Adult Site Broker Talk Episode 228 with Dan Cooper of ClipPage

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 Dan Cooper of ClipPage. We’ve doubled our affiliate payouts at ASB Cash. Now when you refer sellers or buyers to us, you’ll receive 20% of our broker commission on any and all sales that result from that referral for life. Check out ASB Cash for more details and to sign up. And we’re proud to announce our latest project, thewaronporn.com. You’ll find articles from industry websites as well as mainstream publications. It’s designed to raise awareness of our industry’s plight in the war on porn and the numerous attacks on our industry. You’ll find all that and more at thewaronporn.com. Now let’s feature our property of the week that’s for sale at Adult Site Broker. We’re proud to offer a growing free porn gaming site with adult sex games. The site is owned by one of the top entrepreneurs in our industry. This niche site is designed with a streamlined, user-friendly HTML structure that speeds up load times. What makes this site unique is its hands-free operation. It runs on autopilot, so no daily management is required, making it ideal for someone who wants a passive, reliable revenue stream. The only ongoing effort involves uploading new games, which takes no more than 10 to 15 hours per month to add hundreds of titles, ensuring a continuous stream of fresh content. The site is perfect for someone looking to enter or expand in the adult gaming space. The total number of adult games live to date is 3,397. 93% of the traffic is direct or organic. There’s an extensive network of high-authority backlinks built over several years. Many of these links come from permanent guest posts on respected, high-authority domains, offering sustainable SEO strength that requires no ongoing maintenance costs. This strategic backlink portfolio boosts search engine ranking and organic traffic that newer sites can’t match. Only $1.2 million. Now time for this week’s interview. My guest today on Adult Site Broker Talk is Dan Cooper from ClipPage. Dan, thanks for being with us on Adult Site Broker Talk. Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure. Dan has spent 25 years in software engineering. His experience and skills are rooted in the design, development, and operation of large production systems at scale, serving billions of users. Dan’s career spans startups to big tech companies from working on core internet services to product engineering on both software and hardware devices. He has a keen interest in platform design that solves complex problems with an approachable, intuitive, and humane user experience. Outside of work, Dan enjoys family time, retro computing, and hacking on various AI-related projects. Launched earlier this year, ClipPage is dedicated to transforming how creators and fans connect through custom content. With a singular goal of removing friction from custom content orders, ClipPage provides a seamless marketplace where fans can easily request personalized video and audio content from their favorite creators. Features include full control over how creators can share, the type of content they produce, streamlined order processes, promotions, shoot scheduling, and private fan messaging. Convenience controls allow creators to provide a personalized no-list, page password protection, location access restrictions, and the ability to set limits on incoming orders. Recently they launched ClipPage Quickies, that provides creators with a new set of custom content options to their fans such as Dick Ratings and shoutouts. In addition to working with individual creators, ClipPage recently introduced ClipPage Studio, a set of features for studios and agencies that include custom shoot scheduling, promotion tools, and an analysis dashboard for tracking sales, performance, and fan engagement. And Dan, I think that’s all the time we have for today. I think you for such an amazing introduction. It’s an honor to be here. I’m a big fan of the podcast, so thank you for having me on. You’re the one. You’re the guy that listens to it. Okay, that’s great. I am. Ah, good. So Dan, besides what I just talked about, tell me what’s been happening with ClipPage. Yeah, so, where to begin? So yeah, we launched earlier in 2024, around May time. Typically launched, I think it was, the main launch for us was at Exbiz Miami. So I sponsored the event. I attended the event in person, and it was, yeah, it was a really great time to sit actually, you know, face to face with creators there and hear about their use of the platform. We had some early creators attend the event as well and just get a ton of feedback and thoughts on what we were building. So it’s been a very, very busy year. The last few months, we’ve, you know, as you intro covered, we’ve introduced a bunch of new features and we’ve got a roadmap as long as my arm and it seems to be added to almost daily. So yeah, just a lot going on right now. Great. So Dan, tell us a bit more about your background and what I mentioned and what led you to create ClipPage. Yeah, sure. So I am a proud nerd. I’ve been using computers and technology since a really young age. So naturally ended up getting a degree in software engineering and then making a career in the tech industry. I launched my first startup whilst I was still at university in London back in ’99, mostly serving other startups. There was also the big, you know, dot com boom and then the crash in 2001. So when that happened, a lot of my startups that were venture funded kind of disappeared overnight. I ended up taking a job as a sysadmin for a couple of small companies and then later migrating from, I guess, small tech to big tech. And yeah, I’ve been there ever since. So I’ve been very fortunate in my career. I think for the last few years though, I’ve had this kind of drive to return to start up land again. So in the summer of 2023, I quit my well compensated job to venture out with what became