Adult Site Broker Talk Episode 142 With Alison Boden of the Free Speech Coalition

Speaker 1 (0s): 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 Alison Bowden, the executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, in part one of a two-part interview. Adult Site Broker is proud to announce the launch of our new website, adult Site Broker three point oh 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. Speaking of ASB Cash, we’ve doubled our affiliate payouts. 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 offer for sale a streaming network of sites for independent performers. Most of the traffic comes from North America. It’s the Shopify of streaming video and offers turnkey streaming sites to content creators. Creators provide some information about their brand, choose a look and feel, upload their images and videos, and they launch their streaming site on the domain of their choice in minutes.

The platform provides everything creators need from customer support to payment processing, so creators can focus on managing their content and marketing their site. The platform can also generate revenue from ads on free content, as well as subscriptions to premium content. The platform uses AWS Cloud technology to stream live and on-demand content around the world. The sale also includes a mainstream platform. The content is sold on a monthly subscription basis.

The code was developed in-house by their team of engineers. This is a great opportunity to enter the exciting world of live streaming video for a modest cost. Platforms like this cost a lot more to build from scratch, only $540,000. Now time for this week’s interview. My guest today on Adult Site Broker talk is Alison Bowden of Free Speech Coalition. Alison, thanks for being with us today on Adult Site Broker Talk. Thanks for having me.

It’s awesome. It took us a little while, but we finally got this scheduled and I’m stoked now. Allison is a veteran adult entertainment industry exec. That’s a mouthful, who served on the fscs board of directors for over three years, including as its president. Before taking on the role of executive director since starting her adult industry career in 2003, Allison has held a wide variety of marketing technology and leadership positions at companies like Adult Empire Game Link, video Box, and kink.com, where she was c e O.

She also serves Pineapple support as its board president. When do you sleep? Allison holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology with a concentration in women’s studies from the University of Pittsburgh. You can follow her on social media at at Allison Boden. That’s Allison with an L. She enjoys hiking, drinking, wine diving, and listening to podcasts. No doubt, a steady diet of adult site broker talk. The Free Speech Coalition’s mission is to protect the rights and freedoms of both the workers and businesses in the adult industry.

Their organization functions as a resource, a leader, and a tool for the communities that they serve. They take pride in fighting to alleviate the social stigma, misinformation, and discriminatory policies that affect those who work in the adult industry for more than 25 years. Wow. They’ve been fighting and winning impossible battles from the Supreme Court to the ballot box and back again. How’d you like your commercial?

Speaker 2 (4m 34s): I am impressed with us. Good job Free Speech Coalition.

Speaker 1 (4m 40s): Allison, how did you get your start in this crazy industry?

Speaker 2 (4m 46s): Always a funny

Speaker 1 (4m 48s): Question, so gimme a funny answer. So

Speaker 2 (4m 49s): I, I would say I started in college, as you mentioned. I went to the University of Pittsburgh and grew up in Pittsburgh. Ah, and that is a town that, you know, it, it didn’t have like a good vibrations the way you all did in the Bay Area or Toys Bayland. Yeah. Like they did in New York. And it was, it felt to me like Pittsburgh really needed that kind of of institution. Okay. So a really good friend of mine and I in college, we were like, let’s, let’s open a store.

How hard could it be? It was impossible, actually. And this is amazingly still an issue that small retailers face 20 years later. But you know, zoning laws in various cities, municipalities are basically like, well, you can be down by the river with the cockroaches and rats or out by the highway, but that’s it.

Speaker 1 (5m 46s): Yeah.

Speaker 2 (5m 47s): So, you know, I did that for a little while and you know, graduated college needed a real job and just lucked out that adult DVD empire happened to be hiring someone to deal with their sex toys kinda dream job. Yeah, yeah. So that’s kinda, that’s kinda where I started.

Speaker 1 (6m 9s): Wow. So they were called adult DVD Empire then,

Speaker 2 (6m 13s): Back in those days. Yeah, 2000. Makes sense. Yeah. I mean, I’ve never seen so many DVDs and probably never will again.

Speaker 1 (6m 22s): You will never again. What were, Hey man, I, I remember Beta Max is, okay, so I’m a lot older than you. What were the big issues that the industry was facing at that time?

Speaker 2 (6m 34s): You know, I hate to say they were similar to now, but

Speaker 1 (6m 38s): I know, huh?

