TastyTrixie.com

Posts Tagged ‘small business’

I just used some of my webcam money to subscribe to one of my favorite radio programs ever, Hearts of Space. Nevermind the ill-advised acronym (so typical of nerds to make a hilarious mistake like that, god love ‘em).

Since our porn business operates on a subscription basis, it’s interesting to research other subscription-based internet products, their price points, and comparing the offerings. I loved reading the HOS: WHY PAY? page. Like porn, music is something you can get free online in a million places. Even when people don’t ask you to justify charging for it, many of us feel we MUST explain it (I’ve been criticized by adult webmasters for the times when I’ve disclosed similar information and confronted those questions when maybe I should leave them alone). It’s inspiring to read the way Hearts of Space explains some of their business approach (and costs outsiders don’t comprehend without being taught) because it’s so firmly rooted in a clear vision, one that I know DELIVERS an experience I’ve never gotten from any other radio programming. There is a certain personality, there are seductive, hypnotic voices I’m attached to, and there is a well-planned journey offered by HOS.

HEARTS of SPACE PRODUCER STEPHEN HILL’s CAREER seemed to take a sharp detour in the early 70’s when he abandoned his architectural career and opened a recording studio. . . . In retrospect, Hill realizes he never really left architecture. He simply became a sound architect who learned to build his castles on the air. “Architects create environments with physical materials.
I do it with sound.” - Stephen Hill

It’s also interesting to observe my own thought process in deciding what kind of subscription to get: I chose the $13 a month all-access plan because I don’t feel like I can shell out the money for a year even though I know it would save me money in the long run. Also, The internet radio channel only (no archives or playlists) probably would’ve been good enough for me, but if it wasn’t, I didn’t want to try to figure out how to upgrade mid-month. Out of laziness/a desire to be efficient with my time and not necessarily need or probable usage, I chose the more comprehensive membership. I know people go through similar though processes when deciding which membership plan to get for our sites.

Hearts of Space is an inspiring model of how to create and sustain and love a “product” that’s not personalized for each individual listener but still manages to feel intimate even though it’s mass-delivered and not even live (except maybe one hour a week, I think).  It speaks of a void and manages to fill it –inside of me and outside of me — at the same time. I’m fascinated by people and groups who design and deliver stimuli producing what appears to be a relatively mundane experience (compared to, say, a roller coaster ride in a theme park or a provocative theatre piece, etc.) that manages to infiltrate people’s lives by being constantly accessible in private, demanding little of them but providing addictive stimulation. A little like a favorite diner or coffee shop. Something offering sustenance you could get elsewhere, but elsewhere just wouldn’t be QUITE right. I believe there’s something about the earnestness of the proprietors to deliver an actual EXPERIENCE they’ve envisioned in rich detail and feel in their own bones that makes Hearts of Space , some bookstores, a couple of Indian and Thai restaurants in Tacoma, and some porn sites exceptional.

I love music and I love feeling distant connections to people, but it’s impossible for me to listen to voices or most music and WORK at the same time. “Space music” offers me the kind of escape and transcendence I long for. It’s a spiritual salve for me that allows me to imagine journeying into a meaningful peaceful nothingness of wind and colors and stars and the smell of ozone. It gives me a lot of the feeling I get from imagining my ideal forms of church or prayer or sanctuary or space travel. It’s like having a lucid flying dream. That’s totally worth $13 a month to me. “Greetings, space fans . . . “

There’s a vibe on Hearts of Space that I’d like to infuse my own site with – that I’ve always wanted to be there and have maybe succeeded in transmitting some of the time (not the SAME vibe, but a quality or peculiarity of vibe). I think it will be helpful to listen to HOS on a daily basis to remind myself of the possibilities and how personality and vision and voices (even in very limited doses, more often without words) can combine in powerful, seductive, and soothing ways. How to make transportation out of your aesthetics and values to take people to a place they recognize as one where their belief systems make perfect sense. Or freewheeling careless nonsense. Where you look around and feel yourself and even though nothing has changed, you’re like, “THIS is it, what I was trying to remember that was bothering the tip of my tongue.”