ClipPage. I guess once you’ve had a startup, it does get in your blood, doesn’t it? Yeah, it’s some of the best experiences of my professional career have been when I’m working in small teams. And you can get some of that in big tech for sure. But there’s nothing quite like being in a startup. And when you’re working for a large company, you’re so many levels of abstraction away from the actual customers and their experiences. And so you might end up spending a year or two developing features for customers you’ve never spoken to. And so you launch and it’s like, okay, cool. I hope this works. I hope people like it, right? And it’s, yeah. And it’s just, like I said, you can get well compensated in the bigger companies, but the smaller companies, I think is where a lot of the action happens and where you get to learn and have some of the best experiences. What experiences from working in big tech have influenced the way you approached building clip page? Yeah, I think there’s a bunch of them. I think working in big tech definitely taught me the importance around scalability, like building a platform that scales up and ramps with user demand, security, privacy, user-centric design, those sorts of things. So these are things that are, yeah, when you’re working on products that touch literally billions of people, it’s very important that things scale and are private and are designed well. So at clip page, I apply a lot of these principles and all my, all of these learnings by really trying to focus on creating a platform that can grow with our users that it’s smooth and as intuitive as possible. And then I use some of some analytics on the back end to refine our offerings based on real user behavior. So above all, the focus really is around security and data privacy of all our users. Okay. By the way, we were talking before we actually hit the record button about how you obviously came from the UK and ended up in the US. Was that job related coming to the US? I’m guessing it was because you first lived in the Silicon Valley. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. There was an opportunity that came up and I’d visited the US. I’d worked for US companies whilst being in Europe and love the big cars, love the food. And so, yeah, an opportunity came up and discussed with the family and it was like, yeah, it seems like a good thing for us. And so, yeah, we took the plunge and moved out here. What was the position you came up for? Was, let’s think now. So yes, it was to work at one of these big tech companies, but as an individual contributor. So most of my career has been in management and running teams that own products and production systems. But this particular role was to take some of my expertise in scaling infrastructure up to come work for a company in the Bay Area. Okay. Any company we’ve heard of? Yes, absolutely. So, the company was Google. Ah, I’ve heard of them. Yes. But they’re mostly around, initially at least it was on some of their YouTube infrastructure. So got to work on the, what they call a live transcode pipeline, which powered the original, some of the original live streams that YouTube did. So I think it was the 2012 Olympics was one of the projects I worked on. And then the work that I put into that eventually helped power some of the live streaming products that YouTube has today. Very good. Well, we got you to thank for that. So why did you decide to leave the focus full time on clip page? I ask a question. So I think the actual decision kind of made itself for me. So I decided to leave to focus full time on clip page simply because I saw the opportunity ahead and the work that it required. I had a team at my day job, quite a heavy workload. And I felt really to give us the best possible shot. I needed to dedicate all of my energy and focus on building and growing clip page. So friends of mine are like, Hey, you can just do it the weekends and just do it in the evenings, but you can’t. And so I think splitting time between my then day job and clip page just wasn’t possible or even fair. It wasn’t fair to the company I was at or the team I was working with. And then on the other side, it wouldn’t have been fair to the creators and the fans of clip page. Yeah. So if everything’s a side light, it’s probably never really going to take off, is it? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And you’re never going to, you’re going to feel split between both sides. And then you’re going to just hate, hate them both too, right? Cause you’ll be in a meeting in your day job and you’ll get an email from a big creator who’s trying to join the platform, has some questions or whatever. And it’s like, I’ve got to get to them. And then yeah, I just didn’t want to get caught in that kind of tug of war between the, between the two things. Yeah. So you’re a one man band pretty much, aren’t you? Yeah. Correct. Yeah. So I am definitely a solo founder and which has been a challenge within itself, of course, but I am working with a bunch of other partners and companies to help me with the work that I do. So for example, I have an agency that runs our community engagement and our social media strategy. And I have a team who produce our creator and platform promotion images and then consultants that fill in the gaps. So things like SEO, platform testing and finance. So these are things that yeah, I could do, but you know, my time is probably better spent on engineering and then working with creators to help them on board. You know, I’ve always believed do what you do. Well, I don’t work on my own car for one thing. I’d screw it up. And the other thing is that I prefer to let an expert take care of it. Plus, I don’t like grease under my fingernails. And it’s just something I never really liked. But I do the same thing in my business. You know, I’m a solo entrepreneur, but I’ve got, you know, we’ve got the same social media team, seven veils, Alex, shout out to him. He’s fantastic. And he actually, he’s the one that put us together. Jed does my editing for my podcast and I’ve got SEO people. And the most important thing you can do is do what you do well and then let the people and I know I can’t forget Zach, who’s my developer, Zach Osborne, who’s actually been on the podcast a couple of times. You need people to do things for you. And if you’re not going to have employees and I’m with you, I don’t want employees. You should have some very, very good subcontractors. