Adult Site Broker Talk Episode 39 with Karl Edwards of You Love Jack

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This is Bruce Friedman of Adult Site Broker and welcome to Adult Site Broker Talk, where every week we interview one of the movers and shakers of the adult industry, and we discuss what's going on in our business. Plus we give you a tip on buying and selling websites this week. This week we'll be talking with Karl Edwards of You Love Jack.

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Adult Site Broker's proud to announce ASB Cash. The first affiliate program for an adult website brokerage with ASB Cash you'll have the chance to earn as much as 20% of our broker commission, referring sellers and buyers to us at Adult Site Broker. Check our website at asbcash.com for more details. First of all, today let's cover some of the news going on in our industry., the Canadian house of commons committee on access to information, privacy and ethics. That's a mouthful held its third meeting last week regarding mine geeks content moderation with testimony by three alleged subjects of illegal videos followed by presentations by a Canadian law enforcement expert, a Canadian domestic violence advocate, and two us witnesses, Manhattan liability, lawyer, Michael Bowie, and leading anti-porn activists, Laila Micklethwait of Exodus cry.

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The hearing was even more pressing against Montreal based mind geek with the MPS, allowing three witnesses in particular, the Americans Mikel weighed in Bowie plus the London, Ontario domestic violence victims advocate, and anti-porn activists. Megan Walker to essentially run the entire second half of the hearing asserting a number of extreme moral and criminal allegations against mine geek their executives and employees. This culminated in Bowie who had not been listed as a witness and may have been representing some of the alleged victims who spoke earlier on inserting on the record, a prepared soundbite in America. We have monsters, Harvey Weinstein.

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We have Epstein mine. Geek is Canada's monster Bowie. Then characterize mine geek whom he claimed has been. He has been investigating for years as a bad unaccountable road company. The US-based religiously inspired Mikel wait was also allowed by the Canadian MPS to refer to mind geek as the mafia and to make unsupported allegations that they had threatened her and journalist Bowie also in a carefully worded language to avoid being cited for slander said that the mind geek corporate structure was something he had never seen before and likened it to something a law school might teach when covering money laundering.

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Last week, the Utah house of representatives passed an amended version of a controversial bill that would mandate a default porn filter on any phones, computers, tablets, or any other electronic devices sold in the state starting in 2022, HB 72 sponsored by Republican Susan. Pulsifer a realtor with no technology experience was speedily passed by the house only hours after it had cleared the committee stage by the narrowest of margins, a six five vote. The bill was introduced into the Utah Senate where it is co-sponsored by staunch anti-porn Crusader Wayne Harper, the unusually Swift overnight passage of the bill with minimal to non-existent debate flew under the radar of local and national news organizations, which had not yet reported on it by Friday morning.

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Pulsifer had attempted to introduce the bill last year when it died at the committee stage over serious by partisan concerns about privacy and interference with interstate and international commerce. Earlier this month, Pulsifer invited anti-porn advocates to support the bill at the committee stage, including an officer for NC OSC, formally known as morality and media, the leading national sponsor and founder of anti-porn legislation members of the Utah trade associations, tech companies lobbies and free speech groups, all advocated against HB 72 if passed the mandatory filters from which for profit faith based software companies have been profiting for some time would have to be activated by default in 2022, if certain additional conditions attached to the bill as an amendment are met, according to analysts, international manufacturers of phones and computers like Apple or Google

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Could face civil liability.

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The site continues to grow at a rapid pace. Despite the pandemic 2020 profits were actually still up the site offers adult entertainer ads for over 30,000 providers with an active base of 9,000 plus active profiles and all major us Canadian and UK markets. The platform has a very loyal advertiser base allowing the owner to enjoy passive recurring revenue. In addition to an impressive number of new advertiser joins daily revenue is also derived from third-party ad space from major advertisers that does not intrude on the website's beautiful, clean design, making the sites stand out from all their competitors.

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3 (7m 43s):
Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

1 (7m 45s):
It is my pleasure.

3 (7m 47s):
No, it's my pleasure. No, it's my pleasure.

1 (7m 51s):
You'd say that. That's awesome. Now, now Carl is one of the true pioneers of the gay adult industry from his early days as the owner of bedfellow.com to you love Jack, which I'm sure you've heard of and foot woody.com and his most recent venture X, X, X edit.com. He's been on the forefront of technology and adult internet marketing. He shoots net it's his own content manages his own affiliate program and he codes and designs each of his sites from scratch. Now this hands-on approach keeps him in direct touch with his market and helps them stay. One step ahead of the competition.

