Adult Site Broker Talk Episode 60 with Roger T. Pipe of Rog Reviews

Speaker 0 (0s): 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 Roger T. Pipe of Rog Reviews.

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There are trained producers for these shoots who would be happy to stay on after the sale. This great site is available for only $480,000. Now time for this week's interview my guest today on it. Don't say broker talk is Roger T of rod reviews. Roger, thanks for being with us today on adult side broker talk, thank you for having me now an avid person fans since the mid 1980s, Roger T pipe started reviewing adult movies as a hobby in 1995 and posting them to newsgroups.

Remember those now, after having them picked up by adult retail sites, Roger began Roger reviews.com in 1996. The site houses over 8,000 reviews of adult movies, as well as toys, websites, and hundreds of interviews with porn stars. He's a member of the X-rated critics organization and was inducted into the XRC O hall of fame in 2009. Roger is also a regular voter in the annual AVN and XRC awards.

He does a yearly podcast series breaking down the ABN award nominees and winners. Roger has appeared on television on naked New York, numerous radio programs, including regular segments on love bites with Bob Berkowitz, case X radio, Playboy radio daily noise. Like my dog barking back there as well as his own shows on radio. Dentata. I used to do a show on that as well. I remember we were both hosts in 2010, Roger pen to chapter entitled something for everyone, for the collection philosophy for everyone.

How to think with kink. Now, Roger, do you still remember the first porn you ever watched?

Speaker 2 (4m 29s): I, I do actually that there's kind of two answers. The first one I ever watched wasn't intentional. It was a movie called let's talk sex. I didn't realize that until much later I was babysitting and everyone was asleep and there was a tape, a VHS tape next to the VCR and being of a certain age, I was curious and I popped it in and I gotta tell you I was disgusted. I was no, no, no.

I didn't even want to go close to it. It just was so shocking to me now, the first one I was, how old were you? I was 16. 17. Oh, wow. It was just, it was a little much. I where you, where were you from a religious upbringing or something? No, no. I had girlfriends and had been in, in person that intimate. Right. But seeing it on screen just wasn't and again, I'm I'm old. So I come from a time when stealing my friend's dad's Playboy was a mission, impossible level espionage app.

And so that's what I was expecting everything to look like. And this was an early eighties movie and it didn't look at all like that. Nope. And it was a little much, but a few years later I had discovered a w pink TV with Christy canyon and watch that repeatedly and began my lifelong obsession with Christy canyon. Now, how did you end up with your own site, as you mentioned in the intro? I had posted in some newsgroups, like a lot of people, I got a PC, a friend of mine hooked it up to the internet and I found all of these newsgroups, which were just amazing every possible.

I kind of look at Reddit and think that was it Reddit is every newsgroup. Yep. It was all of them. And a couple of them had to do with adult movies. And I worked in video stores. And again, as a, as a young male, not living with his parents, I was kind of put in charge of the porn section for a long time. I hope

Speaker 1 (6m 38s): You did. I hope you didn't have to, to clean up the, the booths.

Speaker 2 (6m 45s): So there was a, well, I won't say there was never a cleanup. There was not supposed to be cleaned up, but I was kind of the resident porn expert and went to a couple of shows. So I gravitated to these newsgroups and found people, writing reviews, writing them in ways that weren't like the adult press, the adult press in the eighties to the early nineties, AVN did their thing as a video store manager. I loved AVN because they gave us a synopsis to tell us what to buy.

Right. But from a fan's perspective, there was nothing there. It was describing the box cover and it was very dry to me. And I found other people doing real. What I consider real reviews, really kind of digging in deep. And I started doing that partially as a sort of a writer's block tool. I'd come home from work, write a couple of reviews and just sort of get flowing. And I found feedback instantly from other fans. Oh, I like that too. I, you know, I love this camera angle and it really, it picked up.

And then I F D adult internet film database, the guy who ran that said, you know, you really should have a place to house. These you're just posting them to newsgroups. And I go, okay, so he put them on his site and he said, you should start your own site. So now when I bought front page, people remember that Microsoft product and I built a Roger views on front page. It was horribly clunky, but that's how it ended up there.

Speaker 1 (8m 20s): And when did it become Raj review?

Speaker 2 (8m 23s): 96. I started reviewing manufactures. So we're actually coming up on 25 years, I believe in may. Wow. 25 years. So it's gone through a few iterations since the front page days, thankfully, but it, it just sort of took off and really kind of lucky that it did. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (8m 43s): Yeah. It's become a career for you, which is fantastic. Now let's, let's talk about the review site landscape and we had some casual about this prior to the, to the interview. There seems to be a lot of consolidation going on right now. Have you

Speaker 2 (9m 5s): Noticed I, over the 25 years, there was a time when there were probably a good 20 to 30 review sites that I followed regularly or knew who ran them or knew who wrote for them besides AVN and ex biz and adult DVD talk and ex critic, the sites are still around. There were a lot of other smaller ones and over time they've sort of gone away. The consolidation part of it. It's hard to run a site. It's hard to review enough movies to run a site.

I know I've tried it. It's very difficult. It's hard to make a living, which means it's hard to hire writers. I get a lot of over the years, a lot of people kind of write for your side. Like, yes, I either can't pay you or I can pay you a very small amount. And very few people are willing to write for nothing sure. For next to nothing. Right. And I totally respect that. I, you know, I understand that completely. And I think that's part of it.

