Porn. Love it or hate it, it’s become easier than ever to make it. But there’s a lot of moving parts between the act of filming yourself and your friends having sex and actually generating an income from doing so, not to mention the incredibly arcane legal hoops you are required to leap through in order to avoid criminal prosecution. I spoke with a friend of a friend who is currently in the process of building a business around enabling amateur porn stars to become profitable.

Wes Unruh:
First off, what exactly is it that you do?

Melody:
What we do is we create web sites. It’s not just one site, it’s a company that will create amateur styles of little girl sites on a partnership basis.

WU:
Okay, so you go in and take care of the business, legal, and technical aspects?

M:
Exactly, we take care of all the 2257 compliance, which is basically the Federal Government basic compliance to make sure these girls are legal, we put together the website, we design the web site, we schedule the photo shoots using our photographer, and basically create these interactive amateur styles of little girl sites. Kind of like Jenna Jameson has her own web site, JennaJameson.com–But much more on an amateur level and much more in an amateur style.

WU:
So, what’s going on behind the web site, like, the sort of social scene that develops, or how did you get into this particular business?

M:
I’ve always kind of been fascinated by porn in general, just because it never affected me or offended me the same way that it offends a lot of women, and I got into it through my boyfriend who worked with this partner company to create this business. (They) brought me on board because I’m really good at the social aspects. Handling the girls, telling them what to do, scheduling the girls, scheduling the shoots, directing the shoots. I’m much better at like the little, everyday, tell people what to do details.

WU:
It would seem that since you’re using your own photographers that this is more of a regional thing that you’re doing, but you are doing it online for the global audience.

M:
Exactly, we find the girls regionally through a bunch of different sources, we use Myspace, we have an ad in the local paper. We go out and we promote, and we give girls our cards, there are cards everywhere, to see if they want to do this. And it’s a long process to get them started before the web site is up.

WU:
Sure, it’s based a lot on word of mouth I’d think, and generating buzz about the idea. It certainly seems, especially with stuff like Suicide Girls or some of the other sites that are popping up that are playing with that line between pornography and ‘legitimate’ entertainment, if you want to use the word legitimate. Burlesque, musical events, there’s a lot more tie-ins now than even in the nineties.

M:
And Jenna Jameson was really the big one that crossed over that line and brought it over with her. There was an interview with her in the New York Times a few months ago. I mean, think about that. An interview with Jenna Jameson in the New York Times. I don’t know that it will ever be a hundred percent legitimate, it will still have that seedy underbelly. But I think that’s what draws people to it, as well. And it’s also, if you do it right, an incredibly, if you do it right, an incredibly profitable enterprise. You know there’s money to be made, and there will always be money to be made in pornography.

WU:
Especially with the continuity-based sites, the member-gate sites, where people sign up for a continuous..

M:
That’s exactly what we’re doing.

Yeah. These “Little Girl” sites are member-based sites. So people’d sign up for a week trial membership, a monthly membership, a yearly membership, and they get much more personal inspection with the girls and I think that’s what’s changing in the pornography business. You get to read the girl’s blog, they have podcasts now, they have webcams, you can go into her forums and ask her questions and she’ll answer you. So you’re getting much more of a personal connection with these girls and I think that’s what the appeal is right now, and why these amateur girl sites are doing so well.

There’s a bunch of them, if you ever want to see the format there’s RavenRiley.com which is basically the benchmark we were using to create these sites and she, her site, I know it brought in over a million dollars last year and it’s been up for two years now, and she gets approximately 30,000 members per month.

WU:
Wow, that’s a significant number.

M:
And if you go onto her web site she doesn’t look like your typical porn girl, she doesn’t have huge fake breasts, she looks like a hot Jersey chick, you know. She looks very amateur and her site, in it’s photography style, video style, (because you can also get videos of her doing things too) it’s all very amateur. Like, girl in a bedroom, with a camera.

WU:
I notice, when I go there I get a pop-under tab…

M:

Yeah, they’re called an affiliate program. You can create these affiliate programs with other people and do like, click-through pay-backs. So if somebody clicks on the pop-under and it’s another girls site and they go to that site and they become a member, then the original site that they clicked through gets a percentage of that membership fee. Porn is always ahead of the industry. They’ve been using affiliate programs, and affiliate things like that for years. I’ve just recently got into it, and I don’t know a whole whole lot about it, and everything that I’ve learned about it I’ve learned basically like, on hand or through my boyfriend, who is the president of this company. It was like a crash course on how to run an internet business.