Like, fucking psychic alignment, man!

Click here for an older post about new age music, porn and more.

*****

I know, you’re all like . . . post some porn, woman!! Are you losing your mind?

I can only answer in a predictably crazy way by insisting that no, I’m totally on the verge of genuine SANITY, motherfuckers!! Seriously, like, all is about to be REVEALED!!

I’ll try to post something porny and down-to-earth for you soon, mkay? I’ll TRY.

I am always trying. I don’t know if that’s apparent or not, but it’s true.

Over the weekend (on May Day) the members area of my site (TastyTrixie.com/members) turned eight years old!

Here are some pictures from this year’s and last year’s May Day galleries:

Wearing a white corset outside: May Day 2010

I *loved* these pictures last year; they made me fall in love with myself (an important state of mind to be in for a webwhore):

It's like magic! And cleavage! And whirling!

My freckled shoulders, curly hair and big natural boobies!

This year’s set wasn’t so good, but it was all worth it to get charming shots like this favorite of mine:

Spreading May Day cheer!

So after eight years you might wonder how the indie porn site business is holding up, and the answer is NOT SO GREAT! I’m still optimistic though because there are so many things I know I could do (or do better or do more often) to boost business.

The only “problem” is I’m becoming more realistic after all these years and recognize I can’t do it all and maybe it’s not really possible for us to do more! better! and more often! It even got to the point where I seriously considered focusing solely on promoting and shooting for DeliaTS.com and putting updates and promotion for all of our other sites, including TastyTrixie.com, on hiatus. We are trying to do the jobs of too many people.

The past few weeks I’ve shifted my approach to work a little bit by

1) using to-do list software (both Swift To-Do List and Daily To-Do List). It’s helping me prioritize and sort my ideas and tasks.

2) making a 40 hour work week a goal / forcing ourselves to take days off like normal people expect to do with good jobs.

I use a timer with a stopwatch to keep track of when I’m working. In the notes section of Daily To-Do List I keep track of the hours I’ve worked and what I’ve accomplished. Yes, it’s very wage-slavey, but it’s more manageable (and more rewarding) than feeling like WORK IS NEVER EVER DONE! BITCH, KEEP WORKING KEEP WORKING TEN TWELVE FOURTEEN HOURS A DAY YOU KNOW YOU CAN’T REST BECAUSE THERE’S JUST SO MUCH!!!

I am beginning to accept that if we can’t succeed by working a humane number of hours and allowing ourselves time OFF that IT ISN’T WORTH IT.

And that’s where the fear/knowledge comes in that I am going to have to give up doing some things I’m very attached to because it isn’t realistic to think I can do them all. Spiritually (? or emotionally or psychologically or whatever word you’re comfortable with) this is an important confrontation to have with myself and reality. I suspect there might be a life of bliss (with lots of time spent checking out books at the library and reading in the grass) awaiting me on the other side of this confrontation but I’m still balking at it and refusing to let go.

I wonder if it’s normal to take a decade to resolve this conflict between what you WANT to do and what you CAN do and still be healthy. Ten years sounds like a long time, but I think it might be about right. I figure I still have two or three years before life finally batters me into submission so for now my site is not on hiatus. Who knows? Maybe my timer-and-to-do-list-software scheme will actually make me more productive because I’m not so psyched out and overwhelmed trying to do everything all the time.

One thing I did let go of is driving myself crazy trying to be RELIABLE at posting a new picture gallery or porno video every week in my members-only area. Instead I’m focusing on posting more frequently (multiple times a week) in my new members-only blog with more uniquely personal and candid stuff like vlogs, webcam snaps, behind the scenes stuff, fantasies and other intimate thoughts I don’t want to post in the open here in my free blog, etc. Things got interrupted a bit with the dog dying and some other stuff we have going on (that I may or may not blog about here, but you can hear all about in my vlogs) but after a couple of months of doing things this way I believe it will take off and be more addictive/unique for members.

