100 questions :thumbsup Shap, what time is it ? :Graucho

Btw I love hearing this. Thank you! We were very picky in our hiring especially of people that had worked in the industry. Michael and Kevin to this day are two of my favourite people. They are both awesome. It took us 3 years to find Michael and he was worth the wait :)

12:14am or 00:14 as they say here

lol damn

Shap, I'll shoot you an email tomorrow. It's a little late here now and want to spend some time with my boy before his bedtime. Nice to see you around.

Thank you for answering Shap ;)

I will quote you on that :winkwink::thumbsup

Wow do you embed video in this forum?? What is windows.exe mean?

In what is after all , 2014 and of course factoring in the rise of the tubes and of course manwin.....

What I really would like to know is why Chelsea sucks so, so badly considering their budget. ;-))

Do you think the Incredible Hulk could survive in the vacuum of space without the equipment that mere humans need?

Welcome back EC :1orglaugh

Hi Kane!

1. Great question. It's hard to regret anything because a lot of the things we did or things we handled helped shape us as a company moving forward. For example we were one of the first to come out and work with RedTube. I took heap loads of shit for that. I don't blame anyone for attacking me. I went public with it because 1. i wasn't going to hide behind my decision to work with them and 2. I thought it was an important step that was happening within the industry. I wasn't alone but I was the only one willing to talk about it. I wanted to share with people that there was a shift happening and it was probably time to start planning and preparing for that shift. Things were not going to go back to the way they were so it was better to plan and prepare for the future than dwell on recreating the past.

I was often told I engage too much with people on GFY and I should just run business and not give a rats ass what others think. It's not in my DNA to be like that. I still vividly remember when I just got started on the industry and I was the guy reading the boards trying to understand and learn the industry. I don't ever want to turn my back on those people. I was once there and if it weren't for a few key people who helped me I probably wouldn't have had the same success that I had. Referring back to the RedTube example if just one person read that thread and thought "man Shap is working with Tubes I can't ignore tubes any longer I have to give them a shot" then it was worth the 10+ page fiasco.

If anything my main regrets is every get rich quick scheme i thought could work. Especially when I was first starting out. Buy this program for $5k and you'll make 10k a month with it. LOL What a load of crap. Every single time. Nothing comes without hard work.

2. When Manwin acquired Twistys all employee jobs were kept for 3 months during the transition period. In the first month of the transition period all of them met with Manwin and a potential job was discussed. Internally Michael and I met with every single employee one on one and discussed their future with them. Found out what they wanted to do. If relocating to Montreal was an option or interest to them? If not what they'd like to do. From there we tried to help all of them make their next move. So throughout that 3 month transition many of them moved on to their new jobs and some of them moved on to Manwin and others just moved on.

3. Not that i know of. Like i said above we went above and beyond imo to help people make the transition. We wanted to make sure everybody was taken care of. I think a lot of people miss the working environment we had. It was a fun office.

What does EC stand for?

Once a whore always a whore I guess :pimp

How about yourself how are you doing these days?

I agree 100% with you. Especially as more stories come out now about how fierce a competitor St Louis. Shame they didn't take him. Hopefully he makes it on as a replacement.

I haven't watched much hockey and have never seen Chris Kunitz. I know he has the padded stats of playing with Crosby. He just doesn't seem like a superstar to me. I definitely think Rick Nash is no longer the Rick Nash of old.

At least PK made it :thumbsup

I'm guessing I can skip this one. No clue what you are asking

Of course!

McDonalds,Burger King or KFC?
Hmm probably Burger King given the choice. If in Canada i'd go with Harvey's or even better Burgers Priest in Toronto.

You ever driven a Bugatti Veyron?
Not yet.

Do you have more than $10 million in your bank account?
I try to avoid answering the personal financial questions :)

Tenerife question - did you chicken out like me & passed on going down the Tower Of Power?, you gotta admit the water park was F.L.Y - the 'wave' machine was pretty cool right?
I did chicken out in Tenerife but I did go on Tower of Power at Atlantis in Dubai which was great but their Poseidon's revenge was even better.

