Hal Star had absolutely no inkling of going into the Internet business - much less the adult world - after he left corporate life and went into semi-retirement in 1996. But when he stumbled upon a site that had an advertisement for Brendon Marley's famed straight seduction videos, he quickly ordered some, and the seed was planted.
"It wasn't even a business idea really, it was just to see if he wanted to put them online and see if we could make a few bucks," Star says, "because he was just selling them in the back of The Advocate. We had conversations on and off for a few months...and we decided to do it."
So in the end of 1996 on a Friday night, a site launched that sold six 5-minute streaming videos for Like-Em-Straight.com. By Monday morning, they had made $20,000 from just 30 minutes of footage. The duo added one new clip a week and, "From that it was all word of mouth."
Star added more amateur video sites, including five more for Marley. TeenSexHouse.com (FirstTimeGaySex.com) was added in 1997, with PussyBoyz.com (from Damien Cox) and ShotgunVideo.com (Roger of San Francisco) in 1998. While the former two producers retired from the industry in 2005, many new partner studios have been added over the years under Star's company, All Star Internet.
"Originally all of my producers were strictly homemade video. And my requirement up through 2005 to take on a new producer was that they not only create their own video, but that they be in it," Star says, noting he had an emphasis on amateur content. "The first time I ever kind of stepped out of it is when I made a move into some reality stuff, and that's when Edward James came along."
The flagship brands have remained strong: Marley's Brendon.tv and Hardnstraight.com; fetish site ShotgunVideo.com; and Edward James Enterprises (BaitBuddies.com, LostInDaHood.com and others), which came aboard in 2004. "I was really happy when I found a group of webmasters whose philosophy I found refreshing: provide consumers real, original and exclusive amateur video at a reasonable price backed by excellent customer service and no B.S.," said James, a 15-year veteran producer.
All Star started its first affiliate program in 1998, and they soon piled up. So Star finally decided to put them all into one affiliate group last year: MonsterHuge.com.
"We realized two things: We were spending a lot more time and money trying to promote everything separately, and any promotional websites or blogs or anything we wanted to do had to be done in triplicate. We also had an issue of affiliates having a hard time dealing with all the different accounts and websites and tracking, and many of them were bugging me to put everything under one affiliate account on CCBill," Star says. "We realized joining together and creating one banner and one brand would allow us to pool our resources, especially with marketing dollars into hiring."
So when Juan Figueroa became available, he was quickly hired as the director of marketing and affiliate services. "I am so excited to be working with these great guys. They are very innovative in their use of technology and have great plans for the future," says Figueroa, formerly of Pridebucks and Topbucks affiliate programs, who helped formally launch an extreme makeover of the affiliate program.
MonsterHuge is also home to BigDickSearch.com, and new sites GayScreenTest.com (featuring unique, live coverage from James' casting sessions) and GayAmateurSex.com, a made-to-order fantasy site where fans can submit stories and scenarios to be performed by talent. Star notes they will also offer GaySitePass.com, which will allow access to five of the company's sites.
All Star also recently launched MonsterTube, its newest affiliate marketing tool: a viral video website and companion video player for affiliates' Web pages and blogs. "MonsterTube came about because we felt we were losing a lot of traffic to everything out there that was free: all the tube sites, the sharing sites, social networking sites and the hookup sites," Star says. "I don't think there's anybody in the online business who can say they haven't been affected by that."
The service also features a stand-alone MonsterTube player, and affiliates can sign up and select the sites to offer. "The player already has all their affiliates' links on it, so any click-through is going to set a cookie in the surfer's browser. The other option is that they can click to see more videos on MonsterTube.com, and no matter where that surfer clicks, no matter what site they go to, the affiliate will wind up getting credit if they buy a membership, because we're on the group affiliate plan with CCBill."
All Star has also converted to its own proprietary video system, VidQ, on several sites. "We've slowly been launching that; we've been really working on our own websites more than marketing VidQ to this point," Star notes. "We've decided to move ahead in a big way."
CONTACT: MonsterHuge.com; [email protected].