1 (8m 31s):
Now, Carl, you've been in the online adult game for a long time,

3 (8m 37s):
Since the late nineties. It's a, it's an eon in internet years.

1 (8m 43s):
God, that is that's like the beginning.

3 (8m 47s):
How, if things do, I'll tell you just a little interesting aside, my business partners and myself actually processed the third-party visa transaction on the internet way back in the day, like this is before CC bill and I bill and DMR and all like, it's just, we go way, way back. So we were kind of breaking ground back then, but

0 (9m 9s):
Yeah. Wow. So how have things changed since you got started?

3 (9m 15s):
Oh, let me see. I guess the, you know, the big thing, right? You know, when I started this, you could throw up a site and literally you could throw up a site and make money within a couple of days and a lot of, and it just isn't that way anymore. There's still a demand for the content and people are still consuming the content, but they're doing it in different ways and you have to be a lot more savvy in actually reaching your customers. It's not like the old days where they just sort of flocked to you. So I mean, that's big thing, but the, you know, the, the real thing is people are savvy in their consumption as well.

3 (9m 56s):
And they have a very specific set of needs that, you know, you can't meet by throwing up a couple of pictures in a two minute clip. They're not going to be satisfied by that anymore. They're sophisticated. And they're used to consuming content day in and day night. And then unless you really raise the bar in what you're actually showing them, they're just not going to be interested.

0 (10m 17s):
Yeah, yeah, no, back then, I mean the entire internet almost was porn. Right?

3 (10m 23s):
Well, as far as I was concerned, it was, you know, it's funny. I go back my background and the internet, there's a company like a service provider in Canada called simpatico, which is run by bell Canada. It's one of the big telcos in Canada. Right. And they, they, when they first started, simpatico was sort of staged. It was set up to be like, Canada's AOL only without sending you a million CD ROMs in the mail. And I was actually working for a simpatico. They hired me to program their children's entertainment website.

3 (11m 4s):
It was like early days of JavaScript and Netscape two. And, you know, I made all these crazy games like squash, the teacher and park piano and all these fun things that kids would love. And it was, it was like the wild West. Like we would just make stuff and see if it worked. And it was a lot of fun to go to work every day. And then all of a sudden bell Canada came in and realized, you know, that this was a cash cow and suddenly they want to corporate bureaucracy put in place and content was being decided by committees. And you know, all the fun, all the, all the soul got stripped out of what we were doing. And I, I turned to my friend who I worked with in, in the bars way back in the day he happened to work there as well. And I just said, you know, just kinda start a porn site.

3 (11m 46s):
And it was like dot, dot, dot, right. Cut to the map as the plane flies across the ocean. And next thing you know, we've got bed phone, it's, it's the, you know, the largest gay porn site on the internet. So, and I say, next thing you know, is like two years later with working 18 hours a day. And, you know, being really savvy with our media buys and really understand, you know, figuring out how to make the thing work. It wasn't like, I don't want to make it sound like it was easy, but it was compared to if we started today, right. Well, you didn't have the competition then that's right. But the competition that we did have was fierce, really. It was just, it was just a different group. Like there was, it's funny because back then there was like three or four big sites that were our competition.

3 (12m 29s):
And now it's three or four big sites that control all the traffic. So it's slightly different, but sort of

1 (12m 35s):
Sure now is the market as strong as it once was. And why do you think it is arisen?

3 (12m 44s):
Well, I think yes and no. I, like I said, I think there's still a lot of, Ooh, that was a nice S sound, but it's still, I think there's still a lot of demand for this kind of content, but the way that people are consuming it, I mean, everyone's aware that they can get content for free. Yeah. The tube sites have sort of pounded it into people's brains that this is not something that they have to necessarily pay for, unless they want something very specific. Right. So when I say it's fragmented, I mean, people are buying smaller and smaller slices. They're still consuming a lot on mass, but they're not necessarily buying a lot. So it's, you know, you got to sort of pry the money out of probably the money out of their hands, right?

1 (13m 26s):
Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. Now why do you shoot your own content? Why not just buy it from a content provider?

3 (13m 35s):
Oh, that's easy. If I don't shoot it, it sucks that wasn't, that wasn't, that, wasn't what I was going to

1 (13m 45s):
Say. That wasn't a pun or anything. Was it? I don't need

3 (13m 47s):
Edith Wharton to tilt her fan at me on this one. No, that, I mean, really I have such high exacting stats. You know, I, my background is in photography. I got my degree in photography. I have a bachelor of fine arts in photography from 1990. I'm that old. So I've always been an image maker

1 (14m 8s):
19, 1990, not old

3 (14m 13s):
10,000. And I turned, I turned 55 this year.

