Adult Site Broker Talk Episode 182 with Michael Gonzales of YumyHub

This is Bruce Friedman of Adult Site Broker and welcome to Adult Site Broker Talk where each week we interview one of the movers and shakers of the adult industry and we give you a tip on buying and selling websites. This week we’ll be speaking with Michael Gonzales of Yumy Hub. At Adult Side Broker we’re proud to announce our latest project, thewaronporn.com. You’ll find articles from industry websites as well as mainstream publications from around the world. It’s designed to raise awareness of our industry’s plight in the war on porn and the numerous attacks on our industry and online free speech by hate groups, the religious right, and politicians. You’ll find all that and more at thewaronporn.com. You’ve probably noticed our new podcast site at adultsidebroker.com. It has a more modern look with easier navigation and more information on our guests including their social media links. For more, go to adultsidebrokertalk.com. And we’ve doubled our affiliate payouts on ASB Cash. Now when you are first sellers or buyers to us, you’re going to receive 20% of our broker commission on any and all sales that result from that referral for life. Check out ASB Cash.com for more details and to sign up. Now let’s feature our property the week that’s for sale at Adult Side Broker. We’re proud to offer for sale an innovative marketing agency that specializes in managing the top .01% only fans profiles in the world. It’s just under a year old but is growing very rapidly. They fully manage creators workflow from promotion to monetization. They’ve developed an internal CRM that empowers the sales management, marketing, automation, and analytics. This is one of the most relevant advantages of the agency that allows it to drive in-target traffic to profiles and monetize them. The company is already doing over 2 million euros in annual revenue from just over 20 creators. They have a database of over 1 million contacts and 600,000 unique user accounts. This is an outstanding opportunity for anyone to enter the world of only fans management and immediately become one of the top agencies in the world along with its software, processes, and know-how which will allow you to bring models up to three times their initial gross monthly revenue or established agencies can acquire the company and expand their business. Only 2.59 million euros. Now time for this week’s interview. My guest today on Adult Site Broker Talk is Michael Gonzalez of Yummy Hub. Michael, thanks for being with us today on Adult Site Broker Talk. Oh, thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure. Now Michael is a serial entrepreneur with an extensive background in business startups. In 2001, he was awarded National Publisher of the Year for a publishing company he started at the age of 20. In 2005, he founded a national franchise company. He was a finalist in the spirit of the entrepreneur award. He grew the business into 67 locations in 13 states and was ranked in Entrepreneurs’ Magazines, Franchise 500 in 2009 and was named as one of the top new franchises in the country. In 2014, he launched a marketing company that provides services to Fortune 500 companies. Michael is also an international real estate investor. So let’s talk about Yummy Hub. It’s an innovative subscription-based social platform that redefines the way creators and their fans connect. It was launched in May of this year. At Yummy Hub, they believe that every creator deserves a platform to share their unique voice and content with the world. Their vision is to empower creators to cultivate a dedicated fan base by offering exclusive, engaging, and compelling content. Yummy Hub is not just a platform, it’s a haven for creators and their fans to form meaningful connections. Through their subscription model, creators can provide their fans with unparalleled access to them, granting an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at their creative process and sharing content that’s tailor-made for their most devoted fans. By providing a safe and respectful space for creators to express themselves, they empower them to connect authentically with their fans. So how’d you like your commercial? Sounds good. I try. So first off, Michael, besides what I just talked about, what is Yummy Hub and how does it work? Uh, Yummy Hub is a fan platform that allows creators to offer their followers exclusive access to their yummy content. Creators can monetize their subscribers by either charging a monthly subscription amount or charging a price per post like a PPV, accepting tips, doing lives, or offering custom requests. Wow. That’s a lot. It sounds like, I mean, I haven’t heard of another platform that has all that. Am I right? Maybe. It just depends. What we offer is, what we currently offer, we wanted to make sure that we have the bare minimum functionalities and features that other fan platforms have to offer. But I can discuss in more detail if you like, what else we are going to be introducing in the near future. Sure. Go for it. So one of the things that we’re working on is like a collab post functionality where creators can offer