Speaker 2 (6m 39s): I do think, right. I do think that like there are some really common threads, right? Social acceptability of what we do, the way people think about us. While it definitely isn’t ideal now, I would argue it was much worse back then, of

Speaker 1 (6m 54s): Course. You know,

Speaker 2 (6m 55s): And, and you know, 20 years is an absurdly long amount of time and I kind of can’t even believe that I’ve been doing this this long. But, you know,

Speaker 1 (7m 4s): Tell me about it.

Speaker 2 (7m 6s): Right? Like thinking about, you know, even being able to tell people what you did for a living, you know, there was just so much judgment. It was so, it was really hard. And the way that sex workers were treated was, believe it or not, even worse, at that point when I was working at Empire, that was when the FBI was doing 2 25 7 inspections. Yeah. They came to us,

Speaker 1 (7m 33s): Oh geez.

Speaker 2 (7m 33s): Located in Pennsylvania. So, you know, that was really the big scary issue at the time. Kind of what do we do about the secondary producer requirement? I remember spending days, even though I was the sex toy person, I had to sit in front of a computer and like look through 2 57 documentation and match IDs to paperwork just because

Speaker 1 (7m 55s): Were you

Speaker 2 (7m 56s): Yeah. Like afraid of, you know, basically your business getting destroyed. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (8m 2s): Yeah.

Speaker 2 (8m 4s): Thankfully FSC actually did solve that problem for the industry. Nice. So I guess it’s sort of full circle in a way.

Speaker 1 (8m 12s): Yeah. They they had an early impact on you.

Speaker 2 (8m 16s): Exactly. I didn’t even know it at the time.

Speaker 1 (8m 19s): Yeah. Crazy. So you’ve held a lot of positions in the industry since then. How did you get from selling sex toys to CEO of Kink?

Speaker 2 (8m 30s): It was Path, as you might expect, so sold Sex Toys that Empire got recruited to come out to San Francisco and work with Game Link, and they needed some help with sex toys, but mostly they were looking for someone to run their editorial department. So that was one of the fun jobs that I’ve had, which was interviewing porn stars. I actually was the first person to interview Sasha Gray.

Speaker 1 (8m 59s): Yeah. Wow.

Speaker 2 (9m 0s): Which was great fun. Yeah. So getting to know that part of the business, getting, you know, I had only really done toys before, so now I’m, I’m learning all about the stars and learning about video and doing a lot of marketing work while I was at it. And then when I left Game Link, I moved over to a video box where they needed a marketing person. Great. I can market. I guess that’s a skill, right? So it

Speaker 1 (9m 27s): Is,

Speaker 2 (9m 28s): I had no idea what I was doing at first, but I figured it out. I learned, I learned how to be a marketer, but in my spare time, I was still front since back in high school, I taught myself to code and I always kind of had a, I dunno, some, somewhere in the back of my mind I was like, oh, I, I wish I could just do this for a job. Like, marketing’s fun and making email newsletters is, well, it’s actually really a slog, but, you know, it’d be cool to actually be building the websites that, you know, I’m working for.

Sure. And eventually, you know, after I left Video Box, I started working for Kink because they were hiring an email marketing person. Interesting. And believe it or not, even to this day, email marketing often does require a fair bit of HTML coding.

Speaker 1 (10m 18s): Yeah. It, it certainly does. And I always need help with it, by the way.

Speaker 2 (10m 22s): You know, if you need somebody reach out, because it’s a lot of tables. It’s a lot of tables. So, you know, doing that coding for kink running, I eventually became kind of their calms person, but I was in the back of my mind was like, well, you know, some one day I’m gonna kinda gonna do this for a real job, I’m gonna write code. And I mentioned that to a boss there and they’re like, well, why not just do it here? And so the head of technology there pulled me over to that department. I worked as a coder there for years, and it was great.

It was some of the, the best, most satisfying work I’ve done. And then of

Speaker 1 (11m 3s): Course, you do not, you do not come across to me as a coder who can sit in a room for days on. And I, sorry, I, you, you don’t seem to be that type to me.

Speaker 2 (11m 19s): I guess I should take that as a compliment.

Speaker 1 (11m 21s): You should. You should.

