I had this great, thoughtful & in-depth post typed out last night, all about my insecurities and struggles in this business… but literally just as I hit submit, my hosting decided to shit out on me. I checked every single website of mine, and all the ones hosted with Webair had vanished. After waiting on someone to actually sign into their supposed “24/7 Live Support” for about 15 minutes, and putting in a support ticket with no response, I posted in their thread on a high-traffic webmaster forum noting that my sites were all inexplicably down and that I couldn’t get ahold of anyone to help me. Within three minutes of that post, my sites were magically back up.
I got an accompanying e-mail that simply stated:
“Hello.
We apologize for the difficulties.
We have corrected the problem and your websites are working now.
Thank you.”
Okay, but why the fuck did it happen in the first place? When I pay for hosting I expect my websites to stay up and accessible, especially when they’re my main source of income. I checked all my usage statistics, and I haven’t gone over with bandwidth or anything of the like - I’ve used about half my alloted BW for the month and the month is almost over. I kept up my end of the deal, I’d at least like some heads up if you’re doing maintenance and my sites are going to be down for awhile so I don’t waste my time trying to update them and then suddenly having all my work disappear into the void! I mean, I know hosting will have problems, but is it so hard to shoot a mass e-mail to the clients affected? It doesn’t help my mood that Posh Freebies disappeared for about an hour earlier in the week due to an unexplained problem with the sql server it’s on. I’m started to get really annoyed and somewhat concerned that I made a really bad choice in switching to Webair - I’ve only been with them for a month and I’m already having so many damn issues. They can’t even bill me properly - my invoice with them has been sitting on “pending” and has stated that they’d initiate billing in the next 24 hours… for the past two weeks. I have the money just sitting there waiting for them to actually do something about it, I’ve tried re-entering my payment info, tried contacting the Billing department… their only response was this:
“I have looked over your account and see that you have one invoice pending as of 12/10/07.”
Well, no shit. That’s exactly what I fucking contacted you about. The fact that the invoice has been pending for SEVENTEEN DAYS, and has yet to actually initiate any funds transfers as per the payment method I have set up.
I’m just so damn frusterated right now. Get this shit together, people. If you can’t even take my money properly, and my websites have disappeared TWICE in my first month hosting with you, how do you think this looks?
I have always REALLY hated shopping in crowds - it just makes me so irritable, so fast. I tend to have very little patience for people who act like dumbasses, and the seemingly endless supply of people who aimlessly wander into my way while I’m trying to get my shit done drives me insane. It seems like there are always a few groups of idiots yammering away at each other in the center of busy aisles while oblivious to everyone trying to get around them, or it’s the similarly tuned out “standing RIGHT IN YOUR WAY, staring into space” people that get me the most. It seems like most shoppers just have no fucking idea what’s going on around them, and that goes tenfold for the Holiday season.
I did much of my Christmas shopping online this year for that very reason (plus I simply found a lot of kickass internet deals, and a lot of people are getting some seriously cool shit from Think Geek) - but today I had to be brave. I had to venture into the madness that is retail stores three days before Christmas. Luckily for me, most of the stops I made today were either at smaller/littler known malls (I wanted to get a specific local coffee/chocolates for my mom, so I had to journey to this little suburban mall that has like 5 stores), or at pet stores (the BF & I spoil our animals so much, it’s kind of crazy - and yes, they did get a box of the doggie candy canes I featured on Posh Vice) - both of which were mercifully normal-paced. Thank God, because once we actually hit the busy stores, most of our shopping was done. Within about 5 minutes of our visit to Target, both me and the BF’s fuses were just DONE. We were both so pissed off by all the fuckin’ idiots swarming around us at all times that we didn’t even have the energy or patience to go looking at Christmas lights afterward as we had planned. I tell you, nothing zaps my drive and good mood faster than a crowd. I’m so antisocial.
Anyhow, at least my shopping is finally done. Everyone I’m gifting this Christmas made out like bandits, seriously. Buying stuff for other people and seeing their reactions is my favorite part of the holiday, hands down.
