brittanyandrews

By ANN DONAHUE

In a recent online forum on Slate.com Washington Post columnist Marjorie Williams joked that the way things are going for some dot-coms, adult entertainment sites were going to take over the industry.

Some would argue that they already have.

Porn sites have long set the standard when it comes to both content and revenue models. They were the first to incorporate video and streaming media to their site’s offerings and are now moving toward including interactivity. But what really makes adult entertainment the standard on the Internet is that it rakes in the cash.

So what are tamer content counterparts doing to duplicate this windfall?

According to Forrester Research, the porn industry online easily clears $1 billion in revenue each year, more than the returns seen by books and music being sold on the ‘Net. Part of what helps adult entertainment is the obvious: sex sells, anonymity and there are thousands of sites to choose from.

But its stellar selling record goes beyond that. Quite simply adult sites are more innovative when it comes to dreaming up ways to take your money.

Brittany Andrews, Webmistress of BrittanyAndrews.net and founder of Britco Pictures, says her site attracts more than 11,600 visitors daily. A basic monthly subscription to her site is $19.95, but beyond that there are a variety of offerings on her site, including chats, live streaming video and e-commerce opportunities, all of which cost a little more and serve to jack up the total amount of money a typical user will fork out per stay.

With a subscription model for a content site, Andrews points out that the economies of scale enter the profit equation. It doesn’t cost a Web site any more money if they have 100 subscribers or 500 subscribers; once the content is up and the technology infrastructure is there to support it, it doesn’t cost much more to keep things running. From there, what they earn from e-commerce is icing on the cake.

“One of the great things about an adult Web site is that we make money from membership, but we’re also succeeding in the sales part of it,” Andrews says.

Andrews also partners with other adult Web sites for cross-promotional purposes, including those run by adult stars Danni Ashe and Mimi Miyagi. Andrews in turn passes along the favor, with 354 links on her sites that refer viewers to other adult entertainment destinations.

“About half of my hits come through Danni’s site,” she says. “That’s the great thing, unlike a lot of other businesses where it’s very competitive, the adult industry is like a family business. ”

If the adult entertainment industry is a family business, then Van Nuys-based Vivid Entertainment Group is the patriarch. Founded in 1984, Vivid is the largest, creator and distributor of pornography in the country — and it realizes that the Internet is slowly usurping what used to be the standard forms of distributing adult content.

Bill Asher, president of Vivid, believes that the Internet isn’t a revolution for the adult entertainment industry, but rather an evolution. Porn is at the apex of its distribution potential when done online.

“Distribution of adult movies was (handled) in theaters,” Asher says. “Then there was video, but adult videos were relatively hard to get in the mainstream. People would have to walk into a store and feel comfortable with themselves and their sexuality. Then there was pay-per-view with only three movies at any given time. The next step is obviously the Internet. ”

Vivid has put 450-500 of its videos online that can be bought and streamed, Asher said, and just started a new payment program where, for a single fee, a user can watch all the porn they want for 24 hours.

Asher says the main reason most entertainment content dot-coms run into trouble is because there is so much overlap in the mediums’ offerings: A sports fan can get news from the Internet, but also from network TV, cable, newspapers, magazines and radio.

“I think that’s the reason why we can make money,” he says. “Other kinds of sites haven’t found the fonnula yet. They have to :find the kind of content that the consumer can’t already get eight different ways.”

But some believe that traditional entertainment dot-coms are starting to realize the profit margins from the adult entertainment industry and are trying to figure out ways to mimic their success. David Marshlack, founder of VoyeurDorm.com. says he has consulted for several “big name” companies, although he declined to give specifics.

He believes, much as Andrews does, that keeping traffic within the online adult entertainment community is the secret to success.

“You can’t take a guy from Disney and take a guy from Yahoo and throw up a site and think it will make a million because its got great content,” Marshlack says. “It’s a numbers game, and in the adult entertainment industry we pass the traffic among ourselves. ”

The money — about $25 million annually — that Marshlack has brought in via VoyeurDorm is now funding a hosting company, CandidHosting.com. which does the backend work for all kinds of content sites, including the one for the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He eventually hopes to take the company public on the stock market.