When CuriousCash.com turned six in August 2005, it was validation in the highest form for the site’s owner and founder, Tim Hamilton. Having emerged from the aviation business in 1999 after being extremely disappointed with a failed attempt at starting his own airline venture, Hamilton, a commercial pilot, was in need of a new career.
“My love of the aviation industry having been soured – and my bank balance having been equally soured – I needed to find a different path. Adult, as it turned out, became that path,” Hamilton recalls of his “dark” days before launching CuriousCash.
Hamilton’s turning point came one day while he was out fishing with a buddy in his home country of Australia. Looking around at some of the stunning young local boys, Hamilton had an epiphany. “I simply looked around me at the surfers coming off the beach from riding the waves and thought, ‘If I could get these guys to model for me, it would be fun,’” Hamilton says. “I knew the Internet was the wave of the future, and I knew that the subject matter – the simple exuberance of the male youth of this wonderful land that is Australia – had wide appeal in the marketplace.”
Hamilton first ventured into the online adult business with BoyModelsAustralia.com, which quickly took off as a hot spot to find Australian studs, um, taking matters into their own hands. An affiliate program, BoyBucks.net, quickly followed. Armed with only a camera and a scanner (and doing most of the work from his bedroom), Hamilton began taking pictures of men who responded to his ads in the local gay papers, transporting the film more than 60 miles to a friend who worked in a photo processing shop so it could be developed after business hours. “Let me tell you, it was touch and go many times in those tough early days!” Hamilton says. “It was beg, borrow, and steal – figuratively speaking, of course – to get my idea off the ground and onto the Web. I was not and am still not any sort of technical guy, so I had to rely on friends to help me get my early model shoots online. I laugh now as I look back at those times.”
Things got easier when Hamilton stumbled across “WebmasterDan,” a (gasp!) straight guy who came onboard to help him out with the technical side of things. The team was later fleshed out when “CuriousToyBoy” and “CuriousJesse” (obviously, not their real names) joined up as well, making for one big and happy pansexual family. In fact, Hamilton frequently refers to his staff as “Tim’s Angels.”
After hooking up with CuriousToyBoy on another program (GayMoneyMachine.com), Hamilton came up with the idea to do something bigger, bolder, and more extensive than BoyBucks, which is when CuriousCash.com saw the light of day. “There was much long and hard thinking and planning on my part,” he says of his decision to rename and re-launch BoyBucks as CuriousCash in April 2004. “When I went to the team with the idea, they were right behind me, and there has been no looking back.”
CuriousCash initially started out with 15 sites to choose from, though that number now stands at 30 and is growing. Version 2 of the program – powered by MPA3 – was launched last year and continues to outperform even Hamilton’s expectations.
It should, however, come as no surprise to any of CuriousCash’s many fans as to why the program has done so well. Even a cursory tour of the program’s sites – which include the likes of TwinkBoySex.com, AustralianLifeSavers.com, StraightBoysSeduced.com, and StraightAustralianGuysJackingOff.com – reveals many hidden treasures.
From the decidedly raunchy boys on GaySmutFrenzy.com to the youthful innocence of the site that started it all, BoyModelsAustralia.com, there is a little something for everyone found in exclusive, quality content that makes up the CuriousCash network. “We pride ourselves on our exclusive and original content,” Hamilton rightly brags. “It converts and retains the most discerning surfer in our niches, and that is what makes it happen for our webmasters. Happy surfers means longer retention means more money for all.”
One thing that the CuriousCash crew has done successfully is employ a roster of fresh young faces to ensure that their content is desirable. From the innocence of the boy next door to the ruggedness of Australian athletes, the boys of CuriousCash are some of the most-watched on the Net. “We now have over 260 fresh and generally exclusive models on my agency books, and this grows every week,” Hamilton boasts. “If I have one strength – and one strength that also makes CuriousCash the success it is today – it is [the ability to find] the young, amateur straight models we recruit and get to do bisexual things. It still gets me going even at my age.”
Hamilton says he pays “spotter fees” to models who help him locate fresh new talent, and he jokes, “I have a constant stream of surfers, bodybuilders, lifesavers, footballers,and more beating a path to my door wanting to get their pants off!” Not that he’ll just sign up anyone who knocks on said door. In fact, Hamilton says he has been known to turn away more boys than he has hired, adding that “fresh, natural good looks and exuberance” are the qualities he looks for in a potential CuriousCash boy. “What makes our content so special is the raw material,” he enthuses. “Our boys are quite simply the hottest young athletes and sportsmen Australia has to offer.”
Of course, Hamilton knows that surfer retention is only part of what makes the CuriousCash program so successful, which is where his ears (“my most important tools,” he insists) come into it. “We listen to our surfers and we listen to our webmasters,” he says. “We generally make changes and add new features according to what feedback we get from those two sources. Our business model does dictate an ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach, but we are constantly fine-tuning and refreshing our existing offerings to stay on top of the game.
“If there is one thing the Internet teaches us, it’s that there is a market for pretty much everything,” he continues. “It depends on how well it is serviced. If you have a good product with good customer service, and your customers get what they pay for, you will always enjoy success. In my opinion, too many people waste time looking for the ‘magic bullet’ and the ‘next best thing.’ Know what you have got product-wise, understand your market, and service it well.” Understanding the market, Hamilton says, is, in fact, integral to CuriousCash’s proven business plan. “Our business model centers around it,” he says. “It does not matter what widget you are selling in or whatever marketplace you are selling to. If you do not know your product you are destined to fail.”
As far as CuriousCash affiliates go, Hamilton says that they are well taken care of. “CuriousCash provides a long-proven and successful program for affiliates to make excellent returns on their gay or bi-curious traffic. Many of our webmasters have been sending us their traffic since we began in this business over six years ago. Many of the large gay programs also send us their traffic, and more and more webmasters and other programs are now recognizing our value in maximizing their returns.” This, Hamilton says, is because his “Angels” know what they are doing. “We know our surfer market and we provide for them,” he stresses.
As for the future, Hamilton is optimistic. When asked what one should expect from CuriousCash in the next few years, he replies, “More of the same and more of the new.” More specifically, Hamilton says he is looking forward to further “branding” the CuriousCash product. “I have had plans to move into producing content for sale to other webmasters, and also to even move into the product delivery and even print areas of our market,” he offers. “Time will tell on these new horizons.”