1 (14m 19s):
I got to

3 (14m 20s):
Remember. You probably remember in the eighties and nineties, the freedom 55 commercials where people were walking around bragging that they were able to retire when they're 55. Yeah. Wouldn't that be nice? I don't think retirement is part of anyone's future anymore. We just work until we drop. Right. But no, I've always been an image maker and it's something that matters a lot to me and making something that not only looks good, but tells a story effectively. Even if that story is you take off your clothes and you suck his Dick, like that's still, the, the storytelling still has to happen in a way that's sophisticated enough for the audience that is consuming.

3 (14m 60s):
Right.

4 (15m 1s):
Yeah. And especially with all of the, especially with all the options they have, if you're, if you're not good, you, you die.

3 (15m 11s):
Well, let's just say, and yeah, there's a lot of free stuff out there. And the advantage we have as content producers, I'm sorry, it's a new age content creators. Is that the stuff that's out there for free typically really sucks too. Like people will always find a way to pirate something. I mean, you know, the internet democratized, the means of distribution, which meant someone like me could actually produce and sell content on the internet relatively easily, but that also means other people can pirate it and redistribute it as well. So, you know, that's, that's something we're always going to live with. And I think since day one, it's always been about staying just ahead of that curve. Just one step ahead. You know, if you do part of the stuff it made last week, someone's still going to buy the stuff that I made this week.

3 (15m 56s):
So, you know, I, I'm still a little bit ahead of the game, right?

4 (16m 0s):
So what are you doing about piracy?

3 (16m 5s):
No, I mean, I'm being flippant, you know, it's, there's not much you can do. It'll always be there. If I encounter content in my travels, you know, I'll send a DMCA notice and it gets taken down, but I'm just a small guy. And I tend to, I'm a small organization that I tend to create a sense of community around what I do. So people aren't coming there like it's Amazon to buy stuff and return it or redistribute it. They're coming there to consume it. And, you know, incidentally piracy will happen. Incidentally people will share it in the wrong spots. Incidentally one or two people will come in and be like, yeah, now I've got this and I can put it on this pirate site, but that's, you know, I keep hearkening back to Hillary Clinton talking about the basket full of deplorables.

3 (16m 54s):
And really, I think what she was saying is like those people, I don't think she was saying those people are deplorable. I think she was saying, that's a small percentage of what I have to deal with. And if I can appeal to the, the, the, the larger sense of community of the people that are coming to my site, my, my energy is better spent producing content for that. Then fending off the piracy on the backside, right?

4 (17m 18s):
Yes. And we got lots of deplorables in the United States. That's for damn sure.

3 (17m 28s):
One less as of tomorrow at noon, unless you're a Trump supporter, in which case it'll be terrible.

4 (17m 35s):
Yeah. We're, we're, we're recording this actually the night before and figuration day. It'll drop some time in February, but it's a grand grand day, actually. It's a 20th air. So it's a grand day that day to day

3 (17m 53s):
Granting Canada to even, even though we're not part of it. I always joke, you know, I always say, people ask me about USA politics. And I'm like, you know, if you guys didn't have such good TV, we wouldn't give a flying. Fuck what you did, but we need our friends.

4 (18m 10s):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Boy, God knows. Right now it's a grand day for the world. Now, most of your sites have softcore twink, solo scenes. Why do you shoot soft core instead of hard?

3 (18m 29s):
Ah, well, I, I, I am in a live, live work situation and I, I can do without the place where I live smelling like ass 24 hours a day. That's funny, that's the joke side of it, right? Like, it's like, okay, I'm going to film this stuff, but you know, do I have to make a mud pie? And I got to get away from that analogy when I'm talking about, but fucking, it's not going to make anyone else. The reality is I keep talking about storytelling and my perspective when I'm shooting content and creating sites is that I'm giving someone sort of seeds for their own fantasy.

3 (19m 11s):
So they can look at what I, what I show them. And that can sort of become a surrogate for something in their own lives. Maybe they're looking at this guy and he kind of looks like someone that they know or someone that they fantasize about, or maybe it's just a really hot guy and they enjoy watching him get off in that fashion. So I don't really feel the need to draw the dots. You know, we do, we do some hardcore stuff. Mostly when I do hardcore it's BJ stuff. Like I'm really interested in the interaction and, and how to people relate to each other as opposed to a graphic description of an act. Right? So, you know, you won't see super tight closeups.