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I guess, I mean, for me, like I want employees. It’s just been able to afford them just now. And, you know, clip pages being completely bootstrapped. It’s, you know, all the investments come out of my own pocket and my own savings. And so, yeah, right now, at least in our early stages, as we get spun up, we’re not even a year old. It’s just to try and ensure that we’ve got a good sort of product market fit with creators and fans to get the, you know, the transactions running to a point where it was our fund. And then, yeah, we can look at getting some full-time employees. There you go. So we probably discovered some of that. But what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a startup founder coming into the adult space? Wow, there’s a lot. So I guess, for me, like personally, it’s not least just like just finding my footing here. You know, I came from big tech. I have zero experience with the adult space. And then I think the other thing is really working through all the core business things that you need in order to operate. It’s been very difficult at times. I think one of the biggest challenges has been navigating some of the services and infrastructure support that we need. So an example there is pain in processing, as I’m sure is no surprise. It’s yourself. There’s a lot of challenges there. So tell me a little bit about that. Yeah, so I thought it’d be easy, right? I thought, okay, there’s going to be a bunch of companies, much like maybe Stripe, but in the adult space. And I could just sign up with them, add a few lines of code to my site, and it’s done easy. Yeah, now in reality, what I found, there were many providers that seemed too good to be true. They offered very low fees, but had little integration support, very pushy salespeople. Or on the other end of the spectrum, I found companies that had every feature a platform like ClipPage could ever want. And a lot more that I just would never care for. Great integration support and everything, but very wide deemers extortionate fees. They had monthly minimum transaction commitments. If you didn’t make them, they would just take it from your account anyway. There’s a lot of monthly service charges and I think quite unfavorable terms as well. So yeah, it was definitely a challenge finding a partner we could work with, which we did. Who’d you end up working with? We ended up with Netbilling. Very good. And so they were very accommodating. I was like, "Hey, I’m a complete noob. Can you help me?" Absolutely. So they did a lot of handholding during our setup. Good company. Oh yeah, they’re amazing. And we sailed through all the audits. We had Visa MasterCard and companies that they employ do a full audit of our site. There was a lot of legal documentation, how-up internal processes and everything else. And their tech support was great as well. So it was probably two months, end to end, from initiating our contract with Netbilling to go in live with payments, but it was pretty plain sailing. That’s cool. So what other challenges have you found? I think another is, for us anyway, it’s been building trust. I think both on the creator and the fansides. I mean, it’s a crucial aspect for any new company, of course, but I think especially so an adult. So we’ve been working quite hard to ensure that both creators and fans feel confident that Clip Page is secure, it’s dependable. We’re very privacy focused. I mean, it’s an ongoing effort for sure. And I think creators that I’ve spoken to have been very skeptical, not least of us. I think one of our first sort of like our most common support requests we got soon after launch was like, "Hey, I’m a creator. I see you offer 100% payouts to creators." So you must be a scam, right? Like, what’s the deal? And so I had made it overly obvious in the copy on our website that we actually charged a 10% fee on the fanside. And that’s how our model works. That’s how you make your money, right? Yeah, exactly. And so that was maybe an oversight, but it was, yeah, again, just speaking to creators and then instantly assuming that you’re going to scam them and then they’re just trying to find out how you’re going to scam them. And this reminds me of a saying I have about the adult industry. And it goes like this. If you give them free money, they won’t take it. They’ll be skeptical. And you’re giving them free money. Yeah, yeah. That’s a good point. Yeah, it’s some creators that say, "I don’t care what you charge me." We’ve been reasoned. I almost want the confidence that you’re earning from me in order to power and support me on your platform. So that was definitely some feedback that I hadn’t expected to receive. But yeah, we’re going to continue with our 100% payouts and convey that in a way that’s not scam-like. That’s really awesome. So what else? I know you had a few. Let me think. So other sort of challenges. I think one of the things that I’ve seen a lot with creators, I do with the onboarding. So when creators join, they get an email and it says, "Hey, welcome." And you can book a free one-on-one with myself for me to take you through the platform. And so one of the challenges there being creators get pulled in multiple directions at all times. And so they have understandably quite short attention spans. They will get a break in time and they’re like, "Hey, oh yeah, that clip page thing. I’ve spent hours on onboarding calls with creators and fielding questions and supporting