There seems to be two sides of Sleazydream’s Scott Hjorleifson. First, there’s Sleazy, the GFY lifer who’s not afraid to tell anyone and everyone they’re an idiot, when he sees fit. Then there’s Scott, or Sleazy Scott as some members of the Adult community refer to him, who is a member of Adult Sites Against Child Pornography (ASACP), sits on just about every traffic panel he can – more than 15 to date, and is more than happy to chat about driving traffic, trends of the industry or whatever might be on someone’s mind.
But if you ask him, he’s just Scott Hjorleifson, a guy from Manitoba who’s hard work has resulted in one of the biggest TGPs in the universe: Sleazydream.com.
Hjorleifson, who in a previous incarnation was a financial planner, started Sleazydream in 2000. Although he says he’s far from tech savvy, his foray into Adult began when he started selling high-end cigarette lighters on eBay in 1997. At the time, eBay allowed sellers to attach any type of banner to their auction page and Hjorleifson took advantage with one pointing to sex personal site Adult Friend Finder. He was soon making a few hundred dollars a month from the AFF banner and began considering the possibilities of Adult.
As an avid porn surfer, Hjorleifson was a fan of the TGP and the free porn that came with it. At the same time, he realized that most of his friends weren’t even aware of its existence, so he put together a list of TGPs and how to surf for free porn and began selling that on eBay. That simple list soon began generating $2,000 in sales per month, but Hjorleifson said the real money was coming in via the Adult Friend Finder banner. So he decided to create a few galleries on some free hosts and the Sleazydream concept was born. Shortly thereafter, Hjorleifson tried his own thing and Sleazydream was sucking up bandwidth and overloading servers with its traffic in no time.
It was a rapid rise to the big time for Hjorleifson, but it certainly wasn’t based on luck.
“The simplest way to describe it is I worked very hard every single day. I focused on the site and then I focused on traffic generation,” he said. “I took an idea that this site was going to orient itself more to the surfer than anyone else. You have to keep the surfer happy if you want to keep going.”
Sleazydream.com was created as an archive of his earlier galleries and as a way to send traffic back to people who were posting on his galleries. It was designed after the TGPs Hjorleifson most admired at the time – German Hardcore and Night Rider. While those two TGPs have since disappeared, Hjorleifson combined his favorite elements of each in Sleazydream.com.
Most people getting into the online Adult game today are investing a good chunk of change, but when Sleazydream officially began in 2000 the industry landscape was much different. Hjorleifson invested no money in the site. All of its growth came from the profits he made with it.
The first content that appeared on Sleazydream was free content from Scarlet. Hjorleifson offered Scarlet a banner on his TGP in exchange for their content and the company agreed to hand it over free of charge.
Within a couple months, Hjorleifson realized that buying and leasing content could make him more money, so he switched business models. When overtures from others in the industry became too financially lucrative to overlook, other people’s galleries began to grace the pages Sleazydream. He would alter his business model again in 2003, when he began producing some of his own content.
“It cost less than one third of the revenue, so it made sense to do it on my own,” Hjorleifson said.
“Free content is usually overused so much that you want something else that not everyone has – to get people interested and to get mass traffic.”
Despite his rapid rise to success, running a TGP is not an easy job. In fact, most people in the industry would say it’s near impossible to start one in today’s climate.
“What’s happening to a lot of sites and businesses is they are consolidating. Those people that know what they’re doing are getting bigger and bigger. I’m not saying there isn’t room for new people to start today, but you wouldn’t be able to start in the same way I did,” Hjorleifson said.
One thing that can be learned from the beginnings of Sleazydream, is that in order to achieve success, a person has to have fresh ideas and perhaps take a few chances. Hjorleifson did that despite what the naysayers told him.
“When I started, everyone said the TGP was closed out and no one could start a big site. I came up with a fairly different and original idea for a TGP. I didn’t do things like everyone else did, I did them quite differently,” he said.
That included being the first major TGP to use thumbnail preview and in the beginning, he only posted two galleries a day, something Hjorleifson was told he was crazy for doing.
“Everybody told me you couldn’t survive with less than 80 galleries. My site to this day never posts more than nine. So I was able to do it with fewer galleries. Everybody told me I’d go bankrupt doing thumbnail preview. I proved them wrong in that as well,” he said.
“I never really gave a shit what anyone else thought.”
And here you see the charm of Sleazy, who, since he works alone from his home, uses Adult webmaster board GoFuckYourself.com as an outlet for both social interaction and the fun of messing with the people who frequent the site. Since running a TGP means he doesn’t depend on anyone else in the industry for income, Sleazy doesn’t mind stepping on anyone’s toes.
However, he does feel that GFY has opened doors for him in the industry and to this day will not post anywhere else out of loyalty.
“GFY is his entertainment refuge I think. It is where he can let off steam, enjoy some drama and more than anything, use his teasing nature to get an arousal out of people and add to the fun nature of the board,” said Eric Matis, marketing director of Adult.com, the parent company of GFY.
“We actually gave Scott administrator power recently. Let’s just say that the phrase ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’ held true. We won’t be giving him that much power again anytime soon,” Matis joked.
Now that he’s established in the industry, Hjorleifson still doesn’t seem to be taking any of it for granted. He now employs five people that work remotely from their homes, but he still works seven days a week, 365 days a year, except for the time he takes off to attend the Webmaster Access show in Curacao each year.
He’s in the process of looking ahead with original-content sites, but is still keeping up with the TGP game. When he started Hjorleifson said everyone was using free listings and trading traffic via top listings – where one TGP links to another and vice versa – and then things moved towards free hosted galleries. To get TGP traffic now, you have to prepay for listings, he said.
With people warning against the longevity of TGPs as early as 2000 and with his own admission that it would be near impossible to start one today, that begs the question – will these sites still to be around in five years?
“I absolutely think the TGP will be around,” Hjorleifson said. “If legislation tightens up what we’re able to show for free, I think it will still be around. TGP is a commercial. Commercials are what sell. If you have traffic and you have commercials, you’ll make money.”
As for the industry itself – no worries about that either.
“The reality is it’s the sex industry and it’s always going to be around,” he said. “Even if the unthinkable happens and credit cards get tightened up there will be other ways for people to pay for it. People will want to want to buy sex and they’ll find other ways to do it.”
And as long as people are looking for porn online, Scott Hjorleifson will most likely be there to provide a small portion of it. Although he never envisioned himself in this role, it’s clearly one he relishes.
“Now, I wouldn’t even consider doing anything else,” Hjorleifson said.
“What other business can you make great money, work from home, fuck with people all day long on GFY, travel to porn conventions on a monthly basis, hang with incredible people, and work in your underwear all day long? I must say, I have met some incredible, honest, and dynamic people in this business, and see this as my full-time career and profession.”