3 (19m 54s):
We'll make sure that you can see everything when I shoot the content, but it's really, it's about what's happening with two people, not the fact that there's a glistening insertion. You know, the funny thing is most porn and I edit porn through triple X edit. So, you know, I see a lot of different content from a lot of different people and you know, a lot of porn, I won't say all porn, but a lot of porn is proof of insertion. And it's proving that it's happening from this angle. Now we're going to show you another angle to show this happening right now. We're going to show you another angle to show that it's happening. And that was a bright, close up to show that it's happening. And without the human side of that, there's nothing to differentiate that from something that we shot 20 years ago, right.

3 (20m 35s):
It's nothing to differences that from something that was shot in every other side of the internet. So by sort of dealing with the relationship, even if that relationship is one person sitting on the couch and the relationship is to themselves and sort of projecting out to the viewer, I think that's more important. I think that's a little bit more interesting at the end of the day.

1 (20m 52s):
Yeah, I do. I mean, I think there used to be more of that. Do you see that coming back? Not only in gay porn, but in straight porn,

3 (21m 1s):
God, I hope not. Cause it's kinda my speciality. Right. But you know, what's, what's the one thing that hasn't changed since I was doing this in the nineties to now is I think when people pay for porn, they're not paying for it because it's porn and I need porn. We're not in high school anymore. They're paying for something very specific. They want to see that person do that thing. And you know, that's, that's really what I'm selling. When I, when I show people the solo twink stuff and you know, it's not, we don't show generic twinks. We, you know, the, the term on a you'd love Jack is buggered twinks, and that's not a tweak who has been anally penetrated.

3 (21m 47s):
It's a twink this slightly off, they're got quirky, good looks. They're kind of, you know, buggered, but then somehow that makes them better. Right. They're more approachable.

1 (21m 58s):
Interesting. Now you said you started a foot feather site called foot woody.com and it was gay foot fetish, a big market.

3 (22m 7s):
Oh God. Yeah. You know, Oh, you know, on the one hand I kinda think the internet caused foot fetish. Cause I grew up when I grew up before there was the internet, there was no, you never heard of it. No one had a foot fetish. The internet comes along suddenly you can't go in any chat room and someone's like show feet rampant, but it's as big in the gay market as it is in the straight market. It's, it's a very strong sub genre and it just makes sense to, it just makes sense to cater to it. I mean, you know, the biggest cost I have in running the site is attracting new models.

3 (22m 48s):
I pay 1.3 or 1.4 times what I pay a model to attract a model to be on the site, through advertising and events and other things. Right. So once I have a model, I, you know, it makes sense to use them in as many possible ways as I can. So what better site was a kind of a natural, a natural extension on what I was already.

1 (23m 12s):
Okay. Okay. Now, you know, it's really funny whenever I think of foot fetish, which I don't have one, but anyway, I always think of that Eddie Murphy and Robin Gibbons movie boomerang, did you see that?

3 (23m 28s):
I can't remember. As while ago

1 (23m 31s):
You gotta, you gotta find it and watch it is that it was actually a very funny movie, but anyway, yeah. It's an, it's about Eddie. It's about Eddie having a foot fetish.

3 (23m 40s):
Yeah. He's quite notorious for that. You know, it's funny. I buy weed, an adult entertainment for 25, 30 years now going on 30 years. And it seems to me that the one thing that, that stands out of what let's look put better for whatever people tend to fetishize the parts of the body that produce a Roma. And that is disgusting. Think about it that way. But they'll fetishize buts. They'll fetishize feet, they'll fetishize for skin. The feticide, it's always the parts it's armpit fetish and the gay side. And as long as there's some smell associated with it, there'll be a site that go with it. Right.

4 (24m 21s):
It's it's

3 (24m 21s):
A weird thing. So how do you convey that when you're showing? Well, you can't really, we don't have a smell, a vision and it's a good thing.

4 (24m 28s):
Oh, trust me. It's probably on its way. Isn't everything. Isn't everything. One can only hope indeed. Indeed. You'll use it. Now. Now the most recent venture you mentioned earlier, XXX edit.com. Now tell us a little bit more about this project.

