Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Markham
So what do you put your success down to in the harder times?
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Happy to reflect on that, it's helpful for me too. Here comes my list. I am sure there is more than one way to Rome, but this is what works for us. Here's what first comes to my mind.
1.
Treating the customers with the utmost respect and consideration. Seems obvious, but my hunch is that some people in the biz got spoiled by a few years of goldrush. I spend a couple of hours a day personally responding to customers emails - including helping the 70 years old guy whose "Windows can't work with videos". People are genuinely amazed by the support level, got answers like "this is support better than Amazon". If we want to be a successful startup, we GOTTA have a support which is better than Amazon. For godsake, customers are more precious for us than for Amazon.
2.
Shooting stuff that we consider a turnon ourselves - and have FUN while doing it. Got SO MANY mails along the lines of "in your videos people like what they are doing, that's amazing, most stuff out there is so serial!".
3.
Ditching the tired porny tour/members model for a more open, community driven approach. From the beginning, surfers see exactly ALL what they will get once they join. (Also, they can comment, interact with other members etc, even before they get themselves a membership.) Side effect of this, is that chargebacks are almost non-existent. Had higher chargebacks when selling physical goods, I hear this is rather unique.
4. Having a small
team in place which is nothing short of amazing. Fast, 200% engaged, and FUN. It almost happened by chance to be honest, so there's not much credit to be taken for sheer luck here.
5. Being first "
the affiliates of ourselves". To be sure, we are acutely aware that affiliates remain very much responsible for the success or failure of an adult online business. Said this, I think it gave us a competitive advantage trying early on to promote without primarily relying on affiliation sources. It allowed us to learn much more closely what converts best, which tools and promos are worth focusing on, and which ones might have been essential 5 years ago but are nowdays nothing more than a nice-to-have.
6. Having a lot of
stuff done custom, especially the internal behind the scenes stuff. From one single page, I can now post updates to all our sites with one click, release promos to a network of content partnerships, control the tagging and a bunch of other things. Custom is not always the answer, it's certainly dumb to reinvent the wheel when a script out there does what you want; however, in our case, it made sure that our tools grew with us and fit our workflow like a glove. When we want to play with something new, we release a new version - our short release cycle allows us to experiment a lot.
7.
Operating from a country with the right combination of highly skilled workforce, relatively cheap labour, adult-friendly environment, and last bast certainly not least - some of the sexiest creatures on this planet.
8. Business mistakes I did in the past with other ventures - well, some experience with screwing up, certainly helped
avoiding some mistakes this time around. I am not saying we did not do any mistake with this business, nor I am saying that we won't do plenty in the future (I know we will). However, I know better some of the typical traps of a fast growing business (stuff like panic-hiring, losing the each-single-dollar-greed attitude, over-complexity, etc, etc.) You can read most of this stuff in any decent business self-help book, but having been there is an advantage.
9. Starting with
little money. This is not always an advantage, but sometimes it is, as paradoxical as it may seem. For us, it helped us focus on the real drivers and cut the bullshit around it. It forced us to multitask and learn in detail each area of the business before scaling. Overall, it set an internal culture of hunger and positive greed that I hope to keep alive no matter how successful the business becomes.
10.
Being nice. Seriously. Towards customers, models, agencies, employees, affiliates, etc. If there was one rule I'd like to place on the board, that's "be nice". I am entirely aware there's plenty of success stories build on exactly the opposite - but this is our experience and we like it that way. When we don't manage to be nice enough, we apologize promptly
Good luck everybody, from rainy Prague!