Adult Site Broker Talk Episode 131 with Jay Strowd of AEBN

1 (7s):
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 AEBN co-founder, Jay Strowd. Adult site Broker is proud to announce the launch of our new website, adult Site Broker 3.0 at adultsitebroker.com. The look and feel of the new site is nice and up to date and easier to navigate. The new site also has links to our affiliate program, ASB Cash, and our new blog.

1 (53s):
Speaking of ASB Cash, we've doubled our affiliate payouts. That's right. Now when you refer sellers or buyers to us at Adult Site Broker, you're gonna receive 20% of our broker commission on any and all sales that result from that referral for life. You can either place a link to us on your site or refer buyers and sellers through an email introduction. ASB Cash is the first affiliate program for an adult website brokerage. 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 Site Broker. We're proud to present a one of a kind, unique, and legendary site.

1 (1m 34s):
It's a pro amateur ethnic reality site. Founded in 2005, the site is styled after popular late night variety shows such as The Tonight Show. Viewers never know what to expect with a variety of different performers from brand new amateur talents to famous porn stars, there's no other website quite like it. The site continues to grow and expand with no major competitors in this niche. What makes it unique is 100% original content that has uncensored and unscripted reality TV style scenes. They let the performers be themselves while having fun filming their video.

1 (2m 15s):
Trailers are short episodes that engage the viewers and are immensely popular online. Almost all the traffic is organic with some affiliate traffic. It runs on a custom built script, which has been maintained and updated. The site gets about 20 joins and 40 rebuilds a day. This iconic site is available for only 1.4 million. Now time for this week's interview. My guest today on Adult Site Broker talk is Jay Stroud, c o of a E B N. That's a lot of letters. Jay, thanks for being with us today on Adult Site Broker Talk.

2 (2m 52s):
Oh, thank you for having me.

1 (2m 54s):
It's a pleasure and an honor, sir Jay was born and raised in North Carolina where he, he still lives. You will hear the accent from an early age. He likes that from an early age, he had a fascination with the utilization of the technology in innovative ways to communicate and produce art. Initially, it was 3D holography, and later in the late eighties and nineties, he was an avid follower of the evolution of vr. I didn't know it went back that far. Oh, yeah. He studied at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where he was introduced to video editing and various 3D animation and graphic design applications. And finally, the internet, which helped drive the inception of a ae.

1 (3m 39s):
He took a job at a web design company in Charlotte and one night at a local gentleman's club into a few of those myself with some friends, how, come on, let's say a titty bar with some friends. They determined they should start creating a dull entertainment websites as a side business. The next day he did some research and connected with the local guy who was selling VHS tapes via a mail order site. Yes, that's the way it always starts, Jay. He started working with him in the warehouse filling the daily orders, and a e BN was born a few years later during his web design, using his web design background and experience working with video, he began researching and testing web video and streaming technologies.

1 (4m 19s):
Of course, at the time, most adult sites were subscription based image sites. Jay and his friends launched a bns pay per minute video streaming media in 1999, which started with only five people. Jay has worn many hats at a, he's recently returned to attending industry events where we met in Prague, and as a co-founder, he finds himself stepping into the role of being the voice of a n after being behind the scenes for many years now, a n was formed in 1999, has been an award-winning technology innovator and trusted distribution partner for the adult industry for over 20 years. A e n was formed, as I said, in 1999.

1 (5m 2s):
I'm repeating myself now. At the time, video streaming technology was still in its infancy, but the founders of a n immediately recognized the impact this technology could have on customers looking for an easy and discreet way to purchase adult content. In the weeks and months that followed, they developed and launched a unique adult video on demand service that revolutionized content delivery. That pay per minute model became the blueprint for the entire industry. One that is still used today, it's flagship VOD site. AE bn.net averages over 150 million unique visitors each month and reaches approximately 4% of the world's population every day.

1 (5m 43s):
That's a mindblower. It's also home to the world's largest adult library housing over a hundred thousand adult titles from over 1500 studios. So Jay, I'm tired after that. Yes, sir. Ready for a nap.

2 (5m 57s):
You made it pretty through that pretty well.

1 (6m 0s):
Yeah, and I edited what you gave me a lot.

2 (6m 3s):
Thank

1 (6m 4s):
You. So, but that was all very important. So Jay, when you started ABN Video Streaming was something brand new today. It's obviously the standard, not only in adult, but in mainstream. Did you ever dream that what you were starting was truly revolutionary?

2 (6m 20s):
Not at the time, to be perfectly honest. For us, it was. It was the challenge, you know, for, you know, the initial group of us. I mean, I think probably, you know, a few of the people had an eye on what we were doing. From my perspective, it was really about digging into the technology. I've always been driven by trying to make things work that

1 (6m 48s):
Yeah, well, you're a tech

2 (6m 50s):
Out of the box solution for

1 (6m 53s):
Right, right.

