With competition getting even thicker than expected, a group of San Francisco Bay Area entrepreneurs has formed a non-profit group aimed at helping new local entrepreneurs get a foothold in the online adult entertainment business.
Bay Area Adult Sites now has two dozen homegrown site members since forming in March, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Members range from operators of Satin Girls and Naked College to the folks behind the Asian Cherry Network. They meet about each month to discuss adult industry trends and directions and to exchange experiences and difficulties, the paper says.
The group also wants to conduct outreach activities to help legitimize the business, the Chronicle says. They're also aiming for assistance in helping local firms go public - something almost no online porn provider has done yet.
One exception, Starnet Communications, has been trying to shed its adult Web sites and concentrate on its gambling interests, especially since a spectacular porn and drug raid at its Vancouver offices last month.
``Link exchange is so important,'' porn star Mimi Miyagi told the packed crowd at a seminar last month. ``You think you're sending away business, but what you're actually doing is helping a visitor find something they want and you don't have.''
The estimated $1 billion a year online porn industry is ruled by a small group of heavy hitters who earn up to $150 million a year, the Chronicle says. Analysts estimate some 40,000 smaller sites earning in a range of a few thousand to a few million dollars annually, the paper says.
Bay Area Adult Sites hopes that by active networking leading to sharing customers, the picture can change profitably for the smaller online porn entrepreneurs.
`There's a lot of opportunity out there,'' says porn star Danni Ashe, whose Danni's Hard Drive is one of the heavier players in the online porn business. ``It's just not as easy as it once was. Now that people are getting better Internet connections, it's incumbent on site operators to provide better content.''
Which could mean a new challenge for the small sites, who often have a difficult time keeping up with industry trends while their profitability isn't quite enough to keep them close to the pack yet.