Speaker 2 (11m 23s): Thank you. No, thank you. And you know, I think that’s part of the reason I ended up becoming management, because, you know, coding is fun, but you need somebody who can, who can manage a bunch of, of other coders, right? And so, got promoted, was running the tech team, became the VP of Tech, and when, you know, King’s founder, Peter decided that he was gonna take some time and, you know, enjoy the spoils of, of having sold the, the San Francisco Armory and needed somebody to step in and run the company.

He picked me. So that was really, you know, a lot of kind of like, sure I went to college, but really all the skills that I got were self-taught or kind of figured out on the job. And yeah, I like to say I went from the email room to the CEO’s office.

Speaker 1 (12m 16s): Yeah, that’s really cool. Yeah. And it really helps to be running something when, you know, everyone’s job. I unfortunately don’t have the knowledge of everyone’s job. I’ve been a little lazy that way. I actually have an HTML course that I one of these days, and I keep moving it back on my calendar that I’m gonna go through because I really should learn it. But, and I’m going to, but yeah, it’s really helpful to know what everyone does and how they do it.

Speaker 2 (12m 53s): Oh, for sure. I mean, I think the fact that I worked for the company for seven years in a bunch of different roles before taking over was, I mean, really impactful on the way I ran the company because knowing, you know, how hard everyone’s job is, you know? Yeah. From having done it or, or sat next to them or having talked to them about it. Right. It, it really does change your perspective.

Speaker 1 (13m 19s): Absolutely. So as c e o of Kink, you really sought to modernize what, at that point was a 20 year company. What was that like?

Speaker 2 (13m 29s): You know, it was a lot of fun, honestly. I think that it was a huge change moving out of the Armory. You know, we had been there, I had worked there in that building in that giant castle for years and years. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13m 43s): Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13m 44s): Seven and a half, eight years. And so

Speaker 1 (13m 46s): That was, that was a cool place.

Speaker 2 (13m 47s): It was really amazing. Although it also didn’t have heat or air conditioning, so oops. You know, pros and cons.

Speaker 1 (13m 55s): Well, San Francisco, you don’t need air conditioning in San Francisco. That’s for darn sure.

Speaker 2 (14m 0s): I don’t know, Bruce, climate change has made some pretty uncomfortable days even in the

Speaker 1 (14m 7s): Bay. Yeah. Maybe I’m thinking of the days I lived in the Bay Area, because what I remember is nobody had had air conditioning then.

Speaker 2 (14m 16s): You didn’t used to need it. Nowadays, there are a couple, even in the, the city itself over a hundred degrees and that, that giant

Speaker 1 (14m 25s): Every once in

Speaker 2 (14m 26s): A while still building. Definitely.

Speaker 1 (14m 28s): Oh yeah. Boy, I bet it can retain heat.

Speaker 2 (14m 31s): Yeah. Oh yeah,

Speaker 1 (14m 32s): Sure. So you remember one time being at being at a jazz show in San Francisco and it was just like really hot and there was no air conditioning and everyone was just dying.

Speaker 2 (14m 44s): Oh, yeah. Because you don’t expect it in San Francisco

Speaker 1 (14m 46s): At all. Of course, of course.

Speaker 2 (14m 47s): What’s what’s going on here? But, you know, kind of trying to move into a different building and one of like those, those sort of cool, you know, startupy, brick exposed buildings in, in San Francisco, in Selma, kind of changing our focus technologically, you know? Right. I really benefited from having the support of the founder. I don’t think I could’ve made the changes I did or, or moved the company forward in the ways that I was able to without his trust.

So on the one hand it was crazy and, you know, really difficult to, to kind of turn a, a giant cruise ship. You don’t turn ’em on a dime. But, you know, it was also just a real joy because I was surrounded by the absolute best human beings, like my colleagues at Kink Yeah. Are still, you know, a close family.

Speaker 1 (15m 46s): Yeah, absolutely. Was j was, was Jesse Garza working there when you were there?

Speaker 2 (15m 52s): He sure was. Yeah. Wow. We worked together for a couple years.

Speaker 1 (15m 56s): So tragic. So tragic. Yeah. We just got the news a few days ago as we record this, that Jesse sadly passed at a very young age, 39 years old.

Speaker 2 (16m 7s): Incredibly shocking. And, and yeah, really so sad.

Speaker 1 (16m 11s): So we saw him a couple weeks ago and just like, just like life. It’s, you know, someone’s gone before you even know it, and it, you don’t even get a chance to say goodbye. It’s really sad.