Do you always fly 'first class' drinking the finest wines?
When available. Under 3 hours it's not worth it in Europe as you don't get anything extra. But long haul flights for sure. I'm a tall guy :winkwink:

What watch are you wearing?
Panerai

Please note:- i never chickened out of Wadi Water Park in Dubai

Hey Shap, great to see you here again, in you're eyes, where is Adult headed in 2014?

Also in your eyes, what should the Affiliate be focused on in 2014?

Hi :) Thanks great to hear from you :thumbsup

What type of affiliate specifically?

Affiliate running multiple porn directories, with hundreds of partners. I have no idea what you would call my network, there really isn't anything like it online, but it converts :) More importantly though, where is Adult headed in 2014 in you're eyes?

Enormous Cock :upsidedow

shap
https://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=1130614

Thanks for the answers. It seems like the sale/transition went well and you handled it with class (which is no surprise to those of us who have been around a while). I was always curious about how that kind of stuff went down. If my pre-porn life I worked for a couple of companies that were sold and in both cases they handled the transition (and eventually firings etc) terribly.

It is always good to see the old timers still hanging out here.

I had one other question for you if you don't mind. Knowing what you now know, if you had a limited budget and were going to start over from scratch what would you focus on. Would you go the paysite route again? Maybe cams? Clip stores? Just work as an affiliate and try to build up a traffic network? Or maybe something all together different.

Name ten people still actively working in the adult industry who you believe have 'what's best for the industry ' high on their priority list.
People who are interested in more than this month or this quarter.
If you think there are more than ten, who are your top ten...

Thanks

Is there light at the end of the tunnel? =)

Everyone is still here right :thumbsup

Things change. If you look at successful mainstream internet companies from 10 or 15 years ago and where are they today? Some are still doing well. Many are probably out of business. They've been replaced by new companies that have jumped on new opportunities that have come up. It's not 2009 anymore. I think it's important for people to maximize their returns on what used to work but also know when to move on and start looking and new opportunities. For example if you made 10k a month submitting galleries to tgps in 2005, and you made 7k a month in 2009 and you make 3k a month now. There probably isn't much you can do to get that 3k back to 10k with tgps. But there are probably other things you can try that may help you start clawing your way back up.

Hi Kolargol. Be sure to reply to my earlier reply to you so i can follow up :thumbsup

That's a great question but far too long an answer I think and to top it off I'm a little out of practise and generally really bad and turning my ideas for design into words LOL ask my former staff :winkwink:

Here are some of my thoughts on each.

Tour page
I think it's important to cater the tour page the to traffic hitting it. You have someone coming from a Lisa Ann video on RedTube don't have the first 10 girls they see be blonde, flat, 18 year olds. It's hard enough to sell to catered traffic never mind trying to sell everyone with one approach. Cater the tour page and try to show what you are about. I am a big fan of a tour page that grows and changes as the site grows and changes. It's important for prospective members to see that your site is a living breathing animal. I think many of your best members might not join the first time they see your site. You are going to have to earn their trust. It's a marathon not a race. If they don't join today that's not the end of the world.

Join Page
Join page is interesting. You have to a/b test non stop. We tried so many things I thought would never work and I was proven wrong. Test test test and test some more. Any time not testing is a potential lost opportunity. Clean pages are best. As simple as you possibly can would be the way I'd opt for.

Members Area
I built Twistys members area based on the Karups members area. A huge vast area that seemed never ending. So many members areas have a finite feel to them. I think it's important for the members area to be so well laid out and so easy to navigate that there are no moments of doubt in the members head. You want to make sure your best content rises to the top. It's obviously important to have a chronological aspect to your site so steady members can always see what's new. But you always want to be sure new members don't only judge your site and your most recent update but also on your best available content. Just because a video was uploaded 2 years ago doesn't make it any less hot to somebody who is seeing it for the first time. Also you have to be a lot like google. You want your member to be able to search for exactly what they are looking for but also you have to show them something that you think they may want even if they don't even know it. We built that feature into Twistys a long time ago before it was easy to do. Nowadays it would be even easier. Cater to them. Clean layout. The funny thing is the cleaner the layout the less shit you'll take for any ads you add to the members area if done right :winkwink:

My pleasure :)

It's a work in progress and we are still right there in the hunt of things. Haven't lost any points to the big boys yet. We seem to stumble badly against the weaker teams.