them." And I think one of the challenges there is that I spend time with a creator and they’ll be like, "Oh, okay, cool. Thanks." And then I would pop off the call and then I wouldn’t hear from them for a month or two months. And then I would maybe do a screen recording of where we got to and just to help them, I would send them a DM and send them a screen recording. And then they’d be like, "Oh yeah, thanks. That’s great. I’ll go on it now." And then a week goes by, two weeks and nothing’s like, "Oh, is this something with this site?" And so yeah, typically I sympathize with it. Absolutely. They have these shorter attention spans because that’s all they’re given. They’re being pulled around too much. And so yeah, that’s been another challenge for us as well because we have some creators that have registered with us. They’ve done the ID verification. They’re approved. They’ve configured their clip page ready to go. They just not hit publish yet. And so you reach out, you’re like, "Hey, you’re going to publish your page because we’d love for you to be live and we can promote you and you can start taking orders and you just get nothing." Yeah, it kind of reminds me of when somebody wants to sell their site and I go, "Great, send me your financials. I wait. I wait. I wait." And I would say at least 40% of the time they never send them. It’s like so hard to do a profit and loss statement for any business, isn’t it? Anyway, explain what clip page is, how it works for both creators and fans. Okay, yeah, certainly. So our official kind of tagline, if you like, is that clip page makes it easy for creators to receive content requests from their fans. Bit of mouthful. So clip page exists because we and many creators that we’ve spoken with believe that the current method of taking fan requests for customs is broken. It’s frustrating. There’s a lot of ambiguity and there’s just way too much friction. So I think, as you mentioned in your introduction, creators on clip page can offer either regular traditional customs or quickies, like the ratings and shout outs or both. And the quickies feature is very straightforward. It’s an on-route experience for both the creators to set up and for fans to order through. But the traditional customs are more complex. It’s where I feel that we truly shine. So I mean, would it be helpful if I explain the current process, typically how it works today for creators and then that might help illustrate some of the complexities and how clip page offers an alternative? Yeah, okay. So there are several fan and clip sites, as you’re aware, that offer a custom order feature. So all of these aren’t really comprehensive enough or cover all the bases for creators and their fans. And so the majority of custom orders that are produced today are typically placed via direct one-on-one interactions between a creator and a fan. So if you’re a creator who produces customs for fans and you’re not already on our site, you will probably do this via one of the many fan or clip sites that you have a presence on or maybe Reddit. And there’s a bunch of subreddits you can post your services to and connect with fans there. But typically as a creator, you have to be present on these platforms, a fan will reach out and say, "Hey, are you open for customs?" And if you are, there’s a period of time which can be quite lengthy where you tend to go back and forth messaging in DMs to figure out exactly what the fan is looking for. So one of the problems that we solve is the initial kind of what we call kind of pre-qualification that the creator has to make. So they have to determine if the fan is maybe new on their platform. Do they have a good reputation? Are they able to actually make a payment? Did it purchase before? Are they sane? And so once they’ve done that then, unfortunately, is the guys here, the fans just want to get off. They’re discussing their fantasies with a creator and they maybe have no intention to pay for maybe a sexting service or a premium Snapchat service or whatever. So there’s a lot of friction, a lot of frustration back and forth between the creator and fan. Typically if the creator feels that the fan is actually legit, the next step is kind of figuring out the details and whether you can actually accommodate the request or whether there’s some aspect the fan is looking for that’s not something you’re equipped or comfortable in producing or even worse, a fan might ask for something that’s highly inappropriate or illegal. So the creator has to work through all that and it’s all on the creator’s shoulders. It’s like what the platforms don’t do any of this kind of pre-qualification for the creators. Once that’s all done, then the creator then has to then surface the narrative. So it’s like, okay, well, what is it you’re looking for? Is there a theme or a particular fetish? What should my appearance be, my outfit? Maybe the fan wants to share some inspiration that they’ve seen elsewhere that they’d like from the creator. Are there toys involved? Does the creator have to say the fan’s name and so on? So there’s a lot and this all goes on typically in the DMs, it’s back and forth, back and forth. And then creators that we spoke into one of the big frustration points is that then once it’s kind of agreed in general what the fan would like, the fans then try to negotiate the price. And so in my opinion, that shouldn’t happen, right? It’s a price. Right, yeah. You don’t go to the grocery store and pull up at the counter and try and get a discount on your shopping. And also customs are more time consuming to prepare, to shoot and to post edit as well. So once that’s all gone through and they’ve figured things out, maybe the fan wants to keep the content for themselves. So the creator might charge an exclusivity fee and that would then have the creator promised not to sell or share on that content as a PPV or something later. So the fan might want to pay that. Then there’s all these peripheral questions