10 questions for baddog

[baddog]

Community Profile – Oprano.com

1. How long have you been working in the adult Internet industry?

The end of 1996 I received some AOL spam telling me I could make millions with a minimum of effort and time selling porn on the Internet. Not being one to turn down easy cash, I borrowed $50 from my girlfriend, and hours later I was building my first paysite, which was on a freehost with a URL so long it would give the average typist finger cramps if they did not take a break half way through typing out.

In 1997 I bought my first domain, www.a1der-babe.com because back then it was the practice of trading links with every other paysite and link list on the net, and a lot of them would list in alphabetical order. From my years looking at telephone books I knew that a1 would be listed before aardvark.com, so it seemed like the natural thing to do.

I took over the customer service end of the company that had spammed me, and for a short while ran a school teaching our affiliates how to get listed with link lists, and how to submit to hundreds of search engines. After they passed my course, we would give them free hosting and content and set them up with one of many PPC programs. They would sign up under us, and in exchange for the hosting and content we would get a percentage of the take.

People are flakes though, and few would put in the necessary effort, plus I had become aware of this new type of site called the TGP. These things were monsters in traffic. I made it a habit of looking at the Top 100 sites on the counter site (the name escapes me, but I am sure you know who I am talking about as they were the first to deal with adult sites), and I started seeing sites like adultbuffet.com that had mad traffic, numbers I had never dreamed of. As a result, I pulled all the domains from the flakes, and I now had 50 sites to run by myself, and I could submit a gallery from each of them every day. I was now getting sometimes 80,000 hits a day, per site.

It did not take long to realize that a lot of these surfers were wising up, and not clicking on the sponsor banners, so we would make it a habit of redirecting the traffic straight to the sponsor about an hour or so after the updated list went up. Then a few hours later, make it right, and then do it again several hours later. We had to be careful, as the TGP owners were getting wise to our antics.

As I was now submitting 35 -50 sites a day, by myself, to dozens of these new TGP's and Top Lists, record keeping was becoming a real PITA, and it became quite the task. My partner, in an effort to ease my workload wrote a simple auto -submit script to make my chore a little easier. The more I used it, the more features I asked for, and eventually we had a fully automated TGP auto-submit script that we could actually sell to other webmasters. This was SiteMogul, and it was the very first auto submit script made available to the public.

This was when I was forced to make my presence known to the general, May 2000 since I was now the front man for this webmaster product. We later came up with a couple other auto-submit scripts, were the first to offer freehosting and content for MGP's, came up with ContentLotto, and various other programs.

Unfortunately, I was being forced to put my reputation at risk due to my partner's flakiness, and in March 2003 I parted company with him.


2. What kind of work did you do before you got into adult and how did it help or prepare you for what you do now?


It has been a long strange trip, but I think one thing led to another. I came from a large family (the eldest of 12 children) and when summer roiled around my mom did not want all of us hanging around, so my parents would ship me and a couple other brothers up to San Francisco beginning in 1963 to stay with my grandmother. Well, she had a job, and was not really into babysitting us, so we pretty much had the run of the streets. By 1967 I was very familiar with the streets of San Francisco, and since she lived right next to Golden Gate Park, I soon discovered the Haight-Ashbury scene.

I used to go to the museums in the park and panhandle. I would then go to one of the many head shops, buy a bunch of copies of the Berkeley Barb and Haight-Ashbury Free Press for $.05 each and sell them to the tourists driving up and down the Haight in their station wagons checking out the hippies for $.25 each. I made a pretty good living for a 13 year old kid.

This also introduced me to the world of drugs and trafficking. By the time I was a freshman in high school I was a regular user of upper and downers, acid, and pot. This shit was expensive, so I got myself a connection and was soon my schools primary supplier, keeping our sports teams supplied with whites (uppers) and the stoners with the different forms of acid. Not only did I make a good income, but also I did not have to pay for my drugs any more.

By the time I was 18 I was driving down to hills outside San Diego and buying kilos of weed from the Hells Angels for anywhere from $80 - 110. I had found my niche. This eventually grew to include meth and heroin, and I had farms in Humboldt County providing me as sole distributor in the beach area.

Alas, I ended up getting married, and having a couple kids, so I decided that I had better give up this lifestyle and settle down a little.

