Adult Site Broker Talk Episode 191 with Alex Lecomte

This is Bruce Friedman of Adult Site Broker and welcome to Adult Site Broker Talk where each week we interview one of the movers and shakers of the adult industry and we give you a tip on buying and selling websites. This week we’ll be speaking with Alex Lecomte of 7Veils. Would you like an easy way to make a lot of money? Send sellers or buyers to us at Adult Site Broker through our affiliate program, ASB Cash. When you refer business to us, you’ll receive 20% of our broker commission on all sales that result from that referral for life. You can make $100,000 or more on only one sale for some of our listings. Check out ASB Cash.com for more details and to sign up. At Adult Site Broker, we’re proud to announce our latest project, thewaronporn.com. You’ll find articles from industry websites as well as mainstream publications from around the world. 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We anticipate multiple offers for this very rare listing. For more information, contact us at adultsidebroker.com. Now time for this week’s interview. My guest today on Adult Site Broker Talk is Alex Lacan of Seven Veils. Hey Alex, thanks for being back with us today on Adult Site Broker Talk. Hello, thank you very much for inviting me again. Thank you so much. It’s my pleasure. Now Alex is an industry veteran and lifelong scholar. He’s also an ex-biz community hall of famer and has won multiple awards. Alex comes from a multicultural background at the crossroads between Europe and South and North America. He graduated with honors in international marketing and foreign languages for business and politics with a postgraduate degree in neuro marketing. You’ll have to tell me what that is someday. He is currently studying psychology. After significant work experience in mainstream advertising and PR, Alex has served as an account manager and sales and marketing consultant for several companies in our industry, including Exoclick, Mobidea, I Want Empire and others. Several of his articles have been published by xbiz, AVN and why not. Alex is the CEO and co-owner of 7Veils Media, an adult industry agency specializing in social media strategies. With 12 years of experience in web and mobile marketing, he’s been helping several video on demand, live cam, dating, sexual enhancement products and gambling partners with their media buys, not to mention a website broker that goes unnamed. Marketing plans and ROI strategies are also part of what he does. Seven Veils is the premier social media marketing agency for the adult industry. Their international award-winning team manages social media accounts for companies and individuals. They operate on platforms such as X, Instagram, Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Only Fans, X-Videos and Porn Hub. The purpose of their agency is to use social media to provide additional business angles for adult brands that do community management, e-reputation, business development, online public relations and customer support on those channels. So Alex, it’s been a while since we last spoke. What’s changed most about the social media landscape in the last couple of years? A few things. So first of all, yeah, you called it yourself X. I think you’re one of the very few people around that are already calling it that way. I still don’t. I still call it Twitter. I know that I really need to... It’s really... He changed the name and I think no one wants to call it X yet, but anyways. So this is a big change, you know? Elon Musk took over and... He just did it for you. Do you say Twitter also, still? Well I do. I do. Okay. I think everyone... And we did a survey recently about that and people still... It was like 96% of the people on Twitter calling the platform still Twitter and refusing to call it X. And it’s interesting because... So you were asking about neuro marketing and it’s exactly... It is exactly the point about neuro marketing, which is one of my biggest passion in life. It’s the crossroad between marketing and psychology because when we speak about our brains being wired for certain things, it’s exactly what neurosciences are studying. So the fact that we are reluctant to change the name and to adopt a change and being flexible, etc. This is exactly one of the areas that we are studying in neurosciences. So yeah, I don’t know why I’m putting such a big fence around X, but yeah, I will just call it Twitter still and I think we all understand what Twitter is or was about. So that’s the biggest change. Since we talked about social media, yeah, Elon Musk took over and it actually didn’t change much. A few things changed. The API has removed some... He wants to turn it more into a business. So he’s clearly going on more subscriptions and paying features. But the platform is still the same, the audience is still the same. It is supposed to be more oriented on free speech, etc. But well, that’s a philosophical question that students might have to study now that can we really have free speech with the internet without offending anymore and politics and stuff. So... In its essence, it offends people. Isn’t that part of the idea? Yeah, and you know, well, I don’t think that it’s actually made to offend people. It’s just that with the politics, especially in the US, it’s something that we saw as an emerging big question about the free speech because if a platform like Twitter, as an example that we were talking about, if during the political speech, etc., if one of the politicians is lying or spreading misinformation or maybe he’s not aware of it, but if he’s spreading fake news or something, what is the duty of social media platforms? Are they really allowed to delete a message? Because at this point, if they delete it, they are going against free speech. And if they don’t, they are just helping and contributing to mass communication and actually miss communication. So it’s a big question, you know, and that’s the main issue and challenge that I see for Elon Musk. If he really wants to dig that free speech stuff because now social media platforms, something that hasn’t changed is that it’s free and it means