Jodie Marsh.

When a glamour model has to resort to reality TV in order to find a mate something is very wrong. Jodie Marsh, who appears to indulge the same surgeon as Jenna Jameson and is rumored to have put the stink in skank, is taking her search for a wifebeater to MTV, because a televised competition to decide who enters your pussy is clearly the smartest way to start a lifelong relationship.

Joking aside, that wedding dress says, I’m not just a pair of tits, respect me for who I am. I predict a long and happy marriage.

Congratulations Jodie!!!

(via The Superficial)

Popularity: 29% [?]

Savanna Samson and family.

While Jenna can’t seem to catch a break in the press nowdays, Savanna Samson seems to have assumed the pornster ‘it’s okay to like’ role for the mainstream media.

If you can look past New York Magazine’s “Welcome to 1998″ discovery of the MILF phenomenon (or that Savanna’s really a MESS, “Mother Everyone Says is Sexy”, in my view) you can’t help but notice the huge plug her work’s getting outside a traditional porn context.

Surprisingly, and hard to immediately understand, Samson’s also broken the pornster taboo against publicly identifying your children and posed with her husband and son. Does she realize her kid’s now going to have to answer questions on his mom’s role in ‘Hole-a-Holic‘ for or the next 20 years? Not smart.

First porn’s biggest name in wine, now an officially sanctioned MILF, Savanna’s rise continues without anything significant happening in her career. If you’re going to hire PR, this is the kind of coverage they should be getting you, shame about the kid – poor bastard.

Popularity: 31% [?]

Jenna Jameson.

Jenna Jameson, who currently looks like Napoleon Dynamite dressed as Skeletor with tits, has decided to stop ignoring the increasingly obvious crisis of her physical condition and says she’s trying to gain weight.

“I got pretty skinny for a little bit. My lightest was about 92 pounds. I ate today!” Then on her way home, one of Jenna’s friends handed her a corndog, to which she announced, “I love hot dogs on a stick. So fucking sexy!”

(The accompanying picture shows Jenna about to take a bite out of her imaginary corndog. She spent the next half hour trying to puke it back up.)

That puts Jenna, sans implants, under 90lbs.

She sounds like a parent junkie who tells you they’re trying to kick the smack. Just ‘deciding’ to gain more weight almost certainly won’t do it. She can afford to get treatment and I hope she does. Eating disorders and drug addictions kill people.

Popularity: 29% [?]

Jenna Jameson.

I’ve been to LA from London twice in ten days and returning to earth can’t click a link for seeing the MSB (MainStream Blogosphere) freaking out over Jenna J’s uncomely, newly visible, bones.

Here’s what’s happening.

1. Anyone who’s had a boob-job knows plastic surgery and weight-loss don’t mix. All that stretched skin and scar tissue looks rough when it starts to sag.
2. Jenna’s had a very well publicized meth habit and meth, makes you thin. I’m not saying Jenna’s back on meth but damn is she thin.
3. Jenna needs better PR. The ’stress’ excuse for sudden weight loss is like the ‘exhaustion’ one for sudden loss of consciousness. If stress made you thin gyms would replace all those mirrors with pictures of tigers and personal trainers would creep up on you dressed as death. Not eating makes you thin. Stress has nothing to do with it (have you seen Al Gore?)

She’s falling apart faster than a clown car on a cobblestone street. Sad, but I’ve got to say I like this outfit. Very Sydney Bristow.

Popularity: 35% [?]

People are shocked – SHOCKED! – by recent pictures of Jenna Jameson looking, to borrow a medical phrase, rough. They’re asking ‘what happened!?’ to this presumably legendary beauty. I feel it’s my duty to provide some answers.

Firstly it’s worth remembering that unless you’ve met her when she’s not expecting to be photographed, as I have, you’ve never really seen Jenna Jameson. 99% of images of her are heavily retouched and as she’s not subject to constant attention from the paparazzi you’ve actually seen more of Angelina Jolie sans make-up than you have Jenna J.

The digital camera’s used by press photographers pick up more detail than the film cameras they’ve replaced and we view the images online where zooming and cropping is easy. It’s a tough gig when you’re expected to drip glamour and sex appeal. I wouldn’t fancy my chances under equivalent scrutiny. Yes Jenna looks awful in these shots but you would too. Maybe worse. Now I’ve got the niceties out of the way here’s the answer to everyones question.

What’s happened to Jenna Jameson?

• Multiple breast enlargements
• Collagen lip injections
• Cheek implants
• A nose job
• A chin implant
• A facelift

Take a look at the Jenna pictures here, taken approximately a decade apart, and see for yourself. Most of this is pretty common knowledge.

Porn years are like dog years but they count for three, not seven. By that measure Jenna looks pretty good for a woman pushing sixty.

Popularity: 28% [?]

The Onion consistently produces the best satire in any form (arguably South Park matches it hit-for-hit). Written by misanthropes porn is often mentioned and parodied and beautifully, unlike those who cop-out and approach porn as a faux outsider with an ‘Isn’t it weird?’ attitude, The Onion consistently makes jokes that are funnier the more you know about the industry.

After much re-reading of their archives, here’s my list of the five best pieces of porn satire they’ve ever done.

1. Nation’s Porn Stars Demand To Be Fucked Harder
   Chosen because:
   Before stunt porn made large insertions and degradation the bar against which porn movies are judged, hard-fucking was what it was all about. They correctly attached Jenna Jameson to ‘Wicked Pictures’ (at time of writing) proving they knew what they were talking about – even cooler.
2. Ironic Porn Purchase Leads To Unironic Ejaculation
   Chosen because:
   I’m the guy who’s always asked to bring the porn to stag parties ‘for a laugh’, who’s then asked if I have anything harder when the copy of ‘Fuck My Dirty Eyelids’ I arrive with is derided for being too pretty.
3. Porn and HIV protection
   Chosen because:
   Almost all the deliberately humorous steps they suggest for preventing the spread of HIV have been seriously suggested, while the second to last suggestion would actually work, and is thus also the funniest. Pure genius.
4. Actress Leaves Porn Past Behind With New Cinemax Erotic Thriller
   Chosen because:
   Sometimes you only need a headline.
5. Part Written Specifically With Sylvia Saint In Mind
   Chosen because:
   Until you meet the people who write a porn movies for a living, it’s easy to believe they’re in on the joke and don’t take their work seriously. Then, as they tell you Madonna ripped off their last gonzo flick for video ideas and that Finnegan’s Wake is the basis for their latest opus, you realize only stabbing the cretin in the neck is going to stop the asshole from breeding little tard-babies named Jack and Bauer.

Popularity: 34% [?]

“Pretty much everyone I ever meet tries to fuck me. I don’t know if it’s because they think I’m attractive, or they want to tell their friends they’ve fucked ‘The World’s Most Famous Porn Star’” – Jenna Jameson

Popularity: 34% [?]

Eva Green.

A: Women have a shorter shelf-life.

Not very funny but trade the word ‘woman’ for ‘pornstar’ and it’s true.

Call me callow, but given the choice between a healthy, happy normal looking woman with a wicked laugh, and an Eva-Green-alike with the same character I’m probably going to take the hotty. I want a Ferrari more than a Ford. I’m happier with Tag Heur than Swatch, and I don’t think comparing my feelings about women with my fondness for high-end consumer goods makes me a sexist (what’s wrong with being sexy anyway?)

I’m safe in the knowledge I speak for the majority – if you’re the kind of person who think looks aren’t important you’re either gorgeous and stupid, or ugly and bitter. Models will never look like ‘average’ people because average isn’t what we aspire to be, you may as well argue for average artists, athletes or actors. Exceptional people are humanity’s muse and looking at our stupid fat asses it’s clear we need the inspiration.

The people who do best in the jizz-bizz are as far to the right of the bell-curve in terms of looks, charisma and sexual-athleticism as the industry can dredge-up. Unfortunately, given the choice between coke or meth, catwalks or a cock-up-the-ass, rock-stars or suitcase pimps, 99% of beautiful-teens choose the former, mainstream, options limiting porn’s talent pool to those without the talent to act, the looks to model or a voice to sing. A crew of the insane, imperfect and anyone from Eastern Europe who gets naked before they realize there are other more lucrative options.

Tom Hanks used to diet and train but can now hide his 38 inch waist (I know his costumier) behind well cut cloth, corsetry and clever camera angles. Heidi Klum had to work harder before fame guaranteed the best make-up artists, re-touchers and photographers would work to keep her looking 22. For pornsters life gets harder, not easier, over time.

They start working at their peak, unseen and novel. As time passes the pressure to go harder, look better and reinvent increases while the best shooters insist they either work under contract, or abandon them for fresher talent. Each year brings a step down the glamor ladder, another wrinkle and fewer jobs. Looking good isn’t easy under raw tungsten lights, contorted and spread, being screwed by a guy who probably didn’t read the manual which came with his camcorder.

Add a public who doesn’t understand the work put into emulating the mainstream performers most pornsters wished they were, and the real risk that of involuntarily voiding, or tasting, your bowels and you have a pressure on food and body image which makes the modeling world’s fight with anorexia and bulimia look laughably manageable.

It’s then either blackly comic, or worrying, when the public – quickly followed by sleeping pundits everywhere – start talking about how unhealthy Jesse Jane’s looking.

Or how despite endless surgical tweaks Jenna looks as if she could spear fish with her arms.

Or why Naomi’s carrying less fat than a salmon fillet after just a year at the coalface.

It’s no coincidence all these women work primarily in video. Web-based performers tend to be more secure financially and emotionally, avoiding the fear of being dumped, broke and homeless. Having a one-to-one relationship makes it easier for fans to fall in love and thus less likely to move on when they discover their fantasy is mortal. On video the fantasy, heavily pushed by the producers, is all there is.

