Above, the TransErotica booth at the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo; photo by JFK/FUBARWebmasters. Below, Dan Hogue with Jamie French and Khloe Kay at AEE; photo by Rick Garcia.
LAS VEGAS—For TransErotica founder Dan Hogue, 2018 was a pretty busy year, and business shows no signs of letting up in 2019. In late December, the company brought "BDSM Vixen" River Enza into the fold, and just a few weeks later, the site named Marissa Minx its first Babe of the Month, just in time for the company's big showing at AVN's Adult Entertainment Expo.
So, we asked Hogue, how's it going?
"Fantastic!" came the enthusiastic response. "This year is kind of our reorganization and breakout year. We went from managing seven official girls' websites to over 22 this year, so we've really blown up. Marissa Minx, she's done phenomenal work on her body this year, so we're really proud of her. She's transformed herself really well. Out of the, I think, 15 trans girls nominated for AVN's Transsexual Performer of the Year, ten of them are in our network. Not only that, we're looking forward to the new girls coming up, and we roll the dice with them and we treat them really well with our network.
"Now, the girls are starting to come to us," he added. "We started with only two sites: Jessy Dubai and Tyra Scott, and they're both major names now. Then we added Chanel Santini—we signed Chanel three days after she turned 18. We were there and signed her before she was a big name, and we know we helped her get started. She went really quickly in her transition and she's done phenomenally well for herself and for her brand; she's built a really a huge brand for herself. And we got Natalie Mars and Kasey Kisses and Korra Del Rio and Lena Kelly, who's come a long way—every one of those names have come a long way this year, and it's been phenomenal to see their transition and how they're progressing and turning into beautiful flowers; I just love any one of them. In the past, we've had to scout the girls out, but now they come to us. And we hope we can get the same exposure for a lot of our girls, especially Khloe Kay, who's brand new to the industry; she's only been in six months but she's blowing up; she's literally just phenomenal talent; she's a phenomenal gal, great personality."
TransErotica doesn't just host the t-girls' websites; Hogue also shoots content with them, both for the gals' websites but also for DVD release.
"We've just launched our DVD line," Hogue noted. "We submitted our first five DVD titles so we're starting a DVD line, which is going to be really cool, so that should be hitting the stores and the pay-per-downloads and pay-per-views and Comcast and whoever buys that stuff—we use a distributor for that, but we're going to be submitting regular titles now and expanding the niches. Our most popular line on the [Hogue-owned] PornStar Platinum site, for instance, is Porn Stars Love T-girls; it's the most popular DVD that we have, so we're looking forward to expanding that with My First Cisgirl, and so we're finding those cis-girls that have never been with a t-girl that want to be, and now it seems that all the cis porn stars are coming over and wanting to shoot with our t-girls because, hey, a dick's a dick, and it's a real turn-on for the fans. We have a couple of really good ideas, and Violet Monroe came to me with a really great idea for a feature film, so we'll be following through on that."
Although TransErotica is based in Vegas, finding t-girls to shoot hasn't been as difficult as one might think.
"Most of the girls in our network, including Khloe, are from Vegas," Hogue said. "There's like six or seven of us that live within about three square miles of each other. My house is actually a model house and a shoot house, so when they come into town from out of town, they stay with us and they're in a safe place and good environment."
So, what about the future?
"Well, our market is trending upwards so fast, it's becoming more and more popular, and let's face it, the girls are more and more beautiful every year," Hogue observed. "I've brought a new culture to our whole platform and it's really a culture of cooperation with the girls as well to bring them on board and get them involved more, because we are truly partners with them. We may be TransErotica, but in essence, we run their official websites and we're partners with them. We pay for the content to be developed for their websites and for their channels, and now we're expanding our duties to include not only the websites but also their channel management and social media marketing; we're helping them with that so that they can expand and improve their revenue streams across the board. I mean, their amazing beauty and talent and their attitudes are great, and we just try to soak in that positivity they have and turn it into something good for them. Our plans for the future are, now we're switching gears into more marketing, getting more traffic to the girls' sites individually, helping them expand their revenue base. Anything we can think to do for them, that's what we'll aim to do."