that we are the products that, of course, we need to be clear about that and transparent. So maybe in that way, Zuckerberg is a little bit less weird. We’ll see. I think it’s one of the biggest changes and something also, of course, to take into account is as usual, social media is a reflection of society. So our society is evolving, is changing. We are carrying the consequences of a pandemic of the Black Lives Matter movement that unfortunately was still a slow change, but at least a little shy step forward against racism. There is still a lot to do in that area worldwide. And but at least, yeah, it’s changing and we can see that a little bit more on social media. So the algorithms are paying more attention to offensive comments and sometimes a bit too much. Sometimes you’re kidding and the robots don’t understand sarcasm. So it makes it complicated. Tell me about it. Because particularly sensitive about that stuff. I wished a guy happy birthday once and I got a time out from Facebook when I was on Facebook before they tossed me. How rude of you to wish happy birthday. That’s and exactly exactly. And I got it. I got a two week time out in a post where I wished a friend happy birthday. I am 100 percent serious. Well, it’s interesting. You mentioned weirdness between Zuckerberg and Musk. Yes, I think Musk wins the weirdness battle hands down. But there’s no doubt about it that Zuckerberg’s got a lot of weirdness about him, too. Yeah, they are both very strange people and hard to understand, you know, from a clinical point of view. Because well, I had read in the past, I think it was actually it was right before the pandemic. There is a biography about Elon Musk and it wasn’t interesting because I had no idea he was one of the people creating PayPal and stuff. So he had a lot of ideas in the past and he is obviously very smart at some point. But his personality is really strange and I think his ex-wife in the book is speaking about it. He seems to be a very strange person. Yeah, I actually think he bought into Facebook. I don’t think I was corrected one time online when I said he was one of the founders. I believe he bought in. I’m not Facebook. I’m sorry to PayPal. But he was one of the original people. I think he had another platform that merged with it. So he essentially bought into it. But you said something about the algorithms and the API changing with Musk there and we’ve experienced it with our statistics or should I say lack of statistics that are now available. How is that affecting what you do? So the largest amount of work that it is giving me is that people since they are not doing it, I mean our clients, people or users, clients or users, when they don’t have all these years of experience using the platform at a marketing level. So sometimes they get confused and that’s when they give us a little bit more work because they come with which is totally normal with more questions and wondering what has changed and how it impacts. And at the end, we can still have access to, let’s say 90% of the data. It’s just that from one month to another, it was changing. You know, I’ve been missing two months of details and I was like, okay, where did it go? And then on the website, when I opened a ticket, no one was answering, of course. But at the same time, there is a link. So they say on Twitter, for example, analytics.tweeter.com, when they tell you are, you can see all the new version of the platform and you can see all the data and you click on the link. But then the link is just like kind of a landing page and then you’re getting back your turning in circles. So it seems that it’s not ready yet. They removed something and they said that they are working on it, but it’s been more than three months now, even more because it was in July. So it’s like, yeah, and it’s like, okay, you’re changing something, but please do it well and not just stop in the middle of it. I think it’s because people are not using it that much. I mean, three customers because clearly this is all made for paying advertising on Twitter. So that’s probably the part they want to improve and revamp or whatever. But for the adult industry, we cannot use that part. We cannot have any paid traffic on Twitter because of the natural content. But it doesn’t affect much. Yeah. I should give the disclaimer. We’ll record this on October 31st and we will run early next year. So of all the social media platforms, which do you consider the most relevant and why? It really depends on the content, really, because you hear so many good stories, successful stories, but also, you know, shooting stars actually for TikTok. I have people who have amazing stories, marketing cases on TikTok. And it’s just that it really depends on the content because some of the clients, their content is almost impossible to make it happen on Twitter on TikTok because on TikTok, people want to see the performer dancing or lip syncing or doing something. It’s all video based and it’s all, it’s very young. So the audience is young. And what I mean by young is like, it’s something very creative. We can see it a little bit silly and stupid sometimes, you know, someone just lip syncing stupid stuff with the filter of a cat overhead. And it’s, but it’s really performing. But at the same time, I think that if we take a common base of all the factors, I would say that Twitter is still the main priority for the industry, simply because they are the most adult friendly social media. So we can still post porn on it. So visual, explicit porn. And the linking system is really good compared to Instagram because Instagram, they got more flexible, you know, I saw so many naked butts on Instagram this month, much more than usual and they’re not getting deleted or anything. We don’t know because of the guidelines, we don’t know how it will evolve. Well, they won’t tell you what the guidelines are. Yeah, you know, they’re on Twitter, for example, they changed the guidelines, which was very interesting because we can tell that they worked on it. Even if it’s still a gray zone, I like that they worked on it in a way that they don’t allow you to promote sexual products. If it’s no, it’s