Another thing we started talking casually, a large part of the, the porn audience no longer pays for what they're watching. That's true. And as such, I think they're less reliant on reviews. What I used to get in the beginning of that. I loved these emails where, oh, thank you so much. I've only got so much to spend every month on, you know, on DVDs or VHS tapes. And I would have never found this if you hadn't recommended it or thank you.

I was going to buy this and I read your review and no, it's not for me. I chose something else. So I think that it's still important for the people who are spending money, but also the way, the way porn is consumed, right? It's a little different now you've got these huge mega sites and you know, they've got 4,000 scenes, you know, for 20 bucks a month, you can click on the ones you like and move around. If you don't like something, you can decide not to watch it back when we were buying physical media, the only way to see the movie is to buy the movie.

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (11m 10s): That's true. And you go, you go back to that age.

Speaker 2 (11m 13s): Sure. Yeah. I think, I think that's part of it. I've always found it challenging to review websites, more challenging for me than, than physical media. Cause a physical, a movie has a beginning and an end, whether it's a feature or a wall-to-wall compilation, doesn't matter. It has a beginning and an end. And I can write that so that someone can read it and go, okay, now I know what's in it. It's to me, it'd be like reviewing an album versus reviewing a streaming music service.

It's true. How do you review when there's 4 million choices? You know, to me, website reviews always end up kind of talking about the bells and whistles, right. You know, how it gets the connection, which is all important stuff. Totally important. But to me it doesn't focus on the media as much. And I think that's part of what you're seeing the consolidation. And again, I think as, as the industry, as a whole, the big pie is sort of shrunk. I think it shrinks all around.

And the other thing is I was able to make a living off of it and have a very understanding family for a lot of people. It was just, Hey, look, when I got married and had to go and not do this anymore. And unfortunately with a couple of sites that I used to follow a lot, LSB reviews and den CA VR, they both passed away. And there was no one to sort of, you know, I mean, I've got almost 9,000 reviews. Den has 26,000. So you want to talk about the king of people reviewing porn.

That was him. He unfortunately passed. So it does, you know, I think that was a long answer. Sorry. No, don't worry about it. No,

Speaker 1 (12m 53s): Take as much time as you want. We don't have a time limit. I like LA I like long answers. So go ahead.

Speaker 2 (12m 59s): This is actually how I ended up reviewing for the internet instead of magazines. I tried for magazines a couple of times and they said, okay, you get 200 words or 400 words. It's like, man, I can't describe the cast and less than 600. So the sort of open flow works well for me. I think another thing is, again, I'm, I'm 53 now. I started my you're so young. You're so young. So someone the same age I was when I started, they were raised on a different kind of porn on the, the bite size reviews are not as important.

Also you can see so much again, if people really want to think back to 1996, there was no video preview on the internet. Right. You know, those of us remember Napster, it took us 12 minutes to download a song on a good day. And Ooh, I have somewhere, some floppy disks with 15 second video clips. Those are amazing. Well, now you can go to Twitter and see an, a long enough preview of a movie to know if you're going to like it or not sure.

So I think it's changing. There's a lot of critics doing great stuff. And I think what we're starting to see a little bit of, and we need to see more of is well-educated critics talking about the industry in general and directions that it's heading in addition to critiquing the movies themselves or the art, the art itself, what, what's the place of the industry? You know, there's a lot going on. There's lots happening in the world in the last year.

And it's, it's found its way into porn and where, where do we stand on social justice issues and what is, and is not okay. I've 25 years in everything has changed.

Speaker 1 (14m 51s): Do you know it? Or you talked about changes. What are the biggest changes you've seen in the adult industry in the last 25?

Speaker 2 (14m 59s): I think the biggest change I could talk about as a shift from physical media to digital and sort of unlimited unlimited options, right? I used to go to the video store and rent DVDs or VHS tapes for a dollar and I had a budget. So if I had $5, I could get five movies right now, the equivalent of that, you can join a website and have 40,000. So the choices are infinite. And I think what it's doing now is it's changing everything to kind of micro economies, performers have more control because a performer with a decent brand and a good social media campaign and an iPhone can spend an afternoon making content that is going to make him or her a nice wage.

Yeah. It's not make them rich in a day, but in the past. And I always kind of use the, the movie pirates that digital playground did years ago, which is a great movie, but in order to make that they had to pay all the pre-production people pay the costume designers, pay the writers, pay an entire cast, an entire crew, edit the movie market. The movie duplicate the movie. All of this money had had to be made in order to make a profit. Now, performer doesn't have to work for $800 or $400 a scene.

They can make that money themselves in their own bedroom, maybe more than that. So it doesn't have to support this huge movie in order to make a profit. And I think that's a really big thing. And social media has made a huge, huge impact on that, that, and the direct to consumer platforms, right? Only fan is obviously the one that everybody's using right now. It's, it's easy. And I say easy. I don't mean to dismiss how hard especially the women in this industry work, right?

But if you are popular, it is not nearly as tough to make a living and work every day. If you're willing to work every day and you see it with the performers who are popular and who last no, this and that they work. And there's enough fans willing to give them small amounts of money, seemingly small. But that's what we used to pay the video store to rent the movie and a couple of dollars at a time from a few thousand people adds up pretty quickly. And that is something that if I could go back 25 years, that Roger would not have understood it.

