In September, the counter was quickly ticking toward 700 as ManOlay.com made a goal to add two new films to its online video network each day.
"Right now we have about 20 different studios that we have content from, and we're continuing every day," says Brandon Ramkey, partner for parent company 3 Guy Productions, LLC. "Once we get through the Beta testing process and get the site finished thoroughly, we're going to be negotiating for more content from other studios."
Launched in August, ManOlay was adding site features at the end of the summer. 3 Guy Productions was formed by Ramkey (a former AVN employee), Nader Fasheh (president and CEO of NichePay), and one other partner. It is based in Las Vegas with an office in Burbank.
"Nader is actually the one who came up with the idea for the program," Ramkey says. "He wanted to step into the gay market and make a name for himself there. NichePay is quite a large and successful program on the straight side of the industry, so he wanted to launch a new gay product with some new partners and a new business, and also create a product using this new Flash video streaming technology that he got involved with."
Ramkey says that ManOlay's biggest point of difference in the gay adult VOD world is its use of Flash. He adds that the video selector process has a browse button feature, which allows customers to jump scenes within the video frame while watching a scene.
"The video format is what's exciting about our service. It's a Flash-based video, so it's super-fast, higher-quality video. It eliminates streaming time that Windows Media Player files have had in the past," Ramkey says. "It's a much faster technology, it's easier to view and stream and encode. It's just a much easier product for the consumer to get on, find what they're looking for, and get off."
3 Guy Productions was started specifically for ManOlay, and Ramkey says that in the future, it plans to launch similar video products, all in the gay adult arena. "We're going to focus on some products that are maybe a little more niche, a little more focused on a specific segment, and expand that way."
Ramkey adds that the content covers all genres, and is pretty evenly dispersed among the different types of videos. ManOlay will keep expanding its services and the level of information customers can get from each title. The company also has a partnership with VideoSecrets to offer the Flirt 4 Free program imported within the site specifically for the gay market, allowing for live chat with models.
"We would like to eventually add some social networking aspects to the site, where members can interact with each other as well as via videos and so forth," Ramkey says. "That's something that we've been toying with adding as a new component."
The company recently launched its affiliate program (invitation-only at the beginning) to help get its name out in the industry and brand itself. "Right now we're doing a lot of advertising. We are also going to be creating some viral marketing aspects so we can get our members to pass along the brand and the message, and maybe give away free memberships to people," Ramkey notes. "MySpace is another good component to do some of the social networking and marketing, so we can get our name out and make friends with people out there, let them discover the service."
At $9.95 a month, ManOlay provides one of the more affordable options for consumers. "We have more videos for the price than anything that's out there, so as long as we're always offering that kind of product, I think that word-of-mouth will continue to help us, along with quality webmasters and good advertising strategies, and just trying to make the biggest impact with our product."
But Ramkey says that the site itself is far from cheap, as they made a concerted effort to make a sleek and appealing product with a strong layout and design to help compete with the big boys.
"Obviously, the first year is always the hardest for new upstart properties, so I think our biggest hurdle right now is to continue improving upon our product," he says. "We're all people who will never be satisfied with our product. Ultimately, we'll always keep continuing to improve it, which is important, especially in this ever-changing industry. But we also need to make sure that we're continuing to add quality content."
CONTACT INFO: ManOlay.com; [email protected].
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