win the cup. Oh, okay. Well I just, I just granted them the cup anyway. Sorry about that. That's why not? They went deep in the playoffs, at least. I hope so. As you see, all right. Maybe not, I'm not a hockey person, obviously. So maybe you can give us your state of the Leafs report.

3 (41m 49s):
You hear the crickets? No, it's

2 (41m 51s):
Look, I do. You

3 (41m 53s):
Know what it's like, you know what it's like with being a sports fan? I mean, you got to stick with your team through the thick and thin and, and some years are better than others. And, and you know, for the past four or five years it's been, it's been encouraging. We've had, we have, we've had better results, better players, better team. The Toronto maple Leafs are kind of like the, the it's like the center of the hockey universe. You know, although maybe many Montreal Canadians fans would disagree with me and it would be a good debate, but definitely, you know, the Leafs are like the Dallas Cowboys, you know, and football, although Dallas has, has won a few championships since 1967.

3 (42m 42s):
And that's the last time the Leafs won the Stanley cup, but it was, it was, I'll tell you this. I'm very happy with the, with, with what's going on changes. There's going to be a lot of changes when they do start up the next season. I enjoyed watching the, the, the condensed playoffs from the two bubble cities. They did it in Toronto and Edmonton played in a bubble and they made it, you know, even, even from the outside, we were like, Oh, they're never going to get it going. They got it going. And then we start saying all the never be able to finish. And they finished and they crowned a new Stanley cup champion and hopefully they never have to do it that way again, but it was still cool to watch.

3 (43m 26s):
I, it was kinda surreal with nobody in the stands. Now we're all kind of used to it now, but yes,

2 (43m 34s):
We're used to the can crowd noise on all our sports. Hey man, I may know now I may not know a lot about hockey, but asked me about, about baseball and the NFL and just get ready to sit down for a few hours. So stuck to especially giants baseball as you know.

3 (43m 54s):
So while we're tailing off on the hockey that anybody out there, who's a Tampa Bay fan, congratulations on winning the cup this year, you know, for any kid growing up in Canada, it's no small feat to win that thing. And in my opinion, it's the toughest to trophy in all pro sports to win. Cool.

2 (44m 15s):
And, and let me just, and let me just say that anybody who's the Los Angeles Dodger fan, fuck you. Anyway. So, so tell me about Chris Roger away from work, besides watching the Leafs, what do you like to do in your spare

3 (44m 29s):
Time? Oh, you know what, I'm not a guy that plays a lot of video games. I'm a little bit on my tablet. Well, you know, I watch a lot of sports on TV as you know, and I play softball every year and an old man's executive league, which is a lot of fun. And we did get, we did get through a season this year with some modified rules. Yeah. It was, it was good and not one positive test to COVID the entire summer. So we did all right. I like to read a lot and you know, if I'm, if I don't have my head in a book, I'm, I'm, I Wiki everything.

3 (45m 12s):
I love Wiki, you know, no matter what I'm doing, I always, you know, and I get stuck on Wiki sometimes for hours, I'll read up on this and then I'll read up on that person. And so, yeah, I I'm, I'm kind of a Wiki Hollick Hey, do me a favor next time. You're going to look something up, give me a little notice and I'll go online and change it. Okay. Are you an editor you remember back in the day DMO Z? Yes. So it was kind of like, it was kind of like Wiki for it for adult sites. And I was one of the editors and they used that, you know, they use that, that database of and then they fed it to different search engines.

3 (46m 2s):
So a lot of, a lot of the editors were guys like myself who owned our own little doorway sites and link lists and stuff. So of course we listed ourselves of course, for a little extra traffic, but yeah, I wanted to actually ask about that earlier if you'd heard of de MAs. Cause that was an interesting little project. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. A little bit before my time on the, on the internet, but I do certainly. And I'm certainly aware of it. Well, Hey, Chris really liked to thank you for being our guest today on don't say broker talk and I hope we'll get a chance to do this again really soon. My broker

1 (46m 41s):
Today is part six of how to buy an adult website. Last week, we talked about the sales agreement. So now both you and the seller have signed the agreement. What comes next? There needs to be an escrow setup where you send the money, whether it be a one-time payment or a deposit. If you're going to be making payments. Now, this has done about half the time. These days, the seller for their part puts the assets of the sale into escrow, namely the domains being sold and any other tangible assets that can be put into escrow. Your attorney can give you more information on that. We recommend escrow domains for us grows. There are a firm out of Washington, DC, and no, they're not paying me to say this.

1 (47m 25s):
I just use them, trust them. And I'm delighted by the work done for us. Either an escrow agreement will be drawn up by them in the case of a customer escrow, or if it's a simple one, it could be set up on their website. Then you, the buyer, the seller and the broker will be contacted by escrow domains with further instructions, such as wiring information, the escrow is opened and either the deal closes within a matter of a few days or an inspection period is allowed. It all depends on what the agreement calls for, whether you need an inspection period really depends on whether there is still some information you need to find out prior to the deal, closing your brokering.

1 (48m 7s):
Your attorney can advise you more on this and it's on a case by case basis. Then the money is transferred as are the domains and the deals closed. Now in many cases, in fact, most of the time, the seller either stays on board for a period of time to help with the transition, or at least as available on an on-call basis to answer questions. This is something most buyers should ask for. But at this point you pretty much own the website. What do you do now? We'll talk about this subject more next week and next week we'll be talking to Suresh, DEC Sheena, the CEO of chargeback guru.

0 (48m 48s):
And that's it for this week's Adult Site Broker Talk. I'd once again like to thank my guest, Chris Rodger of Payze. Talk to you again next week on Adult Site Broker. I'm Bruce Friedman.