Adult Webmasters: Are You Listening To Your Members? Your Competition Is!

Your bottom line objective as an adult pay site owner is to grow your membership base – it’s really that simple. It was true 10 years ago when you were just getting started and it remains true today. But adult webmasters beware – the rules of the  conversion and member retention game are changing and changing fast.  The introduction of free tube sites and file sharing networks are changing the adult landscape and now, you’re having to compete with FREE.
We believe there is still tremendous opportunity to grow a profitable online adult site, but you do need to understand some key trends that are shaping how people make sign-up / cancel decisions and be ready to take action.

Adult Webmasters Must Keep Up With Web 2.0 Trends!

The Adult Content Revolution:
There is a powerful revolution-taking place in the adult content market that serious adult webmasters and pay site owners need to be aware if they want to continue to play in the adult entertainment space in the not so distant future.
The revolution is an undeniable shift away from producer defined content and toward adult content produced specifically for customers based off feedback gleaned directly from the customers themselves through things like content rating applications and comment boxes.
Content rating and commenting applications embedded into the more web-2.0ish adult sites are proving invaluable to the adult site owners who are not only willing to deploy such technology in their websites but (more importantly) are committed to watching and listening to what their members are saying about the models and take action based on this valuable input.
This transformation is so new and so dramatic that many adult webmasters aren’t even aware of what’s happening.  However with a little effort to better understand what your members want to see in terms of updates, you can stay out front of the transformation and stand a better chance of securing your space in the new, user defined adult entertainment industry.

Let’s take a look a the traditional producer defined way of sourcing content for your pay site vs. the more modern member defined approach.

Old School – Producer Defined Content: In this scenario, adult site owners selected the models to be casted or purchased the content to be published in the member area of their site. There was little to no input from the member base as to whether this is a model they want to see or not. The pay site owner, much like the TV station program director made decisions on behalf of the member base.  If a member liked it, great – if not, oh well – there will be another update next week. Weekly updates are simply not going to be enough going forward.  In the world of online social networking, your members expect to be more involved. A couple weeks of less than popular site updates and you can pretty much count on your cancel rates going up.  This model worked in the past, because we had not real alternatives. Enter the more modern approach to choosing content for your adult pay site ..

The Future – Adult Site Member Defined Content. You’ll need weekly updates alright, but you’ll also need to be deploying next generation feedback applications so that you can allow your members to help you define which models get published in your members area and more importantly which ones do not. Do this and watch your member retention statistics start to trend in a positive direction fast.

Read this 5 times over if you have too. If you want to stay competitive in the adult entertainment industry and keep a firm lead on free tube type sites, your adult pay site will have to do a better job of getting feedback from and listening to your membership base. I’ll take this one step further and argue that the most successful pay sites in the future will go as far as to engage the member base to participate in the casting and production process to an extent. It’s that simple and that complex at the same time.

Examples of Applications You Can Deploy To Better Engage Your Members:
Let me give you a couple examples of baby steps you can take now to get your members more involved and improve your member retention stats and over all bottom line.

Site Visitors Should Be Able To Rate Models Easily

1)    At the very least you need to deploy a content rating application / script for each content set you have published. This will do two things for you fast. First, it will tell your members that you care about what they think (Do Not Under Estimate This!). Second, after a short period of time you will begin to see some trends that may impact some of your casting and or licensed adult content purchasing decisions. One model set from that past may emerge as a clear winner and would in turn be a model you would want to re-cast or seek other sets from your content provider – Think “ Back By Popular Demand Here” .. For an example, check out how we get feedback from site visitors on our male models here.
And check out this link for some PHP scripts that you or your webmaster could deploy to get you started: http://pennyhit.com/myratings.html

2)    Once Content rating is in place consider comment and voting type applications for each set. Keep it simple and just ask your members to vote yes or no to a simple question like .. “Would you like to see more of this model?” Here’s a link to a content comment and rating application for joomla site users: http://www.reviewsforjoomla.com/

3)    A third and slightly more advanced idea is to allow your members to play casting director to a certain extent. Publish head shots of potential models who have applied or models sets you are considering purchasing from you licensed content provider and get your members to decide who they want to see. Think “hot or not” here and watch yourself legally here!! But if done right, you would have a raving fan base on your hands fast.

Conclusion:
Ultimately, the responsibility still lies on you the pay site owner / content director to provide your members with hot fresh content that is updated on a regular basis. Based on our experience producing and selling adult content to some of the most successful sites on the web today, What matters most here is that you take steps to engage your customer base, seek out their opinions and develop a community of inclusion with your members and you had better be willing to act on their feedback.
We feel the future is bright for our customers who are embracing this shift to member defined content and deploying simple technology in their sites to seek member involvement. This is just a trend that we are noticing and wanted to share to other webmasters and paysite owners that may benefit from our experiences. Again this is only an opinion and we’d appreciate feedback and counter arguments from other industry pros.