I couldn't have had a concept of this. Imagine going back 25 years and saying, look, porn stars. Don't have to do movies. Not really that there's going to be this thing where everybody's phone is going to have an update on their favorite 50 porn stars. Right? Well, you could,

Speaker 1 (17m 45s): Well, you couldn't have imagined smartphones. Let's start with that.

Speaker 2 (17m 49s): Yeah. Or, or, or, or

Speaker 1 (17m 52s): Gig speed internet or five G.

Speaker 2 (17m 56s): Yeah. That's like I said, somewhere, there is a box of floppy disks that I think have three images, a piece on them. I love it. You know, it's, it's ridiculous. But the, the individual access points for porn, again, nobody has to go into a video store anymore. And, and video stores were a huge jump forward from adult theaters. Right. Then all of a sudden, instead of having to go to a theater and risk being seen, you went to a store and you took a movie home. Right.

And now you don't even have to do that. Now you can just, you know, have whatever device you have. It it's really it's revolutionized everything. And it makes me wonder if I'm around for 10 more years. What's it gonna look like?

Speaker 1 (18m 40s): I think, I think you'll be around for 10 more years. I sure hope so.

Speaker 2 (18m 44s): We'll see

Speaker 1 (18m 48s): If people are sick of me yet. Maybe they won't. Oh, you met in the industry. Okay. All good. Or you were worried, you were worrying me for a second. Roger

Speaker 2 (18m 56s): Should be good there. Okay, good.

Speaker 1 (19m 0s): Now, how have conventions in adult expo changed?

Speaker 2 (19m 4s): They've changed a ton. I went to my first convention in 1988. Back when the adult industry got together twice a year in Las Vegas, once for the video software distributors association. And then for CES consumer electronics show, then was the biggest electronic show, at least in the country. I don't know about the world, but certainly in the United States, everything, video games, computers, cameras, cars, it was huge. And as part of that, the adult industry was very smart and said, we're going to take the Sahara and all of you men, because it was primarily men who like electronics and like porn, you get to go to these shows.

And that, that was the first one I did. And people would wait in long lines to pose for a picture, get an autograph because that was it. Right. Unless your favorite star came to dance in your town. Yeah. And I came from, you know, suburban San Diego. So unless I wanted to go downtown state. Oh, I love

Speaker 1 (20m 1s): That sound. I didn't know. I didn't know you're from there. I love it. So that's one of my favorite places in the world.

Speaker 2 (20m 7s): It's great. Yeah. But you were lucky if you had a star come through. Yeah, I know. So waiting in line for two hours to get an autograph wasn't anything, you, you batted an eye at base. It was worth it to have 45 seconds of conversation. Right. Get an autographs. And now you open your phone and you know what they've had for breakfast before you even wake up. Right. So I think some of the shine is gone and also some of the reasons for it, one of the big reasons for stars to go to CES was so people would see them.

So the guys who were in computers would go who's this Janine woman would know was

Speaker 1 (20m 46s): No. At that time was part of CES or just adjacent to CES.

Speaker 2 (20m 52s): It was, it was part of CS. Oh, AVN was there, but it wasn't their show yet. So it really, I don't want to say took over. Yeah. It was just, it was just CES. And you had to have a separate badge. And I distinctly remember the first two times I went with my father because he owned a video store. And on Sunday of the show, we could sell our pass to go upstairs at this hour for a hundred bucks. And we paid nothing for it. It was, people were waiting in line to bypasses. Cause you had to, you had to have an in, in order to get in.

And it, it was much different. I think in a lot of ways. And I don't want to sound like the old guy. He wasn't, it was nicer. It was kinder than, yeah. I, I think the fans were kinder to performers. Performers had to be kinder to fans. It was their only interaction. And I think it sort of goes both ways, right? Yeah. You S you sit with a line of people who are impatient and greedy all day, and you're going to be a little short too. Yeah.

But now with social media, I think people are just so casual and not that you have to, you know, bow down and treat them like, you know, royalty, but you should treat them with respect as you would anyone. And I see a lot less of that these days. Sure. Well, I think that's all world. Yeah. It could be. I, I still like going to conventions, but now it's more to catch up with people. Right. But back then, it was really important for, for an adult star, trying to get a name together, to, to sign a bunch of autographs and send them home.

The guys at the video store wanted to go through my album every year. Who's who we looking for, who was pretty, who was, you know, and, and it was, it was a great marketing tool. Yeah. So I think it's, it's still great marketing, but again, I think it's now you're handing individual business cards and it's, it's smaller, more personal transactions that are sure.

Speaker 1 (22m 49s): My first year in the business, I went to a van and Internext I in Vegas that would have been about 17 years ago. I th I'd say, and I posed with all the porn stars. Cause I knew that the pictures would be interesting to my friends on, oh God were there. I didn't know any of them. I, I, I've never been much of a porn profe consumer before I got into this industry.

And I can see I'm a big porn consumer. Now I'm a B2B guy, but at the same time, oh God, that guys will go, oh, look, there's so-and-so. I go, oh yeah,

Speaker 2 (23m 33s): Yeah. It's it is a lot of fun to people watch, especially the, oh God. Yeah. I used to stand in line and people would bring stacks of stuff to audit, to be autographed. You know, magazines box covers all kinds of cool stuff. That was, that was pretty fun. Fun to watch.

