trends

A Recipe for Success

When Margaret Morgan started Platinum Media out of her home in Waterville, Maine, she didn't have a business plan. And although the company, which specializes in amateur content, recently signed a distribution deal with Cezar Capone, the go-with-what-makes-sense approach still holds up, she said. There was no sitting down and writing down a business plan or reading books — creating a web-only storefront was the move that enabled Platinum Media to sell its DVDs and steadily grow its business until the deal with Cezar Capone came about.

"We just kind of rolled along with things and checked on the feedback," Morgan said. "We took some of our personal taste and the customer taste and made that our foundation."

Platinum Media is hardly alone in going back to the drawing board. Overall, dramatic changes in the Internet landscape brought on by the explosion of social networking sites and Web 2.0 applications have caused adult businesses to change their business models. Still, a solid idea followed by extensive marketing research ensures that there is "win-win margin" should be at the core of any adult company's business plan, said Craig Tant, billing company CCBill co-founder who is working on a new kind of company within the adult space.

Once a company's idea takes off, figuring out how to stave off copycats becomes increasingly important. If business takes off, a growth plan that focuses on reinvestment of profits back into the business is critical, rivaled only focus on top-notch customer support, Tant said.

A good resource for start-up companies is the U.S. Small Business Administration's website, which offers a step-by-step business plan overview at SBA.gov.

"A business plan should be a work-in-progress," according to the website, which continues that "even successful, growing businesses should maintain a current business plan."

Not far behind the homepage is a list of 10 areas that every successful business plan should have, which the SBA considers "the essentials": executive summary, market analysis, company description, organization and management, marketing and sales management, service or product line, funding request, financials and an appendix.

(For those still inclined to read books on the matter, a quick Amazon search reveals "Business Plans Kit for Dummies," which retails at $23.09 new or as low as $5.09 used).

For Triple 10 Vault, which operates an affiliate program network, the business plan came together the old-fashioned way: through research and getting to know people, said Triple 10's CEO Luca Bizzotto.

"Once we were comfortable, our plan was to get noticed, so we had a huge launch at Internext Miami two years ago," Bizzotto said.

Triple 10 also gambled on a chance that offering up gender-bending content to straight surfers can drive traffic to an affiliate program's network of sites. The company took a gamble on a tranny site when it observed that curious straight surfers would peek in, stay, and then proceed to the straight sites.

Following the launch, the plan called for rolling out sites only after they were reviewed by industry veterans — the "go-to guys," as Bizzotto calls them.

"We love criticism," he said. "Basically as we grow our plan is to have a variety of sites with all different niches. We thoroughly study the niches we enter to make sure we develop a quality product that will convert. We strive to keep the trial cost for the member as low as possible to get them in the door because we stand behind the quality of our content."

Elsewhere, the advent of tube sites is causing old business plans with DVDs and affiliate programs at the center to go away entirely. While many content producers and distributors keep marching on, a number of companies — and even performers — are finding ways to branch out, brand and create business plans that adult industry has never had before.

Out of necessity as much as innovation, more and more performers are building businesses around their brands, bringing into the adult industry their passions from outside. Whether its sought-after Latin performer Marco Banderas recording music and even shooting a video (for a song called "Porn Life") or veteran talent Sinnamon Love's plans to launch a website later this year that will combine adult and mainstream content.

"Having the porn background I hope people recognize me as a legitimate journalist," Love said.

Even the adult industry's most formidable brands aren't prone to going through rapid change. Having decided to go out of the DVD business all together, Playboy Enterprises Inc. has hired streaming video specialists from the mainstream world to help revive its brand on the Web and in the process attract the young male demographic. To that end, the company has hired former employees from Heavy.com. Another Playboy executive, Timothy Sabo, has created a kiosk that utilizes USB Flash memory as storage for adult content. Flash N Go kiosks were to debut at trade shows this month, following a test run at strip clubs in Southern California.