sorry, it’s on Instagram. They don’t allow you to promote sexual products if it’s aiming for pleasure. So right now, and that’s a big change for for Zuckerberg’s products for Facebook and Instagram. Now you can promote condoms, for example. That was a big fight, you know, that was crazy that you couldn’t buy paid traffic for condoms because it was like a sexual offense. Yeah, you can’t promote something that’s going to help birth control. Because it was too sexual. But now, since they understand that it’s medical, healthy, they tolerate it. What was their first clue? Did Zuckerberg have to take a sex ed class or something? I would like to see his face. But it’s, no, I’m pretty sure he has an intense sex life. Yeah, right. Now that would be funny. It’s because I’m always fascinated. Sorry, I’m always wondering what these famous people, business people, we all know because we’re in this industry. So we know that a lot of people have very different and unique fetishes. And I really wonder because they believe they’ve all been a world that is totally different and disconnected from my reality because of the power and the money they generate. I always wonder what would be the most different fetish that this person has? And Mark’s... Probably into BDSM. Yeah, but I was wondering if there is something unique, like the balloon thing or smelling socks. I don’t know. He looks like a painty person to me. You’re killing me. So what kind of content works best on social media? You know, something that we’ve, after years and years working on it, something that we can really summarize. It really needs to be entertaining, which is a bit obvious to say that. But it’s really a common clue that we can see that across all the platforms, even if it’s something, let’s say, something serious, let’s say, I don’t know, for... I cannot take any examples from one of our clients because we don’t have at this moment someone working on something like antivirus or something like that. So let’s take the example of antivirus or sexual disease or something serious. It needs to be entertaining. So there is this very great, very, very good doctor in Brazil. He is a sex educator and he is promoting all the knowledge and awareness around sexual diseases, but he is doing it for social media to get his audience. So he totally understood the way even he’s surfing it. For example, to make a parallel between the butthole, but for social media, he is taking a donut. Oh, God. Yeah, it’s a lot of videos and he is wearing a blouse. So it’s not... It’s very professional, but at the same time, he is bringing it in a very funny and entertaining way. Now, by a blouse, you’re talking about a doctor’s shirt, right? You were going to tell me it was a women’s blouse. Then I was going to say, "Okay, what’s the deal here?" Oh, is that the word in English, a blouse for the doctor? Yeah, a blouse usually means a woman’s top. Oh, all right. Okay, so he is wearing the doctor jacket and he is just using donuts and putting some white cream on it. Like, "Oh, be careful because when you’re a donut, it’s getting wet by some substances. It can affect." And he explains all the process behind it, but it looks like it’s for the kids when we were young and we had these cartoons on TV telling us about personal hygiene and stuff. Well, the way he made it is the best example right now about what content should be on all the platforms because it’s entertaining. So people, even if they are not interested, even if they don’t have sex life, which I don’t believe, but well... Like Zuckerberg, right? Even if they are not having any sex or whatever, they’re still eat donuts, so they have a butthole. So they understand how it works. And I love that he is doing it in a very entertaining way. It’s a bit scary though because it takes out all of the serious aspect of social media. In my opinion, it’s just about how society works because this example of this doctor, he is doing some creative content, entertaining content and fun, but it’s still serious. He is totally legit. He’s a real doctor. He has a real message in patience. He doesn’t have clients. He has patience, right? And so that’s the way it should be on social media, unfortunately, but that’s the way it is. And I might now just want to be entertained with everything. They want to be entertained and you got to get their attention. That’s the number one thing in any marketing. Excuse me. It’s not, but that’s why it’s movies because I’m a big fan of dystopia since I’m a kid. So all the movies like Divergent and The Hunger Games, etc. It’s very scary because we are running that way at a very fast pace. We are really... Because The Hunger Games, that’s the thing about it is like war and entertainment, but taking out all the humanity and social media is going that way. Like, okay, do you want to talk about a war conflict? Ukraine, Israel, but at the same time, if they want to fit it, the social media sphere and marketing, they would have to introduce it in an entertaining way, which is absolutely not possible because it’s a serious matter. It’s a war. So it’s really hard to imagine that they can turn it into something entertaining to educate. I think there is... It’s humanly, it’s not possible. It’s a lack of respect. Right. So is influencer marketing still a thing and does it work as well as it once did? More or less. There is a significant impact legacy from influencer marketing in a way that I like to make this parallel with ad blockers, the plugins for browsers. When I was working in an ad network, I was always worried about the impact of the block occurs on the ads because people who are using it, they are not seeing the placements, right? They are seeing an empty space. And it’s kind of the same now. Our brains are naturally filtering the influencer bullshit. So using an influencer had... It was already really difficult because the main challenge we’ve seen when the whole thing started to evolve and explode in a good way because the influencers didn’t want... They care so much about their page because they’ve spent time to build it and their audience, etc. They are more concerned about fitting their product in their