I have used these early marketing skills to make every program I have found myself involved with over the last several years a success. I feel that if you can work out an arrangement that benefits not just yourself, but the other guy as well, only good things will result.


3. Tell us about yourself – personal life, hobbies, interests, goals, etc.

As most people know, I am one of the village elders at 50. I am a divorced father of two grown children. When I am not working on my Internet ventures I am usually running my mainstream telecommunications business, where I install and repair telephone systems and computer networks.

For fun I like to ride Harley-Davidson motorcycles, something I have been doing for 32+ years.


4. Tell us about your site/program…

Are you kidding? Give away the secrets to my wealth? Nah, I prefer to stay somewhat secretive about my business dealings.



5. What changes have you seen happen in the industry since you began? Do you think those changes have been helpful or hurtful to business?

Wow, well considering there was no JavaScript, Flash, AVS, TGP, or freesites when I started, I would have to say I have seen a lot of changes over the years. I think the primary change is that now instead of there just being a few hundred sites with a couple hundred webmasters, there are now thousands of webmasters and tens of thousands of webmasters, a vast majority of them being hobbyists and teenagers from Russia and other East European countries.


6. If you could start all over again – would you do anything differently?

The only thing I would definitely do differently would be to get into the providing of goods and services for webmasters a little sooner. I often use the analogy of the 1849 California Gold Rush.

There were tens of thousands of people rushing to California, seeking their fortune in the hills and rivers, hoping for that big strike, or the Mother Lode. What a bunch of losers. Few ever saw their dream come true.

The ones that made the real money were the strip miners, the big corporations that used powerful streams of water to strip away all the dirt on the mountains to reveal the gold. It was quick, and the return was great. The environment may have suffered a little, but fuck it. Who wants to live out in the middle of nowhere anyhow?

7. What advice would you give to a new web entrepreneur getting started today?

There is no money in the Internet. Go back to flipping burgers and selling oranges on freeway off-ramps. There will always be freeways; there will always be oranges. These are secure resources - don't waste your valuable time on such new fangled contraptions as the Internet. It probably won't be here in a couple years anyway.

8. What do you think is the most important element necessary to build a successful website or web program?

The built in shave factor is a tool that is mandatory for any successful program. The secret is to be able to count your hits with third page clicks. It will make your affiliates think they have the greatest traffic in the world. If you can convince them that they are converting 1:17, you have it made.

As far as dealing with surfers, fuck them, and fuck them hard. Like I said, this Internet thing is not going to last very long.


9. What area of the industry do you feel needs the most improvement, and why?

Cross sales. I think we should be putting cross sales on every join page, and we should be making the font the same color as the background. That way the surfer never realizes that he has failed to clear the pre-checked agreement to authorize us to have full access to his bank records, and has agreed to renew his membership for one, two and three year terms.

Shaving. Like I said, it is mandatory. It takes money to make money, so might as well take all you can. The average webmaster will never notice anyway.

Email spam. Fuck the government and their spam laws. We need more bullet proof hosting, and perhaps set up some offshore hosting companies. E-mail spam is a resource that has not been tapped to its full potential yet. Just like strip mining, this is where the money is.

10. Predictions for the future… where do you think the adult web will be a year from now?

Who cares? I plan on taking the money and running as fast and far as I can. Maybe will invest in some orange orchards and importing illegal aliens to place on prime freeway off ramps in major metropolitan areas.



Last edited by baddog at Apr 17 2004, 07:47 AM

[baddog]

Is this better?

[Winetalk.com]

baddog,
and they said the old dog can't learn new tricks...
you did very well
;-))

you can now pick up your Oprano graduation diploma
;-))))

[masterp74]

first thread is for free, each one after that is $100 per day on the first page.

[Winetalk.com]

Originally posted by baddog@Apr 17 2004, 10:44 AM
Is this better?

it's MUCH closer to the truth than the "public consumption version"

[baddog]

Originally posted by Serge_Oprano@Apr 17 2004, 07:45 AM
baddog,
and they said the old dog can't learn new tricks...
you did very well
;-))

you can now pick up your Oprano graduation diploma
;-))))

I was so worried, I know how my daughter felt when she was waiting to hear whether she was accepted to Columbia University or not.

Now we both know how it feels to have been accepted.

[Winetalk.com]

Originally posted by baddog+Apr 17 2004, 11:01 AM-->