Porn consumers have been traditionally enthusiastic about a range of body-types but a growing trend towards unhealthy thinness is slowly opening porn to one of the few criticisms it’s previously managed to skirt; the pressure on performers to starve themselves in order to appear ‘normal’ for the genre; a situation the worlds of fashion and film have accepted for decades.

Is this the depressing downside of libertine life? A sign that meth’s the new drug of choice? Proof the rise of gag-intensive blowjobs and dirty ass-to-mouth is making performers scared to eat? Or just an over-reaction to a few thin women?

Popularity: 37% [?]

Neil Strauss, author of the pick-up guide ‘The Game‘, made his bones as a journalist and ghost author. For jizz-bizz followers he’s known as the guy who turned Jenna’s ‘…like, you-know, it was totally kinda…’ verbalizing into ‘How to Make Love Like a Porn Star ‘ for Regan Books in 2004.

Jenna’s book was controversial – at least before Regan Books head honcho Judith Regan tried to publish OJ’s ‘If I did it’ and then accused ‘the jews’ of ganging up on her, actions which ended her company.

‘How to Make Money Like a Porn Star‘ was Neil ‘Jew’ Strauss’s follow-up, a Jenna free graphic novel he felt qualified to write after his time on the wet-end of the porn industry.

‘Claudia’s Activity Book’ is a bizarre eight-page PDF produced as part of the marketing campaign for the title which I got sent this morning. It’s supposed to give potential readers a flavor of the book but makes it look as if Strauss was incapable of finding anything in porn not already believed by O’Reilly fans.

It’s the funniest thing I’ve seen today.

(Click image to enlarge ~ 780k)

As Strauss’s pick-up book sold-out and devolved into a cheesy love story, this document suggests HTMMLAPS is mired in conventional negativity (I guess I’ll never know because I don’t plan on paying for it). Anti-porn cliche from Jenna Jameson’s ghost author? As ironic as rain on your wedding day (or a free ride when you’ve already paid). Do you think she’s read it?

(Check out the Publisher’s Weekly review for an evisceration of the book worthy of Vlad the Impaler)

Popularity: 67% [?]

The debate about revenues in the adult industry is everywhere and Christ-on-a-dildo is it wrong. Too many smart people with too little experience of major adult websites are dismissing the value of the internet.

Newspaper hacks can’t do much better. Websites, as private concerns, don’t publish books and are thus impervious to journalist driven forensic accounting. Given the big companies aversion to being investigated by the tax authorities (though I’ve watched it happen to zero effect – my porn guys are the good guys) the only people able to honestly discuss the income of the web-industry are insiders who’ve seen the books and even one of those isn’t enough.

To asses the web business you have to know about the workings of more than one company, and the only people fitting that description have been inside the handful of billing companies which handle transaction processing for the big websites. Your ideal informant has worked within a major billing company and has had board level access to companies on every side of the online adult industry, content sites, TGP and video-chat.

That’d be me then.

Forbes are quoting Playboy (which is like interviewing Huell Howser for a piece on ‘The best paid people on TV’) and everyone else has assumed the video retail industry is the bulk of modern porn because they don’t know any better. I do. As someone who’s seen the subscriber and revenue numbers for more of the major adult companies than any-one else writing on the subject, I can tell you that there are billions missing from the current debate.

Allow me to break it down:

• The average tier-1 adult website charges $20 a month and has 20-40K subscribers. That’s $400k a month per site, or $4.8M a year, and a conservative estimate puts the number of sites on that level world wide at 100. That’s $500M a year of business without looking at the talented amateurs, the top tier of whom are also clearing $1M per anum and who number in the hundreds.
• Video-chat sites (iFriends, IMLive, CamContacts, LiveJasmin etc) charge an average of $1.50 a minute and the biggest players have an an average total take of about $150 a minute. That’s $216K a day which, even when split 50/50 with chat-hosts and minus running costs provide $100K a day, or $3M a month (yes, there are the costs of running an affiliate program to factor in, but I’m being conservative in my other assumptions and accounting for that expense by underestimating in other areas. E.g. Most companies don’t split 50/50 with chathosts, and 100 active conversations at $1.50 a minute is less than the big guys are averaging – most of them handling fewer chats but at significantly greater average revenue). There are roughly 10 sites of that size and, though the drop-off is sharp, the top 3 are all making over $100M a year and the #1 player is bringing in well over $300M. These figures are not guesses and the top 10 live video-chat sites thus represent over $1B in revenue.
• More philosophically, can our definition of ‘porn’ remain rational while including Playboy and excluding Nuts and Loaded, while all three publish identical photos with identical intentions. If porn is defined by content, not the press releases put out by fearful publishers, we should include everything that’s designed as sexual entertainment and include NN (nearly nude) sites too (tell me this nudity-free site isn’t porn). ‘Demi-porn’ is a growing sector which isn’t being counted by anyone but which can only be left out of industry discussions using the same blinkers the video guys use to ignore the web.

Jenna Jameson doesn’t make as much hard-cash as some of the biggest amateurs in Canada and she’s at the top of the performer tree (though she performs so little it’s get-ting hard to put her in that category). Though the average porn-performer makes more than the average adult webmaster, there are just a few hundred working adult performers on the planet, there are tens of thousands of webmasters. Sites you’ve never heard of are making $1M a month and many more in the $10-$100K range operate completely under the radar. No one who understands the difference between gross and net would rather own Vivid Pictures than The Hun because in porn a sole-trader with a PC and a basement can easily out-perform a corporation with product in every adult store in America.

Yes, the porn industry’s smaller than the $10-12B so often bandied about and enthusiastically swatted down, but video, TV and cable are just the public face of a very private enterprise. The global internet business is worth billions, even if estimates are limited to the conservative back-of-the-envelope sketches presented here. Factoring in the long-tail and demi-porn you’d have to double those estimates. Suddenly those ridiculous numbers don’t look as off as some are suggesting – and the web looks a hell of a lot bigger than the video market. Amazingly, in 2006, this seems to be news.

Popularity: 75% [?]

When I’m not apologizing, traveling or blogging I spend my time trying to spot the trends which make my input worth putting me on a plane for, giving me the opportunity to mess up and then blog about.

As YouTube gets crushed under a weight of nearly-nude pornography (which isn’t a conceptual pile-up if you acknowledge porn’s defined as anything designed to arouse) I’m noticing an increasing abercrombieandfitchification (real word) in the world of porn photography.

Finger Bang, is a good example. A tiny hardback book, designed to arouse and amuse, it looks like porn made by people with some talent and no knowledge of Sydnee Steele, Jenna J or Buttman. More refreshingly it’s hasn’t sailed up the dead-end alley represented by ‘alt’ porn, trapped inside a gallery of its own cliches and crushed creatively by ‘alt’er than thou’ posturing.

The cleverest trick of all this ‘2nd Wave’ porn? Convincing people it’s not porn at all…

Popularity: 73% [?]

Jenna Jameson has 1 million friends on her MySpace page, redefines viral marketing…

Naomi struggles to endure her appearance in ‘Gang Bang Volume 5′, world struggles to watch?

Kira Eggers has published a book.

In Danish.

Let’s hope it has pictures.

Not getting laid enough in reality? Now you can not get laid online too as Red Light District launch Red Light Center, which sounds nothing like, but actually is, ‘World of Fuck Craft’.

Stormy Daniels has a recurring role in FX show ‘Dirt’ and according to Mike South’s year end awards she’s:

“…hat, smart and talented.”

You can’t argue with that sort of versatility.

Adam and Eve have sold $1M of porn in a week. Listen close enough and you can hear the audit coming…

Kirsten Price starts ‘status bodyguard‘ trend at January’s AVN’s

Popularity: 32% [?]

One’s a talented author, one’s a talented woodsman but Craig has managed to tie Paris Hilton, Jenna Jameson and Ron Jeremy into a post which makes a series of salient points about publishing (porn’s published too!)

E.g. When independent distributors come under pressure they often abandon the obscure for the safety of the mainstream. In that case, is Amazon the best friend of the avant-garde?

More smart contortions follow…

NB: Craig’s last novel, Dermaphoria, is now out in paperback. Let Google be your guide…

(Image a page from the graphic novelization of ‘The Contortionists Handbook’)

Popularity: 35% [?]

The word on the wires is that Playboy has extended it’s buying spree and added the AVN organization to it’s portfolio. The news isn’t new but I’ve now heard it confirmed by a person I trust who’s in a position to know so I’ll nail my colors to the mast and say though not officially confirmed – I believe it.

The effects of the buyout aren’t yet clear. Playboy is a company that owes its continued existence to hardcore porn, run by a man who doesn’t think he’s in the porn business and his daughter, who knows she is but would rather not be. They’re surrounded by executives with an appalling reputation for treating models like prostitutes and some very smart unappreciated worker bees. Playboy’s a company with internal politics that make Nero’s Rome look sane and composed by comparison.

AVN makes its money selling ads, and trade-show floor space, to hardcore pornographers who are in direct competition which, er… Playboy. It’s not going to make the industry happy knowing they have to give a portion of their ad budget to a direct competitor. It’s like Toyota buying ‘Motor Trend’ and then expecting GM to keep buying ads and if it wasn’t the jizz-bizz we’d be talking about potential anti-trust issues.

Does this mean a huge opportunity for an AVN magazine competitor? Probably not. AVN’s at the end of it’s natural life. Distribution is going digital which means the challenges of shipping discs are about to become a historic problem and the people with the keys to success for movie producers will be websites. As that happens the money being spent on ads in AVN will go online and, though AVN’s got writing talent and expertise on hand, their website isn’t the force it should be. Unless they fix it, there’s ample opportunity for another company to take their place and for AVN to shrink as magazine’s sales decline.