About ACEBOYS:
Aces Entertainment & ACEBOY Models is an emerging leader in the wholesale adult content industry, working to improve member retention for our clients through stunning photos and video of the hottest male models on the web today.  For more information about our products and services for adult webmasters please visit our male model photography website
Purchasing licensed content from a professional content provider can be a cost effective way for your adult site to compete with the big players, but you have to be ready to address the needs of a target audience – you simply can’t be everything to everybody anymore.  Considering talking with an adult content provider that will truly partner with you and help you publish content that your members will love and pay for year after year.

INTRODUCING ADULT MALE MODEL: TYLER WOODS

Say hello to the newest male model Tyler. He’s 21 years old, about 5′9″ and approx 130 lbs. Special thanks to Arron and Sebastian for introducing us to him. If you’re interested in getting photos of Tyler for your adult pay site website, please see his adult male model gallery page.

Marketing 101 For Male Models … (Chapter 1)

The winter term is winding down, and you’re probably day dreaming of your upcoming summer on the lake, but aspiring male models should take advantage of the down time this summer and work on a little self promotion between semesters. There are countless ways for male models to market themselves to potential clients but here’s what the successful male models are doing now to get noticed and more importantly, get paid.

Before we go to far here, you need to make sure you’re portfolio is up to date and ‘client ready’. None of our male model self-promotion tactics will help you if your portfolio was shot with your iphone. Take a hard look and if your not happy, check out our page on building a killer male model portfolio you may find some helpful tips there. You may also want to consider attending one of our Male Model Portfolio Building Workshops this summer as well to make sure you’ve got the right shots to get you noticed. Also .. You need to make sure you have active profiles on all the major social network sites for aspiring models (see below for some examples)

Now, assuming you’re portfolio is red hot and you’re linked in on the modeling social networks, here’s some tips to get it in front of PAYING photographers, designers and studios around the country.

Brand Yourself:

Your ‘myspace’ and ‘facebook’ pages are hot and show how popular you are, but no scout or photographer with real demands has time to sift through all that. You need to brand yourself and you need to stand out from the crowd. One great way to do this is by getting a personalized domain name and launching a very simple, male model portfolio website.

You can search for domain names at places like godaddy.com. Try to incorporate you name (or stage name if applicable). For example do a search for yourname.com or your-name.com. Or trying adding some key words to the domain name for example malemodel-ashton.com.

With a cool new domain name you can start to look for hosting services where you can park a simple portfolio website. If you don’t have basic HTML skills, there are companies out there can deploy a professional looking male model portfolio website at very reasonable prices. Check out …

With a personalized male model portfolio website up and running you’ve moved yourself into a whole differnt leauge. Be sure to go back and update all of your social networking portfolios (MYSPACE, FACEBOOK, MODELS.COM, MODELLAUNCH, OMP, MODELMAYHEM, MALMOD, ETC..) with a link to your new male model portfolio page.

Who knows, if you’re hot enough, you may even end up with your own male model portfolio page here at ACEBOYS. Good Luck and send us links once you’re up and running. Check back or subscrbe to our Male Model Blog for more self promotion and branding tips.    Chris / ACEBOY MODELS / Ft. Lauderdale, FL

Avoiding Scams In the Adult Industry – Tips For The Next Generation Of Adult Male Models

We’ve all seen the headlines on craigslist and countless other online classified boards: “MODELS WANTED FOR ADULT SITE – UP TO $1,500.00!!”  If you’re an aspiring adult male model, here are a couple things to keep in mind to make sure you stay safe and avoid scams. Some of this is common sense, but some of these tips are things that a new comer to the industry will probably not know.

IF IT SEEMS TO GOOD TO BE TRUE …
You can probably finish that sentence, but the old adage your grandpa told you is true, especially in the adult male modeling industry. Sure, many of the top adult studios do pay large sums of money, but those are probably not the ones posting on free online classifieds. Most of the big players in the industry get models through word of mouth and don’t need to spam forums and message boards. Now, I’m not saying that all these ads are scams. All companies start out small and god knows we placed a few ads in our day and may again in the future. The point here is that as a studio grows, so does it’s reputation (good or bad) and it’s connections in the male model community. If a studio treats their male models professionally and keeps their promises, the need to beg for models starts to subside. Hands down, our biggest source of new male model talent comes from past models that refer friends. The guys out there hitting the boards are most likely head hunters of sorts who simply get a finders fee for delivering you to one of the major studios. So be aware and try to identify early on if you are dealing with the primary producer / studio directly or if you are dealing with a 3rd party like and agency or talent scout. Sure, the agency may be scouting for a major studio that pays $1,500 per set, but probably won’t be so fast to mention that they plan to keep 30% of YOUR earnings.

GO DIRECT TO THE SOURCE:
Virtually every adult paysite has a model recruiting or model casting section on their website. Unlike mainstream commercial modeling, aspiring adult models can easily connect with casting directors by searching for the site you think would be a good match and find the “Be A Model” type link. You really don’t need an “Agency” taking 15, 20 or even up to 30% of your pay to do something you can do on your own! If the AD states something like “We work with the biggest players in the industry” .. guess what, you can too by simply finding the adult sites that interest you and completing a few model applications.