2 (6m 54s):
When my partner asked me, you know, he's like, we, how do we get these videos online? It's like, oh, well, let me do some checking and we'll figure out, and with a little bit of time and well quite a bit of time and determination, we finally made it happen.

1 (7m 14s):
Yeah. So you, you coded the whole thing yourself?

2 (7m 18s):
No, I brought in a long time friend of mine from, we grew up together in high school and he had been doing some Y2K programming, coball, and, you know, I was much more oriented towards graphic design and Right. And video technologies. So I looked at my buddy and was like, you know, you would be, you have a great mind for database and backend programming come to the dark side. It didn't take a whole lot of persuasion. So he and I would just work in our garage, you know, work on the technologies and the site and putting together a prototype.

2 (8m 6s):
And our other partner would, who was our front man at the time, I won't mention his name in case he no longer wants to be associated, but you know, most everyone is familiar with him. You know, he'd bring the investors by our house and we'd give them demos sitting there in the garage. It's that classic tech story, I suppose.

1 (8m 30s):
Yeah, interesting. So what kind of challenges did you incur initially? I'd imagine with the internet still being quite slow that it made what you were trying to do a little bit difficult.

2 (8m 44s):
It was extremely so, you know, I mean, initially there wasn't much of any streaming going on. There was a whole lot of IEG one down downloads or slow feeds. You know, I'd say the biggest hurdle we faced at, at the time, just in general, was that there were not a lot of ready made apps or software that we used. Sure. Not only for the video, but for our data warehousing. I mean, you know, just anything we would do, we had to build it ourselves.

1 (9m 24s):
Right. You had to create it. Sure.

2 (9m 26s):
Yeah. I hear about a lot of the newer companies, they're like, oh, we're using this technology or this, and it's like, you know, that, that just, that didn't exist. Yeah. When we were coming up, you know, our content management system, everything had to be custom rolled. So it was, it was quite a project along the way.

1 (9m 46s):
You had to be the innovators.

2 (9m 48s):
Indeed.

1 (9m 50s):
So you started with two friends, and the company now has hundreds of employees. It kind of reminds me of companies, and you talked about this like Apple or Microsoft's, Microsoft, I can say Microsoft starting in their garage. What made you think this would work way back in 1999?

2 (10m 6s):
Well, we knew that, you know, people had an appetite for adult entertainment. I mean, we saw it and people were using the web for the mail order site and ordering DVDs. And, you know, it just occurred to us that, you know, that was around the time when the, do you remember the old Sprint commercials? 10 cents a minute for long distance. Yeah. Yeah. That, that's, that fed into the impetus it led to abn. It's like, okay, well if we could put the video up, what if we just let people buy minutes Sure. And use them wherever they want, you know, and we don't have to be necessarily behind a pay wall.

2 (10m 48s):
Right. So, so people can actually see the library that we have, the quality of things we have before they have to give us any money. Things were kind of different back then. I mean, you know, we're talking about coming from growing up without the internet and when phones plugged into the wall. So there was a lot of stigma around the, you know, industry players and some of the tactics that were being used that were less than favorable for a great user experience, let's say. Right. And, you know, part of our agenda was to set out changing those perceptions and perspectives.

1 (11m 35s):
You guys obviously started the whole streaming thing and, and the, the cost per minute, which is also used in in camming now as well. I mean, they've, they've adopted that as well. And look, look where that has gone.

2 (11m 51s):
Amen.

1 (11m 52s):
I mean, it's huge. It's absolutely huge. So how is a n different, not only from membership sites, but from tubes and other VOD sites?

2 (12m 1s):
Well, we're, we are kind of different, and we're a little bit like each one of those, you know, we do have a clip site or tube style site, porno tube, which was probably one of the first tube sites that was put out there. Initially, as I recall, it was an adjunct to an adult themed community that we were building called X Peeps. And then it just kind of blew into a user upload type site. Then we've, we've taken it and converted it into an ad free holistic representation of our actual product, and we use it as an upsell Right.

2 (12m 53s):
To upsell the movies and it's works great in that capacity. So we've got, you know, we've got a little bit of Tube site. We've got, we've got some subscription products, you know, we have some, we'll put some older titles in for and give a, a reasonable monthly subscription price, and people will get unlimited streaming on these older titles. We give them a few paper, paper minute to use on the premium VOD minutes. So we're a lot more like a hybrid type of model similar to Amazon Prime say.

2 (13m 36s):
Yeah.

1 (13m 37s):
You know. So how has VOD changed in the 23 years since you got started?