own... In their environment, in their style, etc. That sometimes they were just accepting some products and services to promote because they needed the money. But at the same time, it was... There was a disruption that was kind of hurting the page and the whole environment they were creating. So it was hard on that part. But what we learned from it is that people got educated and now they can tell if someone on social media is talking to you because they want to share something personal or if they want to try to sell something. So this took a lot of power away from the influencers because now if someone wants to talk to you about a loop, you wonder if this person is actually using that loop or if she has been paid for it. It was a trend, basically influencer marketing. It is still a thing, but it has always been. In Lindsay Lohan, Kate Moss, they accept some partnerships with clothes or watches, etc. It is old school influencer marketing. So it’s always going to be a thing when someone relevant, leader of opinion is sharing some tips about some products or services, is going to be influencer marketing, but not at the scale that we used to see it. Interesting. Is that something that you think is relevant in adult? I think so because I think what allows me to say that is when you are at an event or even if it’s industry oriented or not, let’s imagine you’re something that we’ve always wanted to work with colleges. When the performers, the notorious one like big names, Joanna Angel, for example, because she’s amazing. So imagine if a college would invite her to speak about sexual practices, sexual health, both physically and mentally, how the impact of having sexual intercourse with someone, what is involved, etc. And consentment and everything around it. I think her voice in our society has more power, more outreach today rather than someone that is just PhD, whatever in this area, but with less visibility. So yeah, I think even for our industry, it’s still relevant because by the status of notoriety, people in our industry reach through their career, totally deserved. It gives them the legitimacy to speak about a certain subject. And I think that’s why we still have natural influences when they are really good at it. I like the case, the example of Joanna Angel because she’s very natural. She’s also very smart and she’s capable to speak her mind. So I like this example a lot because for me, she’s a natural influencer. She can decide if she would like to speak about a product or a service or not. And the audience would receive it in a tip from a friend. So the marketing operation would be perfect because it’s a natural process. She’s a smart lady. I was at a dinner with about, I don’t know, 10 people that she was at one time and I was pretty amazed. Should I consider AI a threat to my business now or do you think it’ll be in the future? I think it depends. I think this question, if it was the AI robot, they would ask you to rephrase eventually. I don’t know. I think when the whole bubble burst about AI, people got crazy about it. It’s also something very stressful about our society right now. When there is a trending topic, it goes, people go crazy about it and they want to place the word everywhere. So it creates a lot of noise, especially on social media where I work. So I was seeing everyday massive amount of messages talking about AI. And sometimes it was just, Uber drivers are like, "Oh, today the AI is not working. The traffic is stuck and they didn’t make me avoid this line." So people are using it everywhere. So I think it’s a danger because if we create a monster, if we can say exactly where AI is operating, it’s going to make it hard or to use it or to be scared of it. For businesses, adult businesses, it really depends. For example, we use AI when in many cases, the clients are not able to provide us, unfortunately, there’s a lot of content about their product and services because we don’t have only adult movies, productions. We have all kinds of services that involve sexual activities and even dating. Sometimes it’s not even sexual, it’s more relationship and companionship. Dating I think would be a good example. If you use AI to create fake profiles, then in this case, yeah, I think it should hurt your business. But it’s my personal opinion, not the professional one. I think in my personal vision of life and business, just like McDonald’s, if you create a very beautiful hamburger and then we go there and they just give you something that the person was in a hurry and just build the sandwich in a way that everything is falling apart, it’s not a satisfying experience. So if you use AI to create fake profiles and the people on your platforms are so different from the fake profiles you’ve created, then you generate frustration and it’s definitely not good for your business. Or they don’t exist at all. Yeah, that’s why it’s a big problem now. At my level, at Seven Bells, AI is not impacting in a bad way at all because I think AI is great and well, when it started, we were reading this book with Lauren together at the same time about AI ethics and it was, I think it’s an MIT book or something. And so they’ve just published something about ethics. And the part that I love the most is when they compare AI to Frankenstein, the novel, because the problem is not Frankenstein, it’s the creator, the father. And that’s kind of what it is with AI is just going to be what you decide to be. People are scared because of movies and stuff. Can it happen or not? I have no idea. And I don’t even want to think about it because anxiety is going to kick out. But at my level, why it’s not a threat? Because Seven Bells, the line we’re operating, the style we have from the beginning is really to work on organic things. So the kind of posts we are making, even if sometimes I know that most of our clients find them very simple or sometimes they must think that, oh, he wasn’t inspired that day or whatever, but it’s actually well thought, you know, because sometimes all you need is just a thumb up or a smile. But if you use this triggering point, and again, we are getting back to neurosciences, if you use a