3 (24m 49s):
Well, this is a, I mean, I'm an a post-production service Bureau for the adult industry. And as far as I know, I'm the only editing company specifically designed for the adult industry. So, you know, we do everything from D DVD production editing scene, single camera, dual camera clips, whatever someone needs, we can do it in house. And we got really lucky last year, we won a bunch of awards in the industry for scenes that we caught. And, you know, it's, it's this whole thing that I've been talking about with storytelling and being able to sort of expand beyond my own sites and my own scenes and sort of bring this ability to tell a story, to help people tell stories to more and more people.

3 (25m 35s):
It kind of inspired me to start this company and start working for other people as well. And you know, the big part of what I do when I'm, when I'm, when I'm working with other clients, it's not just Sam, your content, I'll send you a scene, but I'm talking with them and I'm helping them understand the mechanics of dual camera shoots and the mechanics of how to make a single camera look like two cameras and you know how to shoot for the edit and how to actually convey the storyline that you're trying to convey, because that's probably the one thing that everyone struggles with the most, you know, they'll, they'll shoot their scene, but the intro, you know, the, the shoot their scene, and it takes three or four hours to shoot an hour's worth of content. But the intro is two and a half minutes and it takes them three hours because they just don't understand the mechanism by which to actually create that.

3 (26m 22s):
So it it's been really rewarding so far and I've been working with some really great people and it's just amazing to see people sort of take little ideas and make their work, you know, grow and, and sort of evolve in a very short period of time. It's really amazing. So, Hey, this is my, this is my plug, right? If anyone's some editing work out there, I'm here to help you. Our poor editors, we've got almost 60 years worth of adult experience in the editing shop. And, you know, since, since the lockdown, there's not a lot of jobs going around, not producing anymore.

3 (27m 4s):
So

4 (27m 4s):
Not a lot of shooting going on.

3 (27m 6s):
Oh, it's under, yeah. It's really a problem, but that'll be the end of the industry before visa, visa fines. Well, right.

4 (27m 15s):
Yeah. Yeah. We won't talk about that.

3 (27m 20s):
I did do. I brought it up. I'm the worst.

4 (27m 22s):
Yeah. Now don't worry about it. Now. Now you have your own sites, you kind of alluded to it, but what made you interested in editing other people's content?

3 (27m 37s):
Well, yeah, it should. It's just that, it's just, it's just what I said. Right. You know, it's really just about helping other people get their content to the next level. And, and you know, I'm not going to do it for every Tom Dick and Harry that comes along. You know, if you're a Dick or a Harry, I'm not going to be that interested in working with you. But you know, mostly I'm working with my friends in the industry and sort of just helping them with production design and production consultation and getting the stuff going. I mean, the actual banging out the scenes, that's easy stuff. Right. As long as, as long as you've got the right equipment, just about anyone can do that.

3 (28m 18s):
Probably not as well as I personally can do it, but that's another story together, but it's really, yeah, it's really about just bringing this, this sense of telling the story and the importance of story in every aspect of the adult industry. And that we're way beyond the, you know, somebody order a pizza, it's way more sophisticated than that now. And even if the story is as simple as you know, we went back to this guy's house and had sex that takes some structure in order to tell that story. So that's believable, right. It doesn't have to be believable. It has to be plausible.

4 (28m 52s):
Yeah. Yeah. Not the, it's not always the pool boy anymore.

3 (28m 57s):
And even when it is, it's not,

4 (28m 59s):
Yeah. It's really funny. You know, we've got a, we've got a guy that cleans our pool and I always call him the porn star anyway. But ah, you're funny. I don't know. Now, now when you're, you know, when you're doing the editing, do you ever find yourself rolling your eyes?

3 (29m 22s):
Do you mean rolling your eyes or trying to gouge my eyes out?

4 (29m 25s):
Yes,

3 (29m 29s):
No. Listen, when you do it, as long as I've done it, you know, the, the single foundational aspect of what I do is that none of this content affects me in a way anymore.

4 (29m 44s):
No, no. What I'm thinking, what I'm saying is, do you ever think to yourself, God, this is really bad.

3 (29m 49s):
Oh yeah. All the time. But that's, my job is to fix that right. As well.

4 (29m 53s):
Sure. It's to make it as good as possible. Right, right. Yeah.

3 (29m 57s):
Yeah. And you know, they, it, it doesn't really get to the point where, you know, there's, there's a couple of jobs that I've had where I've thought, you know, if they were trying, I don't think they could make it look this bad. Like if someone was trying to be ironic, they would stumble and it wouldn't as bad as it is. But you know, everyone has a bad day that the same company turns around the next, the next shoot. And it's fantastic. So, you know, you've got to take the good and the bad and it's, we're all humans. And we don't always come to the, come to the shoot with our a game on, right. So it's not about rolling my eyes. That's the stuff that is frustrating as an editor is when I can't convey the right information so that people keep making the same mistakes, not mistakes, but they keep shooting things in a way that makes it more difficult to assemble.