split payouts on a collab post. So that’s a feature that other platforms do not offer currently. Cool. Very cool. But it sounds like you’ve already got some things that some of the other platforms don’t have. I would say so. So when we developed our platform, we wanted to make sure, so we dissected the big platforms out there, and we wanted to make sure that we offered what they offer. So we definitely made sure we did that. Okay. How long did it take for your team to develop your platform before you could launch? Tell us a little bit about that journey. So we have a team of 10 developers, and it took us 12 months to develop our platform and to get it to a point where we could launch to the public. It was a lot of 80, 100 hour work weeks. Definitely was not an easy journey, especially for me personally, since I do not come from a tech background. So it was a massive learning curve, but I have always thrived on challenges and have always been used to being the underdog in business. I’m used to the David versus Goliath position. I actually thrive on that because it creates a lot of motivation for me, and it’s almost like, "Oh, wow, this can’t be done. Let me show you type of mentality." So it’s nothing new for me. Hey, going up against the only fans of the world, you’re certainly in the right place. Yes. And you said you’re non-technical, and obviously, well, 10 developers, you’ve got lots of technical people to help you through, and I’m sure you have a CTO. How has that learning curve been, and what stumbles have happened along the way? So in the very beginning, I would say our biggest challenge was figuring out how to make our platform stable. So as we were growing in user count, let’s say our servers, we had to make sure that it handled the volume as we grew in scale from different levels. So that was probably the biggest challenge, but we’ve stabilized everything, and now smooth sailing as of right now. But how about as far as understanding what was going on technically, since you’re not technical? So I’m tech savvy, but I’m not a coder, so that’s why I had to put together a team for that. That’s a big team, definitely. In your view, what’s the biggest problem with other fan platforms? So I would say current fan platforms are constantly changing their terms and conditions, which has taken away the trust in the industry for creators. Yeah, and it’s not like they trusted in the first place. Correct. Yeah. So talk a little bit more about that. Get a little bit more into detail about things that have happened and why they don’t trust it. Let’s say only fans, for example, they used to offer a lifetime referral program, and they took it away, then they put a cap on it, and they made it where you can only go up to 50,000, and it’s only a payout for it at the first 12 months, and then after 12 months it goes to zero. Or let’s say explicit content, it was allowed, and then it was banned, and then it’s not banned. So for about 48 hours and it never really went into effect. Exactly. So it’s like, what that does is it creates confusion and frustration for the creators and the subscribers. And so it creates a place of, we don’t know what we’re going to wake up to tomorrow. So that’s not a good position for anyone to be in. Try being a website broker. You’ll understand about waking up, not knowing what you’re waking up to the next day, especially when you live over in Asia. I could tell you stories, my goodness gracious. How is Yummy Hub solving these problems? So me personally, I do not like to be sold and promise something to only have it taken away from me. So since I don’t like that, then I would never do that for any business that I run. So with our platform, creators do not have to worry about us constantly changing our terms and conditions. Like, yes, there will always come times in a company where you have to make updates to the terms and conditions, but changing it purely for the sake of the company making more profit at the customer’s expense is just wrong. Yeah. And the creators have definitely gotten screwed over by a number of these platforms, especially only fans. And I guess they kind of felt like, hey, where else are they going to go to get this kind of traffic? Yeah, exactly. They felt like, hey, well, they can get away with it. So why not? Yeah. And I’m convinced that banning explicit content was nothing more than a publicity stunt. And it was brilliant. I mean, it certainly got everybody’s attention. So I think that companies do that stuff sometime. If you look at Pornhub and some of their publicity stunts, it’s pretty ingenious. How does yummy hum verify their creators and how long does the process take? So obviously to prevent catfishing, we use the same third party provider that only fans uses, which is Endotto. So when we were first developing our platform, there were many IDV companies we were talking to early on, but we figured creators are already used to the Endotto, the flow, the process. So we decided to just go with them. We can talk offline about another possibility that I think you like. How do you monitor the content on the platform? So we have to make sure that our content is legal, of