Finally, with all the new developments, old business models still manage to hold out in the winds of change. That's because companies such as Adult Developments, which operate affiliate programs NichePay and ArchiveCash, still believe they can tap into "taboo fantasies of average people" with sites such as the recently launched RedneckConfessions.com and several celebrity sites, said DJ, Adult Developments' affiliate manager.

Redneck Confessions, in particular, offers exclusive interracial content that "proved very successful using the same process for conception" applied at the network's other sites, DJ said.

Over in Maine, Platinum Media's Margaret Morgan — who started out with no business plan — may just have the last word on the essentials that make up the ingredients of any solid business plan.

"We're self-investing, with my husband and I always putting our own income into our company," Morgan said. "We combine passion and dedication and find people that we can work with."

Related:  

Copyright © 2024 Adnet Media. All Rights Reserved. XBIZ is a trademark of Adnet Media.
Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission is prohibited.

More Articles

profile

VerifyMy Seeks to Provide Frictionless Online Safety, Compliance Solutions

Before founding VerifyMy, Ryan Shaw was simply looking for an age verification solution for his previous business. The ones he found, however, were too expensive, too difficult to integrate with, or failed to take into account the needs of either the businesses implementing them or the end users who would be required to interact with them.

Alejandro Freixes ·
opinion

How Adult Website Operators Can Cash in on the 'Interchange' Class Action

The Payment Card Interchange Fee Settlement resulted from a landmark antitrust lawsuit involving Visa, Mastercard and several major banks. The case centered around the interchange fees charged to merchants for processing credit and debit card transactions. These fees are set by card networks and are paid by merchants to the banks that issue the cards.

Jonathan Corona ·
opinion

It's Time to Rock the Vote and Make Your Voice Heard

When I worked to defeat California’s Proposition 60 in 2016, our opposition campaign was outspent nearly 10 to 1. Nevertheless, our community came together and garnered enough support and awareness to defeat that harmful, misguided piece of proposed legislation — by more than a million votes.

Siouxsie Q ·
opinion

Staying Compliant to Avoid the Takedown Shakedown

Dealing with complaints is an everyday part of doing business — and a crucial one, since not dealing with them properly can haunt your business in multiple ways. Card brand regulations require every merchant doing business online to have in place a complaint process for reporting content that may be illegal or that violates the card brand rules.

Cathy Beardsley ·
profile

WIA Profile: Patricia Ucros

Born in Bogota, Colombia, Ucros graduated from college with a degree in education. She spent three years teaching third grade, which she enjoyed a lot, before heeding her father’s advice and moving to South Florida.

Women In Adult ·
opinion

Creating Payment Redundancies to Maximize Payout Uptime

During the global CrowdStrike outage that took place toward the end of July, a flawed software update brought air travel and electronic commerce to a grinding halt worldwide. This dramatically underscores the importance of having a backup plan in place for critical infrastructure.

Jonathan Corona ·
opinion

The Need for Minimal Friction in Age Verification Technology

In the adult sector, robust age assurance, comprised of age verification and age estimation methods, is critical to ensuring legal compliance with ever-evolving regulations, safeguarding minors from inappropriate content and protecting the privacy of adults wishing to view adult content.

Gavin Worrall ·
opinion

Account-to-Account Payments: The New Banking Disruptor?

So much of our industry relies upon Visa and Mastercard to support consumer payments — and with that reliance comes increased scrutiny by both brands. From a compliance perspective, the bar keeps getting raised until it feels like we end up spending half our time making sure we are compliant rather than growing our business.

Cathy Beardsley ·
profile

WIA Profile: Samantha Beatrice

Beatrice credits the sex positivity of Montreal for ultimately inspiring her to pursue work in adult entertainment. She had many friends working in the industry, from sex workers to production teams, so it felt like a natural fit and offered an opportunity to apply her marketing and social media savvy to support people she truly believes in and wants to see succeed.

Women In Adult ·
opinion

Understanding the Latest Server Processors

Over the last decade, we mostly stopped talking about CPU performance. Recently, however, there has been a seismic and exciting change in the CPU landscape, due to innovation by a chip company called Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

Brad Mitchell ·
Show More