3 (30m 49s):
Right? You just realize that, well, these people have been doing it their way for 25 years. I'm doing it my way. And it's, it's the lack of communicate. It's my lack of communication that brings me there. So it's all my fault.

4 (31m 4s):
Now, are you doing how much of the, of the editing is, is, is gay content and how much it was. It is straight content.

3 (31m 12s):
These days, it's almost exclusively gay. I was doing straight content when we first started the thing up. And it was interesting to notice the difference from the gay industry to the straight industry. Tell me about that. The, this, all the straight stuff that I edited. And it could just be that the people that found me and wanted me to do their work was all rape fantasy. It's not, this is not what the straight market is entirely, but it's interesting that it was that. And then I get to, you know, as opposed to the gay side where it's a sort of, all of this stuff that I'm working on is sort of like this sort of flight of fancy sort of modeled after some type of movie experience with a big, a story arc that goes through it straight side, it's like, ah, bitch, get on the ground.

3 (32m 10s):
And she's like, ah, you know, it's just funny. It's a funny thing. The rape scenes are always the same, right? It's rough and, and push and push push at the end girls like, Oh, I love this

4 (32m 22s):
And this. I got to tell you, it's a good way for them to lose her processing.

3 (32m 26s):
Well, that's just it right. As we found out from, I mean, that was slightly different.

4 (32m 34s):
There are many issues, there are many issues. And sometimes I think we're our own worst enemy.

1 (32m 41s):
What's the, what's the single most important thing for content producers to remember in today's market.

3 (32m 48s):
Well, I'm gonna say don't underestimate your customers. And this goes back to this concept of story and production value. I don't think, you know, we don't need every scene to be a multimillion dollar pirate movie. It's Jenna Jamison reference, right? It's not that, but there's, there's a sophistication now. I'm sure that people have in how they consume this content. And if you underestimate that, you're just going to be, you're just going to lose someone forever and it can never get back. So once you've got someone's eyes, you've got one chance to get them in. Your content has to be content is always been important since day one, but even more now because there's so much of it out there.

3 (33m 37s):
So we do have, you know, it's like, it's like going to a gay bar versus going to a straight bar. If you're a gay guy, go to a straight bar and there might be another gay guy there and you got a better shot, a hundred gay guys there. And half of them are, most of them are way better looking in New York. If you have to compete against all the freestyle, if you have, there has to be a reason for someone to pay for your content. And it's going to story, it's going to be production value. And that's not just the best, camera's the best life, although that helps. But it's, it's the, the way in which you actually present the content and you know, you can't just shoot the same scene over and over with different people standing in.

3 (34m 19s):
It's gotta be. And there's people out there that are, that are doing a great job of it. The guys at Falcon do a great job at it. The guys who raging stallion now do amazing job. If I helix does a great job with that. And you know, you, you look at what's going on with only fans and all the derivatives of that entire phenomenon and the way that those guys are catering to their market, you know, there's lessons to be learned there.

1 (34m 44s):
Oh, big time, big time on that, by the way, on that vein, how is that business model affecting your business?

3 (34m 53s):
Not so much. I mean, it's just more competition. Yeah. The funny thing about the, the only fans thing from, from professional perspective is the guys that are producing content have a market and they're catering to their market, but they're not necessarily marketers. They don't necessarily extend beyond what they've already done. And it's a funny thing. Like only fans, there's no previews there. Like there's no way for people to go there and browse. So you go there specifically to get something that you already know about. Whereas the people who come through my site might be like, Hey, I want to see what this is about. So I've got the chance to sell them when they get to my front door on what I want them to, to do or how, you know, how I could get off on that particular day.

4 (35m 39s):
Yeah. Now how important is technology for adult sites? Does everyone need the latest gear? Like a 4k or eight K cameras?

3 (35m 50s):
Yeah, no. I mean, it's a funny thing. Everyone says, you go through all these websites and you know, they'll have all these 4k banners all over it. 4k is still one of those things where there's no way to deliver this content yet, but a 4k camera looks way better than a 10 ADP camera. So if I sh 4k and delivering 10 ADP, it's going to look better. But you know, it's all catchphrases. It's just like, remember when 3d was a thing like 10 years ago when everyone had to get 3d cameras, or remember when VR was a thing like five years ago and it was going to change it, it doesn't at the end of the day that the technology blips on the radar don't change the industry.