course. So we use a third party provider for our AI monitoring, which is ActiveFence, and it’s the same company that only fans use this. And what exactly does that do? Basically, you put like parameters in place as the platform itself. And then based on those parameters, then it will, let’s say like flag certain things, certain words, certain images, and then us as a company, then we then review it and then we ultimately will say, "Oh, no, this is like the AI got this wrong for this one. This is okay." Or it’s like, "No, this is not okay." And then it’s deleted. How often does it flag somebody and how often is it wrong? So it really depends on how much you turn it up or turn it down. So let’s say you’re trying to monitor a certain image. You can put a percentage on it as far as how much it’s going to flag it, or if it’s going to be more lenient. And so you could put that up or down. So that’s really dependent. Okay. Okay. So it doesn’t really have a database in there? In terms of what? Of past users. Oh, yeah. Well, explain that more. Well, I mean, there are solutions. And like the one I was going to tell you about where there’s actually a database of people that have already been monitored and have either asked or failed. Well, we would have that, but that would only be within our platform itself. Like, we’re not going to have a database of like, "Oh, they were like, past or failed on OnlyFans. Like, we don’t have that access." Well, that kind of thing is available, not necessarily from OnlyFans data, but from people. That kind of stuff is out there. So we talked about the creators. We talked about the content. Does your platform cater towards a certain niche of creators? Or are you pretty much going for all types and why? Yeah. So our platform is available to everyone because we want Yummehub to truly be a platform for the people. So I would like basically am trying to create a platform that is all inclusive and that’s not like where we’re just focusing on like a certain niche. Okay. I understand you have a referral program. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about it? Yeah. So we basically brought back what OnlyFans took away. So instead of limiting our referral payout with a $50,000 cap and having the referral payout go to zero after 12 months, our platform offers unlimited payout and it’s lifetime. And it will not be taken away. Well, that’s good. That’s good. Yeah. I don’t want that to happen like what happened with OnlyFans for sure. So we talked a little while ago about OnlyFans banning explicit content only to bring it back, which they never really banned it. Where do you stand with adult content and what are its limits? So we allow explicit content. We will never ban it. And limits are obviously nothing that’s illegal. So we monitor that very carefully. Okay. So there have been many instances where you’ve had situations where you’ve had to take and remove things? Oh, yeah. We will instantly ban them and delete their account. Okay. So let’s get into this and give me as much detail as you can. How does your customer service differ from other fan platforms? So unlike other fan platforms, we are available by phone 24/7 and we respond back to our emails within the hour instead of within three to four days. Okay. So somebody can just pick up the phone and talk to you? Yes, 24/7. Well, that’s kind of nice and old fashioned. Yeah. So that’s also very rare for tech companies to offer anymore. It’s rare for any company to do anymore. My feeling is customer service really is in the garbage. Okay. It’s really just completely gone and there’s just very few companies that offer customer service and a lot of it is outsourced to countries where you can barely understand the person who’s talking, which is rather unfortunate. Yeah. I really admired what the founder of Zappos did when he created his company and he basically was like, you know, it’s always, it’s like solely focused on, you know, customer service and answering the phone. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. You get a founder to answer the phone. That would be the shock of the century. That’s never happened. Talk a little bit about your position in the company and what you do on a day to day basis. So, I’m the founder and janitor. So everything in between. Yeah. What does a typical day look like? Typical day is waking up at seven, going to bed at four and messaging creators, potential creators and through like Instagram or Twitter and introducing them to our platform, getting them set up and promoting them on our platform. A lot of times creators will ask for guidance on, you know, how to set up certain things or, you know, how to do this, how to do that. And so. So when we were talking offline, I was asking you if you had other people with money in the company and you said you didn’t, said you’d done it all yourself and my comment was you’re brave. And would you or are you looking to do any kind of fundraising? I have not and I’m open to the idea, but it has to make sense, of course. Okay. So if you, if somebody did want to come in, I mean, what kind of, I mean, what would it look like? I mean, so like if an investor came in right