I’ve been slowly trying to break into mainstream websites lately; first with Gamer Hero, the website that I run with my boyfriend - it’s basically an outlet for him to talk about anything and everything related to (obviously) gaming. The second mainstream website I launched was Posh Vice, a shopping website dedicated more to unique finds, sort of up the vein of Daily Candy and Outblush. I’ve had these two websites up for about a month each, and while they each get the occasional spike in traffic due to social linking sites, for the most part they’ve not yet been very successful. I realized, perhaps too late, that I don’t really know any way to get traffic to a mainstream site other than search engine. With adult it’s easy - there are hundreds of link dumps and babelogs where you can submit your galleries. With mainstream… I don’t know yet. I don’t really have any contacts or “mentors” like I did when getting started in adult, either. I’m just sort of haphazardly diving in!
I launched my third mainstream website today, the spinoff Posh Freebies. The name is rather self-explanatory; it’s dedicated to freebies, coupons, free trials, and other such deals that can be found online. I have high hopes for this one, as the affiliate program that I’m using is really good and very promising. I’m hoping that I can build up some good link trades & word of mouth. Wish me luck.
I have a serious case of the lazy right now. I registered the domain cherrydelish.com earlier, and while I’ve got the layout up and the sidebar/links/POTDs pretty well set up… I just cannot bring myself to dredge up the motivation to make any galleries right now. I’ve got some photosets from True Tere, Kari Sweets, and The Wet Peach picked out as my first few galleries - even went so far as to make thumbnails & upload the Tere photos - but once I open that text editor, I’m just… blah.
Oh well. I updated two of my other sites already today (a Scarlett Pain gallery on Lux Alterna & a gallery of Micah Moore at superherofetish), I’ve been pretty productive… right?
I’m already freakishly tired, even though because of my incredibly fucked sleeping schedule, I went to bed at 3PM and woke up at something crazy like 2AM. This is what happens when I try to go without sleeping pills; my natural/inner clock is just reversed from the rest of the world. Or at least, this hemisphere.
I wonder if I’d be a normal person (at least regarding sleeping) if I moved to Japan?
I just watched the Dawson Miller interview video that’s been circulating around the adult webmaster community lately. Dawson - real name Justine - gives an interesting point of view & behind the scenes look of how solo girl sites work, and how the decision to become an internet solo girl is made. Of course, her experiences differs from most solo girls in that she essentially screwed over her webmasters by backing out after all the content had been shot - most solo girls don’t do that. So while the journal entries on dawnsonmiller.com are fabricated and there’s no live webcam shows, most girls actually do have a hand in their sites. I’m hoping that any non-industry porn viewers that see this video don’t automatically assume that all solo girls websites are like this - a big part of the appeal of those girls is the interaction and personality they put into their member’s areas.
In regards to what made her change her mind, I think it’s extremely odd that she didn’t realize that popular opinion in Christianity, when it comes to porn, is that it’s evil. I know that I was raised in an extremely strict, sheltered environment, and I was basically taught that porn - and anyone who is involved in it in any fashion - is horrible, evil, and unclean. But then again, I was raised with the same views on sex drilled into my head, so it’s not surprising. You should’ve seen how my mother reacted when she caught me reading Jenna Jameson’s autobiography!
I’d be interested to hear what the “Christian photographer” that originally talked her into it said that originally made her feel comfortable with the whole nude-on-the-internet thing. I’d also be interested to hear why she didn’t think it through more, and what she thought the long-term effects would be. Perhaps she just underestimated how much of the population views porn, and thought that nobody would ever see her website? I think that sometimes, in the whole American porn-is-the-devil moral value that seems to be the norm, people don’t see through the fact that most people preach about how evil porn is to their children, and then turn around and check out titties once the kids are in bed. And if I recall correctly, hypocrisy is also spoken against in the Bible…
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Christianity. I consider myself a Christian, although I don’t belong to any particular sect - I’ve never really been much of a churchgoer, mostly because when I have attended, the preacher/pastor tends to take some Biblical moral and twist it to his own devices. That never sat right with me - that it seemed like most churchgoers were okay with simply accepting what the preacher said as truth, without actually cracking their bibles to see if he was correct or embellishing to suit his own purposes. But perhaps that comes partially from the fact that I became a Christian solely from reading the Bible - I had been researching world religions for fun (anthropology and the like was my thing in high school) and eventually accepted Christianity as my faith of choice. A lot of the “conflicts” that it seems most people have between faith and science and the like have never made sense to me, and I attribute that to my never having had the “Creationism is the only interpretation” view fed to me by a church or book. My interpretation of my faith comes from the Bible, not a secondhand party.