Speaker 2 (16m 24s): Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16m 26s): So what were some of the changes that you were most proud of at Kink?

Speaker 2 (16m 31s): You know, I felt like when I was in the tech role, I was really excited because we were, you know, I was part of the team that rewrote the entire technology stack. So just built a new website completely from scratch. Then when I, you know, was running the company, now you’re thinking about production and marketing and, you know, the accounting group. And I feel like, you know, it was a, it was a really interesting change at the company at that moment because not only did we move out of the Armory, but all of the producers prior to that, I think Kink may have been the one of the last companies that actually had everybody on payroll.

Yeah. So all the directors, all the PAs, every, everyone was actually an employee of kink.com. And when Peter handed over the Keys, he had also kind of moved everybody out. And so they’re all kind of in their own new studios in three different cities and two different, three different states.

Speaker 1 (17m 34s): Geez.

Speaker 2 (17m 35s): So, yeah. So kind

Speaker 1 (17m 37s): Of, that had to be, that had to be a bit of a challenge.

Speaker 2 (17m 40s): It was, and, and, you know, I mean, kinks known for its, you know, really high standards in terms of consent and, you know, performer rights. And so kind of coming up with a new way to approach that, where we turned what used to be our talent department, right. So we would have people who would do intake and, and handle, you know, models, bookings and things like that. But that’s no longer what the company does. But I took one of those people and turned him into our talent advocate.

And so this is someone whose entire job is to make sure that all of the producers, no matter where they are, are doing right. By the performers and independent, you know, check on. That’s

Speaker 1 (18m 24s): Very cool. That’s very cool.

Speaker 2 (18m 26s): It really, it, it felt great because I felt a little bit better about, oh, I can’t like be there every, you know, I can’t just walk upstairs and check out a set the way I used to. But a, we were working with people who I trusted deeply, and b, like having someone whose entire role is just to make sure performers are happy. I felt like, you know, I was pretty proud of that. I felt good about that.

Speaker 1 (18m 51s): Hey, it doesn’t get better than that. Right?

Speaker 2 (18m 54s): I mean, if it does, I would love to hear about it because I think everybody should definitely be doing as much as they can for the folks who, let’s be honest, make all of the rest of us money.

Speaker 1 (19m 6s): Yeah. It seems like, obviously in like in all businesses, the goal is to make money and it seems to be that everything else kind of goes by the wayside. And to see that kind of emphasis being put on what’s important to the performers, what’s important to the employees, it’s very rare, isn’t it?

Speaker 2 (19m 31s): It used to be extremely rare. I’ve actually been really excited over the last couple of years in that role. I got to talk to a lot of other, you know, folks in leadership at other companies and in this role certainly even more. And yeah, I really think that there’s been, in certain circumstances, a real fundamental shift toward understanding that like, we really need to be careful and do a great job protecting the folks who are honestly the most vulnerable in our industry.

Speaker 1 (20m 7s): Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20m 7s): Because of the way that it works, right? Like, you know, you, you’re just one performer and these are really big companies. You don’t wanna lose work. And I think an understanding of of that and sort of the power dynamics and the way that, you know, these sorts of things are actually a good business decision has, has really, I’ve, I’ve seen some change and it’s, it’s been positive.

Speaker 1 (20m 30s): How much do you think two factors have had to do with that one being Me too. Okay. And, you know, then the other thing being the advent of the fan sites,

Speaker 2 (20m 46s): I think they, they were both both really significant in their own ways, right? So I think Me Too was huge. Yeah. And it’s really, I think, shocking the first time a company realizes that it did something wrong or there’s an allegation that they can’t ignore.

Speaker 1 (21m 3s): Right.

Speaker 2 (21m 4s): And that’s, you know, that’s a really critical moment because they can either choose to like, handle it head on and admit that, you know, they should have done better and that they will do better and fix it, or they can put on the blinders and that’s, it forces them to make a, make a choice. Yeah. And I’m pleased by how many made the right choice. And I think that had had me two not happened. So many of these problems still would’ve been pushed under the rug. Right. And performers wouldn’t have felt as empowered to say, Hey, actually this wasn’t okay.

What happened to me? Yeah. So enormous.

Speaker 1 (21m 40s): Absolutely. Right.

