Did you know? An individual adult entertainer usually makes $200,000 to $350,000 per year. A heavily marketed, niche adult website with creative, unique content can make up to $1 million per year. The average investment in marketing & publicity is about 15-20% of the gross income.

Being ethical and being legitimate is the first step in being successful.

Be More Than A Designer: Be A Developer, A Marketing Strategist, An Advisor and A Visionary. Anyone designing adult websites should be able to build just about anything. PHP, CSS, HTML, Java – I don’t care, you better know it and be able to do it well. I am not a designer, I am a marketing strategist; but my design team – Ope/Zig (the best) – can do anything a client needs them to do. They make it a point to test and demo all the adult related content management systems out there. By doing so, they know the best platform for any client site. If a client comes to us and loves what they have, we can work with it, but we work to improve it. If they don’t like it, they identify what isn’t working and develop several alternatives for them. If we have to, we will build what they want from scratch.

I strive to be more than designer, I strive to be a visionary. I not only create a site, I develop a strategy and a vision for the client. Now some clients aren’t ready for it, whether it’s a financial limitation or a mental step they aren’t to make yet, I make sure concept is there from day one. I visualize their BRAND and what it could be, even if they themselves don’t see it yet.

You have to ask yourself, “What is this company or individual’s five-year plan?” Next, work backwards from there. You are still building their brand, even if it’s an individual person and a name. You have to consider what would hurt that brand, what would dilute it and what would make it stronger. Throw in the average shelf life of adult name/product popularity and it’s some work!

If you have an idea that could be “The Next Step” and blow/transform their image into another lucrative income stream, you must present it to them, even if it’s risky. If you don’t present it, you are a bad marketer and don’t deserve their business. You need to be a visionary and an adviser because things in the adult market become tired quickly. It’s your duty to continually maximize their ROI; that’s what you are being paid for.

Have Standards and Integrity. This is where humanity comes in and I gotta get gritty. Our clients are people; treat them like people.

1. If you can’t get over nudity and provocative content, then this line work isn’t for you.
2. If you think you can use your status as an adult webmaster/marketer to try and meet adult professionals for your “personal” gain, then this line of work isn’t for you.
3. If you can’t imagine doing an online video series focused on selling couture sex toys and leveraging social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook to promote it and drive online sales – then EXIT STAGE LEFT.

What I Am Saying: Treat your adult clients like your corporate clients. Put all you know into practice and give them tangible results based on clear, ethical marketing practices. Make sure they have the proper tools to manage their content can do all the things they want to themselves. It allows you fill in the services that they fall short on and make you a more effective resource.

Play Nice With Others. There are great adult marketers out there. Play nice and make friends, you never know when you are going to need them. I keep in contact with the people I know have ethical standards and we trade and refer work whenever we need to. In fact, make sure you follow @PBVixen and @MasterRobyn on Twitter, these people have mad skills and I would work with them and for them anytime.

Breaking into The Adult Marketing & Web Development Business

Recently, I’ve received a lot of questions about delving into the adult marketing via Twitter and Facebook; the questions I am asked most are:

1. Is there good money in it?
2. Is it hard to do?
3. What do you do?
4. How do you develop a clientele?

The simple answers are:

1. Yes, there is money in it. Just like any business.
2. Yes, it is hard to do. Just like any business
3. I do the same thing you do for mainstream clients.
4. You develop clientele just like you do any business.

These questions are just the icing on the cake, what “inquiring marketing minds” actually pondering and asking is how to penetrate the adult industry and creating a successful business. They want to know if it can it worth the time and effort. Well, guess what? Any smart, determined marketer or developer can create a successful adult business, but they have to have a strategic plan to do so.

Here are my tips for deciding if you should start an adult marketing company:

Tip #1: Don’t approach the adult industry like it’s some secret Illuminati society that must be infiltrated. There are multiple ways to enter it: networking, emailing, trade shows, etc. It’s the same as any industry; it takes time and a targeted, strategic approach. Pick on that is most comfortable for you and go from there. For you online types, my next suggestion in perfect!