As a private company the wisdom in buying AVN depends on how transparent their books are. They should be making millions but what’s really happening behind the scenes depends on how well the company’s being run. For Playboy, who’ve never managed to consistently profit from their brand, any upside is worth pursuing so even small profits must look good to them.

When Playboy do announce the buyout (which they might not because I could be wrong) it’ll be interesting to see if they announce immediate changes. The AVN awards on the Playboy channel – of course. Jenna as managing editor? Possibly. The AVN awards becoming The Bunnies – it’d be mad not to…

Popularity: 35% [?]

Hold the presses.

When I commented on Jenna Jameson’s new waxwork at Madame Tussauds recently I, like many commentators, hadn’t actually seen the porn-candle in question. Now I have, anything I said suggesting this might represent a small step towards the mainstream seems premature.

I’d guessed the figure would be dressed to reflect the image Jenna covets, a sex star who’s also a business person and media personality, thinking she’d be posed holding her recent bestselling autobiography ‘How to Make Love Like a Pornstar’, or wearing headphones and facing up to her media-mentor Howard Stern.

How wrong was I.

Wax Jenna in almost naked and squats on the floor with her legs spread wide dressed in six inch heels and a tiny pair of black panties. You’d think she was sitting on an invisible dildo and the composition is about as mainstream as bukkake. As you can pose with Jenna’s figure I have no doubt a good deal of ’simulated oral’ comedy’s about to be unleashed on America. If this is supposed to represent Jenna at work she’s too clothed and if not do the the people at Tussauds think that pornsters, like tea-party chimps, only wear clothes to perform in public?

For anyone who thinks Jenna’s has reached beyond her looks and willingness to undress in public there can be no stronger evidence to the contrary than the installation. Jenna’s been fighting for recognition with her legs together and her clothes on for years, Tussauds have put her back where she was a decade ago.

Porn ghetto 1: Mainstream acceptance 0.

Popularity: 39% [?]

Assuming the dictionary’s correct and an amateur is:

A person who engages in a pursuit, esp. a sport, on an unpaid basis. A person considered contemptibly inept at a particular activity.

What is amateur porn?

The first adult websites, excluding Playboy which started in 1994 when most people thought the web was a band, grew out of the exhibitionist and swingers scene that dominated sex-themed newsgroups.

Today, most people only know newsgroups via services like SkinVideo, but back in the early nineties, when I upgraded to a 28.8K modem and paid $4,000 for a 2GB disk-drive the size of a shoebox, the only way to get images online was to download small files from newsgroups and stitch them together for display on-screen. The difficulty of the process meant that only scientists and perverts bothered. Swingers and strippers, who had a history of being nude in public, flocked to it, and stocked the net with free porn.

When the web made downloading images from the internet simple, pioneering newsgroup exhibitionists started websites, and the majority of people, who to this day think the web and the internet are the same thing, discovered the joys of looking at OPP (‘Other People’s Partners’ – if you’re not a ‘Naughty By Nature’ fan). On the web clicking on links called things like ‘wfsuck_1.jpg’ placed you a minute from staring at a badly dithered, 300 pixel square, 256-color explosion of amateur hardcore. It was revolutionary. Seconds after seeing their first porn website the average person immediately forgot how great sliced-bread was and went to buy a faster modem.

Traffic to the most popular free sites exploded, Danni’s Hard Drive alone eclipsed the bandwidth use of the whole of South America in the early days, and the push of costs and pull of popularity quickly lead to people charging for subscriptions and making money.

Even when people started to take on employees and buy offices the amateur tag stuck. People couldn’t believe they could make such an easy living, and the business itself was amateurish. To buy a subscription you’d email in credit card information, which was typed into a spreadsheet, run through a machine like a restaurant transaction, and confirmed with another email a couple of days later. Digital cameras were primitive, web design meant picking colors and everyone was learning.

The pioneers were often women and mostly people with no previous technology background. The closest thing to big-business were premium-rate phone operators, who grasped the net faster than anyone, Playboy – who like most magazine publishers fundamentally misunderstood the value of the web, and guys like Seth Warshawsky who were criminals taking advantage of a medium few understood.

As the gold rush brought thousands of people, eager to cash in on the my-wife’s-hot-check-out-her-vagina business model, online free sex content went from being an expression of exhibitionist lust to a marketing tool. Even if the traditional amateur approach to content production, pointing a handycam at a genital pile-up and encoding the results, mandated a certain ineptness; truly amateur, catch-free sex content, was almost entirely consigned to history by late 1998. There was no need, and little desire, to give stuff away with so much money being made, leaving a fast growing mass of free material designed to lead people down a path to making a purchase.

As amateurism became an aesthetic not a principle, amateur content began to change. Sites, which invariably started with a focus on a single performer shot at home, used their money to go on location, hire other models and set up events. The rise of gonzo porn in the mainstream, which had been gathering steam for almost a decade, collided with early experiments in online video. The movie industry had unwittingly created a market for amateurishly shot sex scenes, which amateurs began to churn out because it was all they could put together.

Though porn photography had always been professionally, expensively, done, amateur website video looked almost indistinguishable from gonzo porn. The editing which makes DVD’s watch better than home videos comes from careful editing but online, most clips were so short and to the point editing was an irrelevance. Amateur video MPEGs became wildly popular and the big porn studios finally realized the web was competition.

While Playboy produced a ‘Women of the Internet’ issue and hoped that’d be the end of it, the studios tried to co-opt the web without getting too seriously involved in a revolution they wished wasn’t happening. Blind to the future they offered the most popular, best-looking amateur stars contracts not understanding it was pointless to get paid $5,000 a month to have sex with a strangers in California, when they were making $100,000 a month having sex with their friends at home. The websites they built had protecting DVD sales in mind above all else and were hobbled by aggressive advertising, limited content and corporate insincerity. Lacking serious competition, amateur sites thrived and ‘professional’ online sites, seldom more professional in actuality than the ‘amateurs’, catered to buyers who wanted to see the kind of material they enjoyed in magazines and movies.

The economics of running amateur websites heralded the dumbing down of mainstream porn performers. Wannabe Jenna J’s now had options – working for a studio, getting paid a wage and owning nothing; or becoming a CEO, building a website and owning everything. It wasn’t a hard choice and the people offering themselves to the studio system became increasingly naive, stupid and desperate for quick cash. The only reason to cede control of your career was for the PR a big company could provide, and they only offered that to the most glamourous performers. Jenna herself saw the control a website provided faster than most and made ClubJenna the centre of her career (it would have been JennaJameson.com but she wasn’t thinking of the web when she chose her name and had to buy it back later when she could afford to correct her mistake.)

Now, like ‘alt’, amateur is a self-ordained title chosen by those who like what it suggests. While all performer-driven sites acting without corporate support may be equally amateur, only those who look the part can use the phrase without being accused of cashing-in. Amateur’s not what you are, it’s what your content looks like and as fewer mainstream porn producers cling to the big-budget, high-gloss look which has traditionally been their trademark, the niche amateurs have long exploited is under pressure.

While big-budget porn still does well, hundreds of tiny video production companies competing to make the least watchable POV ‘reality’ compilation with ‘anal’ in the title are making amateur content for DVD. The real split between markets isn’t amateur and pro, it’s online and off. Today it’s easy find sell DVDs to people who choose not to get all their porn via the web. As the DVD market dies and those people become an eccentric fringe, those small producers will come into direct competition with the online amateur market and then whomever’s got the content, and the marketing savvy, will win.

Until the video market realizes the era of selling-discs is over they’re not going to lead the market anywhere. In 2006, amateur porn’s been dead almost a decade but what ‘amateur’ porn becomes is almost certainly the future of porn in general.

Popularity: 50% [?]

Last week Madame Tussaud’s announced they’ve added a Jenna Jameson waxwork to their collection in Vegas. The most interesting question this raises is ‘Does this mean Jenna Jameson’s crossed-over to the mainstream?’ I’ve got to say yes.

And no.

The statue itself means nothing. M. Tussauds have galleries all over the world, including the original in London, and only a handful of the biggest stars are featured in all of them. Jenna’s only in Vegas, proof they think she’s of local – not global – interest, and in Sin City there’s little chance of public outrage if they discover they’ve misjudged. Is the hookers union going to picket? Will casino owners complain the moral fibre of Vegas is under threat? I doubt it.

Placing the figure guarantees M. Tussauds a burst of free publicity (like this blog post) and isn’t much of commitment. They melt down old figures constantly as fashions change, and Jenna’s bust (ha!) might not last more than a year or two. However famous she gets Jenna will have failed to ‘crossover’ until she’s acknowledged for something other than her talent for charming cum. Being interviewed by Forbes on the future of business is a crossover, playing yourself in a big-budget movie is being a famous porn-star.

On the other hand this does mark a step. There’d be no point in making the dummy if, at least in the US, Jenna wasn’t becoming famous outside the legions of Stern fans, Hooters customers, MySpace users and the porn cognoscenti who already know her name. For those to whom she’s just some blond, being in Tussauds will help cement her place as the only female porn-star whose name you need to know. She’s writing her own myth. The more often she declares her #1 status the truer it becomes.

Am I fractionally more likely to visit M. Tussauds in Vegas because she’s there? Probably? The chance to surreptitiously pose her in flagrante delicto with Kofi Annan and Whoopi Goldberg is too much to miss. Besides, I need to know if that mannequin is anatomically correct and as soon that guards out of sight…

Popularity: 41% [?]

Sex has been sold since shortly after a caveman worked out that instead of being left to rot, excess brontosaurus meat could be traded for pussy. Whatever your moral stance, trying to eliminate people’s desire to buy what they want, or sell what they have to get what they need, is impossible. Like drug use, prostitution isn’t something we can eliminate. We just have a choice to make regarding how we deal with it.

