MIAMI BEACH, Fla.—After nearly two months of redesign and rebuilding work, performer-director-producer Collin O’Neal and his business partner, Rich Richards, on Thursday re-launched the eponymous virtual home of their gay adult studio, WorldOfMen.com.
“I must say this has been one of the most frustrating yet exhilarating times of my life,” O’Neal said.
The re-launch caps a period of turmoil during which O’Neal’s self-titled website, CollinONeal.co—formerly home to the majority of O'Neal's content—seemed in danger of disappearing from the web as the result of a dispute with a former hosting company and affiliate program manager. Because O’Neal and Richards feel their World of Men label has established itself as a strong brand, the URL CollinONeal.com now redirects to the World of Men website. Both domain names are owned by O’Neal and Richards.
“In this day and age of the smarter and financially savvy consumer, I decided there was no reason to try and fool consumers by using same or similar content on two different websites like many companies are doing right now,” O’Neal said. “Instead, I decided for a rebranding [of everything] as World of Men.”
“World of Men” first appeared on O’Neal’s line of in early 2006 with the release of World of Men: Miami. At the time, the fledgling studio operated under the aegis of San Francisco-based Raging Stallion Studios. Later in 2006, O’Neal amicably separated from the larger studio and took the bulk of unsold World of Men DVDs with him to Miami Beach, Fla. He re-covered all DVD cases, previously branded as Raging Stallion, to reflect his own brand. The studio has done well since, O’Neal said, and he is grateful to Raging Stallion for giving it a leg up.
“I really owe my start in the DVD market to [Raging Stallion honcho] Chris Ward,” O’Neal said. “He really took a chance on me that paid off for both of us. The break was not due to any conflict with Chris, but rather my own pride in the brand I created and a need to control my company fully.”
In June 2009, O’Neal decided to take full control of the website CollinONeal.com and terminate all contractors involved with its operation.
“I first tried to sell the website, but in this economy the only companies interested were looking for a fire sale,” he said. “I just couldn’t sell my company for pennies on the dollar. I finally decided to pull it together and run the site with my business partner Rich, and that’s it.”
O’Neal was able to expedite payment-processing approval with CCBill, and then located a content management system (CMS) and cloud server provider who worked with him to get WorldOfMen.com up and running quickly.
“The CMS allows Rich and I to do everything with just a few keystrokes in just a few hours,” O’Neal said. “It is just completely amazing and a highly end-user-friendly system.”
Today World of Men operates under a trademark, O’Neal said.
“I decided it was time to protect my brainchild 100 percent, so now I have trademarked World of Men,” he noted.
For more information, visit WorldOfMen.com.