like what resolution does the creator shoot? Is it 4K or is it 1080p? And there’s a bunch of these things. I spoke to a creator in terms of, I was doing some initial customer interviews and she said, and she was quite a high end kind of premium. So her customs were, you know, after like 15, 20 minutes, you’re looking at sort of $600 to $800 for what she shoots. And she went back and forth with her fan and then she spent a week figuring out exactly what the fan wanted to see. And she shot it, she did the post editing, the fan already paid, he had tipped her on one of the fan sites. And she delivered it to him and he was like, oh no, you filmed it in portrait. I wanted landscape. And so she was like, oh, and so they were both, they both left that transaction feeling kind of frustrated, the fan didn’t quite get what he wanted and she felt bad or what she had shot. So things like that, that introduce all these frictions. So you know, clip page steps in and addresses all of those above points and makes sure that every one of those friction points of our platform, we have features that kind of represent those questions that would normally get asked back of all mist. Basically they tick boxes, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, it’s, I mean, you can, you can boil the creators clip page down to be just like a glorified web form if you like. There’s a lot of intelligence behind it. But it’s, yeah, it just, yeah, it removes all those friction points and hopefully makes a fairly smooth process for both the creator and the fan. That’s awesome. That is completely awesome. Now that you’ve explained it, I hope a lot of creators are listening. What was the development process like and how did you know what features to prioritize? Yeah, that was, that was a big deal. So I did a bunch of customer interviews. So I reached out to creators to ask them, okay, like, you know, I’m thinking of building something in the content creative space, can I get some time? And to be honest as well, originally the idea for clip page wasn’t necessarily purely adult. So I spoke to artists and musicians and streamers and social media influencers to really try to understand how they manage their personal brands and their businesses and then to identify areas where they had challenges around content production, distribution and monetization. And, you know, frankly, like the adult creators and that space, it was on my list of people to reach out to, which I did. And I found a group of professionals who not only had all the challenges that maybe a fitness influencer might have, but they had unique issues too. So, you know, aside from the societal stigmas that still plague the industry, unfortunately. Which you found out for your own business. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. But then they had these things like, you know, there’s payment and payout hurdles. There was platform policy changes that we’ve all seen. Privacy and security concerns were just that level higher for them as adult creators. And then you have all the content moderation inconsistencies, right? One day a platform lets something be okay. And then the next day it’s not. And, you know, best case, some content to remove, but worst case, a creator could get de-platformed, right? So there’s a lot of these challenges. And so, I can tell you a story. So what I actually did as well as part of my research, I mean, when I found the adult space and I found such a warm welcome and very engaged set of creators, okay, this is what I want to do. So I was like, hey, well, let’s be a fan. Let’s go to some of these sites and registered and that started to make orders. So I thought, okay, I’ll make some orders for custom content myself. And I probably did like five or six of them with content creators just to see how the flow would work from the fan perspective. And then I was the first couple, I was like, just vanilla, like the creators like, hey, so what do you want to see? I’m like, oh, I don’t know, just, you know, whatever. And so they’re, oh, okay, cool. And so, because I wasn’t there for the content, right? It was there to understand the process. No, yeah. And so it was funny because what happened was like, oh, you know, I can actually use my time and money to actually do some market research here as well, right? So if I’m making requests and why don’t I make requests about custom? So I asked creators, hey, can you, you know, are you open for customs? And they were like, yeah, like, hey, can you make a video where you share three things you really like and three things you really hate about making custom videos? Oh, no, that’s great. Yeah. So a couple of creators were like, no, like they’d climb it. Yeah. They, I guess they probably thought I was some freak with some interview fetish or something. And they were like, no, I’m not going to answer any questions on that. I was like, oh, okay, cool. And then I got maybe three or four back that are really good and very useful. And, you know, I was very open. I was like, hey, I’m just doing some research here. And one creator, she was like, so I don’t have to like be naked or anything. I was like, no, no, no, no, just wear whatever you’re comfortable in. She’s like, you don’t want to see me like my body or anything. I was like, no, no, just answer my questions. Oh, you should have said yes. Maybe. You would have enjoyed it more. Yeah, that’s true. I say, okay. And so, yeah, that’s what I did. And that helped with prioritizing our features, which is always difficult and still is very difficult, but it helped me kind of narrow down. Okay, cool. I now know his 15, 20 things that had to be table stakes for the platform and had to go out at launch. And then it was probably another, I don’t know, five or 10 things that I built as fast follows later. That’s a great way to do research. I like that. So share some metrics on ClubPage if you could. How big is the team? Oh, we already went over that, so we won’t