Speaker 2 (21m 41s): Not only that, you’re right. Only fans change the game. Now they don’t, you know, they’re not like, oh, well I’m gonna get blacklisted by this company now my career’s over. They’re making more in an afternoon on only fans Yeah. Than they would on a, you know, a two day shoot. So they’re, they have no reason to work with companies that don’t treat them extremely well.

Speaker 1 (22m 5s): Exactly. Well, the key is to get rid of the Ron Jeremy’s of the world. Boy has that been a fiasco, and I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of it, unfortunately. It’s a, it’s a black eye on our industry, which is the worst part of it, because it all ends up in, in mainstream news. It’s

Speaker 2 (22m 27s): Incredible how one bad Apple, and I hate using that phrase, but No,

Speaker 1 (22m 32s): It’s okay.

Speaker 2 (22m 33s): Those individual examples of bad actors are, are where the media decides to look when they wanna talk about the industry as a whole. So we all get

Speaker 1 (22m 45s): Of course, of course. It’s where they wanna look.

Speaker 2 (22m 48s): Of course.

Speaker 1 (22m 48s): Yeah, no doubt about it. So when you left Kink in 21, you could have stayed in the for-profit sector and obviously done well considering your track record. How did you come to end up taking over at Free Speech Coalition?

Speaker 2 (23m 4s): Well, thank you for, for saying that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23m 7s): Well look, I mean, Alison, your reputation in this industry is phenomenal. And I’m gonna say it if nobody else does.

Speaker 2 (23m 18s): I appreciate it, Bruce. I did have some offers and they Sure they were tempting, right. But in a way, you know, having served on the board for a few years and knowing what it is free speech has been trying to do and having some thoughts that like, you know, I might be able to bring something new and maybe, you know, push things forward in a, a way that somebody who, you know, a lot of the, the history of this organization has been that it’s been run by executive directors who aren’t from our industry for better or worse.

Right. And so I just thought, you know, after 20 years in this industry, maybe I can bring a, a new energy, do it my own way and, and, and really accomplish some stuff. So, you know, I can always go back to the private sector, but the opportunity kind of arose when I was, because, you know, being ceo, it’s, it’s pretty exhausting. I was like, oh, lemme take a couple months, take a nap.

But you know, when when the board approached me when there was a, you know, the former executive director left, we needed someone. I said, yeah, of course. I mean, Hm. There’s really no other, there’s nothing else. I could have done

Speaker 1 (24m 40s): It.

Speaker 2 (24m 40s): Interesting. Really, I love fsc. I love what, what we stand for. I, it’s honestly a really big, it’s an honor to, to be the one defending this industry that I Yes. Spent my entire life in.

Speaker 1 (24m 57s): I’ll be honest, when I heard you had taken over first I was very happy. Okay. And second, I was kind of surprised cuz I’m like, I mean, Allison can do anything she wants in this industry, why take over a nonprofit? But I’m sure your experience throughout your career, including what we talked about early in your career, where you realized what FSC was and what they did and how important they were, I’m sure that played into it

Speaker 2 (25m 28s): A hundred percent. I mean, you know, I came from a, when I was in college, of course, you know, I was pretty politically active. I had been arrested. Surprised.

Speaker 3 (25m 38s): I’m really surprised. I’m really surprised by that.

Speaker 1 (25m 41s): Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25m 41s): Yeah. Crazy. You know, and, and it kind of, you know, I never thought, like, Alison, you sold out by just working in porn. But there was also a part of me that was like, yeah, you know, it’d be really cool if someday, like you can make a difference for the industry.

Speaker 1 (25m 60s): Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (26m 1s): There was a no brainer.

Speaker 1 (26m 2s): More power to you. More power to you. So nonprofits are a much different animal than for-profit companies. What were the biggest challenges you faced with the transition?

Speaker 2 (26m 16s): As it turns out, yeah. They’re a real, it’s a really different animal.

Speaker 1 (26m 20s): Big time. Like,

Speaker 2 (26m 21s): Oh yeah, I ran, I ran kink.com, I can run ffc and gosh, what isn’t different? So, you know, 50 employees or five. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (26m 35s): Well there’s some simplicity to that too. Of course.

