A polite conversation between a commercial smutsites nuker and a commercial smutsite owner
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By fravia+, May 1998
~

Hey man, I found your page really interesting.  I'm glad that there are
still some sites with REAL content out there. Ok, the reason I did
e-mail you though is because I don't know that you have really seen the
other side of an adult web-page.  Now, I agree with a lot of the stuff
that you said concerning smut pages, but not all of it.  For one, I have
NEVER spammed the news-groups or spammed with e-mail, and I don't
personally know any webmasters that do.  I'm not blind to the fact that
many of them DO participate in this kind of crap, but it is a gross
generalization to say that we ALL do it.  In my eyes, no self-respecting
web-master would spam, and I know that Many others share this opinion.
Ok, secondly, you make us sound .. well .. evil.  I got into it because
I needed some cash, and I know what I look for in an adult site, so I
figured I could try to give that to other people. Also,  I use an AVS
for two reasons:  First, to keep minors out (Isn't that a worthy thing?)
and secondly to make some cash.  Everyone needs to make a living
somehow, right?  Ok, another thing that I thought was kind of bogus
about what you said was:  "You steal a great number of bad scanned smut
images from the newsgroups (where
        anybody could get them for free, of course, but that's not the
point for you)."  Again, any self-respecting webmaster owns the
copyright to Any and ALL material he uses.  And, I know that I have
invested MUCH MUCH more than the $100 to Internic into my page.  Server
costs are high when you start getting 3000 plus hits/day.  And, when you
said that most users don't know that they could get the images for free;
well, although many don't know that .. some do, but even though you CAN
get it for free, it is so much easier and nicer to have it all layed out
there for you (thumbnailed and all).  So, the way I see it, some people
probably think:  "Hmm, do I want to waste my time searching for this
crap, or just Pay $16 per year and have it always at my fingertips??".
Which is due solely to the fact that Many Many people (especially us
Americans) are pretty damn lazy.
    So, in closing, I think that if someone wants to pay me some money
to view my collection, that is their decision, and it is not much
different than subscribing to an adult magazine.  Again, I am very
against spam, and I am very very against people who use false
advertisement to sell their product.  I believe that the internet is a
great great place to do business of all kinds, but many people do take
it way too far, and they are the ones who ruine it for us all.  Maybe,
instead of telling people to just target smut-sites at random (they're
All evil?!?!) .. you should have people do a little research on the
site.  Find out what kind of advertisement the site is using, and if it
is spam (evil) or whatever, or if they are charging people 20 bucks to
get into a site which is just pure crap, then more power to you.  Take
'em down! However, those of us who are honest web-masters , well, I
think that we should be able to do our business and not have to worry
about people fucking us over just because someone else gave us a bad
rep.  What do you think about all of this?  I look forward to hearing
from you :)

Sincerely,

Phil



fravia+ wrote:

> I think you could do a free site with nice thumbnails and everything and
> get more cash from the advertisement there (after a while, of course, but
> a good FREE site would quickly get THOUSAND hits)  than from the
> various smut-key orgs for your paying site.
> I don't suppose you can make much money now, lost in an ocean of
> similar (useless) paying sites, yet please contradict me if I'm mistaken.
> Anyway I know of a guy that had a (completely free) site on film
> actresses of the THIRTIES (not naked, just film-scenes from silent
> films) and had more than 10.000 hits per day (growing fast). I know that
> the (few) ads he carried give him a little money (25 dollars per day... not
>
> much, but, hey, we DON'T want to turn the web in a commercial place, see).
>
> Now let me know what YOU think about this.
>
> later
> fravia+


Well, in a way you are correct, there is a lot of money to be made in banner
advertisement.  However, I have already gone down that road, and the work
required to get 3000+ people to come to my site each day was not worth it.
See, when I got 3000+ people a day coming to my FREE site, that would mean
about 25-40 dollars per day, which wasn't bad.  However, with an AVS I am
making between 60 and 90 dollars per day and getting LESS hits than before.
Plus, I am pretty sure that it will soon be against the law in the US to have
an adult site without SOME form of Adult Verification (Maybe it already is).
And, I'm not trying to sound paranoid, as I know that there is really nothing
the gov can do to patrol cyber-space, but that  is just another issue which I'd
rather not have to deal with.  Also, while I am makig OK money from my site
right now,  some of my fellow web-masters (some, ie not many at all .. but
there are some) Are making upwards of $100,000/year just off of an AVS.  Now,
if you ask me, that is really good money.
    I think that your friend with the 30's movie actress page is a
frickin'genius.  What a great idea.  If I could think of something, ANYTHING,
besides porn that I could sell legally on the internet (without putting a ton
of money into it, and still making at least as much as I am now, etc.) .. I
would jump at it.  I wonder where your friend came up with the idea for a page
like that?
    Ok, I have a couple questions for you.  Hope ya don't mind:

First, do you think that taking down pay-sites is really the BEST thing you
could do for the internet?  Wouldn't it be better to take out kiddy-porn
peddlers or something.  I mean, people who are REALLY hurting other people? (I
used to think that kiddie porn on the Internet was just a myth, until one of my
friends pointed out all of the chan's devoted to it on IRC .. it is disgusting
how many there are.  THOSE are the real bad guys).

2.  Have you ever been personally ripped off by a porn site, or do you know
someone who has?  (ie, paid to get in then found pure crap) Because, it's not
like anyone is saying to the person browsing the page:  "Hey, this material is
great!  If you don't sign up, we will kill you.  Death threat death threat!".
No one is forcing people to sign up for their site.  Yeah?

Ok, that is all I have for now.

Thanks for replying to the first message, and I hope you reply to this one too
:)

-Phil

(c) 2000: [fravia+], all rights reserved