2 (13m 42s):
Oh, well, bandwidth and delivery technologies, Kodak. Sure. It's, it's come a long way. I mean, you know, I think when we were first starting out, God, I think I, I remember arguing to increase our bit rates to 2 25 K because cable modems could then support them. Yeah. You know, so it's, it's gone a long way from, you know, you know, 180 K bit rate to serving out, you know, UHD files now. Yeah. And it seems to be a standard that everyone expects.

1 (14m 24s):
Oh, absolutely. It's, I don't think anybody has any patience at all online anymore.

2 (14m 30s):
Nope. No. Yeah. Buffering, you know, network issues. It just, people are, they don't have to deal with the same issues. And, you know, the quality's just getting better and better as the codex get better and coding technologies and delivery technologies get better. So

1 (14m 51s):
I remember back then, anytime you wanted to try to watch something, the screen would come up and it would say downloading, you know? Yeah. And you'd get the percentages and it would seem to take forever.

2 (15m 7s):
Oh, yeah.

1 (15m 8s):
That had to be a frustration for both you and your clients.

2 (15m 11s):
Well, we did streaming only, we did not do progressive playback.

1 (15m 18s):
Okay.

2 (15m 19s):
At the time, which is where it would try to play. You know, when we got into the later versions of EG, it would try to progressive download while you were playing it back. Right. So we were, before progressive playback really was a big thing.

1 (15m 36s):
Right. But it also used to on, on, on technology like that it would say loading with a percentage. Yeah.

2 (15m 43s):
Or we'd get the buffering. Yes. Yes.

1 (15m 46s):
That was amazing. Yeah. I, I think of the internet net then with dial up and I think of it today. I mean, even here in Thailand, I've gotta gig down and it's, it's wicked fast and there's, there's companies offering two gigs, so it's, yeah. Well, the technology's arrived. Amen. And ABN invests a lot in collecting data, and you share much of this with the industry and the public. Why do you do this?

2 (16m 12s):
We feel it's our obligation to, we were going through a couple years ago, one of my cohorts and I, and we were like, God, we're sitting on all this data and we were trying to sift through it to find some anomalies, do some, some research on our own. And we were like, you know, I had, I had been on a crusade to provide better data to our content partners to assist them in make those that wanted to in Sure. Using the data to make educated decisions about things that were more successful on our platform.

2 (16m 54s):
And that sort of reporting, you know, a lot of our content partners love it, and they use it all the time. They can say, oh, this scene is why this movie made all these minutes. This scene did all the minutes in this movie. Here's the actors, actresses, metadata, sex X, everything that's in this scene. I should make more of that. Exactly. So we're just trying to help give our partners a recipe for success. When I saw all this past data that we had collected, and that's, you know, you know, we decided that we should make it available to the industry as a whole, because there were, you know, there's several people that are publishing similar types of data, but most of it is based upon, you know, free users.

2 (17m 47s):
Yeah. And we were, our, our numbers are based on porn, consumers who pay for the product, which we thought was in a useful data set to compare against all the other data that was being published out there. And, you know, some, I mean, we just found some really interesting anomalies that we want to dig into, get, you know, write some interesting articles, get people's feedback, make, make the data and ourselves available for any, you know, scholastic or, you know, reporters covering the industry that want to write on the industry.

2 (18m 33s):
You know, we do have plans to expand access to that data so that people can potentially plug in different points and look overlay and look at different trends Right. Where they might cross. Let's see, one on the downside, one on the upside, you know, so we, it's, it's, it's a project that we found useful, you know, not only for ourselves, but figured the industry might find some use in it as well. So Sure. We put it out there. I've had people say we should charge for it, but it just doesn't seem right to me.

2 (19m 12s):
I mean, you know, in my mind, we succeed together or Right. Not, you know, I mean

1 (19m 20s):
Absolutely. Absolutely. When you give things like that away, you get a lot more back. That's always been my business philosophy. So, along with that, you recently launched a bn trends.com, and I was looking at some of the articles. I see top selling trends, stars of the third quarter top selling porn stars and third quarter trends. Now, how important is this project to what you do at a

2 (19m 44s):
Well, that is, that's the project I was, I was referring to when we were amassing, you know, going through all that data and decided to make it publicly available. Right. You know, we go through that data constantly anyway for our own benefits so that we're refreshing our site and being more accurate with, you know, who are the top stars and product placing, the top selling scenes movies, et cetera. But we figured, once again, it would just be something that would be nice to put out to our industry peers. Right. As an alternative to all the data on free porn users.

1 (20m 29s):
A lot more valuable. Sure.

2 (20m 31s):
Yeah. And, you know, we're hoping that it will become a much more interactive amongst our team and fun project to work on. Sure. You know, I mean, we've seen some really strange anomalies and we've had some, some discussions and done some initial looks at like, you know, trends in some of the fetish categories during election years, or, you know, blue collar porn versus white collar porn, you know, and the, because we've, we've had some people, you know, we've seen where, you know, certain categories will be popular and, you know, we've had people go, oh, it's always been big ti big ti for straight is always the top.

