PORN & CELEBS... THE CHICKEN OR THE EGG?
by CJ, Purve.com, CelebrityBling.com
 With the warmer weather wrapping up in the USA, its time to bunker down and prepare for the winter - or in adult webmaster terms, prepare for the season of new computers and Internet access that brings millions of new surfers looking for adult entertainment ... right? Not anymore!
Cut to 2004 where reality breaks through the memories of years gone past, when the Internet was so new we were guaranteed millions of new potential customers the day after Christmas, and websites were a novelty that didn't even have to be good...
Historically, when a new entertainment medium is launched, business booms in that direction for a period of years - the 21st Century brings with it many new developments that we could only have dreamed about at the beginning of the last decade. While then we marveled at GPS (Global Positioning System) and satellite technology, we have now reached the time where mobile devices control the flow of information globally between governments and people - right down to personal cell phones which deliver news, sports scores or porn movies wherever you are.
While the adult industry has served us well, the environment is changing in such a way that many of us will leave and others will thrive. Content and its delivery are the keys to longevity in any entertainment market, while ensuring you have the viewer who is looking for it. Adult webmasters have advanced skills in traffic generation and online marketing, but lack creativity in providing a variety of content to the surfers who *don't* buy a porn subscription.
I've always taken inspiration from the mainstream media when developing content for my adult websites, because I believe that adult is just a niche in a much bigger market - Celebrities! The formats of Magazines, Radio and Television are known to the surfer and five pics go a long way when each has text - but most importantly, they have already figured out what the general public wants!
CONTENT, PRESENTATION, HYPE & CULTURE
Newspapers delivered the first ever 'content' for the purpose of entertaining us, a collection of features such as articles, jokes, news, sports scores and classifieds brought together for the convenience of the reader - this is the most simple way to deliver and define content. As society developed, so did the ways we wanted to be entertained - for example, drawings illustrated news in ancient times before cameras gave us the ability to add photos to the delivery of text content.
From here, Magazines, tabloid newspapers and books were designed with covers intended to 'convert' a browser into a buyer with well-known faces and catchy presentation of news headlines - creating celebrities in the process! Then came other mediums of content delivery, and with them came major defining points in the history of our culture. The Roaring Twenties, The Swinging Sixties, Baby Boomers, 80's Big Shots and Generation X - all cultural turning points defined by the media's delivery of content to the buying public's eyes and ears.
The audio medium of radio was released in the early 20s, a decade known for its love of dancing, with a culture that was controlled by music and the stars that made and presented it. In the early 40s, moving pictures were added to the content delivered by radio, brought to us on the box we now know and love, the Television. To sell televisions, content had to be created to present to the audience to justify the investment - television content grew quickly, including sitcoms, variety shows, music clips, sports, news and advertisements.
The Television was launched at the end of WW2, and while the world's population was screaming for the information and comfort that television can provide, the raw materials and money to buy them simply weren't available to meet the demand. For the first three years, television looked to be a dismal failure, but within five years the take-up was 100% more than forecasted, bypassing the take up of radio within seven years.
The Internet became a commercial medium during 1994, and in its ninth year (2003) overtook the take-up rate of television due to its ability to merge mediums (Newspapers, Magazines, Radio, Television, Telephone) into one central location. The future sees us all with mobile devices that can send photos, video, e-mails and a host of other Web content delivered using roaming Internet technology. If you want to continue to provide entertainment to an audience, your model will need to be flexible and expandable.
SAME CONTENT, NEW MEDIUM
One of the many Oprano pearls of wisdom is "There is nothing new under the sun," which can be applied especially to online content. While Pornographers were the first generation of online content producers to successfully provide a multimedia experience, we have without realizing it followed a tried-and-true format that is always guaranteed to work at the beginning of any medium. For every medium, Newspapers, Magazines, Television and Internet, the philosophy of the first five years was, "Fill it with crap and wait till we figure out what people want."
The Internet is finally reaching the end of its "crap" stage, and while the adult industry has lead the way up until now, the media moguls of the world have simply been waiting for the right time to step in. News, Celebrity, Chat, Health and Music sites have been popping up all everywhere over the past two years using the 'text, pics, movies' content format that we tested and perfected to deliver their premium standard of content, pulled from years of archives.
For movie companies, record labels, newspapers, tabloids, magazines and photographers from the mainstream media, building a content rich website with new material every day is as simple as adding another department to their mega corporations. It's a case of the same content being reused in a new medium - the trend of every new successful medium before it.
If you break down the 'content' for each of the companies above, you will notice every single successful industry produces content with an element of celebrity in it ... the celebrity is the content - divided into niches and sub-niches aimed at all ages and areas, such as sport, movies, fashion, reality, hunks, babes, bikini, topless, nude and porn. If you can expand your presentation of adult content to include elements that are familiar to the public, you open up the possibility of converting that surfer that was never going to pay for porn.
ADULT HOLLYWOOD
I can see you thinking, what does Hollywood have to do with us? As adult webmasters, our business model is no longer enough to compete with the big boys, which makes it important to understand why they *are* big boys. The glossy world of the mainstream media has its own adult industry, one which doesn't involve non-celebs throwing chairs over balconys at badly planned conventions. The major adult industry conventions are held by a Valley-based company known for their Oscar-like video awards nights and overpriced events, their business based on the same principle as Hollywood - success through hype ... meaning that as long as your magazine says your event went well, it did! You didn't think we invented deceptive marketing did you?!
The king of adult media moguls, Hugh Hefner, controls a portion of Hollywood, deciding who becomes a celebrity in the adult modeling world - with his Playboy merchandising so in demand it almost single-handedly ensured the company a profit last year. While the Playboy Bunny represents a company built on adult entertainment, Playboy merchandise (slippers, pajamas, underwear) is available in the kids department of many major department stores.
Media acceptance and presentation of the brand controls the public's desire to wear the Playboy logo, and while the availability of merchandise to young girls seems odd, they have made no secret of their intention to cater more to sexually active women in their future. Playboy already features as much celebrity news, photos and gossip as a magazine for women, because Hugh understands that Adult is a niche of Celebrity ... and the latter has a much larger audience.
THE CHICKEN OR THE EGG
When you analyze the origins of the mediums that people use to entertain themselves, you can see the bigger picture of where the online adult industry fits into the overall world of entertainment and culture. While we break down our 'adult' niche into many sub niches, we forget to go back the other way to the top level of niches and look at the world beyond porn. As I traced the root of all successful mainstream content providers I found a single common element ... Celebrities.
Adult webmasters already have a head start on the control of Internet traffic, but if it converts at 1/500, what is happening to the other 499 potential customers? They are probably leaving the computer to watch their favorite celeb on Television, surfing for movie information or downloading desktop wallpapers of their favorite celebs - after all, porn is a niche of entertainment that gets boring for almost everybody ... eventually.
Which do you think came first ... Porn or Celebrities?
CJ started in the industry over six years ago in '98, launching Purve.com, the first adult subscription site for women. Since then, CJ has launched and managed the affiliate program SexHit, and has since used her affiliate management skills to crossover into promoting many products ... from Casinos to Paysites... Bras to Vitamins. Most recently CJ launched CelebrityBling.com and a network of celebrity paysites designed to bridge the gap between adult and mainstream.
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