As director of marketing and merchandising for AllAdultCash, Lawrence Novitch knows how to "spin it" when it comes to talking about what makes the 8-year-old company special.
"We definitely choose quality over quantity," he declared. "We are very selective in our content. That's the difference between us and [a company like] HotMovies."
The irony is that AllAdultCash was born through a deal with HotMovies. In 2004, Novitch - a former film and theater student who landed a gig with a video-on-demand site through a friend he had produced some music videos for a few years earlier - was working as a customer-service representative at a mainstream Internet company. When the company decided to launch an adult division of its VOD service, Novitch saw an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a potentially lucrative venture. As Novitch recalled, it wasn't that hard to do. "We are a technology-driven company, so all the elements, including programming and development, were already available to us," he said. "So breaking off the mainstream site to another URL was not that difficult."
The site started with a subscription model using a co-branded pay-per-minute solution with HotMovies. The venture was successful enough that, after a year of working with HotMovies, the company decided to build its own solution. "At the time, HotMovies thought we were nuts [and said] we'd never be able to do it," Novitch remembered with a chuckle.
Not that Novitch and company were completely sure what they were doing. "We didn't know it was going to work," Novitch said. "We went from a nice, cushy subscription revenue to a [pay-per-minute] model where there is no recurring revenue. That was scary." After "flipping the switch" to the PPM model, the company's revenue did take a hit, he said, but "after some time under our belts and [with] a superior product, our numbers started to jump [up] drastically."
Today, online video stores are nothing new. What sets AllAdultCash's flagship site, AllAdultChannel, apart from the competition is its focus on quality. The company has exclusive deals with high-profile companies like Vivid and Elegant Angel, so both AllAdultCash and its featured partners reap the benefits. "This is good for the licensor because even the smaller licensors have visibility on our site, which means more revenue for them," Novitch explained.
Relationships such as those are the foundation for AllAdultCash's success, he added. "Obviously, the more robust and more competitive your payouts are, the more successful you'll be, but for me, the most important thing is the development of relationships within the industry," he said. "That will ultimately get you new affiliates, new traffic and newfound revenue."
Affiliates can expect a strong emphasis on customer service - which is "by far, the most important thing," since "that personal touch can make or break you," Novitch said - and the benefit of being signed up with the only VOD service that offers revshare payouts (up to 40 percent on minutes purchased), one-time payouts and - to its bigger affiliates - paid free trials. Additionally, because of the crossover traffic that comes from the program's mainstream sister sites, AllAdultCash guarantees high conversions. "Mainstream-to-adult conversions are extremely high," Novitch said. "The crossover is mind-boggling."
He said he understands why. "Most people are fascinated with adult, and now more than ever, adult content is accepted," he said. "The only difference between mainstream and adult traffic is that adult encourages more of an impulse buy, so your product needs to be very compelling out of the gate.
"The adult industry offers great financial gain if you know how to play the game. There are thousands of sites out there, and a lot of them make a little money. There are only a select few that make a lot of money. The adult industry can bring an endless stream of revenue; you just have to know how to tap your resource. It's like reinventing the wheel: It's already there, [but] you just need that new twist."
