Well, after Phil from Cash Uncovered promised to hit me up when he was in the office on Monday, we’re easing into Thursday morning without a peep from him or any of the other CU guys. It’s shaping up to be an exact repeat of last time: he promised to look into it and vanished into the ether. So I guess I should start crafting my GFY drama llama post, huh?
That whole mess aside, I have been having some seriously ADD days lately. I was diagnosed with it a few years back, and I usually take Adderall for it, but with how yucky I’ve been feeling lately (my stomach’s been going nuts every time I take pills all of a sudden), I’ve been skimping on my dosage a bit and it’s REALLY starting to show. Focusing on anything (even non-work like conversations and video games) is just kind of overwhelming and challenging, and getting work done has been like pulling teeth… I know I should go pop my pills, but I’m just SO sick of throwing up. At first I thought it was solely Vicodin, but now each and every pill I take (even friggin’ OTC aspirin) has been wreaking havoc on my insides. And no, there’s no chance that I’m pregnant. So a hearty WTF to my body.
I’m pretty much owing all my income to some big spender on the webcams front, not any hard work and elbow grease on my part. Thank you, random man who’s dropped $650 on adult webcams this past week. Without you, I’d be making like $3 a day.
It seems as though all of the lessons Steve & Kimo are giving me are starting to pay off… I’ve had some boosts in certain search engine keywords (like this gallery that’s ranking #2 - at least for me - for I Dream Of Erica). I’ve been averaging at least one sale a day, which is better than before: pretty much all my sales were clumped on the weekends, but during the rest of the week I’d be lucky to have one sale. My weekends are still doing better than my weekdays (I came really close to $100 this past Saturday), but it’s nice to have daily sales… very reassuring and encouraging.
In affiliate news, Net Audio Ads has made some announcements that have really turned me from ambivalent & unsure to somewhat excited to promote them… assuming that the basic idea behind the ads proves successful, they’ve got some really innovative ideas to use said audio ads in the future. I’ll post more about this once I’m feeling a bit better and my thoughts are more collected, as I’m still feeling a bit queasy and spaced out.
As I mentioned earlier, some time ago I ran a small camgirl website. Not one of the adult ones - I was 17 or so, and it was just my daily blog that happened to have a sporadically-updated webcam snapshot on the front page. My severe lack of dedication to the webcam game & my general aversion to getting lots of “post your boobs” IMs from random strangers (I rarely, if ever, signed onto my site-specific AIM name because of this) caused me to never really make it to the big leagues. I did make some awesome nerd-style internet friends that I still keep in touch with to this day (the lovely Jaimee being one of them - and holy shit, she IMed me right as I typed her name, how mind-meld-ish).
I still read other girls’ websites and posted in a few forums and kept up with internetgossip.net and other such fun stuff. I was marginally informed, and it always seemed to be that Nay (currently going by Ashton Von) was the pint-sized princess of camgirls. Chick was like 14 or something when she got on the web and started prancing around on cam at mija.nu - and considering how insanely popular she was, how much attention she got, the amount of wishlist items she had purchased for her - I wasn’t terribly surprised to find out that she’d gone the softcore camgirl route recently. I mean, you can’t really blame her. If you have a fan/stalkerbase (and judging from Haloscan, she most definitely does… but we’ll get to that in a bit), a decent face and body, and enough web design know-how to create your own amateur website… well then, by all means, rake in that paper, booboo.
Anyhow, the inspiration for this post: I recently made a gallery of Sweet Natural Girl’s Jaimy for Cherry Delish, and noticed a few hundred hits coming from a random Haloscan comment board. Apparently, the place is basically a forum for all Renee hater/fans to sit around and alternately bitch about, pick apart, and make fun of every aspect of Renee’s life. Her family, dogs, friends, website, etc etc… nothing is too inane for these people to bicker about endlessly. It seems that someone thought that Jaimy resembled Renee before she was this Ashton Von character and had posted a link to my gallery there, thus explaining the mysterious outpouring of hits to my website.
I haven’t read the entire comment board yet (um, there are 26 pages? Not gonna happen anytime soon), but it’s been entertaining as hell so far. It’s definitely funny to read the constant comments about how the Ashton Von paysite doesn’t update enough and thus must have no members, when I myself have sold around 10-15 memberships to the site and many of them rebilled monthly. Considering that I’m small-time, that’s a really good conversion/retention rate for a solo girl, so are the haters just hating or do they actually have a case against her? I’d be interested to hear her response, as well as the justification for why her members keep paying every month if her website is so terrible.
I will say, though, that from my affiliate’s perspective… Renee could handle her webmaster program much better. Honey, four promotional galleries? Seriously? Come on, we need more to work with, here. Or at least give out promo passes to the affiliates that are making sales for you so that we can get content from the member’s area to make new galleries with, and thus make MORE sales. Also, her POTD sizes don’t work properly, so…there. Honestly, I think that Renee needs a friend or affiliate manager to help her out a bit - someone to make sure the website gets updated on a regular schedule, do some PR for her at webmaster forums to recruit more affiliates, make sure her webmasters have enough content to promote her regularly, etc, etc. The girl sells well as it is, imagine what could happen if she got her act together.
In closing: there should be a new breed of internetgossip.net - one that covers the reincarnated-as-xxx camgirl crowd and solo girl gossip. Hmmm.
I’ve been pretty stressed out lately; mostly due to the combination of not doing as well as I’d like to be doing sales-wise and the fact that my boyfriend is currently unemployed - I’m pretty much supporting the entire household on my craptacular earnings right now, and it’s been keeping me up at night. As much as I like running websites, I’ve been very discouraged and the notion that I should throw in the towel and get a “real” job keeps nagging at me.
Even though I am working at something, being productive, and getting paid, I still always have this underlying feeling like I’m lazy for not going out and getting some shitty retail job for $7/hr like everyone else. I’m sure part of this comes from the general attitude among most people I know IRL that what I’m doing can’t REALLY pay the bills, that any online/work-from-home money-making scheme is a scam or a cop-out. The other part is that at its heart, this type of thing is unreliable. Even if you usually make a certain amount of money every month, it’s not set in stone. I was raised to always be SURE that I had income, so taking this sort of chance is challenging for me. It’s kind of funny when I think about it; I was raised by a woman who worked contingent for most of her life, but she still managed to instill within me an aversion to risks/not having a normal, steady job.
Steve and Kimo have pretty much been giving me a crash course in being a successful webmaster lately; with Steve especially it’s totally like web school. Dude could totally write an e-book and make loads of cash, he’s awesome at teaching dumbasses (me) how to functionally run websites (see the newly-relaunched-as-a-Latina-blog Caramel Cams for my new skillzzzz… ha). Kimo’s got the motivational skills in spades, too - Tony Robbins needs to move the fuck over.
Lastly, I decided to start promoting the affiliate programs that are currently doing the best for me, on the off chance that anyone reading this hasn’t heard of them. As you can see on the sidebar, it’s currently Widget Bucks (a mainstream company that I’m averaging $0.30/click with right now) and Adult Webmaster Empire (hands-down my best converting/money-making adult sponsor - plus hey, they gave me a free $250 this month). So Kimo, whenever you actually do something with winebeerliquor.com or your mainstream toaster fan site or whatever the fuck, sign up for Widget Bucks, okay?
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 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?
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!