now, the groundwork is already built. So any of that startup risk would be minimized because you’re not investing in a concept or an idea. You’re investing in a platform that already has users. It’s a big difference. But in order for me to even entertain investors or partners or VCs or whatever, it would have to not just be about money because I have money. So why, what’s my incentive to give up percentage of the company? So I would look for more of someone that would offer synergy where the investor partners are not just bringing capital to the table. So like for example, if they brought access to us, which allowed us to onboard 1 million new users in a month, well, then that is valuable and an asset to the company. And that’s something that, you know, of course, then I would seriously consider. What would be the main advantage of somebody investing with you? Oh, well, because there’s just so much potential in this industry and what we have built with our limited team has been pretty impressive. You know, another thing we were talking about offline is that it seems like every week a new fan platform pops up. It might not be every week, but it’s certainly at least every month. And you and I both know that when something makes a lot of money like an only fans, this kind of thing happens. And I was likening it to the to the campsite Gold Rush many years ago when a few sites came out, made a ton of money and everybody went, oh, I’m going to do that. And of course, most of those people are long gone. So do you ever ask yourself, what am I doing? No, I actually think this industry is not crowded at all. I’m used to being in industries where it is crowded. And so I think it’s the exact opposite. I think there’s not a lot of competitors in this industry. And yeah, well, then who do you consider your main competitors? Only fans, fans Lee, a playboy, I would say those are my three main ones. Well, there’s there’s some other strong ones. Yeah, I know, but I those are those are my on my target. Okay. Okay. Sounds good. That’s a good thing to shoot for. So let’s say somebody’s already on one of those platforms only fans fans Lee and others, how would they get their followers to also support them on yummy hub? Okay. So this is a big thing, just not even talking about yummy hub, just talk about, you know, like a subscription platform to a subscription platform to a subscription platform. It’s all going to be universal in this, how it’s going to work. It has nothing to do with just our platform. So like the followers will not support and pay creators on multiple fan platforms if there is not an incentive for them to do that. So us personally, our company, we found that like our creators that have been on OnlyFans for years and have hundreds or thousands of posts on there. And then they join our platform and put up one post. They do not do good, especially like, it would say if they offer a free subscription on OnlyFans, but then charge subscribers on yummy hub like $20 a month, or even if they charge the same, like let’s say on both platforms, it’s $20 a month, but on only fans, they have hundreds of posts or thousands of posts. And on yummy hub, they put up one or two posts. Well then, who would sign up for their yummy hub? I’ll take it one step further. If the same content is on OnlyFans and they go to yummy hub and it’s the same content for the same price, then what’s the advantage there? Exactly. So like for us as a platform, in order for us to be successful, we have to think of the creators for the creators in order for them to be successful on the platform, they have to think of the subscribers. So they have to give them a very strong incentive for their followers to subscribe. So the creators that are actually experiencing a lot of success on our platform, they are doing just that. Making sure that you do not recycle your same content from platform to platform is massive. Making their link on socials is massive. Letting their followers know that they have exclusive content that can only be seen on yummy hub, that’s massive. Or let’s say their followers have been waiting for like a certain type of content that they have never seen anywhere. Well then they can offer that content exclusively on yummy hub and so that can drive their followers to subscribe to their page. Okay, let me play devil’s advocate here for a second. Let’s say they’re already doing really well on only fans and they come across yummy hub, but they want another source of monetization of their content. So they go to yummy hub and let’s say they do create exclusive content for yummy hub. Overall, besides just some more money, what is the motivation for them to do that? There’s a lot of reasons. Number one, you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket. So you don’t want to be like married to only fans and like if only fans of sites do another change like they tend to do, then you’re not screwed. So that’s a big one. And then another thing is you actually will be tapping into a different market as well because every platform has different types of marketing and different audience. So the only negative about joining new platform or joining yummy