A Piece of that Pie
An old friend, someone who reads this column, sent me a cute picture. Uncertain of the copyrights, I have chosen not to display the picture here but the essential jist was as follows: Formatted like one of those “motivational” posters, the caption read: “Entrepreneur: you need to start young”. The inset photograph features a brightly smiling boy of six or seven holding safety scissors at the ready and crude sign reading: “Full Brazilian: 5¢”
Funny as the image is, it also reminded me of my very first entrepreneurial vision. Years before my store storefront in 2001, way back in 1997, I considered starting my own internet-based business. It was a porn business.
Don’t laugh.
I formulated a plan for (ethically) acquiring cheap, original content. The model was affordable and unique enough that I felt I could make a tidy profit after I carved out my niche. The business never materialized because I eventually decided that a working car was a better place to put my hard-earned thousand dollars. By the time I had any hope of putting that much money together again, I was out of high school and paying for college, which leaves very little liquid assets in one’s pockets.
Nonetheless, nostalgia sent me on a whirlwind tour of websites summarizing the current state of virtual smut. I came across the following, enlightening links (all clean and worksafe, I promise):
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/051007.html
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,42061,00.html
http://www.bloggerheads.com/porn_report.asp
Overall, the outlook presented is pretty grim. That stated, I also discovered a vast array of toolkits and hosting services ready and eager to aid an ambitious smutmonger in their quest for a piece of that still-not-inconsiderable moneymaker, cyber-sleaze.
I was originally going to provide links to some of the more legitimate resources I discovered (this is Tools Tuesday after all), but I have chosen not to as few-to-none of them can be considered worksafe. However, if the above links have not dissuaded you entirely from this course, try a few Google searches with terms like “internet pornography hosting” and “adult web business”.
It is certainly a well-established business model with a growing, worldwide customer base, a solid track record, and very low entry-costs. Provided one does not have ethical or moral objections, a young entrepreneur would be remiss in rejecting the idea out of hand.
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