Like My Chemical Romance, the porn industry has never learned that silence is better than bullshit. In the same way the jizz-bizz’s financial strength is exaggerated to the benefit of people who want to tax it out of existence, the proportion of the webternet taken up with HOT TEEN ACTION! has always been less than… well 100%.

Probably.

According to the San Jose Mercury News (today’s headline ‘LIQUID AT ROOM TEMPERATURE AND POISONOUS!’) only 1% of web pages have adult content.

(Tip - skimning the other 99% improves your odds of finding the good-stuff considerably.)

The report which made the findings came out of the Justice Department, inadvertently striking a blow against groups convinced the online world’s a cesspool which will respond only to legislation. The numbers would look even less ’scary’ if all the pornographic content not being produced by pornographers - i.e. most of it - was taken into account.

Maybe the world would seem less pornographic if it was less good at giving us what we want?

The adult webmaster community does most of its business online. Separated by thousands of miles, often ashamed of what others might think, and frequently with the kind of looks best suited to email, the internet provides jizz-bizz geeks with a seemingly endless array of places to meet.

In all the years I’ve worked with internet porn I’ve stayed clear of adult webmaster message boards. They combine a Dungeons and Dragons like love of arcane rules, a Trekkies passion from meaningless jargon and the kind of social violence only people who never got picked for team sports are interested in. I regret to inform you that in recent weeks I’ve been sucked in. Not by witty repartee - there is none - but by the need to talk to the kind of people who know what a DVDA is without hitting Google (hint - it’s not the DVD Association). It’s been an eye-opener. Every board I’ve seen is dominated by a handful of obsessive posters who issue Papal bulls on everything from current affairs to lubricant (when current affairs are lubricant - happy day).

The big posters fall into two groups. Representatives of commercial interests pimping their products who tend to know their beans and lie mostly by omission, and nameless web jockeys who claim to run websites.

The web jockeys are the problem. Watching ‘Hackers‘ till you have to stop and masturbate, daily, does not an internet expert make. Unfortunately the boards give the opposite impression. The more time you spend messaging there the more respect other board members give you and the less time you have to do the stuff you claim to be expert in. Hence conversations lead by people who’d be rejected as unqualified by Jay and Silent Bob.

The level of misinformation, bad advice and pointless debating is staggering. The sad thing being the number of newbies who find the boards early in their development and believe they hold the key to success.

They don’t.

I’ve been stopped from entering conversations on boards because I wasn’t considered qualified to speak, even though the threads I wanted to join were about me.

If you’re a adult message board devotee do yourself a favor and make sure you pull out occasionally for long enough to get something done. When it comes to seeking advice I’d suggest posting questions to multiple boards. At least that way you stand a fair chance of hearing opinions which might not be in favor at your chosen hangout.

Learning what works and what doesn’t can’t be done while reading a thread on the merits of ‘My daughter’s fucking a nigger black dude’ which turns into a debate about O.J. Simpson.

Talking shops manufacture nothing but talk.

Carrie Underwood.

So I was watching that clip of Faith Hill at the country music awards and I noticed two things.

1. The Country Music Award looks like a dildo
2. Phonetically, the Country Music Awards abbreviates to ‘The Cunts’

Could this be random coincidence? I choose to believe not (images of Carrie Underwood’s shaven peach-fish open like a redneck’s banana split come courtesy of me - you’re welcome.)

On another note, this alleged clip of Britney Spears breathing meat is a sad reminder that sex is getting worse because of porn. Apparently this is video of a blow-job but, thanks to movies in which what looks good is traded for what feels good, she’s using more hand than mouth. She’s also heard the frenulum is the key to male pleasure and ladies I’ve got to tell you, that shit tickles. Why can’t we rename it a slow suck job for accuracy’s sake. This looks more like poor mic technique than good sex.

With oral like this their divorce seems predictable. Porn sex in the real world? No thank you…

I’m kinda behind on the Sugasm reposts in a way which would ge tme kicked off the thing permenatly if it hadn’t been my idea to start with.

Sorry. I fucked up. Still more good stuff to discover right!? WHO’S WITH ME!

While looking at the floor and mumbling something about ‘busy’…

Sugasm #52
Waxed (http://edinerotica.blogspot.com)
“After polishing off my testicles and perineum, Sam started on the area above and around my cock.”

Office Inspiration (http://emergingontheotherside.blogspot.com)
“You moans are quite loud now - presumably because everyone else has left the building and you don’t care.”

Home cooking, part 2 (http://erotischism.blogspot.com)
“A moan escaped her as the smooth richness hit her.”

Sugasm #53
PUMPkin Carving - Not Just For Kids! (http://shayssexcolumn.blogspot.com)
“Just carve a vaginal plug and a clit stimulator into the side of your pumpkin and rub your way to Halloween ecstasy.”

