Portal Lite

[BeanTown_Man]

I suggest aw.com as a "light" portal to content-specific sites. Cross-links to other sites stay with aw. It has a sampling of the other sites giving members variety. The other sites can focus on types of models after they've been screened. Each site can have a production pipeline, including photog. Abby can guest shoot girls she likes, but the site has its own shooter from the AW School of Photography.

The other photographers get Primo or Nano 2 packs, not your Grafit! Also a picolight and 180/3.5L macro for close-ups! Btw, primo heads are cheap (on ebay) and just fine for umbrellas if you stick with Bron. I suspect seperate video and still shoots would be simpler for you guys as model fees and lighting differ. Fewer people and coordination is good along with dim modeling lights for the shy model vs. bright hot lights and daylight gels. Capture the moment with existing light as a backstage thing. Pay for and use it if good. Re-book model(s) for well lit improved quality video. Stills are better too with more light and lower ISOs. With G-G shoots do what you are doing with the focus on video. Solo is more still oriented unless its IM with or w/o toys.

A whole seperate business could be a modeling agency. You're doing all that now, so book out girls when they are not so fresh to your site. The girls already have a portfolio you paid for, so get them more work using it and make money for both of you. You can mentor girls and get them work with other sites. Shoot it for the other sites too if desired. With a non-porn name, the agency could even be added to the girl's work history and resume without embarassment.

Content sites could be:
1. Natural and hairy. Girls you encourage to not shave after other shoots go here.
2. IM and BA.com
3. Cute, femme, straight girls - including tier 1 G-G silliness
4. Shy, awkward, bi-curious G-G tier 2/3 and IM - also babydykes being shy and over comming it and getting busy. I've watched it happen in the bars and its fun to see a hook-up in progress.
5. Full-on real G-G luvin', including tier 3.
6. Femme, scrubbed, well lit, G-G stuff to compete with other sites directly.
7. Typical AW girls next door, shaved if they normally do that.
8. Pierced, tatoo'ed etc. goth/punk/SG.com/East Village (nyc)/raver types.
9. Archives acess. Option to ship DVD(s) of it to save bandwidth.
10. ISM.
11. Fit/sporty/bendy babes. Surfer girls, ravers, yoga fans etc.

Besides having multiple pipelines, employees can move between content areas with the same function and get less bored with little training, or switch functions. Sell off business for cash when you want - your modeling agency jump-starts a prospective buyer into maintaining a stream of content. Most of the girls who want to model should fit in some catagory and you won't have to hurt their feelings with rejection.

[On a personal note, I still get a ribbing from an attractive friend who was extremely fit at 40 and wanted me to shoot her and sell the nude images to internet sites. I told her the money wasn't very good and I wasn't that keen. Only after she gets a new girlfriend do I learn from a mutual friend that her then relationship with an older woman had experienced Lesbian Bed Death years before, that she played with boys, the relationship was open, and the friendly/flirty vibes I got from her were for real. So now, when a woman wants to get naked for me, I spare her feelings and let her ]

I like real G-G, shaved, punk/raver, fit/surfer/bendy, and girl next door. The top level site with a smattering of the rest for variety is nice and your forum/behind the scenes content is fantastic. I can only take young girls being young girls in doses and would be happy to only see an occational video and would save money not subscribing to all that video content. The occational over the top loon like Dandy/Mathilda could pry open my wallet.Naked News talking/stripping isn't interesting - telling stories, eating ass, and inserting toys are all good. If clothed video is less expensive, do that for the chat.

I have a full ISM membership, enjoy that and like seeing girls from around the world and reading their bios. For convenience, Beautiful Agony and other site's samples also go in the top-level site content. I'm fine with lots of links to specific content sites and rather you get all the membership dues. Some co-marketing for popular generes, but hopefully most new customers wander into aw then to a sub/sister site.

[alleyes1]

Hi BeanTown_Man! Welcome to Abbywinters!!
I am just a regular member like you, and can't speak for Abby, but I think Abby might point you to her "About Abby" page where she talks about why she started the site and her philosophy for the site. I can tell you that I"ve been belonged to tons of porn sites for the last 10 years and Abbywinters is different. (I know they all say that). Browse around and enjoy the site for a little while look at the gorgeous girls and I think you'll get the idea of this site. Don't be a stranger on the boards and Abby always welcomes suggestions(I can promise you you're very intelligent and well composed post that you made will be closely read). Here is About Abby.

Alleyes

[arsby]

I suggest aw.com as a "light" portal to content-specific sites...

This would be a great idea for some other site. The way you're portraying it the members would have to join 10 sites and pay $100/mon. to get all of the material. No one would be happy. The way Abby is portraying it the members would have to join one site and pay $20 or $25 per month for all of the material, and they'd have an option to pay less for a subset of the material.
People like the "folksiness" of this site, no one wants it to become the portal to a family of sites like ATK. If you read the beginning of this thread that's what people were afraid of.