2 (21m 19s):
And we're like, no, that didn't sound right. And we've, I mean, not necessarily 25 years, you know, looking week to week over the past five years maybe it did look like that was the top category, but that has not always been the case.

1 (21m 34s):
Yeah.

2 (21m 35s):
Which is why we publish our, you know, monthly or quarterly categor list and show the movement of the category, different categories on both the gay and straight side over time, so you can kind of begin to see what's rising or what's dropping off. Now.

1 (21m 54s):
That wasn't the pun was it

2 (21m 55s):
Could be.

1 (21m 56s):
Yeah. You never know. You never know what's, what's rising when we're talking about porn.

2 (22m 1s):
That's right.

1 (22m 2s):
It's always rising,

2 (22m 4s):
Right,

1 (22m 6s):
Is, yeah. I mean, obviously data, big data is, has taken over the world. There's just no two ways about it. So having in an adult just makes absolutely perfect sense. Have you seen anything, or does anything come to mind? You talked about anomalies. Does anything come to mind that you found particularly strange in the data that you've looked at?

2 (22m 30s):
Oh gosh, I'd have to go back. I

1 (22m 32s):
Mean, anything into my notes. I mean, anything, anything that stands out to you

2 (22m 36s):
Right off the top of my head, one of the things I think that immediately springs to mind is the exponential growth of female viewers and where they are watching when we started, and this kind of, pardon me if I go off on a tangent, you know it Please. When we started this, you know, you know, when you come to our site, it's broken up gay and straight. Yep. You know, and that was under, I've, I've gotten a lot of questions about that over the years. You know, I aren't lesbians in the gay side and this, that and the other. And you know, back then our presumption and I think was pretty accurate, was that the main consumer of porn on the internet were, were males.

2 (23m 22s):
Yep. You know, at that point in time. And now we are seeing a huge explosion in female viewership, and a lot of 'em are watching on the gay side of our theater.

1 (23m 36s):
Sure. They like good looking guys.

2 (23m 38s):
Yeah. Good looking guys. Less misogyny, you know. Sure. Better. You know, it's, but it's been growing and growing at a rapid rate. And the trick is, you know, how best to accommodate that demographic.

1 (23m 58s):
Well, there, there is a reasonable amount of porn for women now, and it seems to be growing anti Roundtree comes to mind with her shush site. And there are some others that have just been phenomenal at creating porn for women. So, have you thought about having a porn for women's section? Maybe a separate trans section, maybe changing it up so it isn't just gay and straight?

2 (24m 26s):
We have, we have had many, many conversations about that, you know, and it's, it's tricky, you know, certain, you know, certain communities, my understanding the gay guys don't want to look through a bunch of lesbians to find the content they're looking at. Right, right. You know, so it's, you know, de categorize for the consumer or the product itself, and there's a happy medium in there. Sure. In between. So we are always considering new options. You know, there've been, there's always conversations about, you know, whether everything should be lumped into one.

2 (25m 11s):
So it's, you know, more just, here's your adult. I don't think that our older demographic is quite ready for that. The younger generation is much more accepting of, you know, different forms of sexuality than perhaps the older demographic. But the older demographic is, you know, they've got more disposable income Sure. Generally speaking. So, you know, it's a, it's tricky road to walk.

1 (25m 44s):
Oh, I'm sure it is. And let's face it. And you know, and I bring this up a lot because I believe it a lot in our PC culture. Anything you do, you're gonna piss somebody off.

2 (25m 56s):
Oh yeah. I hear. If you're not pissing somebody off, you're not doing it just Right.

1 (26m 1s):
You're not being successful. Exactly. Absolutely. So you do a lot of partnerships in the form of licensing deals. How important is this to your business?

2 (26m 11s):
In what aspect are you speaking? I mean, we don't, we don't license a lot of content. Okay. It's

1 (26m 21s):
The licensing is the partnerships. Right.

2 (26m 23s):
Yeah. Yeah. We don't license for exclusivity, I guess I should say. Right. You know, it's a, it's a rev share. So, you know, partnerships are everything, in my opinion, you know, there what, back again too. We succeed together.

1 (26m 40s):
Yep.

2 (26m 40s):
Or fail together. I tried to extend any help or goodwill I can to anyone in our industry that's a, a good player, whether we're partners now or not. The more successful they are, the more successful I am. And that certainly holds true for our content and traffic partners as well. Sure. You know, so we work very closely with both of them, from both how we schedule content to go up so that it doesn't compete with each other. Us really focusing on content discoverability within our site, which I think is a good thing for both our users and our content partners.