AVOID ADULT MODEL AGENCIES THAT WANT TO CONDUCT A TEST SHOOT:
This is a classic scam that we’ve seen time and again in this industry. If you get the “come by my apartment for a test shoot” line, run in the opposite direction!  Here’s the bottom line, the talent scouts have no business taking your photos, they can just as easily pass the photos you submit on to the casting directors for a decision. The real producers in the adult industry don’t have time for test shoots, furthermore, they have enough experience working with male models that they can look at your photographs, facebook and myspace galleries and make an informed go / no go decision. I can assure you the top photographers at studios like seancody.com, cockyboys.com, collegedudes247 and boyfun.com don’t have time to ‘test shoot’ and I can also assure you they don’t need the practice.  So if you get the “let’s to a test shoot” line, be very cautious and be sure to understand exactly why the test shoot or screening necessary. There’s about a 99% chance it’s not!!

GET MODEL RELEASE FORMS, SHOOT SPECIFICATIONS &  PAYMENT AGREEMENT IN WRITING BEFORE YOU TRAVEL:
Look guys, read this 10 times if you have too – It’s important. Any real agency or true production studio will be able and willing to provide you with model release documentation in advance of any booking. You need and deserve time to read these documents before you are on location. If the agency is reluctant or can’t provide you with these documents in writing – you need to seriously consider it’s legitimacy. You should also get shoot specifications in writing that list exactly what acts you will need to perform to earn the agreed upon pay. Finally ask if there are any conditions under which you may NOT get paid – for example if you take off work for 4 days to go shoot and the other models don’t show up or the photographer gets the flu – do you get paid in full, nothing at all or some something in between?  These are real life scenarios that more experience models have faced. Any professional adult model agency or production studio will have policies they can provide you in writing and should proactively offer this information to you.

You may be asking how is ACEMALE Models different from the 3rd party companies we’re discussing here. We are not an agency and we do not accept finders fees for sending models to a studio nor do we take a percent of a models earnings. We are a production studio and are contracted by our clients to produce still and video content. We make the model casting decisions, we book the travel, we shoot the content and we are the primary producers with all the legal responsibilities that go along with it. The goal of this blog entry is in no way to bash agencies or scouting companies – there are some dynamite agencies out there that can help you. The goal here is to offer some insider advice to the new generation of  adult male models that we have learned over the years.

Finally, there are watch-dog type organizations that help protect both male and feamale models in the adult industry. BPAV was founded by a senior publisher at xbiz.com and would be a great place to start if you ever were to be a victim of a scam. We fully support the BPAV mission. You can learn more here:

So the moral of this long ass story is this … As in any industry the adult male model industry if teaming with smart, focused and successful people looking to grow legitimate businesses safely and responsibly, but, as in any industry, there are scams, fakes, posers and people who could be down right harmful to your career and even your health.  By keeping these tips in mind and doing a little homework, you can set yourself up for a great experience, meet some amazing and talented people and earn some great cash. Oh, you might even have some fun along the way too. Be Safe!   Chris / ACEBOY Models / Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

As always, comments, questions, critisims and counter arguements are welcome . . .

What Motivates Male Models in 2008? Same Thing That Motivated Them 500 Years Ago.

A few days ago I got a simple question from a fellow photographer that I respect a lot .. “How do you get these hot college guys to photograph frolicking on the beach, wrestling with other guys and posing nude in front of your unforgiving camera lens.” My reply was fast and just as simple: “It’s all about the cash” I blurted out and we went back to our cocktails.

After thinking about it more, I want to take my answer back. I’ve come to a different conclusion and it has nothing to do with cash.

Thing is, a new standard of male modeling has emerged over the past 10 years. Photographers like Bruce Webber and Companies like A&F, Hugo Boss and others have single handedly revolutionalized the product marketing industry through the use of amateur male models and, in my opinion, have help defined pop culture today. I’m calling this reality based marketing. Sounds kinda dramatic, I know, but hear me out ..

That Was Then ...

So how did the every day college guy get to become the epicenter of the fashion industry? Well, I’m not a historian and I’m certainly not a social psychologist, but I am going to take a stab at this one too . . .

The appeal and success of the Abercrombie Male Model that we see (pretty much everywhere you look these days) is rooted in reality. These Abercrombie Models are real guys, you know them, you’ve hung with them on the weekends, you’ve got so damn drunk with them last week that you swore off alcohol for a year. They take the same train to work, work out at your gym and shop at the same grocery store.

If he looks good in those Jeans, I will too. Get the point?

This is now ..

So, why would an otherwise normal college guy run on a beach naked and wrestle with other guys in front of my relentless cameras? I can assure you it’s not the money. They are freezing time and to some extent being immortalized as the new American male icon – They guy next door. Ok Ok – the cash helps a bit too.

I’m hoping some folks will chime in here. Is there any academic truth to this. Do you agree / disagree. Please weigh in And thanks for reading our Male Modeling Blog.

Find out how you can put this powerful ‘reality based’ marketing trend to work for your business by visiting our website at http://www.acemalemodels.com.

Interested in Modeling with us? Please hit us up at http://www.acemalemodels.com