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The
following is a reprint of an article written by Ian
Portsmouth of Profit Magazine (Feb-Mar 2000 issue).
He attended a seminar, at the Learning Annex, hosted
by Jay Servidio, President of Teleteria, with an assignment
to scope out the formula for making millions through
adult websites.
From
XXX to $$$
Move
over, Hef. According to the only firm to risk a guess,
Massachusetts-based Forrester Research Inc., online
adult entertainment is a billion-dollar industry.
Lots of people want in on that action.
Some
35 of us are gathered in a Toronto hotel room on a
Friday night, hoping to learn the secrets of selling
smut online. Our guru of choice: Jay Servidio, a New
York-based cyberpreneur who runs Teleteria,
a Web-hosting service with a booming e-porn business.
A tanned 38-year-old with gold flashes streaking through
his thick brown hair, Jay Servidio makes no apologies
for what he does. "This is a great way to make
money," he quips. "It’s fun. There’s
nudity involved."
Sounds
good to Rob, 34, who operates trucking and construction
firms employing 25. "I’m looking for an
ulcerless business’ he says. Arme, one of
10 women in the class, is also hopeful. The 48-year-old
has tried multi-level marketing, run a pizza joint
and owned a 900 number. "But I want something
more aggressive, something that will make me more
money fast $" Anne explains. "The Internet
and porn are a good combination."
Jay
Servidio promises not to rush as he outlines the basics.
There may be as many as 50,000 porn sites running
at any one time, he says, "but you’re not
competing with them all." With huge demand for
online porn and endless chum as jaded subscribers
flit from site to site, there’s plenty to go
around. "All you need to bring to your website
is 500 hits per day," says Jay Servidio. That
could gross you $600 a month, but be says his average
client makes $300 a day.
Jay
Servidio suggests a good starter site comprises a
dozen pages of free content, a sign-up page, a warning
page ("If you’re under 18, stop here!"),
and a members-only area linking to at least 50,000
pictures and videos catering to a wide range of "interests".
"How about a site focussing on one subject?"
asks a longhaired man in a leather jacket from the
back row. Why limit your audience, asks Jay Servidio:
"There are sexual appetites that need to be satisfied
that you don’t even know about." "I
don’t know about that!" counters the student.
More
explicit advice follows. Get an ISP with lots of bandwidth.
Buy your photos ($1 each) from the dozens of content
providers who gather at industry trade shows. Collecting
membership fees is a snap: just hire a billing company
to do it for you.
Having
made it sound easy, Jay Servidio gets philosophical.
"Do you all know who Warren Buffett is? He’s
a god on Wall Street. He’s a friend of Bill Gates."
Jay Servidio tells us Buffett once listed his personal
pros and cons on a piece of paper, and decided to
purge all the negatives. "All of you have cons
that are holding you back from making money,"
he says. The class falls silent. Jay Servidio says
he was once the same way: an overweight, insolent
sales rep who had trouble keeping a job. Then a friend
convinced him to try the phone-sex biz in the late
‘80s. That pal is now worth $20 million. The
same could happen to us, says Jay Servidio, but we
have to act now: "You have a very limited time
while your motivation is still high to start your
own adult website."
Your
bank balance better be high, too: Jay Servidio prices
a viable porn site at US$68,000 (US$50,000 for those
photos alone). But wait! Jay Servidio will sell you
a turnkey site for just US$2,700 (that’s 100/0
off his regular price, and he’ll throw in two
months of video free!) "It’s a screw-proof
deal," he insists. With Teleteria
handling customer service and the billing company
collecting fees, "you’re free to make money
and enjoy yourself."
Still,
you’ll need traffic to your site. Jay Servidio
says there are 11 ways to market adult websites. We
can register with search engines, "but you’re
not going to get many hits from there." Same
with posting to Internet newsgroups. Banner ads on
adult sites work, but can cost upwards of $10,000
a month. Method No. 4 is Jay Servidio’s favorite:
bulk e-mail. "It’s the No. 1 way to make
money in this business," he says, offering to
hook us up with a good spam service. He never reveals
the other seven marketing methods — but no one
ever asks.
Doubters
begin to emerge. Won’t everyone in the class
end up with the same website asks the long haired
guy? "With 50,000 pictures, it doesn’t matter!"
shouts Jay Servidio. "A guy would have to quit
his job and look all day!" "How many hours
are we expected to put into this?" asks another
student. "Whatever you want," replies Jay
Servidio. Another pupil worries about infringing copyrights.
"If you set your mind to think of the reasons
you shouldn’t do this, you won’t,"
Jay Servidio answers. If this is so easy, why don’t
you just do it yourself? "I could do it and make
tons of money’ he says, "but Teleteria
was designed as a design and hosting company."
Here’s
a better answer. The spam firm charges US$1,200 for
one million mailings. Based on Jay Servidio’s
projection of a 30 % response, you’ll
get 30,000 visitors to your site. According to Jay
Servidio, you can count on one in 500 to sign up.
That’s 60. Charge the typical monthly fee of
US$20 and your take will be, um, US$1,200 —before
the billing firm’s 15% cut. Sure, your membership
will grow if your can retain most of your subscribers
each month, but you’ll have to refresh your content
at a cost of thousands a month.
When
the session ends, not everyone has done the math.
Lara and Chris, a modelesque couple in the film business,
have been researching online porn for months. "Jay’s
company is fantastic," says Chris. "It promises
everything you need to be promised." Sensing
a sale, Jay Servidio takes them to dinner. Rob is
more skeptical: he suggests we all band together to
spread the risk. Perhaps a shared ulcer is less painful.
Still,
Servidio proves you can get rich quick with
e-porn. He says he sells five to seven of his $2,700
packages per seminar — not bad for three hours’
work. Ian
Portsmout
Jay
Servidio is President of Teleteria,
Inc., a company that has been building and hosting
commercial and adult custom Web sites since 1994.
Teleteria's
clients are located all over the world.
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