hub is if you recycle your content, you put one post, you charge more on our platform for less posts than you do on only fans. You basically are just like wasting your time. And so there’s no point of even doing it. And it’s going to be a bad experience. And then you’re going to talk negative about it. So there’s no point. But the other side of it is if it’s new content, okay, and they’re continually producing new content and they’ve already been on only fans for three years, there’s no way they’re going to have that much content on yummy hub. But if their fans can see new content on yummy hub, they can’t see on only fans, then that changes it around, doesn’t it? Exactly. Also, you could use these platforms as on this platform, I’m this person and then on this platform, I’m this person. So you can offer different parts of your personality on different as well. So there’s all different ways that you can take advantage of using different platforms at the same time. Are you seeing any particular niche within adult more on yummy hub than you see on other platforms? No, not necessarily. I would say it’s comparable as a whole individually. Yeah, it could be different, but as a whole, no, it’s comparable. Okay. For the most part, how do creators find you? I would say from our outreach probably for the most part. Okay. Can you get more specific on that? Yeah, we reach out to creators and introduce them to our platform. So that’s how we do it. Social media messages and things like that. Yeah, email, marketing, a lot of different ways. They actually open email? That would amaze me. Yeah, they actually do. That would amaze me. I can’t get my B2B client sometimes to open email, so it would surprise me if creators doing my experience with emailing creators, so I interview for my podcast, has not exactly been the best. Let’s just kind of put it that way. So let’s talk about user acquisition. How are your fans finding you? So we’ve done podcasts to get our name out there. We’ve done a lot of viral content to get our name out there, and we have a lot of other things that we’re working on right now as well. Okay. So where do you see Yummy Hub in the next three to five years? Well, I would say we’re positioning ourselves to be the leader in the fan platform. I know that’s easier said than done, of course, but we’re up for the challenge, and if we put our creators for profit, then I feel we ultimately can get there. And considering everything we have accomplished so far in such a small period of time, then yeah, I think in the next three to five years, we could be the industry leader in this category. So right now you’re at point A, you’re a startup, and OnlyFans is point B. How do you get from point A to point B? One day at a time, introducing our platform to new creators on a daily basis and letting them know that a lot of times they’ll think, "Oh, I already do OnlyFans, so I don’t have to do another fan platform." Well, number one, it’s always good to have a backup, and number two is you can tap into our audience that we’re creating. We talked about the problems with other platforms. Let’s get into OnlyFans specifically if we can. I see a lot of issues with that, and since that’s the largest platform and the one you’re probably competing the most with in getting creators and fans, what do you see as being their biggest issues? So they’ve changed ownership, I don’t know how many times, what, two times, three times? I don’t know. Not really, but go ahead. Well, they’ve had new owner or new investors. New investors, yes. I know the majority owner. They’ve changed CEOs a bit lately. Yeah, they just recently changed the CEO a few weeks ago. Yeah, we’re recording this in August, and it will run later in the year. And yeah, they did that around the beginning of August, I think. So beyond that, what do you see as their biggest issues? So I would say whenever there’s someone new that comes into a company, they always want to make changes, and a lot of times those changes are not for the better of the customer. It’s for the better of profits, and so that’s one of the biggest things that I think has happened. That’s a good point. So what advice would you give to a creator to make as much money as possible? I would say think of your subscriber as a human being more than as a $10 a month subscriber. So in the fan platform, there’s millions of creators. If I’m a subscriber, why am I subscribing to you? I can subscribe to anyone. And if it comes to seeing explicit content, you can see it for free. So what are you paying for? You’re paying for a connection, and it has to feel genuine. So if you keep that in mind and create a genuine connection with your subscribers, then you can keep those subscribers, and they will support you for years. So that is the biggest thing when it comes to a creator being successful on any fan platform. And what’s the best way for a creator to create that personal connection? The content has to feel, and the messaging has to be genuine, feel genuine. They want to be a part of your daily life. So it’s like, oh, I just did this, I just did that. They want to see that. They want to be a part of that. And so creating the