As for how I justify working in porn while still considering myself to be a faithful Christian - it really comes down to this: the Bible states that all sins are equal in the eyes of the Lord. I covet other people’s things, I swear, I have premarital sex… so until I’m ready to change those parts of me (and I don’t know if I ever will, to be honest), how am I going to say that the way I make my money is the one thing that suddenly tips the scales from “Heaven” to “Hell”? That outlook simply doesn’t make sense to me. The only person without sin was Jesus; not me.
That said, I would never become a solo girl or porn star - not out of religious reasons, but because I have the foresight that it seems Dawson didn’t - that such a decision is very public and will follow you for the rest of my life. I’ve often stated that being famous would be my worst nightmare. I like being anonymous; going to the grocery store in my sweats and walking the dog with no makeup and not having to worry that it’ll be plastered all over ONTD or Perez Hilton’s site within an hour. I once went shopping with a comedian who at the time had a show on Comedy Central; even after we parted ways, people were following ME as I met up with different friends. I sort of wanted to smack them all. I can be an extremely private person, and I tend to be introverted with strangers as a rule - so having a bunch of randoms trailing me? Fucking horrific.
Point being, I know myself well enough to know that putting myself out there like that would not be a good decision for me. I’ve had a few people tell me I should become a solo girl or at least a x-rated camgirl, and saying no is the easiest thing in the world for me. I understand that while I and my boyfriend are fine with my career choice, not everyone out there will be okay with it. Quick money and attention are not important enough to me to have to constantly defend my actions to family members who stumbled across me naked (although, of course, you’d probably never hear them defending why they saw the photos in the first place). Even now, as a simple adult webmaster, I pick and choose who I tell carefully. I greatly dislike drama, especially if it involves myself, and anyone who would make a big deal over what I do for a living doesn’t deserve to be close enough to me to know.
That’s enough rambling. If you have no idea what I’m talking about and need to see the interview in question, you can find the video here.
Writing the launch post for any e/n type of site always pretty much sucks. You always feel like it’s the defining post of your site, even though within a few weeks it’ll probably be buried in the archives, lost to all but the most devoted readers. I feel like I should be giving you some nutshell idea of what this blog will be about, full of sparkling wit and lots of reminders that I am a GIRL on the INTERNET and I have BOOBS. Y’know, because that’s really the only reason anyone’s going to end up here, right?
I’m not 100% sure what the fuck will be going on in this blog - the vague idea was to blog about what it’s like being a twenty-something chick behind-the-scened of the adult website industry. I’ve only been running porn sites for about a year, so I’m no heavy hitter or anything - you won’t see me at the conventions and Playboy mansion parties just yet (though I won’t turn down invitations - by all means, please).
If you’re wondering about the domain name & title, it comes from the fact that EVERY TIME I reveal what I do for a living, the person I’m telling immediately draws the conclusion that I’m one step away from my own solo girl website. Of course, it also makes a lot of them think that I’m a lesbian (since I totally look at naked chicks all day) and a meganympho (because I totally masturbate to every gallery I post because I’m a huge lesbo). You say the magic word “porn” and it becomes somehow impossible that I view it as a business, my job, not a fetish. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t look down on the girls I promote (I pretty much idolize Jesse Capelli), but it’s just so weird how much people assume. I mean, someone who blogs about movies isn’t a movie star. But hey, at least it gave me an idea for a domain name, right?
That’s all for today, guys. Don’t cry, I’ll be back and word-vomiting all over the internet some more before you know it!