triggering point, it can generate a significant impact, a seed at least, that is going to be watered over the day. So I think it’s organic and something, some subtility that the AI is not capable to use, especially sarcasm, which is a problem with the algorithm, as we said before, that sometimes they think we are just being rude when we are just being French. So I think sarcasm and everything subtle, humor is a big, it’s a bit hard with AI. So I think it’s not as straight at the end. Simple is always best when it comes to marketing, as far as I’m concerned. And I don’t think that will ever change. What tips do you have for content creators? Okay. I have a tip for content creators to reread the label. If they are content creator, they need to create. It’s not about, it’s not being a content copy-paste, it’s not about being a content thief or it’s just, you know, people find, it’s such a cliche to say that I feel like I’m in a Disney movie, but it’s about finding your own voice. And it’s so hard because people love shortcuts, which is not a good strategy because we are a lot of people in the world and thanks to internet, we’re all connected. So if you spot a trend or something that is going on, let’s say in the US and you are in Germany and you want to reproduce this trend, well, the factors are not the same. Plus, it has been done already. So you’re going to lose your time. You’re going to catch the attention of the algorithm, but people are going to see that it’s something that has already been done that is not funny anymore because they already see it. So it, and maybe the inner culture where you’re posting the content for your fans, the audience is maybe different. So the problem that I see right now for content creators, and that’s what I like to do to see your problem so you can maybe fix it and then to provide help around it. So that’s why I’m thinking about that when you’re asking for a tip for them is to be really creative, but you cannot be a creative person if it’s not something that you have activated in you, you know. So my best tip for them is to calm down and breathe and they need to stop and think, you know. We have many successful people in this industry, especially in Dominatrix, they are very creative. Or there is this performer, she is on Charrivet. Her name is Rock and Rose. Oh my God, she’s a true creator. She has an amazing mind, you know, very beautiful. And sometimes creation doesn’t mean that it needs to be beautiful. It’s just that what she does is very fresh and very innovative. And it’s very hard, of course, to be innovative. And I understand that it’s a challenge that sometimes you’ve been creating new trends like 10 times over the past month. What’s next? Well, what’s next is you to rest to get more ideas because it’s normal. We cannot be creative all the time. And I know that because I’ve been working for marketing agencies. So at some point, I cannot always come with a new campaign or a new trend or whatever. I need to rest and it’s fine. We hold human, you know, it’s just that they are trying it too hard. And it’s a big issue because on social media, when you try it too hard or you are spotted as a robot or as someone obnoxious, so someone to avoid. And I think that’s the problem that I see right now. And that would be a great tip to fix it and to be a little bit more creative instead of just checking what the competition is doing or what people are doing and trying to copy and paste. It’s never a good solution. It’s a temporary patch. It can happen from time to time when you really, you’ve been for two weeks online and you don’t know what what you can do to shake a little bit what’s going on. Then you can get inspired by your competition or other people. But you always need to put it under your to do your own remix. You know. And yeah, I mean, the people that I follow that I really enjoy are the ones who are authentic. How important is it to be yourself to be authentic? For me, it’s the keyword of 2023 authenticity. It’s something that this young generation, I hate when I speak like that because I sound like an old person, which I am. I mean, I’m not. I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ve been talking about you. Yeah, but in dollars, it’s more, I don’t know. For me, the keyword for this year, authenticity, because what and it’s a consequence of the influencer marketing that we were talking about. What influences told us and what this generation, this new generation of 20 years old or 20, 25 years old, they are teaching us even younger. It’s about being authentic. There is a, it’s everything is a cycle, right? So we saw it happening in the past with the generation of our parents. When you were too fake, like I take the example always of women changing their hair color in blonde, for example. And after there was a counter back movement of women who wanted to have their natural color and say, no, it’s fine to be natural. It’s beautiful to be natural, et cetera. And then we have a cycle back of people trying a new artist for beauty, et cetera. And then again, to another movement asking for authenticity to be back. It’s the same with everything. We’re cause with everything. People always come back to something a little bit more rude, something more, they are trying to innovate, but at the same time, they want to keep it in touch with something from the past, something traditional, something that we had value in and we were used to. And neuroscience explains that actually it’s the love for patterns. We are all wired that way that if something looks familiar to us, we are much more permissive and comfortable. So it stimulates dopamine in a faster way. So authenticity is really the way to go because people, as soon as they get educated with bullshit, for example, they feel it that you’re talking, you know, there is a good example. There is something right now going on Twitter. People are using AI to generate engagement questions and you can tell when it’s not authentic because all of the sudden, all of the accounts are asking. So last week it was about, I have someone in the team that was freaking out because it’s a game. It’s funny. In the meeting, he