talk about that. How many creators are on the platform now? Yeah, so in terms of creative numbers and traffic and stuff, we’re not being overly communicative of the sharing just yet because we’re still early days. Well, but, well, it also we’re beginning to look for investment as well. And so some of those early conversations we’ve had with a couple of investors, they were like, "Hey, don’t tell anyone anything." They’re like, "Really, nothing?" They’re like, "Set goals, tell people you’re achieving them or not." But like, yeah, actual numbers. But yeah, I can say that we’ve, you know, when we launched, we launched in around kind of April, May time and ExBiz Miami was great. It gave us a lot of validation, I think, from creators and it helped get our name out there. And so we quickly went into the, you know, sort of low tens and then did the event, a bunch of follow-ups. And we hear our first like 100 creators, maybe a month or so later. And now, yeah, we’re into the hundreds of creators heading towards our goal of 1000 active creators. So we’re getting there, but it’s, you know, it’s a slow uphill battle for sure. And that’s, you know, both creative numbers, those are actual active creators. So we have, you know, and it’s like, I hadn’t really thought about too much, but we have a lot of, what I’d say is kind of like, you know, bigger creators, bigger names, well-known names that have come to our platform, I think just to kind of grab their user names. So they’ve registered and they’ve kept their profiles not published, which makes sense. Because if you’re, yeah, you want to protect your brand as a creator and if people know you as particularly using them, yeah. So I know I’ve reached out, I reach out to every creator who joins, I craft them a personal welcome message because I really do care and appreciate every creator we have. And yeah, some of those bigger creators are like, hey, yeah, I registered, I’m just going to sit on my name for now and I’ll give you six months. And if you’re still around, I’ll consider having someone in my team set me up on your platform. We can discuss some of those off air. Maybe I know some of them. Yeah, that’d be awesome. Yeah. So, which, I mean, it’s great to have the bigger creators for sure. I think there’s kind of like a bell curve of content creators who are, you know, in the sort of high single digit thousands to kind of double digit tens of thousands in terms of fans across different platforms. And that’s where the bulk of the creators actually sit. So for us, yeah, having the bigger creators is awesome for sure because creators follow other bigger creators to see where they go and what platforms they use. But I think also, you know, the bulk for us is those creators in the middle. Okay. You talked about going to Miami, by the way, to expo’s. I was at that show last year. I wasn’t able to make it this year. That was your first adult show, right? Yes. So what was your impression of our industry before and after you went to that show? Yeah, I guess my impression was that a lot of creators that you see who attended that show, so there was a good spectrum of creators of different sizes and audience sizes. I thought you meant sizes. I was going to go, "Yeah, that’s true too." Yeah. Well, both. Both. That’s true. Yes. So I was going to go to those creators physically as well as audience sizes. And like, yeah, I felt like, okay, I don’t know if I can even begin. How do I even approach them? Like these creators, they have thousands, tens, hundreds of thousands of followers and fans. But going then just sitting beside the pool or getting a Coke at the bar or whatever, I was able to approach creators, these famous ones. And like, "Oh, hey, I’m Dan from Clip and Expecting Rejection. I expected them to like, ’Ugh, who are you?’" And I got the exact opposite. I found such a warm and friendly community and very welcoming. And I don’t know if previous expers, maybe you can tell me this, but there was not complaints. There was vendors and platforms there who had voiced their frustration, the badges that you wear didn’t have like vendor on them. And so I think they’d done that a previous year, but this year it was just... Vendor? Yeah, or partner or platform or something to basically distinguish the difference between a creator and a natural platform staff member, for example. I might not always have my company name on them at that show and every show. Oh, yeah. So we didn’t have... I didn’t have my company name on it. So there wasn’t company names on, I think, on any of them. Oh, you didn’t? I don’t believe so. No. That would be a surprise because whenever I’ve been to the expo shows, adult site brokers on there. Right. So I don’t recall now I have to go and dig my badge out, but that was... Yeah, because maybe it’s a different color, maybe they’re different color lanyards or something. That would make some sense. Because I first got there and I had to queue for like four hours to get my ticket. There was a dedicated like vendor or sponsor line that I should have been in, but it was such a crush of people. I ended up in what was the Chatterbait cam model line and I was there for two hours queuing up and then I got asked like, "Hey, are you a Chatterbait cam model?" I was like, "No." And they’re like, "Oh, who are you?" And so they put me to have a line. But yeah, so I think to your question, I think I had expectations that creators maybe weren’t as approachable as I found them to be, which was a pleasant surprise, which was awesome. And they’d just given you their time of day. So I spent the whole week just sat with creators and just talking to them about the industry and they were like, "So how long have you been in the industry?" And they’re like, "Oh, a good two months." And like, you know, no time did I get any kind of, "We can’t sit with us." Kind of thing, right? It was, yeah, it was amazing. We’re a nice group of people. The adult industry in general, we’re a nice group