Tip #2: Set up an alternate Twitter, go raid my Twit-O-Dex (@CallieSimms) and start following adult entertainers, designers and other professionals that look interesting (@AudaciaRay, @VictoriaLane, @DarkGracie, @MasterRobyn, @Mindchaotica, @KimberleeCline and @PBVixen are a must). Start reading blogs, looking at web sites, check links and slowly start to comment. Just like it takes a website about six months to fully integrate into the Google sandbox and be allowed to play, it is the same for any new person in the adult scene. When you find something that tickles your fancy, proceed to Tip #3!

Insider Tip #3: Find something interesting? Go Google the crap out the thing that made you go – “OH!” and start studying it. Need inspiration? Check my side links, I put the stuff I really like there. Find a niche that works for you and start there, then grow.

Well, the illustrious Alex Suze has created a very cool site - Sex Toy Buzz - that reviews products, video, literature and services that claim to be the best and puts them to the test.

Sex Toys Buzz is the latest venture from the team behind the incredibly successful AlexSuze.com site. The Sex Toys Buzz approach is built on years of developing trusted relationships with international adult product producers and retailers.

The Sex Toys Buzz philosophy is based on the belief that outstanding presentation of your products, visually and in terms of SEO, is crucial. It’s no good just throwing your ad in a link farm or having your product review buried on some un-searchable back page.

What I like: Clean and uncluttered layout and the adult toy reviews are complete and passionate. Reviews are performed in-house by and created around each product, not constrained by a list of standard criteria. The Alex Suze team understand that every product is different – and their reviews reflect that.

Nifty too: They’ve created professional-standard videos for many of the products they review. Hello YouTube generation.

Marketing Coo & Relevance: Alex Suze’s videos generate 25-30,000 views per month - that translates into great sales! So if you’re a manufacturer, service provider or retailer in the adult industry seeking to increase your profile, this a great way to or a consumer to get some hellified exposure!

For everyone else & all round sexual deviants: You now have another outlet for honest sex toy reviews.

So here is my favorite article this month “10 Skills You Need To Success At Almost Anything”, a great little ditty about professional success.  It’s for the webmasters and business owners proactive and ready to take action in getting themselves noticed.

- Callie Simms

—

What does it take to succeed? A positive attitude? Well, sure, but that’s hardly enough. The Law of Attraction? The Secret? These ideas might act as spurs to action, but without the action itself, they don’t do much.

Success, however it’s defined, takes action, and taking good and appropriate action takes skills. Some of these skills (not enough, though) are taught in school (not well enough, either), others are taught on the job, and still others we learn from general life experience.

Below is a list of general skills that will help anyone get ahead in practically any field, from running a company to running a gardening club. Of course, there are skills specific to each field as well – but my concern here is with the skills that translate across disciplines, the ones that can be learned by anyone in any position.

1. Public Speaking

The ability to speak clearly, persuasively, and forcefully in front of an audience – whether an audience of 1 or of thousands – is one of the most important skills anyone can develop. People who are effective speakers come across as more comfortable with themselves, more confident, and more attractive to be around. Being able to speak effectively means you can sell anything – products, of course, but also ideas, ideologies, worldviews. And yourself – which means more opportunities for career advancement, bigger clients, or business funding.

2. Writing

Writing well offers many of the same advantages that speaking well offers: good writers are better at selling products, ideas, and themselves than poor writers. Learning to write well involves not just mastery of grammar but the development of the ability to organize one’s thoughts into a coherent form and target it to an audience in the most effective way possible. Given the huge amount of text generated by almost every transaction – from court briefs and legislation running into the thousands of pages to those foot-long receipts you get when you buy gum these days – a person who is a master of the written word can expect doors to open in just about every field.

3. Self-Management

If success depends of effective action, effective action depends on the ability to focus your attention where it is needed most, when it is needed most. Strong organizational skills, effective productivity habits, and a strong sense of discipline are needed to keep yourself on track.