P.S. BA and ISM shouldn't be in you list of sub-sites. I'm pretty sure the ownership of those sites is different.

... and what the heck's a "babydyke"? Sounds mildly insulting to whoever you're calling that.

[BeanTown_Man]

This would be a great idea for some other site. The way you're portraying it the members would have to join 10 sites and pay $100/mon. to get all of the material. No one would be happy. The way Abby is portraying it the members would have to join one site and pay $20 or $25 per month for all of the material, and they'd have an option to pay less for a subset of the material.

P.S. BA and ISM shouldn't be in you list of sub-sites. I'm pretty sure the ownership of those sites is different.

... and what the heck's a "babydyke"? Sounds mildly insulting to whoever you're calling that.

I don't want my porn to cost more. I would just like the aw site to have image sets and videos from all the generes like gold now, just not all of them. The folks wanting more depth in areas add those access bits. Payment would be great as the main site plus a choice of x areas for $a. The next price tier would include more content choices. The main aw site would have no change in updates/week, but all the extra content in backlog would be used so the sum of all sites is more new content/week.

I suggested multiple sites so you could get more of the membership total from the specialized sites by referring more users yourself from aw instead of a sleazy portal. It'd be easier for customers to have content out of our interest/access half-toned out, rather than searching catagories.

I lumped in BA and ISM because I thought all were owned by GMBill, share models, have worked together, and are in Melb.. In the BA forum, some want IM type videos so there is huge synergy.

A babydyke is a young woman discovering and establishing her sexual orientation as a lesbian, often with the cliche' butch accessories (big watch, short hair, wifebeater, men's underwear or outerwear, flanel, waffle weave etc.). It's not insulting, especially when "cute" preceeds it 90% of the time! The term is succinct in also capturing the phase where a woman is screaming to the world that she's queer and learning to get comfortable in her skin. With time it gets toned down. Dyke I don't think is insulting, its just a queer girl on the masculine side. Both seem less common today as there is less pressure for a woman to pick a team/orientation and can just be sexual or queer and not have to assume the whole lifestyle package. Also, the non-PC queer girls who like rough sex are out of the closet and some are very butch. For stealth, my bi, butch, ex-gf and I would use "big watch girl" in place of lesbian, dyke, queer girl, or family to not out or be understood. Besides bi ex-gf's, I've had many queer girls for flatmates and spent lots of time out with them in women's bars. I'm more apt to use words a straight white guy wouldn't/shouldn't, but also more turned off by faux lesbianism.

Rather than turn away girls that aren't Abby's type, the modeling agency can direct them to a site team where they fit. A young woman wanting to get naked is a terrible thing to waste and if she happens to look like a porn star and loves to fist herself, there is still a home for her even if the site doesn't use the Abby Winters (TM) brand name. I do like als scans type content, so add it to my list. Besides std testing for the models, using a speculum to check for cervix leasions is in their best interest!!

Thanks for the welcome. I do like it here...

[Vid Dude]

As this was really quite different to what was being discussed in the other thread, and also because it's a pretty interesting topic that might be worth discussing, I've made it into its own thread.

[BeanTown_Man]

As this was really quite different to what was being discussed in the other thread, and also because it's a pretty interesting topic that might be worth discussing, I've made it into its own thread.

Um, which topic? Thanks anyway. I was just suggesting some things to address business, organizational, and content issues and opportunities. I hope you grow, develop Oz's natural resources, and export so much ANZ product that the PM has to award a plaque!

Turning how you deal with models into an agency struck me after being impressed with how well you do it. Girls who've modeled are great employees - I'd lose my cool dealing with young women all day despite the mental appeal of life in a beer commercial. This service you can sell.

Paralelling the business along content lines has benefits besides easier business growth and content managent. Its opportunity for your employees to develop. If someone is keen on, say, naked girls licking Marmite off each other, and pitches a business plan, they can have a go at a spin-off. Free to existing aw members to jump start it and see if it flies.

AW.com becomes like a start-up factory where the modeling agency, site, billing, and process problems are already solved. The new content catagories and the people behind it are the start-ups. Make it easy and rewarding for individuals to step up and they won't want to leave the fold to do it. Also employees who would be reluctant to be so entrapeneural on their own have a supportive environment to expand themselves.

[More catagories: teen mothers, pregnant women, lactating women, post aw age. These models could get more work than just ISM, or not even do ISM if their photo skills are lacking. I do sort of have a catagory for a semi-fetish of mine that I don't find well served - not hairy or shaved cooters, but cute, short haircuts. Think Demi Moore in Ghost, not G.I. Jane. Its from seeing many cute goth/punk/queer girls with cool hair.]

I've piped in because I like the behind the scenes business exposure of an erotica site. Growing any business is exciting and I suspect Abby and others find that and mentoring more interesting than photo, editing, site etc. skills or yet another naked young woman. Well, I do anyway.

[calliope]

..... because it's a pretty interesting topic that might be worth discussing, I've made it into its own thread.