Dildo Dinner (http://radicalvixen.com/blog)
“Check to see if dildos are cooking up properly.”

A Role Play Confession for Halloween… (http://dirtydetails.blogspot.com)
“Her soft tongue danced around my thickness.”

Sugasm #54
My Response to The Government’s Pushing of Celibacy on Adults! (http://totalsensuality.blogspot.com)
“We should teach that SEX IS ABOUT PLEASURE.”

Flying in the Face of Censorship (http://www.suzanneportnoy.com)
“But these days, the UK is Europe’s frisky frontier, and the hotties are flying in from all over.”

Life as an Adult Cam Worker (http://www.model-chat.com)
“Experiment with days and times to find out what’s the best time for you to be on live.”

In the UK the last couple of years has seen the rise of a new type of men’s magazine aimed firmly at teens to twenties and designed to stimulate the smaller of men’s two brains.

Almost unbelievably, by staying shy of pubic hair these titles have managed to avoid being labeled ‘porn’ and enjoy distribution and sales opportunities traditional porn would jizz over.

Now the web’s following suit. The GooTube’s stuffed with teenage girls in micro-mini-is-it-there-kinis ‘dancing’ for our pleasure, and don’t try and tell me I’m the only person who’s filed ‘RocketBoom‘ under sex in their feed aggregator.

While ‘crossing over’ has long been the aim of porn stars, there are already a generation of celebrities in the UK who are only famous thanks to their comfort with sexual nudity, and yet avoid any of the ‘hooker’ stigma that goes along with stuff like this.

In 2006 the easiest way to use your sex to get rich and famous is to keep your panties on. When will America catch on and who’s going to embrace Demi-porn - low brow, high-nudity, humor, no muff - offline?

Digging to China should be the name of a porn film already but if not, digging China soon will be a concern of smut peddlers everywhere.

I have just been invited to the “4th China International Adult Toys and Reproductive Health Exhibition” which is presumably for the “make benefit of sexy Chinese peoples maximum sexy time.” It’s in the Shanghai - the only city (apart from London) with an anatomically correct phallus in its skyline.

Racist humor aside it’s a pretty impressive event. 85 companies and 6,600 sq m (that’s the same area as a million cartwheels all you medieval Yanks still using ‘English’ measurements) devoted to getting your East Asian groove on.

It’s also a timely reminder that the worlds largest market is also blissfully free of Judeo-Christian hang-ups about sex. In fact I should really say Christian hang-ups, as the Jews I know love to fuck and make up a massive chunk of the jizz bizz.

Japan’s porn market is well established and understood (at least by the Japanese). What floats the Chinese boat though? A billion new credit cards, and I, want to know…

Craigslist can be truly terrifying. I’m not sure I want to know anyone who gets off on other people in extreme pain and this seems to be exactly the kind of woman these guys are looking for. What’s sexy about that anyway and where’s the fun in hurting someone? Am I being terribly naive?

Burns I pick up in the kitchen can be too sensitive to touch for days. Brands in the butt, breast or belly? Jesus Christ on a fucking bicycle.

This post isn’t supposed to be an ad for these people but I guess if this is what floats your boat and you’re in London, go crazy… For more on what you might be in for, try this report. If you do take the plunge, be sure to report back.

The best of the sex blogs by the bloggers who blog them:

This Week’s Picks
To Tell or Not to Tell… (http://lipstickexplosion.com)
“Jane Falling claims it’s best not to tell, and she writes, ‘my identity as a prostitute is too serious a secret to trust with near-strangers.’”

Anti-Anti-Pornography, Part II (http://www.teen-porn-site.com/blog)

“One question I would like to ask them is - were there any rape or child abuse cases *before* the invention of pornography?”

To Shave or Not to Shave (http://www.model-chat.com)
“I stayed full bush for about my first two weeks as a live adult host.”

Mr. Sugasm Himself
Silence is better than bullshit (unless you’re a Gold-level member) (http://sugarbank.com)

Editors’ Choice
Pillow Talk: Interview with Razor Ryan (http://adelehaze.com)

More Sugasm

Crissy Moran.

I’ve spent the afternoon elbow deep in oil, string and plastic syringes. Sadly the only thing that got fucked was a 12lb Turkey.

I don’t use this blog to talk about my personal life, which is probably why most of you read it, but in porn that makes me the exception rather than the rule. Even if you ignore my winning personality and diamond abs.

If you read other porn blogs you might have noticed a recent wave of religious recrimination. Predictably Luke Ford remains the jizz-bizz’s own confused fundamentalist faux-Jew, but Donny Pauling has recently decided that Jesus is better than vagina and Crissy Moran is very publicly working out the issues raised by a Dickensian childhood.