Speaker 1 (23m 50s): Oh yeah. No, what I, what I enjoyed, I remember there was an industry only day, which is when I went in and then I went to the DIT to one of the days where the crowds were there. I was like, these guys, the girls would throw a t-shirt and they'd be tearing it apart, you know, to, to, to try to get it. It was like, oh my God. I was like, okay, I didn't quite get it, but okay.

Speaker 2 (24m 17s): I remember the first show I went to. I think it was the second performer I ever met. Trinity Lauryn, who who's passed a beautiful woman, huge breasts. I was just 21. That's why I got to go my first time in Vegas. And I went to pose for a picture and I put my hand on her hip stood next to her as, as if I were with anyone. Yeah. And she clearly saw that I was nervous and grabbed my hand from her hip, put it on her boob. And I swear to you, I jumped, like someone had shot me in the chest.

I have to, but it's okay. I want to, I just, it was a shock. I know, I know it was, it was just so I was not expecting and it's adorable.

Speaker 1 (25m 5s): That's adorable.

Speaker 2 (25m 7s): Of course. Now, now I stand in line. I see people groping and it's like, man, don't don't if she wants you to, she will. And it'll be,

Speaker 1 (25m 15s): Security's very active. I was at a AVN last year and oh my God security. I saw security throwing a couple of guys. It's just like, ah, I was in, I was in the F mainly in the B2B area, but to get to the B2B area, I'd go through the B to C area, unfortunately. And it was like, oh Lord.

Speaker 2 (25m 36s): Yeah, there there's. And unfortunately there is some, some truly bad behavior that goes, yeah,

Speaker 1 (25m 41s): Of course they get drunk. They're in Vegas, they get drunk. And I think they believe this what happens in Vegas shit. And then they end up in a jail cell. So, well it happened in Vegas. So what are the most common questions you get from readers?

Speaker 2 (25m 58s): Oh man. Over the years, probably the most common is what do I watch with my partner? Right. It used to get that a lot, especially again, when we go back to when it was movies and when, okay. My wife's going to watch movies with me, what should I bring home? And we used to get that in the video stores all the time, too. Right. The guys that go in by themselves, they know what they want. They don't need ask. Sure. But, but couples, a lot of times it's what can you, you know, what can you recommend? And it was, that's always been a great question to me because it made me feel like I was, I was helping in some way to point people in the right direction.

And, and it, it always a special to me because what was typical couples, porn didn't work in my house. My wife doesn't want to see softcore. She would say, if we're going to watch bad acting, let's just watch bad acting. You know, if we're going to watch porn, let's watch porn. That's fine. Yeah. I

Speaker 1 (26m 51s): Like, I like it. I like your wife already.

Speaker 2 (26m 53s): It was like, look, this is it's soft piano music, and it's bad acting. Let's just move on. And a lot of couples porn, especially mid two thousands focused a lot on lesbian sex. And that's not what my wife likes. She actively tunes out during those points. So I learned from that, that couples porn is whatever you guys are into. Right. So my answer would usually be sort of in the form of a professor question. Right. Okay. I have a followup question in eight parts for you, but fill

Speaker 1 (27m 24s): Out, fill out, fill out this questionnaire and get back to

Speaker 2 (27m 27s): Me, ABC. But I usually have a couple of titles. Like if you like serious features, here's a couple, if you like really pretty stuff, here's a couple and, and on and on. And one of my answers to that was I, before my wife had a girlfriend who didn't like porn and there was one that she liked and we watched it over and over. So I'd always tell people, the chameleon watch the chameleon and old John Lesley movie, because someone who didn't like porn at all would watch it over and over. Cause she really liked it. So that was a good one.

One of the ones I, I didn't like one of the ones I didn't like was how do you hide your porn? It was easy for me to answer was I, I don't, I never have, you know, I didn't break it out on the first date, but I had working in video stores over the years and going to shows I had a collection of pictures of autographs of movies. Right. And at the appropriate time, you know, let my girlfriend know I have this and she became my wife. I have this. Similarly when I started the site, I didn't hide it from her.

You know, she came into the spare bedroom one day and I was typing, what are you doing? I'm writing a porn review. And she left the room. And when it came time to, Hey, I can make some money doing this. It was a conversation we had together. So back back to the question, how do you hide it? My answer is always don't right. If you have to hide it, it's not the right relationship. Or if it's the right relationship and they, they won't tolerate it. That's okay, too. Right. But the idea of hiding it to me was it was never hidden. You asked earlier about my background, my parents had stuff.

I wasn't allowed around it because I was kid. Right. But it wasn't because this isn't supposed to be in the house. It was, this is not for children. And you know, my parents owned the store. So my mom recommended porn for couples. So I always been very, you know, don't hide it. If you have to hide it, this was probably a problem. And probably the, the third question I used to love this. Do you get paid for this? Right?

Speaker 1 (29m 29s): No. I died. Do it out of the goodness of my heart.

Speaker 2 (29m 32s): I had a group of friends. We were all very much into sports and sports talk and we'd go to sports bars. And my friend Adrian, his favorite thing to do was sort of do a bar bet with someone. You'll never guess what this guy does for a living. Oh, I love it. And then the guests and I eventually say, and of course it was like, no, you don't. And then it was okay, let me see your phone. Now, keep in mind, this was a flip phone, but here there's Jules Jordan's phone number, Jenna, Jameson phone number. You know, these people, I'm like, this is what I do for a living. And then it was guess how much he makes and you know, and then of course, then what Adrian would do was, you know, if you will buy our table beer and chicken wings, you can go to Roger's trunk, which you know, was filled with porn.