Speaker 2 (26m 38s): A hundred percent. Yeah. No, and, and, and I think that, you know, understanding the whole, the, the impact of, of being a nonprofit, the, the different ways that, you know, you have to run an organization than you, you did have to run a company just from taxes. And I mean, it’s not that hard to sell porn or sex toys if we’re being honest. People want those things. Oh yeah, you have to do a good job. Yes, you have good product, but frankly, you know, it’s a little harder to sell the idea of supporting the industry, protecting our rights, you know, so that I think was the biggest change.

Like, okay, I’m not selling skin and, and pleasure. I’m selling your right to sell it.

Speaker 1 (27m 29s): Yes, absolutely. But

Speaker 2 (27m 31s): I, but I think being able to, having come from the perspective of being an FSC member and having donated and understanding, you know, what it meant to go from early in my career being raided by the FBI to what FSC did to where we all are now. Yeah. You know, I have a personal story, I could sell it. Sure. And we’re doing a lot.

Speaker 1 (27m 54s): I’m sure being on the board als, I I’m sure being on the board also played into it.

Speaker 2 (27m 59s): Yeah, for sure. I mean, had I, had I been totally new to it, gosh, I’m not even, it’d be crazy to take this job. But, you know, after a few years of kind of watching it, getting close to my fellow board members, having been the treasurer of the organization, so super familiar with, you know, what the, the books look like. Always a, an important consideration. Oh yeah. I felt like, yeah. Okay. We can make this work.

Speaker 1 (28m 27s): Absolutely. So beyond what you do at F S C, you’re also president of Pineapple Supports Born, which by the way, we are a proud sponsor of Pineapple Support. I, as I’ve said many, many times, I’m a huge advocate for anything that helps mental health and that also plays into my life that I’ve thought and used therapists and think the world of them. How did you get involved with them?

Speaker 2 (28m 56s): Well, big same. You know, I, I am so happy or I was so happy back when, gosh, whatever year that was when Leia decided she was gonna try to start an organization it

Speaker 1 (29m 11s): Like three years now.

Speaker 2 (29m 12s): Oh my gosh. It’s crazy. Time flies. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (29m 14s): I know, right? I know.

Speaker 2 (29m 16s): And and I, we happened to be in the same city cuz you know, she lives in Spain and I, I happen to be in LA and she was there at the same time and we grabbed lunch and she was like, look, I think I’m gonna, I’m gonna start this nonprofit. And I was like, that is the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (29m 32s): She’s amazing.

Speaker 2 (29m 33s): Can can I help? Do you need anything? Like, I dunno, I dunno how I can help. And Yeah, no, she is just extremely, extremely, I only really came to appreciate her. I definitely appreciate her before I had this job, but now yeah. Doing a similar thing. I’m like, holy crap, are you good at this? Like, she has allowed that organization to serve thousands of performers who need the help.

Speaker 1 (30m 2s): Think about how many lives that’s saved.

Speaker 2 (30m 5s): Lives saved. It’s just incredible. And she deserves all the credit in the world. I

Speaker 1 (30m 10s): Agree. I agree.

Speaker 2 (30m 12s): I can’t believe how far it’s come. Even just in three years. Yes. From nothing to, you know, coming up on 10,000 people,

Speaker 1 (30m 22s): Jews

Speaker 2 (30m 22s): Who’ve gotten help through pineapple support.

Speaker 1 (30m 25s): We promote it every chance we get on this podcast. I’ve had her on a couple times, I’ve had one of her therapists on. To me, it’s just a phenomenon that is just so important to this industry.

Speaker 2 (30m 42s): Oh, incredibly. It’s so important everywhere. And, and it’s very sad to me that this isn’t, you know, the way every industry treats its workers, giving them access to help or the US government even.

Speaker 1 (30m 57s): Yeah. Well there’s such a stigma though. There’s such a stigma about mental health and if you think there’s a stigma in the US try being in Thailand, try being in another country that do that isn’t as progressive. Well I don’t like to say the US is progressive anymore, but that can be as progressive as the US that is progressive in some ways and another ways going backward. But that’s another story.

Speaker 2 (31m 22s): Yeah. And I mean, even, you know, being a sex worker in the United States makes it incredibly difficult to find a provider who isn’t judging you and Right. You know, if you have access it, it can be dicey. I’ve even had therapists who’ve been really weird to me because I was on the business side. So Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31m 42s): Yeah. Tell me about

Speaker 2 (31m 43s): It. Credible screening, all these therapists, making sure that they like, understand the issues and treat all of our, you know, clients with respect. It’s just, I can’t a, I can’t thank you enough for the support because the organization really needs it and it’s just, it’s wonderful. It’s really great.