End of the day we need a striker that can score :disgust

Everyone should be taking advantage of this thread!

Hi Shap! :)

HEY! How've you been?

Affiliates who build websites

have you ever boned a tranny?

Hey Shap, cool thread... one question I got is if you could touch on your drive. It seems like your were always pushing forward and never satisfied with stagnating. That's something a lot of people in this life, myself included, have a hard time dealing with. When you're working at home for yourself, it's not always easy to push yourself if you're content with your situation.

So what kept you motivated besides the money/material things?

hahahha nope.

And Shap, I hope your enjoying your life, you and your partners!

Got any tips for me about www.porndeals.com ?

:)

Do you think you WON GFY Hall of Fame award... I predict you did ;)

I don't know. Would be nice. I didn't even think about that when i started this thread or the other thread. Was my timing good?

Btw how are you doing man? I remember reading on your FB last year but don't remember how everything turned out. Better and awesome I'm hoping?

Interesting thread, lots of good reading :thumbsup

Thanks Shap! I really appreciate this because Im in a bad spot and working to get out of it.
**My goal is to earn $100k by the end of December. is this possible?

How I was going to do it:

I have 5 dating websites.
2 mainstream sites - older people (like senior friend finder) and Christian.
2 sites for men who like to dress as women
1 for gay hookups

which one would you focus on, or would you focus on promoting all 5?

what would you do to promote them and get them off the ground?
I know you started from nothing and worked your tail off to build an empire and I want to do the same. I dont know *exactly* how to spend my 10 hours a day building my empire

I also have $5k in savings I can use to start promoting and get things moving quicker.

Or I could do something besides dating, but I *really* want to hit 100k by the end of 2014 and get my life back on track.

I have no distractions and can work 16 hour days if I need to. this is more important to me than friends or anything to distract me.

Thanks, yay Shap!

even if Canada had a second team it would be a bad ass team.

Sorry for late reply. I have my affiliate program listed on most of the biggest directories but most of them never really referred any affiliates. Owners of most of the biggest foot fetish directories promote my site. The do bring sales but most of sales still come from my own traffic.

With foot fetish traffic my sites convert well and retention is great.
This is very small business. I know sites are small and microniche, design is not the best, promo tools also. I also know I have very good quality content that can sell really well with the right traffic.

Are you currently buying traffic? If so, scale those buys. Which site generates the highest $ per member? Identify which sites have traffic that will convert your sites, and do whatever you can to get ads on them. Track everything religiously, from the site to the banner to the lander to the sale. Stop what isn't profitable and repeat what is. This is possible on a small budget, contact site owners directly, try juicyads, etc.

Be prepared to spend $5000 to make $5500.

1) How much did you sell your business for? We all want to know :) Even a ballpark figure

2) Have you invested any money into Bitcoin? I've noticed you ask a few questions about it on GFY

3) Are you getting bored with being retired? Has money bought you happiness? i.e. having the total financial freedom to do whatever you want

4) Where you see the internet heading in the next 5 years?

i.e. Name 3 industries you'd focus your time and money if you where going to start a new business online today

5) What's your best piece of advice for expanding a business with new staff, especially if you're the type of personality that's a control freak who has trouble trusting other people to perform key tasks.

6) What are the 3 key things you've learnt in business from working in the adult industry?

Oh you have one, you loaned him to Everton for the season :winkwink:

http://d25yla7xp697oa.cloudfront.net...644_lukaku.jpg

Where did you stay in the South of France?
How did it feel to finally bench press over 300lbs?
How big was your boner when you met Gary Vaynerchuk (i love him) and did he say anything to inspire you?