Anytime I went out because I had all the screeners coming in and no place for them. So right. So

Speaker 1 (30m 20s): Have some DV, have some DVDs and we get, we get beer and chicken wings. That's

Speaker 2 (30m 25s): Awesome. You pick up our tab. You can walk away with, I remember one time, one of the guys go in, you know, he walked away with $400 worth of movies like Gabby. We got beer and chicken wings. They exactly had a trunk before. And I didn't have beer and chicken wings and supply and demand here. I think he did well. Do you still,

Speaker 1 (30m 46s): You still like porn after all these years? And so many reviews

Speaker 2 (30m 49s): I do when I, when I was doing it, when it was my entire job, I used to tell my wife, the last weekend of the month was Disney weekend. Cause I was done. I was tired of watching people have sex. Now I don't do it nearly as much, but come award time when I'm doing 20 hours a day, four and five monitors going on all the different performances. Yeah. I get burnout, but a good movie or a good performer. I still like it. And I think if I didn't, I wouldn't still do this.

I'm married. Have a job. Have kids have all these things going on. If I didn't still like it, I I'd probably just let it all go. Yeah. Yeah. You've got it. You've got, have you got a regular job too? I do. For about the last eight years, we had some family medical issues and I needed to have steady income because the, you know, the site went through some adjustment periods and the industry changed a lot, had a couple of big advertisers that left and it was okay.

Now we're going to struggle some months. And instead said, you know, I can go get a regular job and benefits and cover everything. That's always so nice do this. I prefer the other, you know, if, if I, if someone came along and said, Raj wants you to run the site for the next five years, here's going to be your base salary. I do it in a heartbeat and I would do eight, eight to 10 hours a day without a problem. But without that guaranteed money, you know, kids in college, mom's got some medical issues.

Yeah, absolutely. Now

Speaker 1 (32m 30s): Are there generals you won't review or don't like,

Speaker 2 (32m 34s): I never say that I won't review something. As far as a genre goes, there's genres. I like more than others. I'm not a huge fan of lesbian porn. Like I mentioned, my wife doesn't like it. Therefore I like it a lot less because it doesn't interest her. Right. And there's stuff that I really like. So I'll watch a lot of that, but I've only reviewed a couple of gay titles and it's not because I have a problem with it. It's because it doesn't do anything for me.

Speaker 1 (33m 5s): Yeah. You know, I, I think to do, I think to review gay porn, you almost have to be a consumer

Speaker 2 (33m 15s): Of it. And I think

Speaker 1 (33m 18s): The same probably goes,

Speaker 2 (33m 22s): That's how I feel that gay BI, trans and fetish to bond, I'm not a big bondage guy. So what, what ended up happening was in those reviews, I'd get feedback going. Okay. You talked about the lighting, you talked about the editing. It's like, yeah, because it's, it's two men get what they're doing. I totally understand it. I don't know what you, the consumer are looking for.

Speaker 1 (33m 47s): Have you ever thought of bringing, bringing people in to be specialists?

Speaker 2 (33m 52s): Yes. Over the years, there's, there's a lot more than just a couple of gay reviews on my site. They're almost exclusive written by other people for that reason because to me, otherwise, that's all I'm talking about. Right, right, right. The other, the other stuff. And it just, if it doesn't click with me, I don't think I'm doing it justice. Cause I get it. I get it.

Speaker 1 (34m 17s): I've got, I've got some amazing gay friends and I'm from San Francisco for God sakes. What can I say? My, my best friend growing up is gay. My brother-in-law's gay. I mean, I could go on and on, but the bottom line is, and I'm not going to do this. Some of my best friends are gay because that's, that sounds like it, that sounds like a, a, you know, a cop out. But

Speaker 2 (34m 40s): I am not

Speaker 1 (34m 42s): One who enjoys or watches gay porn or, or shemale porn and lesbian porn can be okay. But it's not my favorite. So now while I sell a sites, I absolutely will sell those sites, but I don't have to watch them to sell them.

Speaker 2 (35m 2s): Yeah. And that's, if, if I could find consistent writers, I do a lot more of those genres because for me, I don't feel like I'm doing it any justice and that's, that's not fair to me. I have to be connected.

Speaker 1 (35m 16s): That's the way we should talk on. Maybe I can send some people in your direction. I know a lot of people, so I might have some ideas for you. I might have some ideas for you

Speaker 2 (35m 25s): Used to go ahead. No, no, no, go ahead. We used to have this argument, right. Is, is porn art or is it something else? And to me I've always said edit's core porn is masturbation material. If you're lucky, you've got a partner there to help out. Yeah. So ultimately what's good is what makes your naughty bits tingle. Yeah. Right. And they can, it can be objectively good or it can be whatever flips, all your right switches. Right. And if something doesn't flip the switches, it doesn't matter what the production value is.

It doesn't matter at all. Yeah. And so to me, there's always this balance and I try and be really fair, but there's some things I'm not going to be fair about. There's some things that are going to appeal to me more than they're going to appeal to anybody reading my review. Tom Byron used to laugh when Tommy was working for extreme making movies. He said, I know exactly how you get a perfect review from you. I'm like, really? You got me figured out and he rattled off five performers. He goes, I just have to be in the movie because you like my performances and these five women.