Obviously I will still do the regular porn stuff of high res photo galleries and videos but I am releasing myself from the pressure of thinking “reliable” is more important than “personal”. Because in the long run I’ve NEVER read a testimonial like, “I’m very aroused by the way Trixie is so RELIABLE.” I have, however, been told a number of times that people would maintain their membership even if all they got was the blog (and/or the spycams).

I pretty much think my “porn” is virtually worthless without the personality, especially with so much competition online, so that is what I’m going to make top priority on my site and the feeling of it being alive with more frequency and easily-digested candid content (albeit with *possibly* a *little* less standard porn site fare POSSIBLY . . . we’ll see how it plays out — I think it will wind up being the same quantity in that department once I get on a roll). The people who love me and my site tend to gravitate towards the bloggier, vloggier, twittier, webcammier, embarrassing confessions, taboo weirdness and daily details stuff (along with panties panties UPSKIRTS and panties!).

Over the years it’s started to feel like I had to make porn to meet porn industry standards — to be digestible in a standardized (though less consistently hardcore) way — so that porn site reviewers and other people promoting our sites would be able to sell my site. It has gotten to the point where we shoot HUGE galleries of a zillion photos less because we think that’s what our members want or because it’s more valuable that way, but because we need to have more promo material and because that’s how people assess the value of porn sites: how many pics are in your galleries? How HUGE are the pictures? How many formats do your videos come in? How often do you add another HUGE photo gallery? It’s pretty fucking boring and totally ignores the CONTENT of the content. And what is the point anyway when all of those things are the easiest to steal? I want to focus on the stuff people can’t steal or is less desirable to the people who steal content. I’m sick of feeling like we’re shooting things to make webmasters happy instead of ourselves and our members who really dig us (fortunately there are some webmasters who dig me/get me as is).

Sometimes I look at the stuff I did back in 2001 when I didn’t have a clue what a porn website was “supposed” to look like or offer, and I miss it/love it/want to do it that way again (but better and less stupid in some aspects). I can’t find the earlier version of this that talked about wanting my site to be like the magazines you’d stuff under your mattress, but I want to get back to that. Here’s one old version though (which of course I would change in some ways, but want to revive the spirit of in other ways):

One of my first attempts at a members-only area

I do not, however, want to repeat some of my earlier horrifying uber-cheesy design mistakes like this one from 2001:

I was *so* proud of my red licorice design!

What can I say? It was the turn of the century! And they didn’t even let our screen names be long enough for me to spell my name correctly! Aahh, those were the days . . . and all these years later the porn industry STILL doesn’t “get” camgirls which is how they’ve managed to destroy that platform for us as a way of making really good money and connections. Yeah, I’m getting off track and onto that bitter old webwhore lament . . .

Anyway, the point is that I want to pull some of the purity of my old personality porn into 2010 and approach working in a realistic way that’s personally rewarding. I’m not sure if it’s possible, though, considering how much time I have to sink into promotion and the technical aspects of maintaining our sites and cams, etc. Just as one three example(s): there is nothing pornographically fun or personally rewarding about spending hours dealing with Blogger pulling the rug out from under those of us who FTP our blogs or with searching high and low for my router password so I can modify all of the settings because our cable company decided to fuck with my IP address AGAIN or with getting set up with additional payment processors because one of them is scrubbing so hard you think they’re trying to erase you from their roster of clients. There’s precious little time left over after those kinds of bullshit that I am TOTALLY FUCKING SICK OF. It’s not all sex and games and horny-girl-diary-entries here, it’s a lot of technical minutiae.

I think I blew all of my really-hard-working years (nonstop, no personal time except for ramen and sleep) working for other people and on not knowing what I was doing. I’m almost forty and I’m done with that.

Note: I have a feeling this post might be stupid, but part of being realistic is hitting “publish” without trying to make every fucking thing perfect. Thanks for understanding and putting up with years of me wrestling with these same challenges of self-employment as an internet sex worker and webmaster.