4. Networking

Networking is not only for finding jobs or clients. In an economy dominated by ideas and innovation, networking creates the channel through which ideas flow and in which new ideas are created. A large network, carefully cultivated, ties one into not just a body of people but a body of relationships, and those relationships are more than just the sum of their parts. The interactions those relationships make possible give rise to innovation and creativity – and provide the support to nurture new ideas until they can be realized.

5. Critical Thinking

We are exposed to hundreds, if not thousands, of times more information on a daily basis than our great-grandparents were. Being able to evaluate that information, sort the potentially valuable from the trivial, analyze its relevance and meaning, and relate it to other information is crucial – and woefully under-taught. Good critical thinking skills immediately distinguish you from the mass of people these days.

6. Decision-Making

The bridge that leads from analysis to action is effective decision-making – knowing what to do based on the information available. While not being critical can be dangerous, so too can over-analyzing, or waiting for more information before making a decision. Being able to take in the scene and respond quickly and effectively is what separates the doers from the wannabes.

7. Math

You don’t have to be able to integrate polynomials to be successful. However, the ability to quickly work with figures in your head, to make rough but fairly accurate estimates, and to understand things like compound interest and basic statistics gives you a big lead on most people. All of these skills will help you to analyze data more effectively – and more quickly – and to make better decisions based on it.

8. Research

Nobody can be expected to know everything, or even a tiny fraction of everything. Even within your field, chances are there’s far more that you don’t know than you do know. You don’t have to know everything – but you should be able to quickly and painlessly find out what you need to know. That means learning to use the Internet effectively, learning to use a library, learning to read productively, and learning how to leverage your network of contacts – and what kinds of research are going to work best in any given situation.

9. Relaxation

Stress will not only kill you, it leads to poor decision-making, poor thinking, and poor socialization. So be failing to relax, you knock out at least three of the skills in this list – and really more. Plus, working yourself to death in order to keep up, and not having any time to enjoy the fruits of your work, isn’t really “success”. It’s obsession. Being able to face even the most pressing crises with your wits about you and in the most productive way is possibly the most important thing on this list.

10. Basic Accounting

It is a simple fact in our society that money is necessary. Even the simple pleasures in life, like hugging your child, ultimately need money – or you’re not going to survive to hug for very long. Knowing how to track and record your expenses and income is important just to survive, let alone to thrive. But more than that, the principles of accounting apply more widely to things like tracking the time you spend on a project or determining whether the value of an action outweighs the costs in money, time, and effort. It’s a shame that basic accounting isn’t a required part of the core K-12 curriculum.

What Else?

Surely there are more important skills I’m not thinking of (which is probably why I’m not telling Bill Gates what to do!) – what are they? What have I missed? What lessons have you learned that were key to your successes – and what have you ignored to your peril?

Blog Action Day is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. Our aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion.

Global issues like poverty are extremely complex. There is no simple, clear answer. By asking thousands of different people to give their viewpoints and opinions, Blog Action Day creates an extraordinary lens through which to view these issues. Each blogger brings their own perspective and ideas. Each blogger posts relating to their own blog topic. And each blogger engages their audience differently

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

Kudos to Colleen & BuzzNetworker for posting this! Blog Action Day has several resources to assist bloggers through the event as well.

When do they know it’s time to retire? Is there a specific way to retire? Or should they just take a long, open ended hiatus?

Is there a plan for retirement and leaving the adult entertainment industry?

Can you successfully leave this industry and never come back?

These are all the questions an adult entertainer asks his or her self every year. Should it be this year or should they be in one more?

Retirement is a complicated decision; there are no simple answers.

To me, retirement has always been a personal decision that’s based on a person’s mental state of mind and what point they are at on their life path. When the time came for me to make this decision, I spent a great deal of time researching retirement. I talked to women I know who have successfully retired, I talked to women who have retired and come back.

And what I’ve surmised is that, once you are part of the adult industry, it is very difficult to leave it. Finding “mainstream work” is often difficult because of the stigma that attached to the profession, adding “Pornstar” to your resume when interviewing for a job isn’t actually helpful in most cases. Many entertainers choose to omit it, but then it creates gaps in their resumes that they then have to lie to fill in.