was just freaking out about cold shower and I wasn’t aware of what was going on because I wasn’t on the accounts of our clients recently. But it was what’s going on with the cold showers. And I was like, Oh, okay, do you have an issue at home? And I was wondering. So he was explaining that about 20 posts in two days from several accounts, several big accounts from people who are considered as influential Twitter, they were mentioning cold showers. It was open questions. It was very vague, you know, and the people were not answering after that. So it’s probably a robot operating and generating engagement on several accounts saying, do you think that cold shower is making you rich or do you think that you, I took a cold shower this morning and now I feel ready for the day, et cetera. But it was so obvious because all of the sudden, everybody was talking about cold shower. So of course, the good thing as a marketer would have been to jump in the trend and to as a human person to just make fun of it and would say, Oh, again, cold shower or stuff like that. That’s what I would do. And that’s good when you see it happening, but at the same time, it wasn’t authentic from the initial, then you just take it to your advantage, you know, but the initial trigger was not authentic. And it was a bit stupid because now when we see these accounts who seem to be interesting people, now we’re just like, okay, you’re not capable of creating your own post, which is sad. I mean, if you don’t have anything to say, don’t say anything, you know, why would you occupy some space that could be occupied by someone more interesting? Big time. What tips do you have for companies when it comes to social media? The main challenge that we are seeing with companies is that they are, which is normal. I don’t blame anyone for that. It’s very natural. They care too much about their products. So they are too stuck. Their nose is too close. You know, I mean, their heart actually, because it’s very emotional. So they are getting very emotional. They use social media as an extension of their own personality, which is very strange because it’s business. When it comes to social media, business owners and even reps, they forget that it’s business. They take it very seriously and very deep to their heart. And I understand because the consequences can be really bad, of course, the cancel culture, etc. are still present. So of course, if a company is posting something inappropriate or bad simply, the consequences can be really bad. But at the same time, it’s not about what the owner likes or his personal preferences. It’s good if sometimes you can see the preferences through some posts, like if he’s watching movies, if he’s going to sports game, but maybe not to give too many strong opinion about conflict in the world or because this is not the purpose of it. We’ve had that conversation. Well, it’s something that never changed because religion and politics are really hard to deal with because of course, people have their own opinions. But for business, business is a cold calculation structure made to make profit. That’s what a business is about. So the lovely thing about social media is that it gives it a human voice and human aspect. But we cannot forget that it’s still a business. So I think that the main tips for companies would be to really breathe more, not overdo it because it’s about the ego. You see that the main mistake that we see from the companies, the small companies that just start with us or they call us and they say, "Look, that’s what I did on social media. Is it good?" And you check and everything is so self-centered because all they want to talk about is their product. But they never ask their audience if they like their product. Of course, the audience doesn’t respond because you need to build the audience and to show them that there is a real person behind it, that it’s not only about pushing the product. But it’s impressive to see that people really care. They go on their page and they check their page every day about how does it look? How does it look? The audience is not going to your account. The audience is going through the timelines. People are really obsessed with their business. It’s not a website. Even if it was a website, your clients or potential clients, they are not visiting your website every day and checking, "Oh, he didn’t post today," and stuff like that. I think that people are too obsessed with their businesses, which I understand why. I mean, we are in a digital area, so they always have their cell phone. They always check. Internet never stops. But yeah, I think that’s the main issue. I see it because I have this problem myself. Sometimes I’m too focused on, "No, but it’s normal." You’re doing your business. You want everything to be profitable and sustainable. But I think we need to... That’s why outsourcing, in my opinion, and I came to this answer because I had a doubt when I joined Seven Veils and people were asking, "Why would I outsource my service instead of having someone in-house?" Now today, I’m 100% sure that it is a better option to outsource, not because of my business, but because really, for social media, it creates a kind of distance where the team, your outsource, can absorb the stress and take a step out to get the big picture. Let me ask you this because our situation, what I do with Seven Veils, you guys take care of engagement, but I still have my voice on there. What do you think of those situations? We absolutely encourage the clients to keep in touch with their accounts. And sometimes some companies, they have a big marketing department and they already had someone working on there, let’s say Instagram, for example. And so we don’t encourage them to fire their department and hire us. Now, for us, it’s much more interesting and profitable and sustainable to work with the department and the people who were already operating on Instagram, even if they’re bosses or even if themselves, they want a different challenge and to take care of something bigger, like the whole marketing strategy or communication strategy of the company. Because they have the feeling about the