Viewing their brick-and-mortar offices from the outside, you'd have no idea what kind of business AdultLounge.com is engaged in. The owners of the veterinary offices, lighting supply wholesale warehouses, and other small business that share Glendale, Calif. real estate with Adult Lounge probably don't know what goes on in their neighborhood, but they'd probably be interested and, if they were being honest with themselves, a little turned on if they knew.
The unassuming location, in fact, houses the main offices of three adult companies: AdultLounge.com, a Webmaster affiliate program; Adult Lounge Productions, a video and Web production company; and WorldwideContent.com, a recently launched "warehouse" of original content on sale to the adult industry. Raffi Vartanian is the CEO of all three of these companies and is quickly becoming an even larger force to be reckoned with in the world of adult entertainment.
Of these three businesses, AdultLounge.com is the most well-known to the Web community. "AdultLounge.com is a B2B site, so we attract Webmasters due to our content and our unique niches and the support we provide," says Vartanian. "Business is very strong, and growing .... We have over 60 unique niches and 105 individual sites."
AdultLounge.com offers members several options for payment, including $25 per signup or a revenue-sharing program that pays Webmasters up to 70 percent of revenues for signups. The basic philosophy: As more and more Webmasters compete for the same sets of eyeballs, mouse clicks, and credit cards, content providers need to be increasingly niche-specific to generate profits - the more specific, the better. Adult Lounge boasts everything from younger women (www.youngporn.com) to anal (www.absoluteanal.com) to golden showers (www.peedorm.com) to MILFs (www.milfexplorer.com), and more within its family of sites. Another prime piece of adult real estate: www.atmbabes.com. "We were the first to really feature [ass-to-mouth] on the Net," says Vartanian.
Vartanian is also working to attract members of the adult community to sign on and create personality-driven porn star sites. Porn babes in the Adult Lounge network include Victoria Givens.
The "newest" niche that AdultLounge.com is offering its Webmasters is a wealth of content exploring the growing reality porn genre. "People really want to relate to the porn they watch," says Vartanian. "They're bored with the porn star fantasy where they don't feel like they would have a chance with the girl in real life. They want to fantasize that it could happen. That's a big niche, and companies like us, who produce their own content, are ahead of the game."
In the interest of creating exclusive reality content, Vartanian and Adult Lounge Productions have recently shot and produced a DVD for commercial release called Dirty Road Trips, Vol. 1: Naughty Neighbors, along with an accompanying Website. The most spectacular scene in the production involves a young pornstress ejaculating in a most incredible manner - imagine an X-rated Gallagher show.
"That's Cytherea," laughs Vartanian. "That's all real, too. I filmed it. She squirted about 6 feet in the air, twice," Vartanian says. "People ask me if it's pee, but it's not. Guinness hasn't called us yet, but I'll bet it's a record." Content produced by Adult Lounge Productions is available for purchase at www.worldwidecontent.com.
Along with Cytherea watering the Dirty Road Trips set, Vartanian discussed a more serious brand of porn saturation - the oversaturation of the industry with Webmasters. In a way, an overabudance of Webmasters is a good thing for Vartanian - more Webmasters mean more potential customers to content-providers like Adult Lounge - but it also means a glut of affiliate programs for Webmasters to choose from. Keeping yourself distinct from all the other programs in cyber-land is something AdultLounge.com has worked hard to do. "A lot of programs out there buy the same content from the same producers, but we produce our own content," Vartanian says. "This makes a lot of difference to Webmasters."
Vartanian should know. He's been in the game a long time, doing a vibrant trade within the adult entertainment milieu since 1989. "I started out in the teletype business, creating voice personals," Vartanian says. "Our ads appeared in over 100 publications; weekly newspapers, free papers, and dailies."
From the once-lucrative world of X-rated teletype ads, it was a natural progression for Vartanian to start providing Web surfers and Webmasters with online erotica. Commitment to change in the industry has helped keep Vartanian and his companies on top through the years. "I'm a big innovator," Vartanian says. "I come up with innovative ideas, keep up with what's happening and come up with what's happening next, and what's new."
One of the things that's new for Adult Lounge Webmasters could be a Hummer H2. In order to drum up business for their sites, Adult Lounge is giving away one of the high-end gas-eaters to any Webmaster who provides a certain amount of business to AdultLounge.com. "We offer a point system where, for every signup a Webmaster brings us, s/he gets 20 points in addition to a referral commission," Vartanian says. "If s/he accumulates enough points, s/he can redeem them for cool prizes, including an H2 Hummer. We're hoping to have a Webmaster driving the thing within a year. I figure, if it takes you a year to earn a new Hummer, you're doing okay."
Attendees at the recent summer Internext Expo got a look at the gleaming machine Adult Lounge will part with, and it's a beauty. Vartanian is not sure how long it will take to find a winner, but we'll keep you posted when a hardworking Webmaster drives off with it.
Of course, adult Web work isn't all ejaculations and SUVs. There are serious problems facing the industry in terms of billing and potential governmental crackdowns. "Billing has always been a big issue," Vartanian says. "Legal considerations are important, too. We carefully monitor all of the business we do to make sure everything is 100 percent legal. If the government changes or regulates the industry, we will change accordingly. There are a lot of sites out there that show nudity without a credit card being shown. If that's regulated, it's better for us.
We'd prefer that to happen. You'd end up with a better and a cleaner Internet."