Speaker 1 (32m 5s): Well, our industry, as you know, and this is one of the goals of FSC, is to try to turn this around, but we get prejudice from every turn. But it’s amazing we would get prejudice from therapists,

Speaker 2 (32m 21s): Right. It seems almost at odds with what therapists are supposed to do.

Speaker 1 (32m 27s): Yeah. I’m sure they’ve got a, an oath and they’re breaking it by that. So, oh, well, thank God for laying pineapple support. That’s all I can say. I saw you at AVN and you were, were having meetings with various platforms. You were moving so fast. It wasn’t funny. I didn’t even hardly get a chance to say hi. What do you see as the biggest issues facing the industry?

Speaker 2 (32m 50s): You know, I think that one of the issues that really came to the fore in the fall when Wells Fargo decided to completely ban essentially adult businesses and, and workers from, from their, you know, from their bank. It, it just made an issue that has always been simmering. Like, oh, so and so lost the bank account. Let’s see if we can find them a new one. But it just really brought to the, for how much discrimination right.

Our industry faces. Yes. From what is essentially a basic human right. Like you have to have access to the financial services world in order to exist as a human. Yes. Yep. And that really galvanized me and, and made it really clear that that’s a, an issue we need to tackle.

Speaker 1 (33m 45s): Yes.

Speaker 2 (33m 46s): I think in addition, you know, Louisiana passing its age verification law was just the most recent in a whole string of a really bad age verification mandates Yeah. That we are, we’re gonna have to deal with. Sure. It’s happening. And so getting our strategy proactively, I’ve been talking to a lot of the platforms about look, what, what could work? Obviously these, these suggestions that like websites need to use an official, I mean, LA Wallet is what the Louisiana legislature wants you to use.

It’s absurd. It’s expensive. It’s using someone’s actual id. Yeah. I mean, we just, if you care about privacy, if you care about like actually having customers tomorrow, yeah. We can’t.

Speaker 1 (34m 40s): Well, and they, they know people will, they know the vast majority of people won’t do that because it’s porn.

Speaker 2 (34m 46s): Exactly. The whole point is to deprive adults of access to material that they have the constitutional right to view.

Speaker 1 (34m 55s): Yeah. It’s just the first amendment. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34m 58s): Just that, just number

Speaker 1 (34m 60s): One, no big deal.

Speaker 2 (35m 2s): So tackling that really big issue, you know, I, I think that we’re already, you know, making some strides there.

Speaker 1 (35m 9s): My broker tip today is part one on how to buy a site. The first question to ask yourself is what kind of site would you like to buy? Would you like a tube site, a cam site, a dating site, a membership site, a social media site, or something else? If you wanna buy a membership site, what type of membership site do you want? And in what niche? There are literally hundreds of niches in many sub niches. For instance, let’s say you wanna buy a gay site under gay, there’s Bears or mature bareback, Asian, Latino amateur, bi black Euro and Fetish, along with many fetishes under that classification.

Plus there’s hardcore jocks, porn stars, solo trans twinks, and uniforms. Straight has even more sub niches. I can’t tell you how many people contact me and just say, I wanna buy a site, or I wanna buy a pay site. I obviously need more information than that. How you make this decision should be based on these factors. What interests you, what you enjoy should definitely play a part in what you buy. Let’s say you like men and wanna make money on a straight site, that’s probably a really bad idea.

Say a thing if you’re straight and wanna buy a gay site. So what you like plays a part. What’s your budget? This is something you need to establish at the very beginning. Not only do you need to know what it is you’re working with, but some classifications of sites are more expensive than others. For instance, if you want a Cam site with any traffic or revenue at all, you’re gonna need a lot of money. In fact, to buy any established and successful site is gonna be really expensive. If you buy a site that’s pretty much just a platform without traffic or sales, you’re gonna need a huge investment to build it up.

In that case, it might actually be as good or better just to start your own site. That way you get exactly what it is you’re looking for. We’ll talk about this subject more next week and next week will be part two of our interview with Alison Bowden. And that’s it for this week’s Adult Site Broker talk. I’d once again like to thank my guest, Alison Bowden. Talk to you again next week on Adult Site Broker Talk. I’m Bruce Friedman.