In my research, I found this absolutely amazing post on Kink.com’s Blog that hit the nail on the head (they are the leader in Fetish Kink porn and now I believe they deserve some kudos for showing another side to their talent’s lives). As you can see, the women are women are very different in their daily lives and dress than they are on camera, just like any mainstream actor you see on the big screen.

Here are my opinions and beliefs on retirement:

In the adult industry, you have a shelf life. For a porn stars, it’s usually 2-3 years (there are always exceptions, if they become a major brand with a huge following, there is a lot more to leverage) on film. Then they usually become sex workers afterwards or start directing and producing themselves.

For a person who’s never been on the camera end of the adult business and entered the business as a stripper, prostitute or dominatrix, it’s a bit longer. My belief is that one has a “shelf life” of about five years (there are some amazing exceptions to the rule). That is based on a few factors, including: time in the industry, growing/refining/changing the services offered (and experimentation with the brand that is one’s professional persona) and the area in which an entertainer works. It’s a harsh reality, but in general, the clients that get used to men and women in a certain area and eventually will get tired of them. The area dries up and the entertainer has to relocate and/or reinvent their persona (but that’s another blog I will write at another time).

I started in the adult industry in 2004 and worked in different aspects of it and I still work. But in 2007, I started planning my exit strategy. I took my background that I had tabled for a few years and combined it with my (sometimes hard learned) adult entertainment knowledge and started my own adult marketing and web development firm. I continued my “professional” working as I simultaneously worked to develop and establish a company with a unique business approach and voice.

Two weeks ago, I decided (as I thought through all the questions above) it was time to retire myself and focus on what I want most, which is to continue growing the company. So my own retirement is based on personal goals and desire and wanting the next step.

It’s scary really, I feel what I am doing is still in its infancy, I am further along thank I think. Mainly because of my transparent business style and sheer neurotic drive to create the next enriching part of my life. I am lucky to be able to combine my adult experiences with the education I received in college (marketing/English degree) and create a company built upon my passions.

So here I come world, an retired escort/dominatrix/3-porn movie star - turned amazing adult marketer & adult SEO guru.

And here’s to all those who’ve retired and dared to to take the next step.

And if that retirement brought you back, awesome. Kudos for taking the time to discover what was best for you for a short period of time. Worked should be based on passion, no matter what work it is.

NOTE: I promise a more in depth exploration of adult industry retirement. There is too much to be crammed into on one post.

Our Goal For Our Clients is Business Success

We want all of our clients to be successful, so when their businesses have grown by astronomical proportions, we want them to come back to us to when they are ready take their prosperous business even further. We want to be the company they choose when they are ready for a custom design & marketing solution. The design company they will know and trust in moving forward with. The best adult marketing solution for their business for years to come.

Website/Blog Design packages are priced at $450 - 800 and include semi-custom design, hosting, copy editing, keyword word optimization, SEO marketing set-up. To learn more, please visit ExoticBlogDesign.com.

So I recently starting reading Stephanie Chandler, an remarkably business savvy woman and self publisher. Stephanie has found remarkable ways to make money via blogging, eBooks and online products. Her most notable eBook, FROM ENTREPRENEUR TO INFOPRENEUR: MAKE MONEY WITH BOOKS, E-BOOKS AND INFORMATION PRODUCTS, is more than read worthy.

Like an addict & withdrawals, we are unpacifiable until the whale stops its fail and our Twitter returns.

Well, what happens when Hitler’s twitter fails (it’s supposed to be funny, not upsetting).

Click: HERE

To me, the term “high class” can’t and shouldn’t be defined by rates on a woman’s website. High-class is defined by personality, the perception of  one’s self and a women’s view of her SELF WORTH.

- Callie

Here is the blog post:

I’m officially over “high class escort” hysteria.