And I'm like, yeah, you're probably right. That's a consumer. I would have blocked that movie because I would've looked at it and gone, holy crap. I'm going to like all this. Yeah, of course. Of course. I like,

Speaker 1 (36m 41s): I like, I, I'm not, I'm not necessarily partial to any, any particular performers. I like book hockey though. That's fun. The Japanese version of it is, is pretty crazy. So anyway,

Speaker 2 (36m 57s): Easy stuff. Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (36m 59s): Oh yeah. Now did you ever think about getting in front of the camera?

Speaker 2 (37m 4s): I've been in front of the camera fully dressed, but nobody, nobody needs to vomit. It's just not something that ever really presented itself. Sure. My wife's very comfortable with just about everything that wasn't something she was particularly comfortable with, except for on a couple of occasions and then the timing wasn't right. Or, you know, you can shoot your own stuff, but it costs money. And so, yeah, but I've been in a couple of movies, just a little bit parts and stuff, but mostly just my interest is as a fan and as a journalist.

And I think that's where I belong.

Speaker 1 (37m 46s): There you go. And you do it well now, now do you have any favorite interviews over the years?

Speaker 2 (37m 54s): Yeah, I do. There's people I interviewed repeatedly who were always good. Aurora snow was always good for a great interview. She has a great sense of humor. She's smart. And I got to interview her from when she was brand new to when she was done as a performer and had accomplished all these great things. So that was great because then we sort of got the typical porn reviewer questions out of the way, you know, who her favorite position knew, where she was from all that stuff and had to kind of dig and talk a little more.

And that always worked well. Robbie D when he was at digital playground, digital playground was always really good at controlling their message and their image. And Robbie was always really good at giving me a whole lot more than they were comfortable with, but they made for great interviews. I interviewed Lexington steel four or five times, and we never did a regular interview. It was always in a sports bar or in a restaurant. And we would let the tape roll for two or three hours. And sometimes Lex would be particularly relaxed and got it.

And it, it, it was great. It, again, it became more conversational.

Speaker 1 (39m 7s): You mentioned, you mentioned him. I was in Miami the night he melted down.

Speaker 2 (39m 13s): I witnessed it. It was, it was

Speaker 1 (39m 15s): Quite interesting to say the least.

Speaker 2 (39m 18s): He was, he was a fun person. I remember I, I was in a spoons restaurant with Lexington Steele and Mike, John, when he was directing it anabolic as well as Lex and the waitress recognized Lex and kept coming over. And Mike, Mike and Lex were both very relaxed and it became a thing. It became a thing because, because Mike was not having it, it'd be, Hey, I'm a famous director here. Hold on. That's funny.

And, and Lexa at the time had a relationship and was trying very hard to politely. Yep. We're kind of busy. God, that's good.

Speaker 1 (39m 58s): I guess, I guess I caught them on a bad day.

Speaker 2 (40m 1s): Yeah. He, he's always been really great to me. And sometimes you can catch people on a bad day. Yes. I'm not gonna say his name, but my wife has a particular porn star. She always liked, always liked. And that gentleman happens to be one of the coolest people I've ever met was cool to me when I was going to shows and passing out physical copies of reviews to let people know what I was doing, this particular guy, you know what I'm going to go. I'm going to go out because he's a cool guy. It was Sean, Michael and Sean pulled a review out of the trash because the president man, that's true.

Speaker 1 (40m 35s): I thought you were going to say Ron, Jeremy, but go ahead.

Speaker 2 (40m 37s): No. So Sean actually pulled a review out and grabbed me as to hold on. I want to read this before you leave. And he was always great. He was super cool. And my wife thought he was just super handsome and a great performer. So she almost never went to shows. She went to one, we walked over to the booth and I went to introduce my wife to Sean. And he was having a bad day. And it just, my wife was like, wow, that was really kind of unpleasant. I'm like, I know, I know. And it was, Sean said he will make it up to her at some point. It was just one of those.

Wait, no, you're always the nicest guy. What happened? Yeah. But of all my interviews that I've done, my favorite was with John Deliana because of who he is. It obviously was a big deal. He and I sat down in a restaurant in Vegas and he just obliterated the whole idea of porn critics. Just your entire, your entire profession is full of shit. And he told me in three or four other critics, why we were all full of shit. And I basically said, oh, good point.

I disagree. And here's why. And I told them where I came from and, and, and how I got into it and why I got into it. But I got into it for the fans. And at the end of the day, he is a, his wife gave me his card and said, call or set up an interview. So I went to his house, which was surreal for me as a fan. Right. I'm sitting in this room that I'd seen in 20 of my favorite movies. Oh, wow. He showed me where the fire came up and damaged the house. And he sat and watched a Cubs game while we did an interview.

And it was just this long flowing conversation that would stop whenever Sammy Sosa came to the plate. I know,

Speaker 1 (42m 17s): I know about what time, what year

Speaker 2 (42m 20s): It was. Yeah, it was. And we talked for probably an hour about baseball and then he would get a call from John Leslie. So hang up the phone and say it was John. And then we started talking about John and then Joey Silvera called. And he, so it was this sort of meandering long four and a half hours. But in the end it was really good and I couldn't help, but just be a huge fan. And there's so much porn history that, that he just wove in, in that time. And it was really glad we had that setting because in Vegas, you've got 15 minutes usually.

Right? If you're lucky, you get to have your questions all asked and that's all you can do. And this was a whole lot more and I'm really proud of it. And I'd love to do it again at some point testing.

