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Online Porn - The Technology Testbed?
DaveAtFraud writes "USA Today is running a only slightly tongue-in-cheek article pointing out that the on-line porn industry has become the technology testbed for innovative content delivery. On-line delivery of 'adult' content has been wrestling with issues such as digital rights management, video on-demand billing, wireless services, and geo-location software since long before these became issues for 'mainstream' content providers. Maybe having an adult content provider listed on your geek resume isn't so bad after all."
I much suspect that the real reason is that there's shitloads of people who just want the porn and don't want to jump through hoops and wander around meaningless shitlinks for 'free pron' they never seem to get to(also, hunting down some spesific pics of a spesific girl from a spesific site WILL be bitchy compared to just paying few dollars).
I'd guess fetish sites are the winner in all this, just general 'naked chicks' for little hanky panky is very easy to find by almost anybody, but spesific videos or picture sets are not that easy to find just when you 'need'..
also there's lots of dumb fucks who waste their hard earned cash on some payphone dreams, so there must be 'few' willing to do the same thing online(camwhores).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Well, for one, I do. Specifically, I pay for two types of porn:
A) Broadcast porn (i.e. "stuff on the television") because 1. It's of a higher visual quality than the standard net stuff; 2. I don't have to hunt around for it; 3. Unless I'm traveling, I like watching porn on my TV more than I like watching it on my computer. Yes, I could use either my PS2 or my XBOX to stream porn from my desktop, but when I want porn, I don't want to have to go and boot up one of these systems.
B) Truly excellent or unusual online porn. I have no problem using my money to encourage people out there who do good work and who cater to my (shamefully, these days, pretty vanilla) tastes. I pay for Red vs. Blue even though I could get it for free -- why not porn?
Lastly, to be honest, I've found porn downloads via, say, Kazaa to be fraught with disappointment. For one thing, there's the horrendously slow speeds often times; also, the unclear (or outright deceptive) descriptions can be a bitch. I still do it every once in a while, but for visual porn, my TV's a primary source these days. One exception to this is written porn -- www.asstr.org is your friend, and I use them pretty much exclusively for my written porn.
The company I work for hosts some of the largest porn sites on the web - we have 4 gigs - Internet, and all the latest Cisco toys: iSCSI SANs, 6500's with load balancing, IDS, and firewall modules, gig E everywhere, real-time geographical load distribution, you name it.
My last two gigs were Universal and Sony (I'm in LA) and both were tiny Internet environments compared to this.
Our SAN has 7TB of content so far & we're adding 1/2 a TB a month...
Being an adult webmaster myself I can assure you that our customers complain if something is wrong. But all the free porn makes up for a lot :-)
And it pays well too, so it should be a career option for all techies out there, seeing the current techjobmarket.
Probably not G. himself, but others certainly did.
With the invention of the printing press in 1440 by Johann Gutenburg (Kapr 1996), publishing and distribution written erotic works became much simpler. Adrian Johnswrites of the early printing houses, "Learned scholars andgentlemen alike had to commit their tomes to be printed in themidst of almanacs, pamphlets, and (in the case ofNewton's Principia) pornography."
Of course the RIAA has a viable market without having to worry about file sharing. All they need to do is offer me music that is:
:)
1. Decently priced;
2. Priced a-la-carte;
3. Allows for me to archive and re-present it however I wish with minimal limitations.
Ever heard of iTMS?
Oh, and the shower? Get off of it. We keep making jokes about porn, and you know the vast majority of us actually look at porn, but as soon as someone says, soberly and reasonably, "yes, I pay for porn and this is why" you flip?
Especially when there are excellent specific sites like Suicide Girls that treat the people paying well and have a brilliantly laid out site.
No, I don't subscribe, but if I ever wanted to pay for porn they would be the first to get the cash.
Goblin
It's all fun and games until a 200' robot dinosaur shows up and trashes Neo-Tokyo... Again
Ok, I'll try to answer this...
To become an adult webmaster, don't do it for the money. It has to be something you're interested in (ha ha, joke's on me! Who isn't interested in porn?). Honestly though, you need to be passionate about the subject, otherwise it WILL get boring. There are thousands of TGPs & MGPs out there, so try to come up with something "different" to build hits.