I get it, we all get it: these women charge a lot per hour, therefore they must be the best looking, and the best lay, and their sexy, glamorous lifestyle makes them seem more on par with celebrities than it does other sex workers. Except for the fact that those assumptions often aren’t even true. And, sadly, “high class” callgirls are the only sex workers allowed a voice in the media, the only group to whom they will regularly give a platform. Not only is this particular brand of sex worker visibility criminally exclusive, but it’s perpetuating a series of ugly stereotypes, even when the callgirls in question are being contracted to allegedly dispel myths about their work, as is the case with this Salon “Ask A Callgirl” feature. Asking questions like “what about Belle can you relate to” doesn’t actually address any of the problems inherent in the media’s understanding of a “high class escort.”

First, let’s stop with the “upscale” and “high class” nonsense. Using those terms as a descriptor for sex workers is classist and inaccurate. Just come out and say “expensive.” Would anyone actually call “Kirsten” from the Spitzer scandal “high class”? I have nothing but love for the girl, and I wish we lived in a world where she could have been spared the entirely unethical “outing” by the media, but she’s preparing to do a reality show on E!. She stole or at the very least used someone else’s driver’s license to appear on Girls Gone Wild. She’s entirely entitled to do what she wants, but she’s not a poster child for elegant behavior. Class and expense should not be confused. (Do we have to read some Edith Wharton novels together and discuss the garish excesses of the nouveau riche to prove this point?) And why is anyone using a euphemistic term for a sex worker’s price in the first place? There are plenty of other aspects of escorting you’ll want to save the euphemisms for.

Next, for all the laypeople reading this, I want to assure you that many expensive escorts do not look like supermodels. They have shapely bodies, well-groomed hair, freshly done nails, nice clothes, and, like most fashion models, they’re probably white. But they might not be girls you’d even look at twice on the street. I’m not saying they’re not beautiful. I’m saying that what our society recognizes as being quantifiable, financially reward-able beauty doesn’t really apply here. It’s the wrong rubric for judging price when it comes to all sex workers, not just the expensive ones. Please, trust someone who knows. I could ask the pricey escorts I know to line up among women who charge half as much, and you wouldn’t be able to parse who’s who. With that said, let’s also not forget that many of the women making hundreds of dollars an hour are working with agents who take a considerable cut. The escort is still making bank, especially when you factor in tips and gifts, but if she’s working for an agency, only half of that fee is going towards maintaining her glamorous lifestyle. The other half is for the glamorous madam.

And the misconceptions don’t end there. The obvious media assumption is that girls who charge the most per hour make the most money, although I’ve had several “high class escort” friends comment that their route is not the way to make the most money, and if they wanted to make more they would charge less. Charge less? Yes! Let me school those of you who don’t know on why that is.

Women who charge hundreds of dollars per hour—at least, the independent ones—often don’t do this as a full-time job. They might be seeing clients only once every two weeks, or even once a month. It’s like a gym owner charging $400 an hour for a her private training sessions. She’s not charging that because there are people lined up around the block clamoring to cough up $1200 a week to do some bicep curls. She’s doing that because she doesn’t want to spend most of her week training people, and when she does, she wants it to be damn well worth her time.

Here’s a fact: the less an escort charges, the more people she can see. If she lowers her rate by just $50, suddenly dozens of men who thought they couldn’t afford her before will be ready to book an appointment. Some women don’t want that—they want their prices to be a means of screening. And they don’t want to see multiple men in a week, or a day. But other women just want to keep up the volume, because they know that there’s money in volume. If Escort A charges $500 an hour and sees only one person a day for two hours, while Escort B charges $250 an hour and sees four people, it’s true that they’ve made the same amount of money at the end of the day. But guess who’s more likely to have four more people ready to see her tomorrow, and who may be waiting three days for her next date? How many people have a regular $500 of discretionary income? How many people have $250?

Understand that I’m not impugning anyone’s appearance or financial success. I know there are escorts who were models, look like models, are prettier than models. And I know there are women who charge a lot and are in high demand. But I want to do away with “high class escort” in it’s current incarnation, to do away with the package of assumptions of which it’s composed. In the end, it’s just another way to minimize sex worker voices and to erase the complexity from a tangled profession. It’s just another way to misrepresent us and the work we do.