WU:

Well that’s the only way to do it, in my opinion, you have to get in there and get dirty to figure out what the hell you’re doing

M:

So to speak.

WU:

So how much of porn’s coming out is in response to the sort of over-arching conservative atmosphere that there’s this kind of undergrowth, this subculture in response to that.

M:
I don’t know–it’s a chicken or egg phenomena, too, because I don’t know if it’s coming out through all of this kind of conservative vibe that’s going on in this country now, or the conservatives are kind of cracking down on pornography because it’s so ever-present, and it’s a very easy target for conservatives to attack. And it very much sits on their agenda. So I don’t know. I think even with the prevalent conservative feeling of the country today it hasn’t really stopped the proliferation of pornography like porn has always been. I think that porn is such a juggernaut right now, and such a huge multi-billion dollar far-reaching industry, I mean, think about it, there’s strip tease aerobics classes. Porn stars marry rock stars all the time and it gets tons of publicity. As I said Jenna Jameson was interviewed by the New York Times.

So I don’t even know if the conservative regime even effects it. I think it’s become this huge monster, in and of itself. But I think because it’s so huge, it’s seeping into people’s lives that aren’t otherwise affected by pornography, that don’t utilize pornography because they see it on mainstream media, I think that becomes a target for conservatives.

WU:
They then bandy it about for the election year.

M:
Exactly, it’s like gay marriage, it’s one of those really easy things to get people frustrated. And the conservatives are becoming much more frustrated that porn is becoming more acceptible in mainstream. And even pornographic things are becoming more acceptable. Look at strip clubs, you know.

WU:
You’re right, it’s much more obvious, it’s gone beyond nudity on television, there’s much more going on on cable channels, on network tv..

M:
Exactly, exactly. And even pornographic things like you know, are becoming acceptable in mainstream.
Look at the amount of women who are going to strip clubs now, it’s like the cool, fun thing to do to go to a strip club. Whereas ten or fifteen years it wasn’t so acceptible. And you know we’ve got suburban moms taking strip-tease aerobics classes? The little pieces of porn are seeping into our everyday existence. Everyone knows who Jenna Jameson is. Porn stars are even being exalted in this country, much more than they ever were. I don’t think that anyone will ever be able to completely illegalize the industry. Strip clubs are just as profitable now as they’ve always been.

WU:
Well, it’s safer to keep it legitimatized.

M:
Absolutely, I think that any time you legitimatize something and you make it more mainstream, you make it safer. So it’s not just the criminals that are running the strip clubs, it’s not just the criminals who are shooting the pornography. You know, a lot of the amateur stuff kind of comes into play too, and why it’s so safe, because girls don’t have to now, go on shoots, per se, in some hotel room with some guy and have sex with him and create a movie and have the movie go out. Now they can do it from their own homes, take the pictures in their own homes, start the web sites. Go onto the forums from their own house. They can just have one of their friends with a video camera and then transfer that video onto their web site. So essentially it’s giving some of the power back to these women, because they’re in control of their own marketing. The more they go on their webcams, the more they communicate with their audience and their members, the more money they’re going to make. Especially these kinds of webs are essentially kind of giving the power back to the women. Or some of the power back to the women.

WU:
But there’s a number of factors that have to come into play for these sites to be successful.

M:
And that’s what makes Jenna Jameson so unbelievably effective, and just mind-blowing. Not only was she a girl who was willing to take her clothes off and have sex with people on camera, but she had incredible business savvy and she took control over her image. She said “I’m Jenna Jameson the brand, Jenna Jameson the image, you’re buying this movie because you want to see Jenna Jameson, and I am Jenna Jameson the business.” Jenna Jameson put a business stamp on her pornographic name, her pornographic image and created this vast empire, huge empire. She’s a millionaire, many times over, and awfully cute.

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Hopefully I will have the chance soon to speak with Melody’s partner soon, and feature some of the sites they’ve been developing. Until then, I’m betting you lot know more than a few places to find porn… & if not, just start with Technorgasmic.