audience. When you work on an account for several years or even several months, you can feel some username, you can see that some username are coming back often. You know what the subtility, everything that a robot cannot do properly to feel your audience really, to understand how they would react on certain aspects, how to trigger a little bit more of comments and this kind of things. So that’s why it’s really interesting in that way to benefit from their experience and be managed by them, being their assistant. Maybe they don’t have the time anymore to operate on Instagram, for example, and we just do it, adding our own recipes and tips and the experiences we gathered over the year. But using their main guidelines, because they know better, much better than us, how their audience is. This is a fact. We know the system better. We know the platform probably better, but their insight is very valuable and very interesting. So that’s why when you were taking the example of Adult Site Broker, we really encouraged the client to keep operating on their account. Even if we do our thing, it’s basically about putting a structure, putting some seeds that we know for sure that on the long run it’s going to be watered, create a kind of fish net on the long run. But it’s really nice when we see that the client is also involved in sharing interesting things. It’s a problem when the client interacts against something, let’s imagine you’re, we are just posting something about how Netflix is a good way to entertain yourself over the weekend. And then the client arrives and just post something like, "Oh, Netflix is so stupid. I don’t know why I’m paying that for that service." It’s like, "Okay, wait, maybe you want to focus on the aspect you know better, which is the business part of your business, like your servers or the money situation, etc. Some details that you eventually didn’t share with the team you are sourcing or some things that you didn’t thought would be relevant, but you’re just sharing it. These kind of details are very valuable and very interesting when the client is putting it on the account. I don’t care if you guys talk about what I saw on Netflix, even if I didn’t see it. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s of interest to the people out there. Yeah, but let’s be authentic. Exactly. So, what are some of the challenges as a society we’re facing with social media? It’s toxic. Social media is toxic and people are not seeing it. It’s a very big problem. And you know, I’m very worried to give my opinion about that because I know that so many times it can be misinterpretated, I don’t know how to say that in English, but misunderstood. And I think that my opinion can be misunderstood about that and it’s a problem because it’s the core activity for my business. But I do believe that social media is toxic. I like to take the example of Soda’s. I think it’s just the same. Most of us love Soda’s and we don’t want to stop drinking them. I don’t. You don’t drink Soda? Nah. Really? Not anymore. Yeah, because I remember you were drinking Diet Coke. I used to, yes. I remember that. No, so yeah, it’s like it’s just social media for me. It’s just like Soda’s. We love it. We love to drink it and we know that it’s not good for health. It’s just that we need to educate ourselves and especially our kids or people around us about it. So it’s just about, yeah, you want to open a Soda? Well, just have one per weekend or whatever. For social media, it’s kind of the same. It’s just like it’s very entertaining. We love it because it’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of information. It’s very useful. So that’s the beauty of it. My family is spread out all over the world. So of course, for me, social media is the main tool of communication and I love it because I can see the pictures. I can see. I love all this part of it. But at the same time, when I use it, I know that I am the product because it’s a free platform. So there is something behind that is making me, forcing me to use the platform more and more so I can get fed with a lot more of advertisement. And I think we’ll need to be aware of that. It’s addictive. It’s addictive and it’s a rabbit hole. I like that Beth at some point from AVN used this expression one day to describe social media and I adopted it immediately because it’s exactly what it is, a rabbit hole. It’s leading you to a really strange world that has been built and a world of illusions. So you need to keep your mind open, but at the same time, you need to keep your head on your shoulders and just navigate through this world knowing that you’re in a different space, different dimension. What you’re going to say maybe can affect other factors. So I think that’s the challenge society is facing right now, how to deal with social media because it is something very cool and I wouldn’t be happy without social media. I really enjoy it on my free time. It’s just that we need to take it as what it is, a business. Sure. What KPIs are relevant when we measure our social media effectiveness? Thank you. I love this question. So KPIs is because most of the people that I’m talking to and trying to work on social media, working on social media, first of all, they don’t listen and second, they don’t listen again. Do they not listen? I think they don’t listen. No, it’s strange because I swear it’s very impressive. I can spend one hour talking about that to someone and tomorrow the person can come to me and say, "Yeah, but how many followers?" "Oh my God, I’m going to kill you." So it’s followers, for example, is not a KPI. It is an indicator of performance, but it’s not the key indicator of performance. The most important, of course, is to think about why are you on social media and why do you want to invest your time, energy and money in social media. It’s because you’re a company and you want to be visible. You want people to know about, to be aware about your brand and to know about your product or services and eventually to purchase it. And for that, so what you’re going to measure is not the people who are following you because people who are following you, it can be friends that