experience that there is a connection with this creator, that’s what they are wanting. They don’t just want to pay to see explicit content because they don’t have to pay to see explicit content. So what’s the point of, what’s the concept of a fan platform? It’s to give them access to the creator’s lives, obviously on a safe level, but they still have to feel like they have access to it. Yeah, if guys just want to walk off, they can go to a tube site and do that for free. Or there’s obviously lots of paid membership sites that they can do that too as well. So one thing that I have a little bit of an issue with when it comes to the personal connection side is that everyone in this industry knows that the vast majority, if not almost all of the creators, are using chatters. And they’re not really communicating with the fans themselves. What issues do you see with that? I would say as a form of catfishing. So I would say creators have to be pretty careful with that. Yeah, but I mean, it is, but it’s done by pretty much everyone. So how can they be careful if they outsource to some guy or woman in the Philippines for $10 an hour typing responses to messages? So there is this new technology coming out, AI technology. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. But yeah, so it’s where the AI will learn what the creator basically sees how the creator interacts and it will learn that. And so basically, I even think Snapchat is experimenting with that right now. That could definitely help the situation in the future. Hey, AI is amazing, but color me skeptical that there aren’t going to be some real clutches with something like that. Oh, well, there’s always clutches with everything. And as you know, technology is like initially introduced, but then everything smooths out. Yeah, well, one will hope that it’s good enough. So the platforms like your own isn’t hurt by it because you’re buying a fantasy. Okay. When you’re dealing with any adult site, you’re buying the fantasy. You’re not buying any reality. Okay. These girls aren’t in love with you. They’re there to make a buck, but they want the guys to think that, hey, I really like you. You know, I liken it a little bit to the prostitutes out here in Thailand. I love you long time, you know, which is the, which is the classic line, but they say it and guys believe it. So yeah, I mean, as long as it isn’t going to be too blatantly, I don’t know, overtly bad, then it makes some sense to me. But I’ve always kind of thought about, and I’ve never been through the mechanics of it, but I’ve always kind of thought about the whole chatter thing and how that can go very wrong. Oh, 100%. Yeah. So I guess we’ll see where it takes us. AI is going to be running a good portion of our lives soon. It already is unfortunately, we talked about customer service before. Anytime you go on a website, you get their chat bot. Well, that’s AI. And the early reviews from my side aren’t very good. Well, hey, Michael, I’d like to thank you for being our guest today on Adult Site Broker Talk and I hope we’ll get a chance to do this again soon when you got an update for me. Sounds good. Thanks for having me. Hey, it’s a pleasure. My broker tip today is part seven of how to buy a site. Last week we talked about the agreement and escrow. So now you own the website. What do you do now? The first thing you should do is make sure you understand everything about the operation of the site. The previous owner will hopefully be available for a period of time to help you with this. As I mentioned last week, you should establish what the former owner’s participation will be after the sale. You’ll need to deal with production of new content, processing, paying affiliates and many other things. If you don’t have experience in these areas, you may want to consider using our general consulting firm, Adult Business Consulting. You can get more information on what this company does at adultbusinessconsulting.com. We help website owners project manage and guide them to the right vendors. Maybe the previous owner had all the right elements, processing, hosting, payments, production, scripts, etc. or maybe they didn’t. We can help evaluate that for you. Let us know if we can help. Anyway, you’ll now be operating the website. If you don’t have someone like our general consulting firm to help, evaluate all of those items and everything the site is spending money on and using to operate the site. Make sure you’re getting a good deal and that these companies are providing the right service and check to see if you can do better. Hosting is a great example on something where people are often both overpaying and not getting the right service. Many times a server is just too slow. If you have any questions about any of this, feel free to reach out to us on our site. Next week we’ll talk about how to sell a website. Next week we’ll be speaking with Ruan Willow of Oh Fuck Yeah with Ruan Willow. And that’s it for this week’s Adult Site Broker Talk. I’d once again like to thank my guest Michael Gonzales. Talk to you again next week on Adult Site Broker Talk. I’m Bruce Friedman. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]