As people break stupid laws that tilt at human nature prostitution should be legal everywhere. The victims of prostitution only exist because the trade’s semi-legal status and traffiking women, the closest the west gets to slavery, would be impossible if brothels were inspected by the police, customers could use them legally and pimps were denied their traditional ‘keep you out or bail you out’ purpose.

Would prostitutes still be vulnerable to abuse, addiction and bad luck? Of course, but 90% of the nastiness they now endure could be solved with a combination of calls to the local cop-shop, swift kicks to the hacky-sack and pepper spray. Nutters will always prey on vulnerable people and prostitutes working outside the protection of the law are more vulnerable than they need to be.

Now you know where I stand – go prostitutes! – let’s talk about porn performers who hook on the side, an old issue that has come to my attention following the revelation that one of the most notorious performer focused escort agencies is back in business and has signed up a raft of new recruits – a couple of whom I know personally.

Porn performers traditionally do everything in their power to draw a line between what they do, which is have sex with people for money, and what prostitutes do, have sex with people for money, but honestly assessed the jobs are pretty similar.

Porn performers work to please an audience while prostitutes are only concerned with making the person they’re banging feel better. Physically prostitutes have as much choice over who they see as most performers, and in terms of what they’re do for money, you’d have a hard time finding a hooker who’s been expected to perform a DV, DP, A2M or other dubiously sane acronym since the fall of Rome.

The clearest difference is one of attitude. Performers want to be famous, I get a press release every day from Tera Patrick informing me of such vital information as her choice of shoes, favorite diet soda and what she thought of last night’s CSI. Prostitutes value discretion, like strippers who live across town and won’t let you take their photo, working-girls are often paying for children, education or boyfriends recording dire ska-folk demos and don’t want there to be any permanent record of what they see as an embarrassing, necessary, phase.

Some porn fans seem SHOCKED! HORRIFIED! that women who sell sex in public would do so in private too. I don’t get it? My life may be a catalog of moral turpitude and depravity, but as I’ve only ever had one sexual partner who wasn’t considerably filthier than me I doubt it. As far as I’m concerned there’s nothing wrong with sex for pleasure, sex without love or sex that’s been bought for cash, comfort, food or favor. It’s what most of us have a lot of the time. People have been public about paying Jenna Jameson for sex before she was quite the star she is today, and contrary to the standard ‘they stole my photo’ defense – I can tell you that this agency didn’t and that I believe every woman listed there is available for home delivery.

Should we care about porn stars who perform off camera or chide those who don’t as hypocrites? Is the line between prostitution and pornography insincerely drawn and if not – anyone care to explain why one’s okay and the other taboo?

Popularity: 41% [?]

“The girl can be as beautiful as a supermodel but if she’s not able to fuck, then that kind of misses the point.” – Jenna Jameson

Popularity: 41% [?]

Recent announcements suggest the biggest company in porn are in a little trouble. The first horseman clue was the announcement they were going condom optional and this week brings a raft of new announcements which, taken together, hint at a company losing sales and unsure of how to fix things.

1. The ClubJenna Deal
The details of Club Jenna’s move from Vivid to Playboy aren’t public but I can make a few educated guesses about how the deal went down. It’s well known in the jizz-bizz that Playboy made a huge mistake when it sold its adult cable channels to Vivid in the nineties, only to buy them back a couple of years later for a vastly inflated price. That deal was evidence Playboy had recognized their money lay in hardcore and they were prepared to pay a high price to get a foothold in the business. Now the same things happened again. Playboy have bought ClubJenna (which was never really Jenna’s company, more a division of Vivid carrying her name in which she owned a share) from Vivid in order to boost its hardcore offerings.

Superficially it works for Vivid. Jenna’s no longer a performer (she’s not appeared on camera with a man other than her husband in seven years) and she’s reaching the end of her credible life as a first tier sex-symbol. If she’s smart, and she is, she’ll not try to keep performing and ruin the fantasy she’s worked hard to build. As far as Vivid are concerned, there’s nothing to gain from having ClubJenna on board if there’s no new Jenna material. They can develop talent on their own and already have the rights to a lot of ‘classic’ Jenna footage. ClubJenna’s video production infrastructure is redundant or already owned by Vivid. The only part of ClubJenna which is truly unique is the website and that’s not as profitable as some people want you to believe. If Playboy are prepared to pay Vivid a few million dollars for a website – great. Vivid still have plenty of Jenna footage they own outright and will continue to make money from distribution under the new deal.

The problem is where’s next Jenna? Vivid was once a star factory (though Jenna was created by Wicked, not Vivid, who bought into her later on). There’s no one who looks set to inherit Jenna’s mantle – a job that takes reasonable looks, real personality and total commitment. Playboy can see that and have bought the only Jenna on the market – Jenna – in time to make her the face of Playboy when Hefner goes to the party in the sky. It’s perfect for Jenna, she just wants to be a mainstream star and Playboy can make that happen better than any other adult company.
More than losing Jenna, Vivid have also lost ‘the Jenna effect’. She’s a charismatic figure who’s can convince most young performers to play for her team over a plate of sushi. That team was Vivid. Now it’s Playboy. As long as losing ‘the’ star Vivid are rissking their ability to create stars in future.

2. Bandwagon jumping
Vivid’s attempts to jump on the alt porn bandwagon are destined to fail. Even hipsters who’ve bought into the faintly ludicrous idea that ‘alternative’ porn is somehow ‘authentic’ and ‘valid’ (Q: What do you get when you cross a hippo and and hamster? A: A hipster), would have to make a conscious effort to ignore the fact that anything done by Vivid isn’t alt – however it’s marketed. Can you be an alternative to the status quo when you are the status quo? Corporate rebellion has never looked so diaphanous.

Vivid’s embrace of the ‘alt’ trend also shows a lack of insight. Alt porn suffers from the same lack of imagination as the gonzo mainstream and is no different than ‘Christian porn’ featuring performers dressed as clergy or ‘Nascar porn’ packed with guys in Nomex suits (actually, that sounds pretty hot).

Vivid have the resources to pay people with the intelligence to innovate but is choosing instead to invest in a trend that was peaking years ago. Their weakening sales are more than skin deep and producing better content means improving things beyond a paint-job. In the near future, when everything will be online and users will try before they buy, Vivid will need product consumers can feel is worth a premium when they’re watching it, not just when they’re looking at the box.

Vivid took a brave step by offering movies for download but are orchestrating their own failure by failing to take the final step and offer users a system which can compete with the file-sharing networks but is easier to use, as free of restrictions, and delivers higher quality.

3. Losing Faith
The third horseman is Vivid’s creeping abandonment of its core values. After inventing the modern porn industry in the eighties, Vivid thrived by making its contract stars (a system it also re-invented) more glamourous and better known than anyone else’s. For years performers have wanted to be ‘Vivid Girls’ because of the company’s ability to produce pretty posters, quality movies and a feeling of real stardom. It wasn’t about $75K a year and a steady stream of easy jobs. Vivid made performers feel special.

Trying to compete with the gonzo masses is a bad idea. Vivid will never match ’stunt porn’ for shock value, and when the industry notices Vivid’s material isn’t much different than that produced elsewhere the glamour of being a Vivid Girl will evaporate. Without glamour the best performers won’t beat a path to Vivid’s door and the idea of Vivid as ‘home of the stars’ will be gone. In recent years, Digital Playground, with performers like Jana Cova and movies like Pirates, have done a better job of being Vivid that Vivid have.

With deep pockets and an eye on the future Vivid should be doing what the competition can’t. Big budget, high quality, exotic and gorgeous to look at movies with performers they promote as celebrities. Not ‘”It was my first time ever doing anal,” and “It was the most guys I had ever had sex with in one scene.” They have the time and money to innovate. Sex is limited, imagination isn’t. Find some talented directors, put them under contract and give them enough rope to surprise you. Hell, give me a camera and a budget and I’ll do it myself (sounds crazy but Adam and Eve are now employing sex-bloggers they respect as directors and given the average porn micro budget, and the built in audience bloggers carry with them, what’s there to lose?)

I predict Vivid’s current attempts to boost sales won’t work for long, if at all, and there’ll be more announcements of mergers, acquisitions and realignments and they scrabble to find a solution to their woes. Given their size, anything Vivid do effects the industry as a whole and their mistakes are as often copied as their victories. Let’s hope they start getting things right.

Popularity: 59% [?]

Pieces like this are a real primer in modern PR.

Porn Show Lands In Miami Beach

There’s no story here. Trade shows happen all the time and reporting on an ‘erotic’ expo is in itself as newsworthy as reporting on a car-chase. It’s part of the news because sex-sells and on a slow-news day sexy stories can pull viewers with Germanic efficiency. Normally they ‘tease’ pieces like this for hours and save them to the very end of the show in order to keep news numbers up.

So what’s there to learn?

Jenna gives good interview. Her style is a mix of summer-dress and glamour wear which manages to sell her sexuality without making her look like the whore of Babylon. She consistently has the best make-up of anyone I’ve ever seen (mainstream or jizz-bizz). She’s not so glamorous that women immediately react against her and when she speaks, she talks about Miami, telling the local-news crews exactly what they want to hear and she’s not trying to sell anything. Once you know Jenna’s name, she knows Google will do all her marketing for her.

By rights Tera should be a media darling. She’s got a better story than Jenna (ex-Ford model, trained nurse, Thai-English heritage) but she’s doing it all wrong. She looks intimidating (who suggested her signing booth put her in the sky like some kind of skin-flick St. Peter?), she doesn’t smile (beautiful women who don’t smile get called bitches), and when she speaks she reels off a list of things she’ll sign. I suspect that the rest of her interview was deemed ‘too commercial’, i.e. she spent all her time discussing upcoming ‘projects’ and thus got edited away to nothing. Her PR people need to be lined up and shot.