of people. You’re going to find that out. Did you get a chance to talk to many of the B2B people there? I did, yes. Yeah. So we had to have a couple of, what do they call them, B dating for like, for, well, they bring both of vendors. So the speed networking, yeah. Yes. Yeah. And that was great. I did that on every day that it was running and got to meet some new faces for sure. Very important for anybody in B2B. You got to do speed networking if you don’t do that. You’re wasting your time and money being at the show if you don’t network well. And that’s a good way to meet a lot of people in a very short period of time. Everyone who gives me their card at one of those speed networking goes in my database and gets my newsletters. Anyway. Are there any success stories you can share and notable creators who are using ClipPage? Yeah. So we are, you know, at least ages right now, as I explained. And I think one of the most exciting aspects of ClipPage is just the sheer diversity of creators that we have on our platform who are finding actual value with the usage of the platform. So a couple of examples that come to mind. One is Yuri Game. She is an amazing cosplayer. She actually has one of the highest number of options available to fans of any creators on our site. So she has an amazing array of outfits and costumes and add-ons and things. Oh, sure. Cosplayer for sure. Oh, yeah. So I actually did the math recently just for fun. And I calculated that a fan could customize a request from her in one of 916 subterranean ways. Whoa. Yeah. So that’s nearly, I think it’s a thousand times greater than the number of stars in the observable universe. That’s how many options she offers. Well, there you go. And so she’s great. She’s very energetic, very personable, I guess, being a cosplayer and attending a lot of events and cons you kind of have to be, right? And yeah, being a great supporter of the platform. Cindyka is a lady called Cindyka and Cindyka is an adult creator and also a cam model. And so I got to meet her actually in person. Actually, I got to meet you again as well, but I got to meet them both at X-Piz, Miami, just so happened that they were going there. And so with Cindyka, she uses Clip Page to provide her fans with a way of so they can basically receive personalized content that might not be possible to shoot whilst she’s live streaming. And as a cam model, she has a set up, whether it’s on a desktop or wherever she is, despite also having kind of like private sessions that are available when she’s going live, fans want to continue that kind of engagement with her later, right? And so they can order customs from Clip Page for that. Another thing I’ll also say, I mean, without sharing the details, is that many customs that we see get produced by creators are not necessarily extreme, hardcore or very deep fetish oriented, as you might imagine as a fans mind can kind of run wild. And so we’ve seen actually a lot of creators who provide very kind of intimate and very endearing content to fans who just want to be noticed and appreciated. And so perhaps they might not get the opportunity to connect with a person, a creator like that in real life, and they just want something that’s heartfelt and inspiring for them. Some recognition. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. And we’ve had fans right in and reach out and just the feedback has been wonderful. They receive a custom from someone wishing them well wishes for maybe they’re in the military and they’re going to go off on some tour and creators sent them well wishes through our platform. And so it makes a lot of the difficult and stressful times when we’re dealing with some of the not so great things just kind of go away because it’s just seeing some of these happy fans are with the deliveries that are getting from creators makes it all kind of worth it. So what do you see as the biggest trends in the content creator space right now? Yeah, so I’m definitely seeing a shift towards more personalized and direct fan interactions. There’s definitely a rise of like short form content. Obviously, things like TikTok and shorts and that the existing a lot of the big platforms exploded during COVID. I think it’s presented fans with I would say almost unlimited choices of creators. I think there’s I think the latest numbers is three, three and a half million creators are out there today that you can connect with and purchase content from. And so the market feels fairly saturated. Like if you’re a fan has a particular niche or body type or whatever you want to see, you can probably find a hundred creators now in that niche. So yeah, I’m passing a big believer in customs. I think customs definitely help creators differentiate themselves a little bit. And when you’ve got that much competition, something like clip page will allow you to more easily make customs and make more money. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think there’s there’s probably another kind of like trend of creators seeking more control over their content and their earnings. And that’s definitely driving interest in platforms that prioritize the creator economy or autonomy, I should say. And so I think yeah, one of the features we call on our roadmap later for 2024 is the ability to embed our platform into your own. So several creators have said, hey, look, I’ve got some escape velocity on only fans or fans or wherever they are. And I’ve spun up my own.com and I want to take customs. So can I do that? So we’re going to make an embedded version of clip page later. That’s awesome. Very good. What advice would you give to new content creators looking to build a following and monetize their work? So I would say it’s definitely a lot of work. It’s a massive commitment. It’s not an easy space to be in. I think I guess I’ve had an easier time coming in as a platform, but like speaking to creators. Well, that’s because you’re offering them something they can’t get right