When the Web first appeared, I ditched my BBS and print magazine and moved eagerly toward the new frontier. Many porn folks believed the Web was just another high-tech venue that would pass as quickly as laserdisc. I, on the other hand, knew that we would soon be moving toward another era.
It was cool being one of the first kids on the block. Being in the niche fetish business, I was happy not to deal with the over-saturated "tits and ass" segment of the industry. I had something different going on, and the content I produced was quality and real. The Fetish Network was built long before the Web; because we are scene people, our focus was on our customer and how we could provide a truly beneficial service to a loyal customer base. I knew many of my customers; even today, I personally answer much of the customer email from my five sites. It's important to me to stay dialed-in to what my customers want and need. This is my business, and like any other "professional," I want to provide the best possible service.
I watched the industry change on the Web. Scam artists arrived to see how many open windows they could climb through, make their kill, and then jump out before they closed, never giving a second thought to what it would do to the integrity of the industry. Some of the best known "Porn Lords" today are closet geeks, little-dick men to whom no one gave a second glance, who were PC savvy when everyone else was trying to figure out how to make this new frontier a porn haven. I see pictures of them in AVN Online with sexy babes on each arm and it makes me laugh.
Oh, well. It's business, right?
I stuck with my niche and didn't have any need to add "tits and ass" porn to my sites. I specialize in femdom, bondage, foot fetishism - the bizarre kinky stuff. I felt comfortable here because I knew kink. Opening a straight vanilla T&A site would be fatal because even though I consider myself bisexual, I still don't understand what people see in all that BORING sex. After all, how many ways can you fuck and give a blowjob?
My point is this: Why would the T&A guys want to open niche sites when they know nothing about them? Furthermore, why would a subscriber want to go to sites where the same content is recycled over and over? It's comedy for me to go to a femdom site and see a pitiful tattooed girl, barely 19, sucking some guy's cock with a whip in her hand. Or to see a guy in rope bondage that looks like a 2-year-old did it. The front pages have fabulous graphics and words that pop out at you: "Real Bitch Mistresses!" "Thousands of images!" and then the closing, "Join now for only $1.95." You step inside to find not only some femdom images, but also a whole leased gallery of the same content you'll find on a hundred other sites. If they have stories, they're the same stories I've seen drifting around since my BBS days. Once the subscriber realizes he's been had, he looks around to find a place where he can cancel his reccurring membership, only to be taken through a major loop or to not find it at all.
I saw an article in the January 2002 issue of AVN Online called "Remember Your Member" and laughed my ass off. Perhaps if the "Porn Lords" had applied the ethical and successful marketing tools described in the article, they wouldn't all be scrambling to try and figure out how to corner traffic. Maybe they wouldn't be standing around with their thumbs up their asses wondering why their sales are down. Maybe now they will finally see that it's not the quantity of sites you own, but the quality of your sites and a truly loyal customer following. Stick with what you know, or at least hire people who understand the niche you are trying to service. Don't play your customer for a fool just to make a quick buck. Surely we can all see the effect this has had on the industry.
Consumers are wising up and are a lot more careful about where they spend their money. I don't consider myself in the big leagues with my five sites, but my business is steady. I don't care if I only get eight or 10 signups a day, as long as they stay or come back at a later date. I already know that I can't (nor do I want to) compete with the spam-indexing on the search engines or the huge networks opening the same sites with different fronts and names. I don't want to play these types of marketing games.
I guess that all industries go through a transition before they get real. I've watched them all grasp at straws and play the game for the last five years. All the closet part-time Webmasters might as well start studying for a new career because the consumer isn't going to take it any more - the only people who will be making money in this industry are business people and the real professionals who value integrity.
Dianna Vesta owns The Fetish Network (www.fetishnetwork.com) along with several other niche fetish sites. She is also the founder of Women Owned Adult Web Sites, a network for women in the adult industry:
