If the sex act known as the "facial" - i.e., spurting one's cum all over another's face - were ever to develop an advertising campaign, I believe Dagny would be an excellent choice as the spokesmodel. The face of facials, you might say.
Broadcasting from CumOnDagny.com headquarters in San Diego, Calif., the indubitably beautiful Dagny and her husband/business partner Jeff have deftly crafted a Website that's become a popular niche destination on the Web. Their success can be attributed to a progressive integration of Internet technologies blended quite well amid the drawing power of Dagny's radiant personality.
One look at the lovely Dagny, and I ask, who wouldn't want to see that cute face covered with cum? With her All-American girl smile and charming presence, one would half-expect to find Dagny hosting Fashion File on the Style Network rather than on the business-end of a double shot of love juice. But hey, the girl loves a good facial.
Personal affinity for having a face covered with jism notwithstanding, Dagny's one-time hobby of capturing her personal exploits on camera has turned into big business. From a night spent fooling around with a Polaroid, where the story goes that Jeff caught a shot of himself midstream, he decided to scan the photos and put them on the Web with an e-mail address attached.
"We got so much response," says Jeff. What transpired was the debut of a Yahoo! club where the couple continued posting various content of Dagny. "I really hit the pavement after that and we really beat the thing to death," Jeff recalls. "We started buying our first generations of cameras and really started advertising just for the club."
He adds, "I think in the first month or two we had the biggest club on Yahoo!."
For Jeff and Dagny, the idea for the Web business wasn't that extreme since they had been actively experimenting with content and the Internet. "She was open to it way before the site," says Jeff. "We were already actively doing this kind of thing, so it fit for us because I was already looking at it, we were messing around, we were sort of voyeurs and we had the camera and then we had a lot of response."
It would be almost a year after the debut of the Yahoo! club before the official CumOnDagny.com Website would premiere. The reason: Jeff and Dagny had a lot to learn about the Internet. "You have to learn the concept of Web, you have to understand what it means to have a merchant account, the banking side, the video side, the Web development side, the kind of equipment and so on," says Jeff. He admits it was all a bit overwhelming at first.
"And we didn't market anything for the first year because we had the free clubs," adds Dagny.
The frenzy over the Dagny phenomena on Yahoo! proved to be the deciding factor in moving the operation to a permanent home on the Internet, which launched in May 2000. "The main reason was that Yahoo! [limits club size] and people wanted to see videos and they were requesting all this stuff," says Dagny. "I would get e-mail after e-mail from people saying, 'Why don't you start a Website?' and 'I'll pay to see you... I'll pay to see the shot.'"
Jeff credits Kevin from Wifey's World (www.wifeysworld.com) as a tremendous help during the development of the Cum On Dagny Website. "We wrote him, he wrote us back, and he gave us a lot of advice. Then I did what someone might think is atypical - I started to really get into his ear about the tech stuff... I wanted to know about the cameras, the video compression, I really started pushing it and it became like a hobby for me.
"That's helped us evolve to where we are now."
And where they are now is the number two Website in their niche, according to Jeff. "Other than Wifey's World, there's not any site bigger than ours for amateur facials [that is also] a single-girl site," he says.
"When we started we were going to target a niche and stick with it if we were going to be successful," Jeff says. "We were clear [in determining] that we didn't want to do what everybody else is doing, we didn't want to be one of those 'make everybody happy with everything' - we're not an 'everything' type site, so we wanted to be specific about what we do."
With that, Jeff decided to take a unique approach, by not studying what others in the business were up to, instead creating his own plans for billing services, marketing, video technology, and so forth. His belief is that the cottage industry of single-girl amateurs on the Web is a hodgepodge of sites that mirror one another in every technical and visual way imaginable, offering no semblance of individuality. "In the beginning, we said if we're going to do this we're going to be special, we're going to be unique and make sure that we do our own product in our way...and that's what we did," says Jeff. "We spent a lot of money and time on technology, design and content."
"We do really adventurous stuff," says Dagny, who recalls one daring shoot that allegedly took place on the USS Yorktown.
Taking on the role of struggling artists as they worked to bring their masterpiece to the masses, Jeff and Dagny were almost forced to find public locales for shooting due to the tiny apartment they lived in at the time. "The day our site opened it was a twelve-dollar membership, we didn't have the money to join it," Dagny recalls; Jeff mentions having to "sponge off" his neighbor to get an Internet connection.
They look back now with a hearty laugh because all the hard work has paid off. Certainly other amateur facial sites existed when Cum On Dagny debuted, but perhaps Jeff and Dagny's biggest coup was locating the heart of the Web community that supported this niche, and working their way from the inside out. "We step in, take over, and bring our game to the table," says Jeff. "And at this point, we're winning."
And as the brand has taken hold, so has the company's reach, allowing C.O.D Productions to wade out into deeper waters of business opportunity. Says Jeff: "We're in a position now as a company where we helping a lot of people and we've spawned the brand."
With a built-in fan base from the Yahoo! club (they figure about 10,000 members), CumOnDagny.com premiered to rave reviews. Dagny and Jeff figured if they could at least bring over ten percent of the fans to join the new site than they'd be off to a rousing start. "From the first day we opened up we never looked back," says Jeff. "We've never had a problem, we filled up right away, and we've never really had a down month."
A key to the site's popularity is Dagny's personal connection to the site's dedicated members, with whom she has developed a special bond through the years. "It's not like they're my boyfriends, but they're fun to hang out with, and when I do live shows I know a lot about them and they know a lot about me," says Dagny. "I would do the shows by myself, and I would have such a good time because it's me just hanging out with all these guys."
Asked if she's an exhibitionist, Dagny candidly says, "Yes." She recalls being at Mardi Gras in New Orleans when she first felt the thrill of flashing her breasts in public. "It was fun, and I thought, 'Hey this is cool, everybody wants to see my tits. It didn't bother me when anyone saw. Actually it was erotic... I liked it."
It's that bold nature that is an important component to the site. A prime example is "Dagny's Facial Tour USA," where Dagny chronicles her facial pleasures from Los Angeles to Boston. But what really works, aside from "the Dagny factor" and Jeff's erudite attention to detail, is a genuine desire to please their members and fans by giving them a damn good time. "I've been to these other shows and it's just a girl and it's very cold and mechanical," says Dagny. "I'm not, and I really make a connection with these people and they do too."
Because the original intent of the site was not, as Jeff puts it, "to get rich," he believes their mindset to just have fun adds to the authenticity of the overall product and the personal relationship Dagny has developed with members.
One thing most refreshing about the Website is Jeff and Dagny's motivation not to rest on laurels, but to go back to the drawing board and come up with fresh ideas. The live, weekly series "Dagny Request Live" (DRL), a take-off of the once relevant MTV show "Total Request Live," allow members to submit a request to have Dagny bring their fantasy come true. Then there is "Weekend at Dagny's," another series that captures the naughty goings-on when special houseguests come visit Jeff and Dagny for the weekend.
"We like to have people live their adventure through what we're living," says Dagny. "We try to make it fun. We're two people... a very close couple who is bringing other people into our life and letting them watch us."
It's a delicate balance for Jeff and Dagny as they struggle with a familiar paradox: to run a professional Internet business when your audience is primarily the amateur market. "We walk that fine line everyday," Jeff says. "We don't want to be 'corporate' and we fight it very hard."
Wherever the gray zone is between amateur and professional, CumOnDagny.com is resting there comfortably. They have successfully fused both ends of the entertainment/business spectrum, pulling specifics from both the amateur and professional mediums in order to create a viable, Website product.
The mantra for Jeff and Dagny seemingly is, 'give the people what they want,' which they do, but they smartly have framed that rallying cry with a fervent commitment to first class design, technology, and usability. "There is a sense of major overspending on our Website," says Jeff, "because it becomes a vanity thing. This is an extension of us and I don't want it to be poor."
With Jeff's perfectionism and Dagny's easygoing spirit, the duo is a perfect match. They have known one another for sixteen years, and their personal/professional shorthand has been a benefit. The success of CumOnDagny.com has allowed Jeff and Dagny to expand their base and set up what is known as the CumOnNetwork, which consists of CumOnReviews, CumOnAmateurs, A HREF="http://www.CumOnWebmasters" target="new">CumOnWebmasters, CumOnHosting and the original site. "We cross-marketed all of our Websites," says Jeff. "I look at it as like a web, we put our tentacles out there and say, 'How much can we catch?'"
Aside from the technically progressive menu of bells and whistles the site offers, there is an intrinsic sexuality and fun factor throughout, which can be directly associated with Dagny. The camera loves her. What she possesses are the intangibles, a panache that's hard to describe. Whatever it is, people are responding. You can almost hear the branding avalanche roaring down the mountain. Dagny lunch box anyone? How about your very own Dagny coffee mug?
Perhaps in a sea of silicone starlets with names like Cherry and Barbie and Janet Juggs, it's the sweet and pretty girl with the peculiar name that people really want to spend time with.