Ron’s a natural of course. If there’s any doubt about him being more famous than Jenna it should be assuaged by the fact he’s the only performer who needs no name for the CBS audience – who are in their 50’s – to recognize. There’s no real way to contain a personality like Ron and the rounder he gets, the less threatening and funnier he becomes. Can you imagine a 6′4″, buff Ron Jeremy with Brad Pitt’s physique AND a ten inch cock? He’d be terrifying. The only multimillionaire I know who lives in logo T-Shirts and is therefore in line for a state funeral.

Of course the real winners are the people organizing the show. For the cost of a press-pass they’ve got a three minute ad on their local CBS affiliate from reporters kind enough to include opening times and prices in case anyone’s too busy to look it up. Don’t worry, this doesn’t make sex acceptable, in a week or two these shows will be running some scare-story about the danger bikini-shots on MySpace pose to American youth but, thanks to capitalism as long as it sells ads they’ll put as much porn on air as they can get away with.

Popularity: 73% [?]

I arrived in London yesterday and it seems to be crammed with beautiful women – which means I’ve been traveling long enough to get horny – always a bad sign. In my other apartment I have an old bull-milking machine and never have this problem. How I miss you Flo.

In the UK Zoo Magazine, which is to journalism what COPS is to law-enforcement, has named Jenna Jameson the most popular woman on the net. Their research seems to have entailed asking a search engine for the most requested name entered and, as Google doesn’t make that information easily available, the results have to be taken with a grain of salt. In fact until I see ‘dog kiddie fuck’ as one of the top ten phrases on a search engine’s list of popular strings I’ll know they continue to edit published info for public consumption.

The real story here is that fewer people are looking for nude pictures of Britney Spears, the traditional ‘top search’, than once were. I have no idea why (okay I do, she’s always been what we Limey’s would call ‘a pig in a dress’ and now she’s ‘a pig in a mu-mu’ and that’s not pretty.)

Believe me, if more people could spell Sung Hi Lee the results would be different – trust me.

In other celebrity news (thanks AVN) Marie Osmond’s daughters have been caught posting sexy messages at their MySpace pages.

“Osmond’s 18-year-old daughter Jessica, who was adopted by Osmond when she was a baby, said in her site that she is bisexual and that she craves sex “as many times as possible.” Likewise, her 16-year-old sister says in her site that she is a “slut” and a “whore” and that she dreams of having sex with David Bowie.”

This is excellent news for the porn industry – these debutantes are not biologically related and so in two years I look forward to a debut based on their parent’s 1971 hit – Double Lovin’.

Be kind to your waitresses people.

Popularity: 35% [?]

Tiffany Taylor

Yesterday when I wrote about the reasons Tiffany Taylor might have signed to Vivid based on a story at AVN.com which was down when I went to verify the story.

There didn’t seem much to check, I know Tiffany Taylor and instantly saw an interesting piece about why a successful, older, softcore model might be leaving the Playboy stable for the world of hardcore. The only problem with my brilliant analysis being that the Tiffany Taylor I know isn’t the Tiffany Taylor Vivid signed.

Bollocks.

The moral of the story is pretty obvious. Non-unique names cause trouble. Hence being called ‘Jenna’ is useless in today’s porn world unless your last name’s Jameson and you happen to be ‘the’ Jenna Jameson. I wrote about the naming problem here.

On a more positive note, everything I said about age, modeling and porn is still vali, and for anyone whose hopes I raised about a truly spectacular new Playmate/porn-performer who doesn’t actually exisit, sorry (next time I see the real Tiffany Taylor I’ll see if she’ll consider signing to Vivid after a Roofiecolada or two.)

Popularity: 36% [?]

Working in the jizz bizz, on either side of the camera, or in the sex blogosphere, can mean exposure to sticky handshakes, insect-level cognition and the arcane rules of porn etiquette. To help make that first meeting with Jenna, Ron or Rocco more easy, here’s a beginners guide.

1. Play the name game. Performers usually go by a stage-name which they use professionally, and reserve their ‘real’ name for use amongst friends. Everyone uses professional names to refer to people who aren’t physically present. Though often you’ll discover a performer’s real name before you meet them, due to concerns about privacy, it’s only acceptable to use a real name once a performer’s told it to you themselves. This means it’s possible to be surrounded by people talking to a woman called Mary you’re left calling ‘Titsy’. When Mary leaves everyone starts talking about Titsy again. It’s confusing, but breaking the rules is almost always a mistake. The last time I called a performer I’d never met, and used her real name on the phone she got scared, pretended to be someone else, and hung-up. That was for a pre-scheduled interview. Stalkers make paranoia reasonable, respect it.
2. Maintain eye contact. It’s okay to want to orgasm in, over and around performers you find attractive, but working with them means cultivating an ability to ignore the sexuality of situations and focus on business. I’ve given critical business information to beautiful naked women more often than I care to remember. It’s not a good time for your eyes to wander, or to pass out as blood leaves your head and rushes to your crotch. Letting someone who gets paid to turn you on, turn you on, is strictly for amateurs (this is universal, music execs are notorious for standing impassively at the bar during concerts and movie people don’t appear to enjoy movies.) The less you acknowledge the sex being wiped off the person you’re talking to, the more respect you’ll earn.
3. Don’t fuck around. This cannot be overstressed. Sex is power and people in the industry have a lot of it. When you’re known for being susceptible to temptation, you’ll be ruthlessly exploited by hordes of people expert in calculating the difference in value between a handjob and a blowjob – in Yen. You’ll get what you want for a while, lose all credibility and ultimately have a hard time getting people to take you seriously.
4. Ignore gossip. The jizz bizz is unique for having a gossip mill fueled almost exclusively by the people who complain about gossip. There are a number of ‘news’ blogs and websites dedicated to listing who’s taking what, who owes whom how much, and who’s about to do what where. Like all gossip, the majority of it is as worthless as it’s inaccurate. Listening to gossip with the excuse it’s an ‘inside track’ is like claiming you read ‘The National Enquirer’ in order to keep up with what’s happening in Hollywood.
5. Be on time. You can rate the professionalism of almost anyone, in any industry, by how late they tend to arrive. In the porn industry lateness is endemic. Performers have a lot of license, only getting blackballed if they don’t show, everyone else can make a good impression by behaving as if time and money were as painful to separate as a crusty penis and bed linen. There used to be a website dedicated to cataloguing porn industry no-shows and late arrivals, it’s that serious a problem.

As you may have predicted, I’ve broken most of these rules myself, but it’s what you do most of the time that matters (that’s what I keep telling myself). If you’re blog/business/ambitions or website are drawing you towards the jizz bizz what the hell are you thinking? Does your mother know? I hope these points are useful and good luck.

Popularity: 38% [?]

Jenna Jameson.

You should check out Jenna Fatigue – a blog devoted to cataloguing every appearance of Jenna Jameson in the public eye. It’s funny, an interesting study in the media’s (and Jenna’s) exploitation of porn, and it might be the cleverest piece of stealth marketing Vivid/ClubJenna’s come up with yet…

Popularity: 48% [?]

The most important part of any porn movie is the cast – specifically the women (or men If you’re working the homosexualist/gaysexual tip.) Your cast will determine what happens in your movie, and the kind of success you can expect to have. Anything, however poorly shot, which features Jenna Jameson or Tera Patrick is worth thousands today; if you cast your movie right, the only thing left to worry about is screwing (oh! I’m punning) things up.

• Ladies first. Start by casting your female leads. If that’s your other half make sure you discuss what’s going to happen and what’s expected.  Asking your wife how much she likes the postman three minutes before a scene isn’t going to work. If you’re not working with your partner, a talent agency is going to be easier and quicker than advertising (ads can work but, outside LA, the chances of finding the right sort of people are slim.) Going to an agent gives you more choice, and more protection, than asking members of your AA group.
• Choose men based on reliability. Looks and size are nice (thank you, it’s a gift) but choose male performers for their ability to get wood on demand and keep it for extended periods (unless the theme of your movie is ‘getting toothpaste back into the tube’). If you’re the male talent, expect erectile dysfunction and have a plan B. Plan B can be a sex-toy, another performer or a ’stunt cock’ – i.e. a guy whose reliable cock stands in for yours.
• Get tests. Everyone you shoot needs to be tested for STD’s, even if they’re ‘just’ sharing toys (anyone who comes into contact with body fluids has to be tested and clear). The industry expects performers to pay for their own testing (unless they’re under contract to a studio). Make sure you know what a real test looks like – call the testing center to verify if you don’t. Using condoms is a really smart idea.
• Prep in advance. The camera sees detail you ignore in the heat of the moment, i.e. freshly waxed flesh looks like cold chicken peppered with tiny scabs, and bra’s leave dents in boobs for up to an hour after they’ve been removed. Speak to your performers so they can wax a couple of days before the shoot, and arrive for work braless. If guys are going to shave, make sure they have adequate time to heal/get stitches. Few people outside porn spend much time staring at their exposed ass – ensure everyone checks their airlock for Klingons.
• Confirm ID. Traci Lords had a real passport which showed a fake age, there’s nothing you can do about that, you will go to jail however if you accept a third generation Xerox of a video-rental card as proof-of-age. Insist on originals and check carefully, any mistakes made will be your problem. Don’t even take a test shot until you’re sure the ID’s good, and remember that in the US today, it’s effectively illegal to shoot anyone who doesn’t have a US ID (i.e. a foreign passport won’t work). Take a picture of each performer with their ID so you can prove they gave it to you.

Sam’s Swollen Tip: Whatever your plans, make sure everyone you cast knows what you plan to shoot and has agreed to it. You’ll be surprised at what people are sensitive about (the standing joke in porn concerns how much pickier people are about who they kiss than who they screw). If your plans and your cast don’t mesh, change something before you’re on location wasting time and money.

Popularity: 29% [?]