3 (36m 32s):
The industry is about producing content and it's about stories. And it's about, you know, giving people the experience that thereafter, how you wrap it is usually just a gimmick, right? So, yeah, I'm, I'm a techno snob, you know, I I've always got the latest gear. I'm currently shooting on a Sony, a seven S3, which is the, you know, the camera of the year. It's the Jesus, Sony's new Jesus camera. And it's great. It does a great job, but it's just the camera that I have between the last camera I had and the next one I'm going to get. And none of them are going to make my ability to tell a story any better.

3 (37m 14s):
If the pictures and the pixels will look better. Right. But the story is all up to me. So shoot it on the phone. If you have to,

4 (37m 21s):
Yeah. You can shoot some teas and stuff on iPhone right now,

3 (37m 26s):
If you control the lighting properly, because dynamic range isn't there. But if you control the lighting and you know, you set this thing up, there's no reason not to shoot stuff on an iPhone. It really does great quality, you know, get the right apps and shoot on film pro don't shoot in the native app, you have to control the shutter speed. So it doesn't look a little wonky, but you know, the stuff's there, you can, you can set up a studio with next to no money now, per compelling content that would rival anything that Hollywood could have produced 10 or 15 years ago. I mean, holiday was now running on a hundred thousand dollars cameras, but right. It's a, it's a whole different ball of wax there, but you know, the, the, the tools are readily available.

3 (38m 6s):
You know, you don't have to go crazy with it.

4 (38m 9s):
Kind of like what happened with music a long time ago. Now, now you mentioned VR is that you seem to kind of be dismissive of it. Although a lot of people are using it. It doesn't sound like it's something you've partaken in. Is that, do you, do you see a future for it?

3 (38m 28s):
Well, you know, the funny thing, but listen, I, the VR people are going to be up in arms. I'm not a fan. I think the one good thing about VR is it's an immersive experience that lets you look away. And every time I've been in a VR type of demonstration, I'm like, look at the lamps.

1 (38m 51s):
This is cool. Look at the deck. Isn't the decorating gorgeous. I don't think VR

3 (39m 1s):
Delivers on its promise because the camera is still stationary. And until I can actually walk in the scenes and maybe walk around and get a different point of view on what I want to look at, it's not as compelling to me personally. And I know the live people love it. And then there are, there are people that employ it with great fortitude and make terrific content with it. It's just not something that's in my, on my radar right now. Okay.

1 (39m 30s):
Okay. What do you see as the future? So good, good segue of online content. How do you see the market changing? Moving forward?

3 (39m 42s):
I, I see it getting even more fragmented and I, and I think that by fragmented, I mean more vertical, more niches, so micro sites, right? We're we're back to that. I think the, the age of the mega site with 10 updates a week is not as compelling anymore. Right? I think, you know, people go and look, they're still spend 40 minutes looking for the five minute clip that will get them off. But the process of looking is where you have a chance to get your audience, right. And you know, if, if I've got just, you know, ABC twink.com with generic content from 10 years ago, I don't think anyone's going to be some people will love it, but it's not compelling.

3 (40m 30s):
It's not going to stop someone who's looking for things make them consider. So, you know, the online content is always been, it's always been the thing for me since day one, where it's different than traditional marketing, traditional marketing. You look at a market, you look at the market, you figure out what's missing, you create a product to fill that need. And then you develop a marketing campaign to let the market know, like, can I say market anymore, but online for online first you create a product and then you create a market for the product. Right. It's kind of backwards. Yeah. So when I say micro-sites sites, I really think that, you know, small, like boutique sites are really where everything has gone and only fans in the, in the, you know, the rabid success and things like that are really proof of concept.

3 (41m 25s):
You know, they handed the power back to the, the models, which is a whole other political discussion. Yes and no right on the power. But, but that's, I think that's really, the reason it took off ultimately is because it's what people want. It, people want to follow, you know, this particular model and consume everything from that particular model. And once they have it, they go on to the next person, right. It's a it's collecting sensibility. Right. So, you know, and when I say this, I don't mean it's all going to be fetishes and, you know, midgets wearing boots, smoking cigars.com.

3 (42m 5s):
It's not that, but it is really vertical. It might just be, you know, redheads on bikes or, you know, whatever it might be or foot fetish or, you know, a very specific sub genre of foot fetish tweets or in cowboy hat,

5 (42m 20s):
Whatever it is. It's

3 (42m 21s):
Not about cycling content. It's still about making really quality, good quality, new content, fresh content, but catered to a very specific market for that content.