Photo shoots are "interesting" to say the least. I have only been on one, and basically, it went like this:
Me: "Hi, glad you could show up. This is the photographer. Do you mind if we stick around for the shoot, to provide input?" (I was ABSOLUTELY lying through my teeth. I just wanted to see her naked.)
Her: "No."
"Ok, have fun!" At that point I had to leave the room. Stock images are great for original content, but they can be expensive. Photo sets range from $20 to $50+ per set, and buying new content on a daily basis is immensely expensive. If your sponsor/advertiser revenue can support it, no problem. I usually hit usenet for image sets, as I can get untagged images for free.
Strippers are seriously one of your best points of contact. They have no problem taking off their clothes, and usually aren't afraid to pose in front of a camera. Usual billing rates are $100 to $300+ per hour, depending on the "talent".
No webmaster wants to talk about revenue, but IF (and that's a HUGE if) I filled all my advertising slots, I would clear in excess of 22k per month. I have NEVER come close to filling my advertising slots, so for now, the point is moot.
No, there are no "fringe benefits" that I know of. Other webmasters may operate differently from myself though. I'm married, and the very thought of John Wayne Bobbit brings up horrific images. You do the math on that one.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
Or for the Canucks in the house, there's a Canadian version: Dirrtyerntals.ca
What's your definition of "quality"?
My tastes actually run to softcore photos rather than out-and-out porn.
Here's a decent set of recommendations.
In the movie department there are a lot of variables. I'll restrain myself to movies you might find on the shelf at your local shop.
Movies from Private usually have unenhanced girls doing nasty things with guys who don't look like they just got out of prison. Quality is generally very high there but no single movie stands out.
Wicked's films usually have something resembling a plot. I like Brad Armstrong's work almost universally. "Not a Romance" is a recent standout.
Vivid has all the "name" performers. Chances are, if there's a starlet you're into, she works for Vivid. Vivid's movies are reasonably well-made, but photography isn't ever great and they use the same four former inmates in every movie. On the plus side, they (and Wicked and things fom Adam and Eve productions, also) tend not to veer off into anything particularly nasty, so they're a little more S.O. friendly. One of my favorite recent Vivid movies is "Roommates", which happens to have the best plot I can think of in a movie from the '90s. It actually manages to be a little bit thrilling in a "thriller" sort-of way, and there's a sense of "real life" about it, too.
Andrew Blake and Michael Ninn both make heavily stylized, beautifully filmed material. Pornographic art-movies, really. Their movies are less about the sex act and more about the image on the screen; comparing a Blake movie to something from Vivid is like comparing "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" to "The Tuxedo".
I avoided Hustler's video line for a long time because, well, it's Hustler. I don't like the magazine, it's too crude for my taste. But I got a copy of "Barely Legal #1" about a year ago and, with the unfortunate exception of the director's urine fetish, it was good. "Barely Legal" is young girls and the inmates who love them, but it's well-photographed, stocked with really cute natural-type young women and consistently hot sex. I actually like "Hot Showers", the all-girl series a little better, since it maintains the otherwise high-quality of "Barely Legal" and completely avoids the knuckle-dragging simians. I think "Barely Legal on Vacation" is probably the best of the series.
I mentioned softcore: I like Playboy videos. Over time a decent number of high-quality vignettes have been produced to show between movies on the Playboy channel, which have been collected on DVD as "Erotic Fantasies" and "Inside Out" They're short and steamy. Me and my ex- used to love 'em.
Is that enough or are you looking for something in particular?
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
I run several adult sites. It's not easy to make money, but not as hard as on mainstream sites. :)
I rule my own network where I have my own paysites, my own TGPs, my own galleries and my own scripts to manage that all. I use only my own scripts, so they do exactly what I want them to do (precise customer targeting, best pay method selection per surfer, etc...)
Having the complete puzzle I make more money than lots of other adult webmasters and I have way less traffic than them.
Of course I manage my own servers and code my own scripts. This is not usual because most adult webmasters are complete computer iliterates and don't even know how to power on their own machines.
If you have good tech skills you for shure will make crazy money... so it's worth the effort
And this is the secret phrase for success: Izberete balgarskiya produkt.