This is the final installment in a short series of pieces designed to answer Jack’s question “How do I get noticed.” It’s become a short primer on media and publicity, and today I’ll wrap it up with what I’m sure many people wanted me to post first.

If you’ve seen the other installments and chose to ignore them and go straight to this, good luck, you’ll need it.

If you get to this point when you have a great buzz and need to tell the world about it, this’ll be a lot easier than you expected. If it doesn’t work, build better buzz and work on your story.

Before I get into specifics, it’s worth explaining why I’m using Howard Stern (Stern) as an example. If you’re not in the US and only have a vague memory of the movie ‘Private Parts’ you may be wondering why a New York DJ’s worth talking about.

Stern’s the most important broadcaster in America if you’re in the Jizz Bizz. He’s the only major public figure who is honest about using and enjoying pornography and, perhaps because of that, has a huge audience of 18-35 year old males who trust his opinions about what’s good and bad.

Being on Stern’s radio show can help make a career, Jenna Jameson’s the prime example, and it can also bring down a website if you’re not prepared for a tsunami of extra visitors.

Dealing with Stern is essentially no different to dealing with any major media outlet. The image of the show might be ‘rock ‘n’ roll’, but behind the scenes things are run along the same lines that govern everything from ‘The View’ to ‘Jerry Springer’.

So how do you pitch your story to Stern and what do you do when you’re invited on?

Here are ten tips for getting onto the Howard Stern Show:

1. Pitch the right person

Nothing will get you ignored more quickly than showing that you haven’t bothered to find out who to talk to.

Most shows have a guest booker/coordinator and that person has a name. Find out what it is and ask to speak to that person. If you appear to be trying to go around them you’ve made an immediate enemy for no reason at all.

2. Don’t pitch on Monday’s and Fridays

Monday’s are busy. After the weekend there are piles on unopened mail and usually a lot of stuff left over from Friday. Anything arriving on Monday, when people are busiest, will get less time than things arriving later in the week.

Friday’s no good either. Even if your pitch is great it’ll be mostly forgotten by Monday and if it’s remembered, there’ll be a pile of newer stuff on Monday which make your story look like a missed opportunity.

Timeliness is important. Shows prioritize stories that have to be told ‘now’. If yours can wait – it will.

3. Don’t pitch by post

The mail, and email to a lesser extent, is a great way to get people documents and materials, but you won’t ever get booked on a show by sending letters.

Most guest bookers have a preferred method of communication and for 99% of them it’s the phone. None of them have the time to respond to letters. If you use the mail to introduce yourself to a show, follow-up by phone.

4. Learn their schedule

Shows normally have a ‘pitch meeting’ once or twice a week. That’s when the team plans their next few shows and who the guests will be. You stand a far better chance of being chosen as a guest if you know when those meetings are, and make your pitch a few hours before they happen. Your story will be fresh in someone’s mind and your story will appear to be ‘hot’.

5. Get to the point and go away

On the phone you should be polite but not verbose. Guest bookers and producers are busy people. Introduce yourself, make your pitch in three sentences or less (work it out before hand!) and then listen.

If you’re asked a lot of questions you might be taking part in a pre-interview. Most big shows like to provide their presenter(s) with the ‘juicy’ parts of your story so they don’t miss anything good. The pre-interview is where they find out what those juicy parts are. Be prepared to answer detailed questions – a pre-interview is a definite sign of interest.

Listen to what you’re told. If you get a straight ‘we’re not interested right now’ leave it. Don’t complain, implore or try to pitch the same idea again (never pitch the same idea twice, you’ll get written off as an idiot).

If you’re told to follow up do it exactly how, and when, you’re asked to. You want your contact to see you as part of their team. Make it clear that you’ll work with them however they’d like you to.

If you’re asked for an exclusive say yes, but use it to get a firm confirmation on your appearance. You want your story to seem ‘hot’, and you want them to know you’ll take it somewhere else if they don’t want it.

Congratulations – in a week you’re going to be on the Stern Show. Here’s how not to blow it.

1. Arrive on time

Obvious but worth saying. If you arrive late you’ll never get booked again. They’ll hate you and probably ‘bump’ (bump is industry slang for reschedule) your appearance to ‘when hell freezes over’.

If you’re on Stern you might need to be at the studio as early as 6:00 a.m. Go to bed early and arrive fresh. His show goes out on TV – it’s not like most radio which you can do in your Pajama’s.

2. Bring swag

A lot of the people you deal with at the studio will know little about you. Many of them will be making no money at all in return for the ‘glamour’ of being shouted at and making coffee. Bring swag (books, DVD’s whatever you’re selling) and give it to anyone who’s interested. They’ll thank you for it and might remember you next time you need a call put through.

3. Don’t lie

When you’re being interviewed assume the person you’re talking to has done their homework. If you lie, and are caught out, you’ll bring everything else you say into question. Interviews are like dates, you want to leave an impression that makes another one a possibility.

4. Don’t advertise

After all your hard work has paid off don’t ruin things, and guarantee you’ll never be asked back, by trying to use your time to sell products. You’ll look like an amateur and turn off anyone listening to you. If your website isn’t mentioned in your introduction, and it can’t be found by Googling your name, make it the last thing you say (and ask Howard if you can mention it before you do).

5. Tell stories (don’t do shtick)

Your story was interesting enough to get you onto the show, attempting to perform a comedy routine will look, and sound, bad. Trust the interviewer to lead things and make your answers as punchy as possible.

If you’re not a good speaker, or very nervous, work out answers to common questions ahead of time. Limit your answers to two minutes and never respond with just ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Working out your answers isn’t cheating – most celebrities roll out the same twelve anecdotes for an entire career.

Now thank everyone you met and go work on your next story.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Everyone on this list has owned this car.

The media tends to portray the jizz bizz as comic or evil. The comic portrail tends to be dated. The evil portrail always features the same companies, quotes and faces.

The dated stuff starts with yellowing film shot from a car driving up the Sunset Strip in 1975.

• Cut to a picture of John Holmes with an afro.
• Cut to Jackie Onanssis walking into a theater showing Deep Throat.
• James Caan appears and says he can’t remember how many hookers he killed at the Playboy mansion, “It was the seventies, a crazy time man.”
• Cut to a photographer in flares big enough for Native Americans to live in, shooting pictures of a woman with natural breasts. Bow-chucka-bow-wow funk music is playing.
• Larry Flynt pours champagne over a woman dressed as Mother Theresa fellating a homeless guy.
• Cut to Hugh Hefner surrounded by celebrities.
• Cut to James Caan with two playmates. He’s using one as a footstool, the other stands beside him with a flashlight in her mouth, he’s using her as a lamp. He snorts a line of coke off the lamp’s tits and finger-bangs her distractedly. When his finger’s moist he turns the page of the newspaper he’s reading. The headline reads ‘Disco, Carter, Oil Prices’.

The dogmatic stuff starts with audio of a woman screaming.

• A voiceover. It’s deep and serious. “Pornography has claimed many victims. Has America had enough?” The voice is Bill O’Reilly.
• Cuts to a close-up of a large aroused dog with a fully exposed lipstick.
• O’Reilly (who has an uncannily detailed knowledge of hardcore pornography) calls an adult performer a whore.
• O’Reilly cuts to footage of a topless woman crying, ‘Dust in the wind’ is playing softly in the background.
• AIDS appears on the screen in red letters.
• A performer explains that rough sex is a common fantasy.
• Cut to footage of some really rough sex. The performer from the last shot is getting peed on.
• Cut to a picture of Savannah. The date of her death appears on the screen.
• Cut to a rapid fire montage of porn scenes cut into footage of Stalin, smiling children, mushroom clouds, and burning flags. Iron Maiden’s “Bring your daughter to the slaughter” is playing in the background.
• Cut to O’Reilly wiping away a tear. “I guess that’s what you call entertainment,” he says.

(NB: After the show he asks his interviewee for free DVDs and a home phone number in case he needs to do any after-hours follow-up.)

Neither type of coverage gives an accurate view of the state of the industry in 2005. Here’s a brief look at five people who better reflect how it works today.

If you want to…

…run a website, copy Danni Ashe
Danni Ashe represents the growth of the web from zero to the biggest segment of the adult market. Ashe launched her site, Danni.com, in 1996 and in doing so, embodied the then new, performer-driven, online adult market. Ashe, a stripper who had an mid-ranking career as a magazine model, coded her own site before there were tools that made it easy, and made technologies that barely worked (like video streaming) profitable. Her fame came almost instantly and almost entirely from the net. In her first year she was using more bandwidth than the whole of Central America and was one of the top ten sites on the planet. She became the most downloaded woman in history and was among the very first self-made, internet millionaires. Impressively she did it all with boobies and jokes, without going hardcore.

…dominate a niche, copy John Cross
The softcore market is even less well understood than the hardcore porn market. Hugh Hefner popularized softcore back in the fifties, but today Playboy makes most of its money from hardcore cable TV. John Cross has inherited Hefner’s mantle and kept it real (real soft). His ‘Sexy, no sex’ mantra would be quaint if it wasn’t such good business. His company continues to prove that naked beautiful women are a draw, and that you can profitably ignore the ‘what-next?’ hardcore porn arms-race. You can buy HotBody tapes in stores that swear they don’t sell porn, and watch them on satellite or cable anywhere in the US . HotBody are a quiet player on the adult/mainstream divide.

…be a porn star, copy Nina Hartley
Nina may be the smartest woman in porn and is a consummate performer. She had a speaking role in ‘Boogie Nights‘ (William H. Macy’s wife) and she’s been blogging since before there was a name for it. That’s cool. She’s smart, she’s quoted, she loves her job and she’s old enough to be your mother. While other performers pretend to like what they do and leave the industry at the earliest opportunity, she likes what she does and shows no sign of slowing. As the business has evolved she’s stayed at its forefront. A performer worth listening too as well as looking at.