you’ve asked, "Can you please follow my page?" Okay, so these 10 people who are following you, what are they? Can you turn them into leads or into buyers? I’m not sure. It’s your aunt. She doesn’t care about your new deal though. So the followers is just something interesting to see if your brand is likable, but the KPI, for me, it will always be, of course, it depends on the goals of the company, but the main ones that are always coming back, the visibility. So in this case, I would pay attention to the impressions and the profile visits and the clicks. If the person wants to drive users from the platform because they cannot, for example, sell on Twitter if they have an OnlyFans and they need someone to subscribe on OnlyFans on the platform, then you want to check the clicks because if they like your content because they are having a good time watching your videos on Twitter, but if they don’t go to your OnlyFans, well, then there is something that you need to adapt and eventually hire 7VALES. So the clicks, for me, KPI is the most important, the impressions and profile visits and the clicks. Very good. Has anything changed over the past five years working at 7VALES in terms of social media content, use and guidelines? Yes. The guidelines evolved. I was taking the example of the condoms, for example, on Instagram and Facebook. It was impossible to purchase paid traffic for adult products and they were including condoms, which was a dramatic mistake because it is not porn. Condoms are about health. It’s not entertainment. So the fact that they were putting that together with porn was a big mistake, but it was also annoying because the kind of content that we were using, especially for sex toy clients, is very hard because sex toy is not like showing porn, but at the same time, the content is somehow fitting in the same category, which is sexual entertainment. So the guidelines are still very gray because, of course, it’s hard to label human behaviors and to think about all the cases and all the creative banners that people can make for their companies, but they definitely changed their vision about sexuality. So now it’s divided into main things, the sexual health and the sexual pleasure. So of course, our industry totally fits in sexual pleasure, but the fact that they are allowing some sexual health possibilities makes it interesting in terms of creative content. If your company wants to, let’s take the example of Tentric Massages. A Tentric Massage technically is health. So technically, well, there is a problem with foster ancestor that can be a little bit too picky and mix everything just the way they love to do it. But yeah, Tentric Massages technically should be under sexual health. So I don’t know because I’m very cautious and I’m so used to annoying people on social media mixing up everything and thinking that everything is dirty and forced and co-edged and stuff. So we are very cautious and we just do things according to the guidelines. And when the guidelines are gray, of course, we don’t take the risk for our clients unless the clients want us to. But so yeah, that’s the main thing that has changed in terms of content and guidelines for Zuckerberg’s product. For Twitter, nothing has changed. For Reddit, nothing has really changed. I mean, of course, some minor changes, but nothing that impacts content that much. The algorithm is still very into videos, but I really recommend to keep posting pictures because we see it from the performing posts on Twitter, for example, that still most of the top posts are pictures. And we are not sure if it’s the algorithm itself that is giving priority to certain type of content or if it’s just people, you know, if they’re in the subway or something or listening to music, maybe they don’t want to click on the video and they just prefer to open the picture to zoom. So that’s why it’s important to have a mix of it. But yeah, the guidelines are still the same for Twitter, for sexual activity at least. So yeah, not a big change, a few alterations. Well, hey, Alex, I’d like to thank you for being back with us again on Adult Site Broker Talk and I hope we’ll get a chance to do this again soon. It was my absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for inviting me, really. Thank you so much. My broker tip today is part nine of what to do to make your site more valuable for when you decide to sell it later. Last week we talked about what information to provide a potential buyer. Here’s more. Tell them what’s special or different about your site. How’s it unique? Make sure and include a list of all the websites you’re selling in addition to any domains that come along with the sale. Is there anything that adds value to the sale? Provide them with any additional information upon request. Before giving a buyer any information, have them sign a non-disclosure agreement. If you use a broker, the NDA will be provided for you. Good brokers like, oh, I don’t know, Adult Site Broker, have a large resource of potential buyers that are looking for properties just like yours and they know how to deal with potential buyers. They’ll also negotiate the terms of the sale, such as price and any payment terms. Before closing the sale, find a good escrow service to make sure that both the buyer and the seller are protected. We have those resources, of course. Let’s talk about some of the factors that influence the sale price of a website. Number one is always profit. It will be a multiple of the profit and that multiple is based on whether the profit is trending up or trending down and how fast it’s trending up or down. I’ve seen valuations of as much as five times, although that’s very rare. Normally it’s in the two and a half to four times area. I’ve also seen valuations of one time if the profit is taking a nosedive. We’ll talk about this subject more next week. And next week we’ll be speaking with performer Erica Love. And that’s it for this week’s Adult Site Broker Talk. I’d once again like to thank my guest, Alex Lecomte of 7Veils. Talk to you again next week on Adult Site Broker Talk. I’m Bruce Friedman. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]