LOS ANGELES—The second and last day of #interNEXT21 picked up where day one left off, but with 12 instead of 15 linear hours of educational programming before the start of the GFY Awards, which capped off the event.
The stream of content, presented by ClickDealer, began at 2 a.m. PT, with sessions over the following few hours on topics as varied as crypto traffic, Pilates, in-page push for dating, social media strategies, and tips and tricks from European models and studios, all of it taking advantage of the early time zones (relative to the U.S.) to focus on people and companies doing business in other parts of the world, reinforcing the global nature of the event.
The morning itinerary also featured several 30-minute master classes run by experts in their field who spoke on a vast range of topics, including CPA, in-page push for dating, the Nutra vertical, mass payments, SEO, virtual elevator pitches, social bar ads, and tipping, to name a few. Indeed, these tasty half-hour morsels of information and infomercials continued throughout the schedule, adding up to a full 12 hours of content condensed into Thursday’s eight hours of programming.
Later master classes also covered an array of mostly transactional subject-matter, including fan collection, email collection, the German market, flipping the switch, YNOT Mail, best business practices, and finally, how to fight hackers and bots to rescue the revenue princess, as explained by MojoHost CTO, Christopher O’Connell. Interspersed with longer sessions throughout the day, these master classes often worked to provide finer points in support of the seminars, which might tend to cover topics more generally.
Still, the breadth of attention given to each of the verticals ensured that most business angles would be covered. Thursday’s panels touched on topics ranging from the ecommerce boom during the pandemic (it really happened), content monetization and diversification done right (best practices, everyone!), the secrets behind the clicks (too many to mention), how to work smarter and not harder (focus, focus, focus), to the supposed dating boom during the pandemic. (Yes, it really happened!). These are a few of the 50 individual sessions on Thursday’s schedule.
If there was a theme from yesterday that jumped out to this observer, it is the changing nature of adult entertainment, long in the making, in which performers are no longer just performers, but creators and business entities responsible for every aspect of their career. The topic was all over the place: in the Legal Panel, with attorneys Larry Walters and Corey Silverstein agonizing at the laundry list of vital responsibilities a producer of adult content must address before they can rest easy, if ever they can; in the Content Production seminar, where a panel of smart, experienced performers offered great insight into the challenges and decisions they face daily; to the Top Models panel, where the operators of leading cam programs discussed what makes sense for models in 2021.
It was fascinating. Each panel from its own perspective was discussing the destiny of the model/performer/influencer, but in totally transactional terms. The entertainment aspect of adult entertainment was all but missing but for the refreshing insistence by the performers who still understand the unique role of traditional (or non-traditional) studios in the making of stars, that, in addition to OnlyFans and other platforms, they plan to continue making movies “as long as the movie will have me.”
Over two intense days, the assembled speakers worked hard to provide the information necessary to address most of what someone either entering or active in the industry needs to know to begin or grow their business, as well as the opportunities to put that knowledge into action. The few technical issues that occurred were to be expected, and probably were the result of human error (which is usually the case), and paled beside the pure onslaught of content and ability to network without returning home with the Vegas flu, as much as people look forward to doing that again.
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