My lover and I would love to do some internet porn. We are interested in doing webcam, photos and video. We are both attractive with more than a handful of kinks we are willing to indulge in publicly. We want to be independent. We have no idea where to start. Any ideas? STARS IN TRAINING
My pal Seska, who has been doing independent web porn with her husband James for almost a decade, shares some insights into the current climate. “I would say it is much harder than it used to be, especially as an independent producer starting with no traffic base,” she says. “To make it work you would need to invest time and money into developing a competitive website and affiliate marketing program.
Affiliates would send you traffic and get a cut of sales. Working your own traffic, creating and starring in your own content and webmastering your own site is a lot of work. Plus, affiliates are very demanding in terms of what promotional materials they require. To gain their attention you also need to be a good networker within the internet porn market. You need connections or to stand out. Some people give Hummers away to their top affiliates to keep their program competitive.” (And just to be clear, by Hummers she does mean the car and not the blow job, meaning you will be sharing your profits with people for whom this ridiculous vehicle is an enticing symbol of prestige.)
Seska recommends using an adult social networking website like www.rude.com. “They do the backend work for you,” she says. “You create a profile and create the content. They host it and do some promotion for you. You get a cut when you make sales on the content — photos, video, group webcam shows and private webcam shows. It’s not easy money since you need to spend hours online to develop a following and to deal with freeloaders and idiots. Still, it can make you some decent extra money and if you can figure out how to sell your content in multiple places you can make a full-time living.”
For some pleasurable homework, I’ll encourage you to have a peek at Seska and James’ live sex show, which airs every Tuesday night at 9pm on www.seska.com. In addition to being super cute and occasionally charmingly silly, they’ll answer viewers’ questions while they bonk. Keep in mind, though, that there are others watching who may have more pertinent requests like, “Show me your toes” or “Will you do anal this week?”
Audacia Ray is a former sex worker and author of Naked on the Internet: Hook-ups, Downloads and Cashing in on Internet Sexploration. “My book is not a very how-to kind of book so the chapter on porn won’t answer their technical questions,” she says, “but it will give them something to chew on in terms of the social repercussions of making porn, like what happens when their family/friends/employers find out.” Ray is a savvy source for online sex trends — you can read her on www.nakedcity.com. Regina Lynn also writes about sex, technology and the Internet. Read her at www.reginalynn.com.
It’s important that you consider this venture from all angles because your self-description tells me you have little new to offer this frantically oversaturated industry. It seems the real money now is in remarketing and/or promoting your product to a broader range of demographics; in other words, becoming a sex worker so you can write a film or book or conduct a workshop about the experience.
The smartest move I’ve seen recently is the brothel from Prague (www.bigsister.net) where you can watch real live hookers fucking real live johns. Since these women are paid by Big Sister’s members and not the johns themselves (who get free sex in exchange for appearing on the site) the whole operation is simply canny rebranding with a few added novelties like watching the girls hang out on their off time — yet it’s getting a tonne of international attention. And speaking of kinks, is that a room devoted to the Arctic with a life size polar bear attacking a snowy love nest? Yes it is. People have long fetishized endangered species; I guess it was only a matter of time before the dwindling polar ice cap started inspiring erections. Love bits
By now you’ve probably heard that, rather than go back to prison for running a high-end escort agency, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, “The DC Madam,” committed suicide by hanging. For the conspiracy theorists amongst my readers, Palfrey’s client roster included Randall Tobias — Bush’s first global AIDS coordinator and a man who emphasized policies opposing prostitution — and David Vitter, the Republican senator who opposed same-sex marriage and funding for abortion clinics. Last year, Susie Bright interviewed this articulate and controversial woman on her podcast. You can find it here: www.susiebright.blogs.com/susie_brights_journal_/.
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