2 (27m 25s):
If we can extend the life cycle, the long tail of revenue generation on a piece of content, our partners win. They're making every penny they possibly can, and our users win because they're discovering content they might not have found themselves.

1 (27m 44s):
What kind of vetting process does a potential partner have to go through?

2 (27m 48s):
Well, we look at content, obviously have, you know, have, you know, preliminary talks with 'em, hammer out the percentages and splits and get all the corporate information, and then it's turned over to legal and the contracts are drawn up and everybody signs. I mean, it's nothing out of the ordinary or very complicated, you know, it's not like we're vetting people that are direct up, direct uploading to our site or anything. You know, we just need to verify that they, they hold all the proper licenses and paperwork and they are who they say they are, and the checks are gonna go to the right spot.

2 (28m 32s):
And

1 (28m 33s):
Are there, are there any, are there any potential partners you won't accept? I mean, does anybody get, does anybody get turned down?

2 (28m 45s):
Not that I am aware of, unless they're just a bad actor or there is something really off with the content. Okay. You know, I mean, obviously we don't want to carry any content that is, would get us or anyone else in any type of legal issues. Sure. So, you know, I mean, makes sense. That's always there. Yes. You know, it's for everyone's best interest.

1 (29m 15s):
Yep. You come from a tech background and design background. How does that give you an edge as a company owner and ceo?

2 (29m 24s):
Well, I'm cso I don't wanna steal anyone else's thunder there, but

1 (29m 31s):
What, what does CSO stand for? It's a new one on me.

2 (29m 34s):
Yeah. Chief Strategy Officer, I suppose.

1 (29m 38s):
Ah, okay.

2 (29m 39s):
You know, I've kind of been the man behind the curtain trying to drive along the way remaining incognito. But I guess all that's come to an end now officially.

1 (29m 52s):
Okay.

2 (29m 53s):
You know, I think it, it just gives me a, a good language to be able to communicate with my UX and UI designers ideas from a user perspective to make the site more engaging, et cetera. And of course, I'm always looking at new technologies to implement, and I usually bring them up way too early. It excites me, but it's not ready for public yet. So, you know,

1 (30m 24s):
I get it. Well, for someone who's been on the VR train for as long as you have, that doesn't surprise me.

2 (30m 31s):
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Hacking Nintendo Power Gloves.

1 (30m 38s):
What's your, what's your take on where VR is at now?

2 (30m 41s):
It's nice to see it. I mean, you know, I was, I follow, like, like you mentioned in the intro, I followed VR way, way back when, you know, it was well out of consumer hands, but it just, it fascinated me the, the ability to be able to create completely immersive environments. And I'm pretty impressed by what I've seen nowadays. And now that, you know, the hardware is becoming more affordable and more accessible to, you know, the common consumer. That was, that's the tipping point that we've, you know, VR is needed for a long time, you know?

2 (31m 25s):
Yes.

1 (31m 26s):
Yeah. Because without, because without the hardware, the software doesn't really matter.

2 (31m 31s):
Yeah. And that immersive experience is unlike anything else. I mean, it really is impressive.

1 (31m 39s):
Yeah. I'm looking forward to when they bring it to sports.

2 (31m 43s):
Oh yeah, absolutely.

1 (31m 46s):
Yeah. You told me you were a, you're a racing fan and, and performer or rather, rather participant boy. I bet that would be fun.

2 (31m 56s):
Oh yeah. Yep. That was one of the first things when I got my Oculus, was showed my mom one of the ride along in a Formula one car or a

1 (32m 6s):
Geez,

2 (32m 7s):
You know, s a car. And she put that thing on, was just like, oh my God, this is amazing. You need to get me one of these things for when I'm, when you put me in the old folks home, obviously I didn't show her any porn, but you

1 (32m 21s):
Knows whole thing

2 (32m 22s):
She's well aware of, of, you know, what

1 (32m 26s):
You do,

2 (32m 26s):
What I do. So

1 (32m 28s):
Yeah, I would hope so by now. It would be kind of hard to hide it at this point. Yeah. What's your take on the latest assault on our industry from the anti-porn crusaders and their religious groups that are connected to

2 (32m 44s):
Them? Initially, I would, I would have to say it just kind of saddens me. You know, I mean, there's, this has been going on forever, but, you know, it, it, it seems frustrating that there's, you know, parties on two sides and we're, there's smart people on both sides that could figure out a solution. But when one side's only acceptable outcome is the complete eradication of the other party. Yeah. How do you find common ground to sit down and have a discussion about how do we coexist?