I feel for performers like Crissy. When I last saw her in a professional environment (back when she was in softcore) she had the glazed tunnel vision of someone who is as unsure of what they’re doing as they are determined to do it. Worse for her, she’s sold her image and her name which now means her old site, CrissyMoran.com, is running independently and against her wishes.

Pornographers like Donny don’t deserve any sympathy. Only people blind to other people’s feelings (that’d be sociopaths) knowingly collaborate in other people’s self-destructive decisions. Being ready to shoot confused, angry people who aren’t aware of the consequences of their actions is like giving tattoos to drunk people. Porn doesn’t have to be a messy business and if you’re open to running a ’sticky floor’ operation the consequences are well-documented and obvious. Pornographers who only discover the people around them are hurt and confused when they find religion can’t have been paying much attention before.

Porn doesn’t hurt people, assholes hurt people. Crissy and Donny are forgetting that.

(No pictures of Crissy involved with a Turkey were available. Sorry).

PS. Enjoy your food and don’t deep-fry inside okay?

Last year I started a lot of projects, launched a number of blogs and made plans to launch a number of others. Many of those plans were public and to the careful observer of the Sugarverse this year might look like a failure as I repeatedly put things on hiatus, changed direction, and disappeared for weeks on end.

Here’s what happened and how it taught me to make lemonade.

My plan was to build a network of blogs, I knew blogs grew fastest when they had a lot of posts, and I was crushingly aware I didn’t have the time to write 40-50 posts a day. The answer seemed obvious. Gather a team of talented volunteers and trade shares of the profits for their time. As long as blogs with more posts have more readers, more readers mean more pageviews and more pageviews meant more revenue, a bet on a fast growing blog looked like a no brainer. I’d give up a little profit and gain a team of people I couldn’t afford to pay, united in a desire to succeed with blogs they had a stake in. Trading a few months work for a successful network was a great deal for all of us.

Did you see my mistake? I’ll give you a clue - I’m a glass half full kind of guy.

If you guessed ‘a few months work’ stop gloating and pour yourself a drink. Naively, I asked for three months to turn a profit and should have asked for 12. A wise man would have asked for 18 and an accountant a full 24. Without dollars advertising or Googlebatics you have to be prepared for the long haul when building a site. Every reader is a relationship and relationships take time. When I promised a quick return I assigned myself the increasingly difficult task of motivating people who felt mislead and let down.

Meanwhile the growth that wasn’t happening fast enough required two sets of server upgrades to manage and all my time for weeks on end. The result was a system which costs thousands to maintain and which made profit sharing even harder to achieve than the steady growth suggested.

Personally, without the blogging income I’d predicted I spent more of my time on planes having lame conversations with celebutards, international conglomerates and other people interested in my fecal veneering ability. Every time I spent less time on the network things got worse and I had to fill the gaps with other jobs.

Finally, forced to slim things to the bone after losing most of my volunteers, I put off some of my own plans (e.g. podcasting), crunched the website statistics through Excel and went to work. I had no time for niceties, and simply focused on what I could show to be effective. It wasn’t pretty but I was confident it was right.

A graph of the year is the best way to see what happened:

Going from a team of 20 to one of less than five we managed to begin a 60 day cycle of doubling traffic which continues to this day. The ’secret’ is simple enough to put into a handful of bullet points.

5 keys to rapid growth

• Predict the worst - When working anyone (including yourself) find the people who’d do it for free and then tell them they’ll probably never see a dime They’ll be thrilled when you succeed, work hard until you do, and give you time to make smart mistakes.
• Change your mind - Sticking to a plan which isn’t working is a bad way to run a war and a worse way to run a website. Being prepared to admit you were wrong is a big step towards being right.
• Spread yourself thick - There’s only so much time you can devote to any project and the more projects you have the worse job you’ll do overall. Putting things in storage is better than letting them rot in the open air. Don’t be afraid to step back and regroup.
• Be patient - YouTube happened fast, as long as you discount its founders university education and prior careers at PayPal. Steady growth isn’t anything to be ashamed of and leads to all the same places. Let things progress organically and if you can’t accelerate them, enjoy the ride - you’re moving in the right direction.
• Watch your data - There are many ways to look at numbers but most people don’t get far beyond bar graphs. If you don’t look at your data in the right way you’ll miss what you should be seeing and any opportunity to learn from it. If there’s ‘nothing to see’, turn everything round and look again. Graphs with logarithmic scales are useful. Clusters on point graphs mean something. If you’re not sure where to turn you probably don’t need better data, just better ways of looking at it.

If I said I’d have predicted the last 6-8 months I’d be lying and if I said I had no regrets I’d be stupid. That said, it’s been the most interesting, most productive and most exciting year of my life. Sometimes ‘experience’ means taking your lumps and learning where you went wrong. I’m pretty experienced and learning from me is less painful than making my mistakes again. Good luck.