…be an icon, copy Jenna Jameson
Jenna’s carefully constructed myth distracts from what she’s achieved. Jenna is not a staggering natural beauty (I mean this in the most honest way – Angelina Jolie is a staggering natural beauty, that’s it for famous women on Earth currently), nor a crazed sexual deviant and wasn’t born a celebrity. She is the most famous adult performer working today because of hard work and smart decisions. Launched to prominence in the adult industry by Wicked Pictures, Jenna has always been a media whore, and early on recognized the value in forging a strong relationship with America ’s favorite porn consumer, Howard Stern. Since leaving Wicked she’s continued to volunteer for anything that might get her on camera or into the news. She’s now an icon, securely part of the establishment, and is an example of how to transcend the limitations of being a performer. She makes it look easy. It wasn’t.

…be a phtotographer, copy Suze Randall
Suze Randall was a nurse, then a nude model and then a photographer. She’s still the photographer that every performer in the industry wants to shoot for. In her second half century she’s still beautiful, and famous for boundless hospitality and a natural eloquence with the f-word. She’s worked for Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler, and helped to define the look of modern ‘hi-gloss’ pornography. When the magazine market which supported her began to suffer at the hands of the internet she launched a site of the own, Suze.net, and began to reclaim the rights to her massive archive of photos. By remaining focused on beauty and quality, Suze has built a library of material that will be in demand 100 years from now for aesthetic reasons alone. Her website is hugely successful and she’s the most direct route to becoming a Penthouse Pet. Her stuff will be exhibited in gallery’s as soon as someone divorces its quality from the "Look – they’re fucking" factor.

If you’re looking to get into the industry – pioneers like those listed above are the ones you should be listening to.

Popularity: 23% [?]

Written by men, dictated by God.

The jizz bizz, like any industry, has it’s own slang and references. They can be confusing to outsiders. For example, during a refreshment break on an adult movie set, only someone with no experience of the porn world would ask Ron Jeremy to put some cream in their coffee.

To ease people’s entry to the world of smut I’ve started compiling an encyclopedia of common terms – The Encyclopedia Pornographia. To ease people’s entry in more general terms I suggest KY jelly, butter or – in a pinch – 10w30 (10w40 between November and March).

The Encyclopedia is aimed at people interested in working in the jizz bizz, so I’ve left out porn information which is of more interest to fans. I’m not including anything which I don’t think is directly relevant to porn, so don’t look for non-porn specific definitions either.

Have I missed something? Tell me. Think I’ve made a mistake? Start your own blog if you’re so fucking clever.

I’ll update this in response to requests or whenever I feel it’s necessary.

0-9

2257 – Shorthand for the laws regarding the production of pornography in the US . Often used in reference to the specific requirements placed on adult websites. Not complying with 2257 regulations will land you in jail.

A

A2M – Ass-to-mouth. Depictions of men receiving fellatio immediately following unprotected anal sex from the woman they were sodomizing. Ingesting rectal bacteria is potentially highly dangerous. Definitely a second date move.

A2OGM – Ass-to-other-girls-mouth. Depictions of men receiving fellatio, immediately following unprotected anal sex, from a woman who isn’t the one they were sodomizing. Potentially dangerous (see A2M). Performed by Tom Hanks during the ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ DVD out-takes.

AIDS – The disease most often cited as a risk of working in hardcore pornography. Most performers are tested every 30 days using a PCR-DNA test. HIV tests are not mandated by law, but performers in the US are expected to be tested and arrive for work with current test data. AIM healthcare will confirm a clean bill of health for a performer if asked.

AIM Healthcare – Adult Industry Medical. Medical facility run by ex-performer Dr. Sharon Mitchell. Performs the vast majority of the mandatory STD screening performers need in order to work in the jizz bizz. AIM offers counseling to performers and warns the industry of disease outbreaks.

Anal – Anal sex. A standard part of porn movies. Female performers stop eating 12-8 hours before an anal scene and give themselves repeated enemas to create the illusion of a soot-free tailpipe.

AVN – Adult Video News (www.avn.com), the main trade publication of the porn industry. Free subscriptions available to qualified individuals. Can be purchased at some news stands and in sex shops.

AVN Awards – The Oscars of US Porn. Held in Vegas each January. Ironically AVN Awards are harder to use as sex toys than Oscars.

AVN Online – Adult Video News the magazine and website that takes a monthly look at the online adult market

B

B/G – A sex scene involving a man and a woman.

Bi – Bisexual. Only used to describe scenes in which men are bisexual. There is unwarranted stigma attached to women who perform with bisexual men (i.e. in films which contain male-homosexual and straight content together).

Boy – A male performer, regardless of his age.

C

Condom only – Studios who insist on using condoms during sex scenes. What I pack for a weekend out of town.

Content – The video, photos, text or other which comprise ‘porn’.

Couples friendly – Phrase used to identify porn which couples (i.e. women) are expected to enjoy. This often means soft focus, sub Kenny G muzak and pointless melodrama.

Crack Whore Magazine – Fictional publication featured in South Park, has Cartman’s mom on the cover.

Cum – Also known as man fat, baby gravy, liquid silk, cock vomit, the juice, milky goodness, the breakfast of champions or semen. Latin word meaning "with".

D

Danni Ashe – The most downloaded women on the Internet. Her sucess with the adult website she launched in 1996 has become the model which porn stars, strippers and models follow online.

Dong – What the people who make them call a dildo. Seriously.

F

Free Speech Coalition (FSC) – Adult industry lobbying group. Fights punitive legislation, defends performers and offers a public ‘face’ for the industry. The animated flag on their website is cheesy.

G

G/G – A sex scene involving two women.

Gape – Term used to describe video footage of a wide open rectum. More tea vicar?

Gay – Refers only to male homosexuality. Lesbianism and female bisexuality are expected of women and not usually specified. Small open-top cars and iPod mini’s are also gay.

Girl - A female performer, regardless of her age, number of grandchildren etc.

Gush, The – A fictional condition afflicting male performers invented by Chris Morris. When ‘the gush’ strikes men can’t stop ejaculating – "…first white, then black, then death."

H

Hardcore – Porn that includes scenes of sex taking place (simulations of sex don’t count). A pretty depressing 1979 movie about the sex industry starring George C. Scott and directed by Paul Schrader. 

Hot Body – Worlds #2 producer of softcore adult content after Playboy. If you want to work in the softcore market and don’t want to work for Playboy, or want more money than they pay, these are the guys to contact.

Hitachi Magic Wand – World’s finest vibrator and controversial Harry Potter product placement. Gluing a credit card to one makes men totally redundant.

I

InterNext – Bi-annual adult website industry trade-show. Takes place in Vegas, Nevada in January, and in Hollywood , Florida in August.

Interracial – Scenes in which black and white people have sex with each other. White/Asian sex is not always categorized as interracial but Black/White sex always is. Black/Asian sex is good – real good.

J

Jenna Jameson – Arguably the worlds most famous porn star, certainly the richest. The only real ’star’. Came to fame at Wicked Pictures under the tutelage of Joy King and Steve Orenstein. Now runs a number of porn related business’ and websites. Is partnered with Vivid for distribution. Looks good as a brunette.

Jesus – Invented sex, hates fucking apparently. A confusing message we all struggle with.

Jesus juice – Wine, as administered to minors by Michael Jackson who is not a paedophile in the eyes of the law. Jesus juice (not Jesus) is responsible for the content on 90% of amateur porn sites.

K

Kyla Cole – Gorgeous Czech model. An example of how beautiful the best softcore models are/need to be. Can out drink the lot of you.

M

Max Hardcore – Has defined the ‘edge’ of hardcore porn for over ten years. Sexual pioneer? Violent misogynist? Watch his movies before taking any job offer, the man does not yell cut when he needs a bathroom break. Available for Weddings and Bar Mitzvah’s

P

Playboy – The pornographic magazine founded by Hugh Hefner. The most popular men’s magazine in the US, it still outsells Sports Illustrated. The closest thing the porn industry has to a ‘respectable’ face.

Porn Character Actor – Does not exist.

Porn Star – Used by civilians to describe talent/performers.

PPV – Pay-per-view. See VOD

Private – World’s second largest producer of hardcore adult movies. Based in Europe and known for explicit movies starring beautiful people.

R

Ron Jeremy – Arguably more famous than Jenna. Big enough to self fellate. Loved by many, mocked by all, universally liked. The only male porn star straight guys can claim to like without being considered a bit fruity.

S

Scene – A filmed sex act. Porn movies are made up of ’scenes’ and adult movie performers are paid per  scene.

Sharon Mitchell, Dr. – founder of AIM Healthcare, ex-performer and ex-heroin addict. Smart and saintly in her devotion to performer welfare. Has a pet parrot.

Softcore – Porn which does not include sex scenes involving more than one person, or in which the sex is simulated. The kind of porn David Duchovny starred in before he got the lead in the X-Files.

Solo – Porn featuring only one performer. Pilot of the Millenium Falcon, likes Wookies.

Suitcase Pimp – Derogatory term used to describe a man who lives off his performer girlfriend or wife. Apocryphally they show up to jobs with a suitcase and their ‘girl’ hence the phrase.

T

Talent – A performer. May have no talent.

TFP – Trade-For-Pics. When a photographer shoots a model and, instead of paying her cash, gives her rights to re-sell the images on her website or elsewhere.

V

Vivid Entertainment Group – Worlds largest producer of hardcore adult movies. Operates a ‘condom only’ policy.

VOD – Video on demand. Traditionally referred to selling movies via cable systems. Increasingly used to refer to movies downloaded online.

W

Wicked Pictures – The company that gave the world Jenna Jameson. Operates a ‘condom only’ policy.