2 (33m 28s):
Yeah. You know, what can we do? You know, I mean, there are not everyone in this industry is a bad apple just looking to take advantage and convert children and all the other horrible things that they say about us. I think there's a lot of misinformation and the press takes what they can because it's sensationalized and that sells more. And, but we've, we've really gotta find some way to begin to steer a new narrative and try and not meet those people halfway, but, you know, dispel some of the misperceptions.

2 (34m 13s):
It, it, it a minimum

1 (34m 15s):
Well, one of, well, one of the parties are the ones that are delivering the vast majority of the assault and the other party is sitting on their hands.

2 (34m 26s):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, if, if we could find a way to come together as a community, and, you know, one of the, one of the things that I've been churning over in my head is, is, you know, is there something that we can do that that shows that we're making a conscious effort? No, we are not sex traffickers and pedophiles and the lowest of low human beings. We're just people making a living and

1 (34m 59s):
Some of the coolest people in the world. We both know that.

2 (35m 2s):
Yeah. Yeah. Some of the best people I have ever met in my life, and I'm not much of a people person have been in this industry, you know, friends that I'll have for the rest of my life indeed

1 (35m 14s):
Have

2 (35m 14s):
Longer, short, that may be,

1 (35m 16s):
Yeah. I've made a lot more friends in my 20 plus years in this business than I ever did in my 21 years in radio.

2 (35m 26s):
Amen. Yep. Yeah. There are some great, wonderful people here and Yep. It paints me that we're all painted in a bad light because of a few bad choices or lack of foresight, you know, I mean, obviously there's bad actors in every industry.

1 (35m 49s):
Indeed.

2 (35m 50s):
They're everywhere, you know, but as a whole, generally we, you know, this industry doesn't support that. And they're painting us with a big brush that is of course, false and inaccurate and

1 (36m 8s):
Well, we're low hanging fruit.

2 (36m 9s):
Yeah. I wish I had an answer for that, you know? Yeah, yeah.

1 (36m 13s):
Well, let's just, let's just hope we come out well on the other end. So there's been a lot of change in the industry in all the years you've been in the business now, about a decade ago, or maybe a little longer, the tube sites really changed the landscape. Not necessarily talking about legal tubes like yours, but just tubes in general, which many of which are not legal now at that time. Any people freaked out, they all were like, the sky is falling, yet the adult industry marches on. What's your feeling on that subject?

2 (36m 43s):
Well, I mean, you know, there's good and bad aspects all, all the way around. I mean, you know, I'm somewhat, I have some concerns on the one hand, you know, about training a younger generation to expect that everything's free. I don't think that's only the case with porn. No, but it's not. No. You know, I mean, the younger generation doesn't have as much disposable income. I mean, you know, remember, remember Napster, you know, when everybody was

1 (37m 16s):
Yes.

2 (37m 17s):
Downloading, downloading music until Apple came along and went, you know what, here we're gonna break it up and sell songs. You, you get something Yes. For a known bar of quality that you don't have to scour around and bunch of questionable sites to get. Sure. It's at a reasonable price. At a certain time in your life, you realize that your time is worth money, and if you know there's a quality product at a reasonable price, people will pay for it. Sure. The trick, I think is, is creating a, a seamless and smooth path path to transition a free user into a paid user.

1 (38m 1s):
Yes. Yes. Abs. Absolutely.

2 (38m 4s):
Which we're starting to get a handle on how to do fairly effectively, you know,

1 (38m 13s):
So most recently fan and clip sites have taken a large percentage of the adult industry market. While they've obviously created a market of their own, there's more eyes now. How has this impacted your business and where do you see this going?

2 (38m 29s):
Well, we've, you know, we've got a few relationships with a couple of cam companies and couple of white labels, and they've been good for us. We are really looking to help foster that, you know, it's an adapt or die. Yes. You know, we would like to start supporting the, the performer creators. They have followings, they're creating content. You know, we, we don't wanna compete with their main platforms. But, you know, I mean, if I think in a talk in Miami, I, I, I told some of the content creators, it's like, you know, diversify don't think that only fans or one of these other sites Yeah.

2 (39m 19s):
Is if you put your content there, everyone's seen it. Yeah. You know? Right. Which, you know, you need to generate the maximum revenue from your major asset, which is your content. Correct. So figure out which your, your best performing platform is release on that just before it's the peak starts to tail off, window it out, release on another platform, ride that high good strategy and make that con continue to do that so you can squeeze everything you can out of each individual piece of content and not be under the gun to continually create content.

2 (39m 59s):
Makes sense. You know, so we're, we would like to be one of those distribution platforms for these girls and it girls and guys, pardon me. Right. And help them generate additional revenue. You know, for the more pro performers that have done studio work, we're creating the ability for them to be able to sell their home curated or created content right beside all their studio content. You know, where else can somebody go and see all of that content right there?

