SAN DIEGO — Aly Drummond remembers the early days of online porn, when webmasters spent their time partying and watching the money roll in. Everyone seemed to be in their early 20s, with energy and libido to burn.
Then came the stock market crash, credit card hassles and legal crackdowns. “We had to become more responsible,” recalled Drummond, a former porn website marketer who now works for Adult Video News, a porn industry journal.
At the same time, the twenty-somethings got older. “We’ve settled down, gotten married and had kids,” she said. “That’s definitely reflected in the state of the industry. It’s matured as we have.”
As small mom-on-pop sites turn into full-time mom-and-pop operations, the porn webmaster community is dealing with something new: family life.
In a first for the industry, webmasters met Monday for a bit of “therapy” at the annual Cybernet Expo porn trade show and spilled their guts about the strains of juggling porn and the PTA.
Audience members heard from “JFK,” a party photographer who covers porn industry events, like this Memorial Day barbecue. JFK prefers to keep his job on the QT: The nuns at his daughters’ Catholic school might not approve.
And then there’s “Dan,” the Florida webmaster of the porn video site CamZ.com, who won’t even tell a porn star who lives across the street about what he does for a living, even though he’d like to bring her on board as a performer.
“We do take privacy issues, with regard to what we do for a living, very seriously,” he said. “I’m not going to talk to (the porn star).”
According to Dan, his family had to leave Kansas due to neighbors’ harassment after they discovered what he does for a living.
As Dan and others spoke in front of hundreds at the Cybernet Expo, there was no nudity to be seen, reflecting a growing level of professionalism at porn industry events.
Instead of gawking at bodies, webmasters talked about credit-card billing, domain registration and federal law. They’re also learning the tricks of the trade, such as making sure to know your audience. Men who visit foot fetish sites tend to prefer dominant women, explained one speaker, so bondage photos are out.
But despite the fact that online porn remains incredibly popular, plenty of stigma remains. Some blame it on the conservative federal government, and others on the actions of “extreme” pornographers who embrace violence and attract prosecutors.
Then, of course, there are cultural constraints. “Am I going to join the chamber of commerce in my city? No,” said “Madame,” who runs the porn site BlueToon Media and lives in North Texas. “With our present government, it’s making it harder for us to say, ‘Yeah, I’m a pornmaster.”
In general, webmasters said they keep outsiders in the dark along with family members, especially little kids. Richard Buss of porn affiliate site Lightspeed Cash keeps his home office in Phoenix locked tight and has no plans to ever tell his preschool-age daughter what he does for a living.
“I don’t want her to know, whether she’s 21 or 25,” he said. “I think it’s the proper way to do things.”
Nosy parkers tend to get nothing more than vague talk about “website marketing” and “internet consulting” from porn webmasters. Even people who Google their suspicious neighbor may not find anything: Many of the speakers at Cybernet seminars use a pseudonym or their first name and last initial.
“I don’t tell, not because I’m ashamed of it. I don’t tell to protect my daughter and my livelihood,” said “Lori Z.” who runs The Adult Broker, a resource site for porn webmasters. She also has a preschool-age child she eventually plans to tell about her job, and is active at her local school, where she keeps her work life secret.
It may be tougher to pull off subterfuge when adults are involved. Unfortunately, “being ambiguous doesn’t pay off anymore,” said Jay “LAJ” Kopita of porn resource site Ynot.com, who thinks ordinary people often figure out what these “internet consultants” really do for a living.
“The world,” he said, “is starting to catch on.”