Speaker 1 (43m 5s): Do you still have any one on your wishlist for interviews?

Speaker 2 (43m 8s): I, yeah. I really wish I had had a chance to interview John Leslie, because I think he's just such a fantastic artist. Unfortunately, he passed, right? I'd like to sit down with Angela White. Again, I interviewed her early in her American phase of her career where she was super fun and energetic. And I kept thinking, my God, who is this woman? And how are we going to contain this energy now, you know, five years and three avian performer of the year awards later, I, I see where she was going.

And I would love to sit down with her a couple others, Greg Lansky, who's done so much recently. I would love to sit down and talk with him. Kayden Krause, who I interviewed when she was a performer at digital playground. Again, she's transitioned to being an award-winning director now. And I haven't had an interview Jules Jordan in probably 10, 10 years. And again, someone who's been around for a long time and seen all the changes and has had to do company pivots.

I find that really interesting interviewing new porn performers is a little less interesting to me these days, just because I hate to sound like the old guy, but I re I read the interview and I'm like, yeah, I asked those questions 20 years ago to, you know, she's going to tell you if her position is doggy. Cause they all do. So I'd like to do interviews like that. And, Hmm.

Speaker 1 (44m 37s): Well, I have famous famous people. Definitely. Have you ever been recognized or had a, your famous moment?

Speaker 2 (44m 45s): I get recognized. It shows mostly by people in the industry. Yeah. Fans or readers don't really recognize me there. There was a picture of me anywhere for a good 10 years. Yeah. So not often there are two examples. I'll try and keep them short. Okay. In Vegas one year I was, I was walking the floor and of course we have our name badges on. They're pretty big. And I was hurrying cause I always do. I don't like crowds. So you've been on the floor. Right. And imagine someone who doesn't like crowds, someone who is perpetually running late and needing to be on the other side of the room three minutes ago, trying to move quickly.

So I'm moving quickly and someone grabs my arm and says, Hey, which back then good internet feuds going on. Maybe I'm about to get punched. I'm not sure. So I was a little defensive and the guy pointed and said, you're Roger. I'm like, I am. I read your site. I really love your stuff. Super nice guy. So stopped and talked to him long story short he's from Vegas. W you know, what are you, what are you guys doing to get parties going on? And I sit down, I'm kind of not a party guy anymore. A couple of my friends were going to go, maybe see this particular show tonight.

And he said, really whips out his card. He's the producer of the show. We wanted to see. Oh, weird. I said, that's, that's such a coincidence. We were looking for tickets. It's like, you know what? You know what, give me your number. I'll call you in 15 minutes. We'll say it with some tickets. Nice. So center fourth row. Amazing seats. Wow. He came at an intermission and said, Hey, come backstage after the show. That's cool. So

Speaker 1 (46m 17s): What was the, what was the, what was, what was the show? It was mama Mia. Oh.

Speaker 2 (46m 22s): And it was really one of the coolest things ever all because he recognized me the other one. That's amazing. It, it was it's super nice. What was really cool for me was he met me in my element. Right. So we're talking, people are walking by and saying hello to me. And he said, oh, that's, so-and-so that? And they're like, yeah. You know them? Yes. We went backstage at this musical that I had just, you know, enjoyed the hell out of. And he walks into the room and everybody turns and says, hello is very differential.

And like, in here, you're the man, you know? So when we kind of went out on stage, take some pictures and a couple of the cast members were like, would, would you like us to come out? It was like, oh, that's because we're with this guy over here. So it was, it was very cool. He's a great guy. And when the show came to LA, he set us up with some tickets to my family, got tickets. It was great. That's awesome. That, that was, that was the best. The funniest to me back in the beginning, my sister was going to school in San Francisco actually.

And she was hanging out where to go. She went to San Francisco state. That's my Alma mater. It's a great campus. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47m 37s): Yeah. It's kinda, kinda old school. Kind of cool.

Speaker 2 (47m 40s): Yeah. So she was up there and she apparently was in a dorm room, hanging out with some friends, some guys dorm room. And she knew what I did. My family knew right from the beginning. And she saw, she saw a binder on his desk with my name on it. And so she kind of waited and pulled it out and said, what is this? And the guy goes, oh, it's this guy who reviews porn on the internet. And we just print out some of the funny reviews and some of the ones we really like, and we sort of pass this book around so we know what to buy.

She called me up. She said, you're not going to believe where I saw your work. Like, well, apparently I'm, I'm San Francisco state.

Speaker 1 (48m 19s): I love it. I love it. The, the Gators, the Gators, the Gators love ya. I used to, I used to call her football games among other things. So do you think the era of porn stars is over?

Speaker 2 (48m 31s): I don't think for example, there's ever going to be another Jen and Jamison. I just don't. I think that kind of crossover mainstream, everybody knows her name is kind of gone because there's no studio system pushing anybody. Now. Jen was fantastic. She also had Hugh a huge company behind her running campaigns with her at the center. Yep. That doesn't happen anymore. Performers have to do that. Almost always on their own social media.

Yeah. Yeah. And some of them are fantastic at it. Right. Riley Reed, people know who Riley Reed is in the mainstream, but not like 1980s, ginger Lynn or 1990s. Jenna Jamison. It's different. Sure. And in that way, if we wanted to find porn star that way. Yes. But if you want to define it as a star, as an artist doing their own thing, no, Angela, White's got three performers. Have your titles. Nobody else has more than two.