2 (40m 40s):
That's true. Together in one place. Very true. And we would incorporate the girls and guys performers, pardon me, as potential affiliates. So if you were to drive traffic to your page, you know, you get a piece of everything within our system that, that user bought, whether they went That's awesome and looked at another girl's content or watched performers studio content. I mean, these, these performers, they got paid once for making this video. Now they can get paid again and again and again.

2 (41m 21s):
Every time somebody watches the title, if they bring us the traffic.

1 (41m 28s):
Sure. So what, oh, go ahead. I'm

2 (41m 31s):
Sorry. Oh, no, I was just gonna say, I think it's just a matter of adapting, you know, I mean, we're in the business of selling video. They're creating video, we wanna sell it for 'em.

1 (41m 42s):
Absolutely. So where do you see this industry going in the future? And you've always been ahead of the curve, so I kind of wanted you to look into your crystal ball and

2 (41m 52s):
Give,

1 (41m 53s):
Give your take.

2 (41m 55s):
Gosh, that is really hard. That, that, I thought that's the curve ball. I wish I could see that far out. I, I, I'm so focused on, you know, trying to adapt to the content creator, model creator content. Right now, that's really one of the places I'm putting a lot of emphasis on because they are the new affiliates, the new content, the new studios, and we need to foster relationships.

1 (42m 31s):
Absolutely.

2 (42m 34s):
You know, just, you know, for me right now, it's, it's building out better user experience things, features that will be more engaging to our users and facilitate better information and ways to onboard different types of content onto our platform. Be it, you know, content creators selling photo sets or their home shot video clips or audio or anything

1 (43m 9s):
That sounds, sounds like quite a task.

2 (43m 11s):
Yeah. It's, and you know, it's, it's really hard to venture to guess what it will be in the future, you know, with AI and machine learning and, you know, blockchain technologies. And I mean, when, think about it, when a user has control over their own personal data and can be in charge of who gets that data and maintain a single login on a thumb drive that works across all their sites. I mean, I think there's a lot of technology coming up in, you know, with the web 3.0 initiative that I think will have huge ramifications, you know, between that and cryptocurrency and the banking issues that we're facing now on Yes.

2 (44m 3s):
I say now like it's a new thing, but

1 (44m 5s):
Yeah, exactly. It, it's, it, it, but it has been worse lately. It has been worse lately, hasn't it?

2 (44m 12s):
Yeah. I mean, it, I don't, it, it seems to, it seems to go in cycles. Right. You know, I mean every what

1 (44m 20s):
Sure.

2 (44m 21s):
Maybe six years, you know, it's, it's the, the age verification from the uk I mean, I'm not opposed to any of these things as long as they're thought out and implemented correctly.

1 (44m 38s):
Well, that's where, that's, that's where you're probably wrong because, you know, governments never, politicians don't, don't think things out.

2 (44m 47s):
No, they don't. So, you know, the onus eventually will fall on us to come up with, of course, a proper solution. Right. You know, I think, you know, every, every time it reaches, you know, chaos reaches critical mass, it's an opportunity to innovate.

1 (45m 3s):
Yeah. And I, I totally believe that the adult industry is blowing it because as a whole, the adult industry should get together and adopt a universal age verification system before the governments do.

2 (45m 17s):
Yep. Well, and part of the problem is, you know, yeah. Every government, be it a state government or, or you know, nation Yeah. It's, if we are reactive and wait until they're pa you know, they start passing them, it's gonna be impossible to contend with. Correct. You know,

1 (45m 40s):
Well, the UK can't make up their mind.

2 (45m 44s):
I know.

1 (45m 44s):
It's on, it's not, it's on, it's not. It's on, it's not. And these poor people with these age verification companies, they've had so many full starts, it's not even funny.

2 (45m 55s):
Oh, oh, I know. I, I can't tell you, for me to go back to my development team and go, oh, I've got another one. They, they chase me out tar and feather me. You know, I mean, I, I, because, you know, I, I would like to stay ahead of it. Of course. And, you know, we always, we've always strived to do the right thing to stay in the good graces. You know, like I said, part of our process, you know, we have at least five stages of qc, human eyeballs looking at content before it ever goes on our site, you know?

2 (46m 35s):
Good. A lot of that is to make sure that it, it, you know, there's no audio video glitching, you know, but we're also looking for things that might be in there that might not be defensible. Exactly. We don't deal with user uploads primarily, mostly, you know, we're dealing with studios and brokers at the moment, so, you know, it's not like they're suspect or we don't trust them, you know, so it is more of a quality check, but it's also cover your ass

1 (47m 8s):
Still big time that, well, that's my answer to the vetting question by the way. The rights just took a little while. So besides catering more to the performers, anything else exciting coming up at ABN that we should know about?