World Modeling – Jim South’s porn modeling agency. The big one. 4524 Van Nuys Boulevard , Los Angeles , CA .

Y

Your mothers got a penis – Derogotary remark common at SugarBank HQ.

Popularity: 23% [?]

Flame on…

The sex industry has a crappy reputation and gets appalling press. A lot of that’s due to prejudice and misrepresentation. The rest is due to stupidity.

Misrepresentation we can’t do anything about. Stupidity we can. Here are ten things to avoid is you want to get better publicity, more often.

(Flame on)

Don’t endanger performers: The BDSM community handles people’s wildly different sexual fetishes, without being judgmental, by saying anything’s okay if it’s safe, sane and consensual:

• Safe = People shouldn’t put others at risk
• Sane = People shouldn’t put themselves at risk due to stupidity or naivete
• Consensual = Everyone involved has to agree to everything they’re involved in

Consent alone isn’t enough. Consenting to some things doesn’t mean consenting to anything. I consented to seeing ‘Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace’ back in 1999. Sure I knew it was going to have some kids stuff in it, but I didn’t know how bad a movie could be back then – I was young. No one told me about Jar Jar Binks.

In every other branch of the entertainment industry, what appears to be dangerous is simulated. The adult industry has to start doing the same.

Don’t lie: I recently read a piece in which a well known adult performer discussed being too busy to follow through on the mainstream movie offers that land on her doorstep, every week apparently.

Bullshit.

To expect people to believe than a porn actress turned down a speaking role in a (real) movie, so they could film spend the day in a warehouse in San Fernando shooting ‘Put It All In There Right Now – 14′, is ridiculous.

If good offers of real parts existed they’d be going to Jenna Jameson and she’d take one occasionally. The roles adult performers get offered are cameos as porn stars and strippers. They pay $250 for the day and you have to date the director. I know – I used to get the calls.

Don’t lie. Didn’t Mr. T teach you anything?

Don’t steal: If you’re going to advertise that your website’s free, and say you need a credit card to authenticate age, and you later charge people who’ve signed on for a free trial for a membership, you are a liar and a thief.

It’s the seller’s responsibility to make things clear, not the customers job to analyze the fine print.

The enduring popularity of ‘fine-print scams’ are the reason people begin think that browsing adult websites is a leading cause of cancer.

Anything that damages customers trust costs you, and everyone else, money.

Don’t copy (as much): The world’s not out of ideas but the adult world can seem as if it is.

Sex is at the center of porn in the same way that violence is at the center of ‘action’ movies. It provides space for limitless variation. Where’s porn’s Alias? Die Hard? Stanford and Son? (actually I think I saw a porn take on Stanford and Son once, it wasn’t pretty).

Do something new, people want to be entertained and the things being copied were new ideas once. Get some.

Don’t pretend it’s real: Reality porn is now less convincing than the pizza-delivery scenario so well-loved in the seventies and eighties. What’s the point of labeling things ‘reality’ when everything’s been staged? How does that differ from badly acted drama?

If you want to shoot reality work out a way to do it that works. Stop pretending that you’re picking people up people too stupid to ask why the guy who’s talking to them goes by the name ‘MILF Assassin’ and is holding a camcorder.

Don’t call women sluts and whores: The current popularity in the porn industry for calling female performers sluts, whores and tramps is as misguided as rappers calling each other nigger. (Don’t believe me? Think that ‘nigga’s’ okay now? Shout it at some black people and see if anyone’s offended. I don’t care who you are. If Justin Timberlake called Snoop nigger, Snoop would fuck him up.)

There’s nothing empowering about encouraging people who think you’re worthless, to refer to you as if you are.

Verbal degradation is a particular fetish some people share and many don’t. When did the industry decide that most of us were into it?

Don’t become obsessed with sodomy: Women have entirely different genitals from men. That’s good. The vagina is the perfect reproductive and sexual organ – why trade it for an orifice women share with your grandfather.

I’m not homophobe but if I want to watch a close-up or a penis entering an asshole I’ll watch gay porn – ‘Extreme Makeover: Home Edition’ or something.

At one time wasn’t an emphasis on sodomy the difference between straight and gay porn anyway?

Don’t piss on people: Penthouse famously led us down this golden pathway, ostensibly satisfying a fetish of Bob Guccione (Bob if that’s not true – apologies).

It’s not that peeing is horrifying or even particularly gross (though drinking it’s a bit odd). It’s just why? When I see a beautiful women in a bar I don’t think ‘Hmmm, she’d look great with her mouth full of my lemonade’ – I’m not R Kelly.

Taking a pee is not a sexy event for most people.

Don’t pretend you’re a pimp: You know who you are webmasters.

You spend your life in front of a keyboard. As a teenager dates were a problem. The most attractive woman you know pays you to run her website. You like Linux. You go online to play computer games with other chubby men. You have never been arrested. Any competent tarmac technician could, and would, kick your ass. You’re white. You are not a pimp. Shut up about it.

Don’t court bad publicity: The two groups of people who say ‘There’s no such thing as bad publicity’ are idiots and incompetent publicists (these groups crossover). Don’t believe it and remember that you can say no occasionally.

If you’re unsure what bad publicity might be, think about anything that gets you attention without making you money or more popular.

Don’t defend everything: The adult industry won’t succeed in protecting its right to free speech by trying to force the public to accept whatever the most degenerate people in the industry can think up. Even the NRA distance themselves from people who use guns to shoot people at random from their car.

When people are hurt the free-speech argument is superseded, in the same way it is when a protest against a minority group devolves into a physical attack.

Some things, like the fifth season of the West Wing, aren’t worth defending. Let them rot.

(Flame off)

Popularity: 33% [?]

If you want people to look you in the eyse without laughing, consider your porn name carefully.

We’ve all heard about making up a porn name by combining our pet’s name with the street we grew up on but since 1986 that’s been illegal. Seriously, try it and porn commandos will bury up to the neck in sand and bukkake on you until you apologize.

A professional name is a serious thing. You have to live with it, it’s your calling card and it has to grow as you do. It’s also the first major decision you make on entering the industry, and shouldn’t be made when confronted with a release form in a photographers studio. If you leave it until then you’ll end up with a name the photographer came up with. You don’t want that, get any jizz bizz professional drunk enough and they’ll rattle off a list of ridiculous porn names they’d love to saddle someone with.

A number of European performers use their real names, though it’s rare in the US (a dissertation on guilt and morality is waiting to be written on that). The problems with using your real name are:

1. It may not be memorable.
2. You probably won’t be able to buy it as a URL for your website.
3. You won’t be able to check into a hotel without getting calls from horny fans who know you’re in town.
4. If you have children they’re going to have to justify your lifestyle every day in school. Of course, if you home school your kids and work in the adult industry, your kids are social outcasts already. Go back to worrying about Arab homosexuals with AIDS being paid, with your tax dollars, to take our guns away and force us all to be Buddhists.

Like everyone else in the public eye, including William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton (so named because he’ll drop trou’ for a dollar), you also want a porn name to create an impression.

Newcomers frequently try to choose names that sound similar to other performers they admire. That’s a mistake.

The more successful you become, the shorter your name will become. We naturally shorten names because we like the people we’re referring to. It feels friendly and the public’s reliable ability to sniff out killers and pederasts before they’ve done anything obviously wrong is why Michael Jackson, even at the height of his fame, was never just Michael, why O.J Simpson never lost the Simpson, and why Jack the Ripper was never simply Rip.

If I say Jennifer, Brad or Angelina you’ll think of specific individuals (naked, a messy pile of limbs, oil everywhere – or is that just me?). If your chosen name is shared with someone more famous than you it’s a certainty that you’ll be mistaken for them in print. In the porn industry any names which include: Ron, Jenna, Danni, Tera, Nina, Seka, Aria, Veronika (and many, many more) are going to be an uphill battle.

Some amateur website owners try to solve the problem of having a non-unique name, and a decent URL, by tying a description of what they like to do the name they want. It’s where we got ExtremeHolly.com (she’s extreme) and NaughtyAlysha.com (a very naughty lady) from.

NB: If you’re going to visit either of those URLs remember there are some things you can’t un-see.

The problem with descriptive names is that they can be restrictive and give the impression you’re a one trick pony. Flexible names are as desirable as flexible dates.

Unless you’re looking for legal bills don’t choose anything that includes a trademarked phrase. That means you Dr. Whopper (catchphrase – Extra mayo? UARRRGH!)

Most importantly, choose your name before your first professional engagement and choose carefully. Some directors refuse to put ‘cheesy’ names on their boxes and I know models who are called different things according to where they appear because of that. Name changes are a marketing nightmare.

Don’t tell anyone your professional name until you’ve bought a URL, and perhaps started a trademark application. Otherwise when you try to buy that domain you might discover someone else is pretending to be you. Unfortunately it still happens a lot.

Personally, I love names with a touch of retro humor. Beverly Center, Dana Point, Jerry Curl and Bill O’Goods are all high on my list of too-good-not-to-be-used porn names. Which is why I’ll never venture in front of the camera (besides, until wide angle lens technology catches up with my size I’m doomed to appearing blurry.)

The key to picking a great professional name for the adult industry is to forget you’re in the adult industry at all. The best-known nude models and performers have names that would work just as well if they were fronting a rock band or acting in mainstream movies. Your name shouldn’t be something you might ever be ashamed of – you’ll have enough prejudice to counter if you become successful.

Even if you leave the adult world, think how much easier it’ll be to discuss your ‘lost’ past and religious conversion if you don’t have to refer to your former self as ‘Goldie Cumfish’.

Pick something that sounds cool and is non-porn specific. By the time people see your website they’ll be aware of what you’re involved in. If your name sounds ‘porny’ it’ll only make you seem cheesy and out of date.

Rule #1 – Porn and cheese don’t mix.

Popularity: 30% [?]