Not sure that I follow everything that BeanTown_Man is saying,but if he's speculating on what an ideal porn/erotica website might look like,then I agree,that's a very interesting topic.

[arsby]

Not sure that I follow everything that BeanTown_Man is saying,but if he's speculating on what an ideal porn/erotica website might look like,then I agree,that's a very interesting topic.

I'm thinking the same thing. If I had gobs of content and wanted to make a gazillion dollars, I'd follow Beanie's plan. Beanie seems to be going for maximizing receipts rather than for fulfilling artistic vision and a sense of community. Abby's aiming for "the Anti-Porn" rather than for "Ultra-Porn".

[sqrt17]

Abby's aiming for "the Anti-Porn" rather than for "Ultra-Porn".

I think Anti-Porn is much too strong -- the fact is that Abby makes good porn without all that stuff that make porn taste bitter normally (e.g. facial cumshots, obviously faked orgasms, but also some business practices). "Alternative Porn" fits better, since she draws on a population of people who would not normally subscribe to a porn site (like me -- I collected free samples from Met-Art, Galitsin etc., but found their prices way too high) and keeps them from the usual site-hopping behaviour by just offering fair prices.
The alternative is described by BeanTown_Man: have ten different sites, so people will do more hopping inside your porn emire than outside, and instead of just snarfing the site's content (or a representative sample) and saying goodbye, they would have to sign on to each of the ten sites and look. This is why Abby has this non-gold/gold distinction, ISM has the level of membership where you can just look at today's post (which I find ridiculous, I see myself quite often "missing" a set here and then coming back to it a few days later), and most sites have cheaper options for long-time subscribers.
I find Beantown's idea of a "porn photographer incubator" quite interesting -- something like the mezzanine shoots now (don't expect the greatest of all, but it's ok and worth checking out), with Abby keeping both a pool of people able and willing to do photography -- maybe limited to former and current AW models, and with one of the more seasoned photographers doing a little bit of tutoring ocasionally -- and a pool of potential models that Abby, Penny and Nico don't have the time to shoot. This could be as fun and fascinating as ISM, without the feeling of being whirled around on the model's arm. Now IF Abby's going to split the site (what I don't really hope), I would find this as a subsection as interesting as the concept of a "IM only" subsection.

[BeanTown_Man]

To preserve the abbywinters.com quality and not lighten it, I suggest just Abby's images reside on it. This creates the brand name with the site and what ever subsites are made don't have her name on it and she doesn't have to closely monitor it. They can have more freedom to try things on their own and make some mistakes along the way.

I'd thought about adding this comment, and now that image sets have the photog's name on them, its more pertinent.

[BeanTown_Man]

I wish I could edit my posts here indefinately to add and clarify ideas.

Another way to view content is not as sites, but as file access groups or bits. A user would pay a small incremental fee to belong to additional groups, much like being able to pick and choose what cable TV channels one wants, only cheaper.

An aw.com office webcam was suggested elsewhere, and that goes with the backstage offerings. Employees would have to sign a general release. Signs warning visitors of the cameras might be enough for them, but there is good news too. Camera shy Abby wouldn't look over your shoulder - only via webcam like the rest of us!

Oh, and we want to see tossers... Imagine the job advert and pulling girls like Zorg's secretary in The Fifth Element. Some civil servants and customer service reps have to be attractive. For variety, they can be temps or full-time. Oh, and there needs to be an outdoor or rooftop cam so girls can be paid to work on their tans, starkers, nach. Oh, for the cold weather there needs to be a company hot tub, and beverages, and massages, and grooming or personal care products - all business expenses! Some guys will pay to watch toenail painting, skin lotion application, pube trimming, sweating on the treadmill, stair climber, sauna etc.. Get paid to pamper yourself and when you leave work, you'll be ready for a hot date! Also, new mum's - breastfeed or pump at work, no problem! Guys will wank at anything,

[arsby]

Hi, Beantown_man.

If Abby's goal was to maximize profits, then I'm sure she'd be making grand use of your detailed and thoughtful posts. However, she's been pretty clear that as a photographer her goal is to provide content that she wants to provide, which are photographs and videos of naturally pretty girls.

With regards to web-cams, hey, who wouldn't pay good money to be a fly on the wall of the AW offices? But that's a voyeurism thing, and well out of the scope (mission?) of what AW is all about. Not to mention a potentially serious drag on day-to-day hitherto spontaneous business transactions.

With regards to only Abby's work being at AbbyWinters.com, she wants to expand her brand, not fractionalize it. If only her work is at the site, then she has issues of reducing new content. If other photographers' work goes to AbbysPhotogs.com then she has to develop a new brand from scratch, and irritate existing members who then have to remember two site names. She'll have similar problems with any other spinoff. Best to keep it all together and keep everyone happy.

So, using business terminology, rather than breaking the site into subsidiaries like you're suggesting, Abby would rather have the site like a headquarters with divisions.