She's probably going to get one or two more before she's done. Yeah. So that's not a coincidence. It's just a different kind of stardom, I think now. Yeah. Yeah. No,

Speaker 1 (49m 42s): No. Two ways about it. Clip artists are stars now. So, so how will the industry need to adapt to thrive in the future?

Speaker 2 (49m 52s): I think they're going to have to embrace. And I think they already have, but I think they're going to continue to embrace the micro economies. Right. Performers doing their own thing is the way to go. And companies are going to have to figure out that in the past, like going way back, a lot of performers did adult movies, right? So they could feature dance because the money was in dancing. And then for a while you did movies to promote your own website. Right. Cause that's, what's really wanted, but you had to do a Brazzers movie or Jules Jordan movie to get known.

Yep. Now you've got performers that have the big companies saying, Hey, come shoot a scene for us because you've already got a million social media fans and you are going to bring people to our brand instead of the other way around. So I, I think they're going to have to just continue to embrace that. And before we're thinking what's next,

Speaker 1 (50m 44s): They better have a truckload of cash too, because really most of these clip artists and cam performers don't really have a big financial incentive to go do a shoot for a site, I mean, is, is, is even a thousand dollars or $2,000 a day going to be that interesting to them when they consider it home in their bathrobe and makeup.

Speaker 2 (51m 7s): Yeah. That's the thing, the new performers who don't know that yet are still going to do movies the old way. Yeah. But again, for, for the, the truly hardworking and dedicated performer. Yeah. Cut out a little bit of time for yourself every day and maximize that. Sure. You don't need to do much,

Speaker 1 (51m 27s): But I mean, who doesn't, what, what young lady or in some cases, young man doesn't know that doesn't know about only fans. My God,

Speaker 2 (51m 37s): I think they all know about it. I think the allure is still go shoot your own content. Do a live show, make a couple hundred dollars today or go shoot, make $800. Come back home. You're done. I think the entrepreneurial spirit is what's going to get you right. We're thinking, or again, either way is good. But to me, if I can make a hundred percent of what I make, right.

It's all me. Right. Or I go out and I get paid to do a job, but from someone else where they're collecting the bulk of the profit yeah. The appeals there. And I think that's only going to continue to grow. You're going to find a lot more performance to get into it already knowing that. Right. And that's going to make it tough if the industry doesn't embrace it. And I think you're going to see a lot more crossover. Yeah. Yes. This is shot from my site, but also for your clip store and your only fans and whoever gets the customer's eyes first gets that 20 bucks.

Right. That and kill piracy. If we can just find a way to kill piracy. We're fine. Yeah. I've got

Speaker 1 (52m 46s): An, I've got an interview on that. I've got an interview coming up on that in the next week with, with the notable piracy company that we're going to talk about that. So I cover all bases. Roger adult, adult site broker talk is everywhere. Well, Hey, I'd like to thank you once again for being our guest today on adult side broker talk and I hope we'll get a chance to do it again really soon. My pleasure. Thank you. My broker tip today is part three of what to do to make your site more valuable for when you decide to sell it later, find new ways to monetize your website, such as sell advertising.

If you've got a free site, like a that's the best way to monetize your site. If you have a tube, another way to make more money is to sell premium memberships, offer free users, one level of content. And for premium users, you can do things like give them higher quality videos or longer videos or both. You can also make the site ad free for premium members. Start an affiliate program. If you have a pay site, especially this is a great way to increase your quality of traffic and get more joins with all sites, you can figure out other upgrades and products you can sell to your users.

Pay sites can also sell pay view where people have the option of paying by the scene for content they can't get on the site. This is also another way to charge users as opposed to a monthly fee, sell them other products like toys and novelties market, your business, do things to improve your search engine results like using SEO. There are some great SEO consultants out there who can help you get higher search rankings in Google. If you want some recommendations, please contact us on our website list.

All of the benefits of your site in your marketing and how they affect the user. And of course, hire a great marketing consulting firm, such as adult B2B marketing, which we also happen to own eliminate unneeded expenses constantly make sure you're not spending money. You don't need to make sure there isn't duplication in your staffing from time to time check services you pay for like hosting and see if there are better and less expensive options. Take it from me. I've done this and saved a bunch. Plus got higher quality hosting in the process.

Again, ask us for recommendations. Always look for ways to do things more cost-effectively along with this, make your profit and loss statements show more profit, increasing sales and reducing expenses obviously does just that make sure your P and L statement accurately reflects your company's actual costs. Not a bunch of personal BS you've put in for the tax man. This will cost you money when you sell it may help you at tax time to put that stuff on your tax return, but it hurts you.

If you show that stuff on your profit and loss statement, remember every dollar in profit increases the value of your website. As much as three to four times, this is why you need a good experience broker to help lead you through the process. We've gotten people thousands of dollars, more on their sale just by adjusting the P and L statement to reflect actual business expenses. As opposed again, to that personal BS that you put on your tax return. We'll talk about this subject more next week and next week we'll be talking to Andy Wulmer of Traffic Partnerr.

Yes. The traffic captain himself. You don't want to miss that.

Speaker 0 (56m 14s): And that's it on this week's Adult Site Broker Talk. I'd once again like to thank our guest Roger of Rog Reviews. Talk to you next week on Adult Site Broker Talk. I'm Bruce Friedman.