now. Right. Yeah, that’s probably true. I think just speaking to creators again, like at Xbeers or if I’ve done customer kind of discovery calls with them, I think you really have to understand that it’s a lot of work and really understand what you’re going to venture into when you’re getting into adults. Very important. I would say in general, like, I think it’s probably several things. I think you’ve got to definitely know your audience. You’ve got to understand who your fans are and what they value from you. Be consistent. I mean, that gets banded about a lot, but it’s true. You’ve got to post high quality content, regular cadence. There’s a lot of conversation right now around engagement with fans, interaction, a lot of creators. I think, unfortunately, you’re using Chatters and some of the AI tooling to interact with their fans. I think there’s not a backlash, but definitely I’ve spoken to fans who are like, "Hey, I don’t follow that creator. I don’t stop to create anymore because all I get is just some AI bot trying to get me to purchase something." There are lawsuits because of that. Oh, really? I hadn’t seen those. Oh, you weren’t aware of that. No. Yes. Against only fans and a number of agencies, but continue. Because they’re using Chatters? Yes. Oh, wow. Okay. I should take a look at that. Sorry, you’re asking me for other things. I guess definitely to diversify your income streams. I wouldn’t, as a creator today in 2024, I wouldn’t rely on just a platform or even type of content. So definitely find other ways to monetize such as custom content, but look at all the different platforms. There’s so many. Every week, there’s a new announcement of a new fan site or clip site that launches. Definitely test them out. As we get, we get creators that sign up and they just want to see what it looks like or they just want to quickly just kick the tires on it and then they disappear. So which is good. And we encourage that. I definitely try out all the things. I guess the most important thing is your branding. Again, with a lot of AI tools and stuff that’s happening right now, I think staying authentic to your values and then being really mindful of the platform that you choose to work with is really important. I think that goes for miles with fans. When they know that they’re talking to you, the actual creator they’ve subscribed to, they tip or pay is really important. So definitely brand is everything. Absolutely. So talk about your future plans for Clip Page. You’ve just introduced a couple of big features. How do you see the platform evolving over the next few years? Yeah. So, okay, so we have a roadmap that is, I think I’m adding to it almost daily, which is actually awesome. Like both creators, mostly creators by fans too, they reach out and they’re like, "Hey, I’d like to see this or can you build this?" We recently introduced Clip Page Studio. So that’s where we’re working with both studios and agencies and we’ll be adding features to that component. We’ve got Clip Page quickies as well. So that’s something that we’re going to add to again over time. And then we are going to be introducing a couple of AI backed features to the platform. And so I can give you a quick overview of those. So I think for the fan side, we are going to have a chat and voice bot. So fans can come to the platform and they can say, "Hey, I’m looking for XYZ." And the bot will say, "Okay, cool. There’s four creators that can do that for you. Do you want to see this, this or this?" And basically just walk them through the whole order process from end to end and help them craft the ultimate fantasy. But it’s not like you’re talking to a creator. We wouldn’t market that as that. It’s like, "Hey, you’re talking to this bot and it’ll help you." It’s kind of like a co-pilot for your order. And then on the creator side, I’m calling right now a virtual director shot list. So this is an AI-driven tool that will interpret the fan narrative. So whatever the fan order that is placed, and then it would automatically generate a detailed shot list for the creator. So it will help them streamline their production process and ensure that they capture all the fan expectations in their content. That’s awesome. Well, hey, Dan. Great to thank you for being our guest on Adult Site Broker Talk. And I hope we’ll get a chance to do this again soon. Yeah, thank you, Bruce, for having me. Really appreciate our time. My broker tip today is part two of how to buy a site. Last week we discussed first deciding the type of site you want to buy and then establishing what your budget is. Next it’s time to look for your new website. So where do you look? Well, Adult Site Broker is a great place to start. We always have a nice variety of website and non-website properties for sale. But if there’s a particular type of site you want, we can also act as your buyer’s broker to help you find just the right site. Other places to look are boards like xbiz.net and gfy.com. But to be completely honest, unless what you’re looking for is a really low-end property, you’re probably not going to find what you’re looking for there. Of course, you could contact site owners yourself, but take it from someone who does it for a living. It’s a major hassle and it can be really hard to even find out who owns a site. Almost all adult sites use who is privacy from their domain registrar, so when you send them an email, it will be an anonymous address and in most cases the emails aren’t returned. We have a huge database of sellers and generally know who owns what. And if it’s a website of note, if we don’t know who owns it, we can usually find out. We’ll talk about this subject more next week. And next week we’ll be speaking with Steve Lightspeed of porn.ai. And that’s it for this week’s Adult Site Broker Talk. And once again, I’d like to thank my guest, Dan Cooper of ClipPage. Talk to you again next week on Adult Site Broker Talk. I’m Bruce Friedland. [MUSIC] to be implemented.