2 (47m 26s):
Oh, you know, evolving out the trends, and we are always happy to, if people have questions or anything that's, they might be interested in, we are always happy to do a deeper dive and help people out. You know, really for us, you know, one of the main focuses is going to be on really using artificial intelligence and machine learning to enhance the user experience right now, to know what content users like and be able to put that in front of them or what they don't like, and suppress that somewhat, give them the most applicable recommendations.

1 (48m 17s):
Right. No lesbians for the gay men.

2 (48m 20s):
Right. You know, or customized promotions, you know, this guy likes buying downloads and he loves this company. Let's hmm hmm. And give him, you know, promo code for a 20% discount on his next download from this studio, or, it's cool. Really, personalization right now is one of my big priorities at the moment. Absolutely. It's no small task, but, you know. No,

1 (48m 52s):
It sounds, it sounds like when you get it going, it's gonna be really fantastic for everybody.

2 (48m 58s):
Yeah, well, I think so. I think it'll help everyone involved, you know, I mean, it helps the consumer find the product that they're looking for, the easiest to discover content that's, that they might be looking for, which helps our content partners. And it's the way things are going now, you know, we're just gonna try not to be Netflix and move major UI elements around so no one knows where to find their list. But, you know,

1 (49m 30s):
That's always helpful. It's like many websites, and I complain about it all the time. I, and when I'm doing my broker tips, one of the things I say is, do not just tell your designer or your developer put together a website for me and not give any direction because oh my God, what comes, comes out the other end. And this is with big sites, you mentioned Netflix, they need direction.

2 (49m 57s):
Yep. Well, and that's one of the things, back to one of your original questions, I think that, you know, really helps in my conversations with my teams as Right. That's one of the, one of the few meetings I have every week that I look forward to more than others, is the interaction with my creative department and my u i UX people after a million years of art school. You know, I, I, I kind of know how to speak the language of the creatives and it, it's, it's really a nice refreshing brainstorming session, exchange of ideas, you know?

2 (50m 43s):
Absolutely.

1 (50m 44s):
One, one last question. How do you still have the passion for this after over two decades?

2 (50m 52s):
Because there's so much to do, there's so many challenges. Yeah, I mean, so many of the things that we talked about now, I mean, you know, there's so many things I wanna do with our site. You know, the, the AI personalization, facilitating, you know, like I said, better data and information for our partners to consume ways that they can create comps based on scenes that are already existing in our library without having to go back and re-edit and make another box cover and send us another comp that we have to encode and double store content.

2 (51m 33s):
We already have. Things like that, you know, and not to mention this issue with the stigma around adult, I mean, I, I would love to see our community, our industry come together and have real intelligent conversations about how we might deal with this. Yeah. I wish I had the answer, but I think well,

1 (51m 59s):
As a thought leader in the industry, maybe you need to make the suggestion at a major trade show to have that conversation.

2 (52m 7s):
I have. Oh, okay. Should have figured I've been, I've been talking to, to free speech about trying to facilitate something like that. I think they're probably in the best situation to facilitate those discussions and steer the narratives in the public eye. Sure. You know, but we all have to come together, have amicable and intelligent conversations with each other. Yes. Without accusations or pointing fingers and figure out a way forward for the bulk of us, you know, nobody has to get on board.

2 (52m 50s):
But those that do should be able to say, you know, look, I'm participating. I want to follow best practices. I, you know, absolutely. We don't support the same, many of the same things that you don't support. We, you know, we're not sex traffickers, we're not pedophiles, we're not trying to taint your children. You know, we're just people trying to make a living. It's not gonna go away. You're not going to, you know, exterminate adult entertainment from the face of the earth. Nope. So how do we move forward

1 (53m 26s):
Anyway? The kids are already tainted, so it's too late. Just look at social media.

2 (53m 32s):
God, that's the most evil thing on earth.

1 (53m 35s):
Agreed. Well, Jay, I'd like to thank you for being our guest today on Adult Say Broker Talk. And I hope we'll get a chance to do this again soon.

2 (53m 44s):
Thank you so much for having me and giving me this opportunity, and I look forward to seeing you and speaking with you again soon. I

1 (53m 52s):
Hope so. My broker tip today is part seven of How to Buy an Adult website. 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 our general consulting firm, adult Business Consulting.

1 (54m 33s):
You can get more information on what this company does@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, et cetera, 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 company 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.

1 (55m 16s):
Hosting is a great example on something where people are often both overpaying and not getting the right service. Many times the server is just too slow. If you have any questions about this, feel free to reach out to us on our site. Next week we'll talk about how to sell a website, and next week we'll be speaking with Jay Moyes of High Octane Heart Media and pr. And that's it for this week's Adult Site Broker talk. I'd once again like to thank my guest, Jay Strowd. Talk to you again next week on Adult Site Broker Talk. I'm Bruce Friedman.