HOLLYWOOD, Fla. - "Mobile is the Wild West of the digital market," said Catherine and Brian Oliver-Smith of Sounds Publishing, which creates and distributes audio erotica. "It's very difficult to do right now, but you have to do it."
The Oliver-Smiths were part of the "iSex" seminar panel, which discussed some of the challenges in the mobile space: getting adult content into mainstream distribution channels, staying flexible as the technology and rules change, and making money.
Susan Bratton of Personal Life Media produces 16 weekly podcasts, eight of which are about sex. She monetizes them through sponsorships and advertising, and she compares her method to the low-tech tradition of roadside signs that feed consumers little bits of information at a time.
"Start with a short hook at the beginning of the program," she said. "Then, put a longer message in the middle, when the audience is engaged. End with a short call to action."
Sounds Publishing uses a pay-as-you-go model rather than ads. "We believe micro-payments will grow astronomically in the next five years," Brian Oliver-Smith said. The company sells audio erotic stories through iTunes, mainstream bookstores and their own website. The owners say the company's success is due to their ability to sneak adult content into other outlets.
"We changed our brand from 'Sounds Erotic' to 'Sounds Romantic,' we added physical CDs when we realized more people rip CDs than download files, and we fit into a literary genre," Catherine Oliver-Smith said.
Colin Rowntree of Wasteland.com, the oldest BDSM website, heartily endorses that strategy. He said adapting content to multiple delivery channels enables adult-content producers to draw customers from various places.
Rowntree spoke of "three degrees of separation from MySpace," saying that MySpace pages can't link to porn sites but can link to "intermediary" sites. He said his models build MySpace pages that are on the PG-13 level and link out to R-level personal sites that link to the X-rated Wasteland.
"It's all free," Rowntree said of his podcasts. "I use it as a hook to bring customers to the larger platform."
All panelists agreed that adult producers must get into the portable-content space now, or the industry will miss a huge opportunity to build and shape the media - and survive the legislative backlash they expect to follow.
"The pendulum will swing, and things will lighten up," Brian Oliver-Smith said, referring to the Bush administration's anti-porn activities. "And then the mainstream-content producers will turn to you for racier content because they're going to need it."
