Alec Helmy, CEO of Helmy Enterprises, set his sights on redefining the porn industry. With 11 diverse websites in the company's portfolio, including the widely-recognized Adult Sites Against Child Pornography (www.asacp.org), Helmy has achieved his goal.
I met with the young entrepreneur at a small Lebanese restaurant in West Los Angeles. Knowing that he had started a highly acclaimed organization like ASACP, I expected to meet a cynical, middle-aged businessman. Instead, the person I met was a youthful 28-year-old graduate of the University of Southern California's business school. Helmy and his staff of ten employees also enjoy the modern comfort of telecommuting to work. Though he maintains an office for his employees, only three of them ever see it - the rest being able to work from home or on the road.
Asked how he got involved in the adult industry, Helmy answers, "After I graduated, I worked for a video game company and I was just not happy. Even though I enjoyed what I was doing, I've always been into doing things for myself. That's what fueled my start."
Having started his business in 1996, Helmy describes the early period as "the golden days." He used to feature one new video clip a week along with about 1,000 pictures, and says he was receiving order confirmations "by the hundreds. Nowadays even the average paysite offers tens of thousands of video clips and pictures."
Helmy says that because a large majority of surfers still connect to the Internet over modems, that picture galleries are still the most popular attraction of a paysite. "When watching streaming video on a modem you experience very poor frame rates and a pixilated video quality, not exactly something you'd consider entertaining. Only those with dsl or cable experience decent quality streaming video."
Helmy says his secret to success has been developing eye-friendly, organized websites that offer visitors "a different impression of porn. By designing user-friendly websites our visitors enjoy a comfortable browsing environment and therefore are more likely to become repeat visitors."
In an industry where competition with similar content practically pops up daily, it takes hard work to stand out in the crowd. Helmy has always made it a priority to feature his company logo prominently on every website, "so that when we launch a new product or service, the adult webmaster community listens, because they've seen the name, and they associate it with quality." Some of Helmy's more popular sites include 69Spot.com, which is one of the most visited adult webmaster resource sites, TrueClicks.com and SuperParters.com, both of which are very well respected affiliate programs as well as 4AdultsOnly.com, an extremely popular free adult site.
With the help of their affiliate programs, his business continues to grow. Helmy says that he implemented one of the first ever partnership programs, in which partners were paid a percentage of recurring billings; Helmy says that the newly launched OrgyParty.com will become his company's new flagship paysite, offering only the best pictorials, live shows and other premium content. He is also excited about the launch of their new affiliate program, Helmy's Cash (cash.helmy.com).
With this new program webmasters will earn commission on a per-signup basis, meaning that they will receive a large upfront payment rather than smaller monthly amounts. Helmy says that nowadays webmasters prefer the quick cash concept. "There's a lot of uncertainty in our industry, and a growing number of webmasters are no longer willing to take the chance on a long-term business deal. Partnerships require you to stay with one company for months before you really reap the benefits of such programs. I don't believe as many webmasters are comfortable with this concept as there were before."
Helmy is also extremely proud of his anti-child porn work with ASACP. At this site, webmasters apply for membership in the organization thus expressing their disapproval of child pornography. After a potential member site submits the enrollment form, Helmy's staff reviews the site for questionable content; if the site passes the review, it is then added to ASACP's ever-growing list of official member sites (according to Helmy, over the life of the ASACP website, they have had well over 7,000 member sites). Members may then report questionable sites for review by the ASACP staff. If a website is confirmed to feature sexual material featuring minors, a report is generated and sent to the U.S. Customs and the FBI. To date ASACP has been responsible for the removal of over 4000 child pornography websites. Helmy was justifiably pleased to learn from a recent article in Interactive Week that the U.S. Customs has acknowledged the leads provided by ASACP.
I then asked Helmy his thoughts on the idea of forcing adult sites to register domains with the dot-xxx suffix. "The problem," Helmy says, "is that the Internet is worldwide. Just because the U.S. imposes such a law doesn't mean that Canada or Germany will follow. Some webmasters will do just about anything to generate more traffic. This point is proven by the large number of adult websites today which feature child pornography text links as well as those which send surfers through an endless maze of popup windows. Just because a law is passed attempting to enforce the use of a dot-xxx doesn't mean that many individuals won't attempt to generate extra traffic through a dot-com. They'll do it. If you try to apply any rule or law to the Internet, it's not going to be very effective."
Helmy remains extremely positive about the future outlook of his company. "We have put in a lot of time and dedication into establishing a well-respected corporation and we have definitely achieved this goal. Aside from this we are on a path to continued growth and aggressive expansion. Oh yeah, and we'll continue to redefine porn."