5 (42m 32s):
Okay. Now under the Pro-Am market as all, but disappeared online. Do you think it's ready for a return I'm here. Yeah. Yeah. I'm here. I'm queer. I'm pro am.

3 (42m 46s):
It's, it's a tough one. There you need an entirely new set of skills now to market, to, to find your traffic than you did 15 years ago, when Pro-Am was really going crazy, the content is still desirable. The ability for people like me to make sites and, and, you know, get them out to my customer. I it's still good. I can still do it, but you don't get like, there's really no affiliate market anymore. Right? It's there for sure. It's there. Like it was where I had 400 sites that would post my picks every time we did an update. It's not that. So you have to be a little bit more savvy and, and sort of play the social media game in order to get to the people who might buy your content.

3 (43m 32s):
And it's not, it's not a quick and easy process, it's it? You know, I, I don't know how much you know about SEO. I run a street photography website as well. And my entire SEO strategy for the past search engine optimization strategy for the past five years has been long-term content base produce content that the search engines will, will, you know, search engine friendly content, that it still has value that that can actually get the people who are looking for that content eyes on it eventually. So it's the same thing right now. We have to sort of dance through social media, not allowing adults or not wanting adults.

3 (44m 14s):
So, you know, there's different rules to what sites you're on, but there there's ways to get to your customers, but it's not as easy as why. So I think the, the Pro-Am is, is set for a resurgence, but it's going to be a new kind of webmaster that can do it or an old like me.

1 (44m 36s):
You're not old compared to some people like the guy asking you questions,

3 (44m 42s):
Crip, keeper. Now, what

1 (44m 46s):
Other advice do you have for content creators and site owners today?

3 (44m 51s):
Oh, don't take your customers for granted. Don't think that your customers are stupid and you know, they're more important than they ever were because they're not just your customer now, but they'll remember, and they will come back. I've got guys on my site now that have been there for four or five years, because they're so attached to the content and the way that I, I give them that content, that there's no reason for them to go anywhere else or they forgot. And I'm the worst person in the world. You never know. But you know, it's, it's really, you know, have a, you have a unique idea, have give your content, give your site personality and you know, be responsive, not to the market, but be responsive to your customers.

3 (45m 42s):
You know, if you can, if you can do that, I think that you're, you've got a leg up on just about anyone else.

1 (45m 47s):
That's awesome. Well, Hey, Carl, I'd like to thank you once again for being our guest on adult side broker talk, and I hope we get a chance to do this again really soon.

3 (45m 58s):
How much does this pay again, Bruce?

1 (46m 1s):
The checks, the checks in the mail. Carl.

3 (46m 4s):
Good. No, this was, this was delightful. Any time, you know, you want my perspective on anything? Let me know. I'm more than happy to connect across the ocean.

1 (46m 13s):
Hey, my pleasure. My broker tip today is part three of how to buy a website. Last week, we talked about finding the right site to buy. Once you find it, what do you do once you've either reached the broker of the site or the seller review the information about the site. The broker should provide you with the following a profit and loss statement of at least three years. That's up to date. If it's June and they give you financials only through the end of the previous year, you need to see what the site is doing now, not last year, if it's the pay site, get a username and password for the sites that you can review the content, ask how often the site is updated.

1 (46m 54s):
Get some history on the site. How long has it been in business? The story behind the site and importantly, why the seller wants to sell, get an inventory of the content and how much of it as current technology find out if all the content is exclusive to that site, ask the seller. If the content has ever been on VOD or DVD, see if there are any clip stores, the content is on find out how much the content cost to produce and what the current cost of production is. Very importantly, see if this operation can run without the current owner, do they do the shooting themselves or do they hire someone to do it?

1 (47m 34s):
And if there's an outside producer, will that person continued to provide content for the site, find out how many new joins and rebuilds there are a day, ask them what's the retention rate on the site and find out if they do advertising on the site and where they get their traffic asked for Google analytics access. So you can see where the traffic comes from. This information will give you the opportunity to truly evaluate what it is you're buying. We'll talk about this subject more next week. And next week we'll be talking to adult industry veteran Dan Hogue.

0 (48m 12s):
And that's it on this week's Adult Site Broker Talk. I'd once again like to thank our guest, Karl Edwards. Talk to you next week on Adult Site Broker Talk. I'm Bruce Friedman.