For Adult Paymaster’s Tim Knoll, the seed for a career in porn was planted early, as it was for so many others, from the time he was 5 years old and continued throughout his formative years.
“I used to walk down to the local liquor store and flip through Playboy magazine on Saturdays,” he recalls. “I would spend hours there at a time. I was fascinated by the female body. I wanted to know more. And I found the articles interesting at such a young age. I think it has helped shape most of my decisions in life.”
Those decisions would include solid business ones, as Knoll currently serves as president of Adult Paymaster, the company he formed with chief of technology operations and co-owner Jeff Macher (who prefers to be “the silent partner”). Launched in 2001, Adult Paymaster has since gone on to become a major driving force in the adult industry, one of the few sites with content licensed from other sources that consistently does well for its affiliates. With a roster of sites that includes, among others, MeatStickMilkers.com, MilfMunchers.com, BigTitBuffet.com and NaughtyAsianNymphos.com, Adult Paymaster provides subscriptions to some of the very best in hot niche content.
Adult Paymaster’s origin stemmed from Knoll’s youthful obsession with Playboy and continued after he’d relocated from his home state of Michigan to Los Angeles, where he originally intended to pursue a career in rock ’n’ roll. Though he had a great time playing, he says, “for tons of hair-sprayed beauties on the Sunset Strip” in a few bands during the late '80s, Knoll eventually “got tired of Ramen noodles and Lucky beer,” and thought seriously about making a career change.
Calling upon his family’s background in law and commerce (“I come from a family of attorneys, judges, and self-made men,” he explains), Knoll decided to take a job with the Los Angeles County. He ended up “busting deadbeat dads that were not paying their child support,” working the Watts and Compton beats for four years, and managed to avoid any scrapes with death. “I made it out without a scratch—or any guns pointed at my head,” he chuckles.
During his tenure with the County, Knoll found his childhood interest in adult-oriented material revived with the Internet boom of the mid-’90s. “Four years of that job allowed me to take the time I needed to see what all this online adult commotion was about,” he says. “I would bust ass for the County one week, then concentrate on adult the next.”
He played around with a few search engine listings for a bit, then says he felt lured toward the TGP gallery market. By 2000, he was moonlighting in the evenings as a TGP webmaster, though, he recalls, “The money was good, but I knew there was a larger financial picture out there.”
With a basic understanding of how to build and run an affiliate program, he used his TGP money to finance a new venture, “grabbed the smartest programmer I knew, built some sites, and the rest, as they say, is history.”
Knoll immediately threw himself into the biz, attending trade shows and networking “with anyone I met.” He called upon some of those folks (“various TGP owners and link list owners”) in the early days of Adult Paymaster, launching a revshare-only affiliate program that quickly evolved into a successful pay-per-sign-up program.
Knoll recalls that there were a few of the usual snafus that often accompany a venture into adult webmastering, but for the most part, there weren’t a whole lot of hurdles standing in their way.
“There were a few upsets here and there with the quality of some of our providers, like hosting and payment processing,” Knoll remembers, “but those were all worked out eventually.”
Today, Adult Paymaster employs state-of-the-art technology and software to help them track conversions, retention, sources of traffic, and traffic patterns, and that helps keep the program running in tip-top shape. Affiliate programs include pay-per-sign-ups of up to $55 (during their frequent “specials”), a 60/40 partnership program, 5 percent revshare referral payouts, and a $1 webmaster referral program. What’s more, Adult Paymaster also pays $25 per free trial sign-up.
Though Knoll concedes that there have been times when he’s considered picking up a camera and trying his hand at original content, he says that using licensed content works just fine for them, thank you very much.
“We had tossed the idea around from time to time about shooting our own, but we decided … to concentrate on doing what we do best, which is selling site subscriptions,” he says. “I have lots of respect for those guys that are out there shooting [original content] for the industry, though. If it wasn’t for them, we would not exist.”
Knoll says he himself will occasionally get involved with marketing and design efforts, though he confesses that he would rather leave that to the professionals.
“I have always had an interactive relationship with our designers on a regular basis,” he says. “If I see a particular shot that I think would help sell a site, I am usually the one that oversees this. I’m not sure if that comes from my artistic background, but I like it [on occasion]. I have to stand behind the product before I bring it to the people.”
Knoll says that his experience in adult has taught him how to be a better businessman.
“I have most definitely learned that adult is very competitive,” he explains. “I’m pretty thankful for that, though, as I feel that whatever else I get myself into, I will have some of the tools to do so a bit smoother.
“Since this is my first business, it has opened my eyes to some pretty cool things and some not so cool things,” he continues. “I have experienced a crash course in what to do and what not to do in the business.”
With a wink and a chuckle, he adds, “I have even learned to trust our attorney’s advice a bit more as well.”
While Knoll hints that “a new program with some incredible new sites” will launch in the coming months, he says that for the most part, future plans for the site mostly will include more of the same. “As usual, Adult Paymaster will continue to release new sites on a regular basis, stay on top of current trends, and make our webmasters feel like they are in a good spot with our company,” he promises. “That’s what’s got us where we are today.”
When asked what kind of advice he might have for other burgeoning webmasters dipping their toes into the sometimes murky waters of the online adult industry, Knoll has this to offer: “Make sure you know your network as much as possible. Get to the shows, talk to the pros, take notes, do whatever you can to make your venture a success. It can still be done in this business; you just need to be the person that makes that happen. There are more than enough people that don’t mind lending a helping hand here and there. What you do with it afterwards is up to you.”
Obviously, Knoll has followed his own advice in turning Adult Paymaster into an enduringly profitable venture, though even he seems surprised by his own success—especially since so many other adult sites have come and gone. What’s so different about his?
“I ask myself that question everyday!” he says with a laugh. “Seriously, I think it has to do with how involved we are within the community. I have always made a point to make sure the name is out there as much as possible. Whether it's at the trade shows or on the message boards, we try to stay in the public eye. Throw in webmaster support, a hands-on approach to site designs, webmaster relations, and it's seemed to work for us. When you think about it, it's really what any successful company does. You need to be out there.”
Then again, perhaps Adult Paymaster’s success has more to do with one big boy’s enduring fascination with the female body.
“I think it goes back to the time I was 5 years old and could not put those damned Playboy magazines down!” he says of his continued interest in adult entertainment. Then, with all the mischievousness of that starry-eyed 5-year-old, he adds, “The money doesn’t hurt either.”
