North Star: Stars Cum and Go, but PeterNorth.com Shines On

Friend to the XXX surfer Sir Rodney says at his best-of-the-adult-Web guide (www.sirrodney.com), “Peter North is the Johnny Depp of porn.” Does he mean North is... unpredictable? Capable of reinventing himself and surprising the industry he’s famous in at the unexpected moment? A big hit with the ladies? A quantifiable success as a hot Internet property?

All of the above, it seems. A quick look around the WWW shows Peter’s site, PeterNorth.com, to be above the 85th percentile among critics, professional and armchair alike. PeterNorth.com features the series North Pole, Anal Addicts, and Deep Throat This, in addition to stuff from the vaults – North’s been an active woodslinger for more than 20 years now. There are over 43 galleries averaging 100 pictures per, over 68 vids around 90 minutes each, and, according to North himself, the defining element of the site’s sterling reputation:

“The quality of the streaming video.”

This is one of the reasons why North is so happy with Frederic Valiquette and the team at BrainCa$h, who designed and run the site. “Peter wanted to go on the Internet for years,” Valiquette reveals, “but faced many problems.”

North corroborates. “I had signed a non-exclusive contract with a company locally down in Orange County; they were putting together templates. I had put in about $3 grand, $3500 at that point. I went to Montréal to shoot some stuff and got the worst flu of my life... and then couldn’t really shoot. So I watched what [BrainCa$h] were doing, I was paying attention; they knew I had a deal, so they didn’t try to push me or hard sell me – but I realized these guys really knew what they were doing. They had a really good pulse on new things, creative things, things that would work – they had a small team at the time, but a team that was very good in each category.

“So I ate the money I’d invested with the company in Orange County – even though they were nice people, I had to do what I thought was the right thing for me, and for the business.

“I never regretted it. I couldn’t be happier.”

BrainCa$h designed the site, taking North’s input about specific pictures and models, but putting the thing together completely.

“Making it stand out over the other porn star sites was our main objective,” Valiquette says. “We’ve put a lot of thought into the layout and navigation of site, in order to give it a personal feel.

“Of course, the exclusive broadband content helped a lot to give the site its uniqueness. Otherwise, we really wanted to build a site that would please everyone involved, from Peter to the surfers and Webmasters. That really played a big part in our success, since it created a strong synergy and motivated everyone involved in the project.

“Our second objective was building a strong marketing strategy around the site,” he continues. “We really wanted to establish Peter’s brand on the Web. We took full advantage of Peter’s legendary status: he’s a porn star, he has incredible cumshots and he’s a gifted producer. I guess everything combined made PeterNorth.com stand out from the rest of the pack.”

North says the site’s main purpose, to his mind, is to provide a direct link to his fans. “As I’ve traveled and done signings and done conventions, I don’t like just to sign autographs; I like to talk to people, to the fans out there, because they make us who we are. I’ve gotten feedback that a lot of [retail shops] are not getting my videos... If my videos got to every store in the country, I’d be doing 30-40,000 pieces out the door. Some buyers just don’t [offer my product] to particular stores; I found some stores ran out and couldn’t get it; I talked to people in certain areas or other countries who couldn’t get it – this is a way that they can really get a chance to see what I have out there, check out my product – with streaming [on the site] that’s second to none.

“A lot of people don’t like to go to the video store anyway,” he reasons, “and this is an easier and quicker way.”

For Valiquette’s part, he knows that “Peter’s got enough background and notoriety to make it interesting.

“PeterNorth.com is the portal to Peter, the actor and producer. It does an amazing job with porn star traffic, since the name is well-branded. Customers know Peter North and feel they can trust him and his products.

“We also focus on every Peter-related niche we can. For example, Peter has built quite a reputation for his incredible cumshots [North “came” to fame due to his prodigious cumshots, which were notable for both force and length of ejaculation and volume. He says his best length is a recorded 6 1/2 feet: “I used to have notches on the wall from when I hit directors and cameramen. They get in the way of some of the... uh... action. I hit cameramen in the lens, in the hand. They take it in stride, they laugh. It was pretty funny”], so we released www.peterscumshots.com. Everything on that site focuses on Peter’s facial/cumshot content.” Valiquette says the numbers the site brought in from the first were “amazing. These kinds of sites are easier for our affiliates to market, since they are more focused. That allows us to get the perfect content, design, and sales pitch for a concept.

“Since day one, we were amazed by the response from both surfers and Webmasters. In fact, the growth has far exceeded everybody’s expectations, and things are still growing steadily.”

Modestly, North adds, “The interesting thing about PeterNorth.com is [it doesn’t just feature me]. When you sign up, you get full access to other full sites, from Christina Young to Sweet AmyLee to Silverstone Video. There’s also a lot of extra content that we have – we have Hustler content – we wanted to give people a good variety of [content].

“All I do is provide the content, and [BrainCa$h] go from there; they run with it. I think my name has helped – even though I’ve had bad luck with sites in the past. I’ve probably had seven or eight years of frustration with people who have dropped the ball, who didn’t really know what they were doing. I guess everything happens for a reason; that’s why I eventually ended up with BrainCa$h, who I really can’t say enough excellent things about.”

North’s pretty stoic about the run-around he endured before he hooked up with BrainCa$h.

“That’s the whole thing about trial-and-error, making mistakes and learning the hard way. Hopefully, people who have gone to my site years back when it wasn’t anything to pay attention to will come back and see what’s been done.”

Backing away from performing will open up time for North to focus on the site, he says. He’s matter-of-fact about the shift. “It’s just like with anything, I think... 20 years in front of the camera... the time is coming. I’ve got a lot of fresh new scenes that I haven’t put out yet, so I’ll still have content.”

“The fact Peter switched from acting to producing is a key element in our strategy,” Valiquette confirms. “Now that Peter produces and distributes his own DVDs, he’s all set to target new niches with interracial, Latina and POV series. Of course, we will use these series to target new traffic in niches where we were absent. We feel there’s still a lot of potential space for us to occupy out there, and these new series will help us establish PeterNorth.com and his production company as strong brands in the adult business.”

The team is gearing up to run live chat and shows. North is looking forward to the challenge. “We want to get the message board going, too – I want to communicate with the fans out there.

“I’ll put more attention, time and effort in with BrainCa$h to make my site even better, because I think that’s the direction things are starting to go. It’s less frustrating for me now to deal with the Internet than with distribution and production. I do very well with [those], but the Internet, for me... BrainCa$h has made it a beautiful thing.”