TEMPE, Ariz.—Sam Nguyen tells AVN the Pornhub Model Program now features more than 50,000 users, some of whom earn tens of thousands of dollars every month.
“Some of these girls are making so much money per month it’s crazy,” says Nguyen, the content manager who leads the Model Program team in Montreal.
Nguyen and her colleagues spread the word about the lucrative service on Thursday as hundreds of adult industry tech professionals gathered at the Tempe Mission Palms Hotel for the first full day of the 18th annual Phoenix Forum.
To participate in the Model Program, users shoot and upload their own videos to their Verified Pornhub Profile and the more popular the video, the more it makes. Pornhub pays out a percentage of the ad revenue the videos receive—the top ones generate millions of monthly views.
“It’s so easy because you could do it from home,” said Nguyen, a six-year veteran of Pornhub who used to work in the gaming industry. “Girls that are scared to get into the business, you could do it from the safety of your own house. You’re your own boss. You can do it whenever you want as long as you upload maybe three times a month you could be really successful. And if you’re wanting to start in the industry you could try it out and see if you like it.
“A lot of our girls actually became super popular and became porn stars after. Like Cameron Canela—she was our Model of the Year a couple years ago and she did really well and now she’s a popular porn star.”
Speaking of porn, several current performers including Honey Gold, Texas Patti, Alex Chance, Shavelle Love, James Deen, Jules Jordan and Ginger Banks were spotted mingling in the cozy courtyard of the Mission Palms.
On what turned into a sizzling 90-degree afternoon, Gold joined Love in representing AgeID, which offers a suite of age verification solutions and membership in the largest network of age verified adult sites in the world.
Produced by Tempe-based payment services provider, CCBill, one of the cornerstones of The Phoenix Forum is its educational sessions, which got underway Thursday with two separate tracks—The Basics and Affiliate/Traffic.
Sean Christian, CEO of Revolution Force, moderated the lively “Top 10 Best Ways to Buy Traffic” session that also included insights from Hiyas Carr (Native.xxx), Paul Kluzak (CCBill), Jose Lorenzo (ExoClick), Evan Maslennikov (RunCPA) and Rainey Stricklin (JuicyAds).
Christian kept the mood light and the discussion meaningful, asking the speakers to dissect the A-B-C’s of the traffic game.
“When you’re first starting out you want to test, you want to do low-level tests to figure out where you sell,” Stricklin said. “Do you sell in Brazil on a Sunday? Do you sell only in North America? Do you sell on iPhones; do you sell on desktop? All of that testing is your initial starting point.
“You have to figure out who’s responding to your ads and your product and where they are and what they’re using. And that’s the best way you can narrow down the plethora of options that we all offer as far as targeting goes. The more you can narrow it down, the more targeted your advertising will be. … JuicyAds is a great network to start and learn. We have low minimums— 100 bucks to start a campaign.”
Stricklin added that traffic acquisition is “not a get rich quick kind of thing as anybody who buys media knows.”
“It takes research. It takes practice and it takes intelligence to learn what you’re doing,” she adds.
Hiyas Carr said her company works with publishers to make sure ads are placed in the right spot “where the user is going to see it.”
“We’re very hands-on in terms of managing your campaign,” Carr said. “We’re a self-managed network so if you want to pause your campaign on a Saturday or a Sunday you can definitely do that and target and blacklist as well.”
Both Carr and Stricklin emphasized the importance of tracking your data.
“You don’t want to make the same mistakes twice,” Stricklin said. “If you don’t know where the sale is coming from it’s not doing you any good. If you talk to people you learn. Talk to your affiliate manager…We have thousands of accounts we never hear from. It’s in our best interest to help you make sales.”
Christian noted that social media has helped media buying pros because it tends to keep everyone glued to their phones.
“It keeps them looking and keeps them engaged. You just need to make sure that you’re putting engaging content in front of them and especially inside of the space when we’re talking about with native ads and stuff like that,” Christian said. “A good native ad on the right mobile site crushes.”
Christian pointed out that dating and cam users are different animals. The typical short-term dating user may bring $80-$100 in revenue, while the average cam user could bring in $750-$1000—but over an 18-month period.
“A cam user is walking into something knowing that they’re going to pay money for this. They know that they’re walking into that strip bar and they actually have to pay cash,” Christian explained. “… People are buying cam traffic because they’re trying to identify and target users to know how to sell them later on.”
“There’s no free money in adult anymore,” Christian added. “You need to know what you’re doing and engage your users.”
Meanwhile, the GFY Happy Hour returned to The Forum in style, providing a needed midday break in the action as Cams.com and AdultFriendFinder teamed with the industry's No. 1 webmaster community to host attendees at Rúla Búla Irish Pub and Restaurant just outside the West gate of the hotel.
The Happy Hour guests received black GFY baseball caps, dined on delicious appetizers and downed free pints of Guinness before getting back to the show.
German star Texas Patti, known for rocking the stars and stripes of America in her movies and at her appearances, did not disappoint at her first Phoenix Forum, lighting up the Happy Hour in a red and white striped sun dress. She was accompanied by her producer/director partner Patrick Mirror Man.
“It’s very important for us to be here promoting our production company and maybe for new shootings,” said Texas Patti, the face of Beate Uhse who this year has already shot for PervCity, CherryPimps, LeWood, Brazzers and Mile High Media.
Speaking of first-timers, Eyal Erez, the co-founder of SinVR, also made his virgin trip to Phoenix to discuss his expanding platform.
“We’ve grown a lot,” Erez said. “Technology-wise we can now use real models, real porn stars. We can scan them, use facial motion capture, show their expression and everything and bring that into our game. We just did Luna Star. We’re starting to get big names into the game.”
Social media took center stage in the opening session of the day as 7Veils founder Lauren MacEwen moderated the “Turning Visitors Into Customers” panel. She was joined by Stewart Tongue (EngineFood) and Christophe Peyras (Streamate), along with performers Alex Chance and Ginger Banks.
Banks, a seasoned cam girl who is making a transition to doing porn scenes, noted how underrated Reddit is as a social media platform.
“I love Reddit,” Banks told the audience. “I don’t think adult entertainment utilizes that as much as they should.
“… Creating your own subreddit is essential. Then you can control the content that gets posted in there and you won’t get kicked out for spamming.
MacEwen, whose 7Veils is a social media marketing firm, agreed, saying “getting on the front page if you can is amazing.”
7Veils Logistical Manager Joe Evans sat in the front row and contributed several wise comments to the discussion. He said to be careful about “not blatantly selling your product” while using Reddit but instead solicit feedback from the Reddit-verse.
“Do this thing called be social,” Evans said. “Have active conversations. As soon as you allow them to ask you questions and give back it starts to go from there.”
Banks recommended girls maintain some version of a safe-for-work account on Twitter because of shadow-banning.
Christoph Peyras, a 10-year marketing wiz at the Seattle-based Streamate, said he was a big fan of Snapchat.
“The problem with Twitter is there are so many bots,” Peyras said, adding that seven years ago Twitter traffic led to 10 percent of his company’s revenue but now it’s nowhere close to that.
Banks likened Pornhub’s model affiliate program to Youtube.
“You can get paid per view and you won’t get taken down because it’s porn,” she said.
The Forum continues through Saturday.
Pictured: Shavelle Love & Honey Gold
