The Boston Phoenix
June 8 - 15, 2000

[Features]

Media

Servicing the online porn industry

by Dan Kennedy

HARD, THROBBING CASH: business tips for smut peddlers

It is an e-commerce truism that the only online services large numbers of people will pay for are financial advice and pornography -- or "stocks and bondage," as WGBH-TV's John Carroll likes to say. With estimates of the cyberporn business ranging from $1 billion to $5 billion, there are obviously a lot of X-rated webmasters out there who could use some good-old-fashioned business advice.

Enter AVN Online, which, despite its name, is a monthly print magazine (it's also on the Web at www.avnonline.com). The Chatsworth, California-based trade publication is aimed at purveyors of Internet porn. The 212-page June issue is chock full of ads offering wholesale-priced content, computer services, and billing help, among other things.

Oddly, the naughty bits are covered up. But no matter. The real fun in AVN Online is in the articles, which include a legal-advice column to help wanna-be pornographers negotiate the intricacies of credit-card payments, and a feature story on how to turn curious surfers who leave a porn site without signing up -- so-called exit traffic -- into hard, throbbing cash. "Most webmasters . . . regard exit traffic as an invaluable source of revenue and would no sooner casually discard it than they would throw away a half-eaten package of Pepperidge Farm chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies," instructs the mono-named associate editor Sirin.

All business people need a self-esteem boost from time to time, and AVN Online obliges here as well. Take, for instance, the lead of this dispatch, datelined from Washington: "Consumers may lose millions to Internet fraud, but only a tiny percentage of that can be laid at the feet of the adult Web, according [to] Internet Fraud Watch (IFW), a consumer advocacy group." Hey, you pays your $50 through an auction site for a Paul McCartney T-shirt and you takes your chances. But if you sign up for live, streaming video of masturbating nymphets, then that's exactly what you're going to get. It's called truth in advertising, pal.