Owner: Not A Porn Star URL:http://www.notapornstar.com Join Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 01:47:35 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: Personal blog of a twenty-something girl, documenting her life working behind the scenes of the online porn industry, and trying to break into being a mainstream webmaster.
My RSS Reader Is Full Of Hot People! 2008-03-28 16:36:39 Since I have been COMPLETELY crappy about personal blogging lately and I don’t want y’all to get TOO bored while I spend my time watching re-runs of America’s Next Top Model when I SHOULD be posting, here’s a roundup of my current favorite personal weblogs of the moment.
ONE D AT A TIME: You may know her as Slutmachine from Jezebel - but even if you don’t, her blog is a ton of fun to read. She’s witty and super-snarky, which are things I really dig in a girl. Her site is mostly sex-centered, so it’s not for the prude… but if you’re here, you probably don’t really take issue with sex on the web anyhow.
FOUR FOUR: If you like Top Model, you probably read Rich’s blog. His weekly recaps brighten my Mondays, but the rest of his blog is just as great. I love him, I love Winston, and I love Tyra.
MOD GERL: Probably the closest thing my smut sistah Jamiee has to a personal blog right now… and since I totally wish she wou Read more:Hot
The Infiltration Will Be Televised 2008-03-25 04:48:36 I’ve been getting a few emails the past few days wanting to “pick my brain” about what I do, or just wanting to talk/e-hang out in general. Since I tend to suck at answering e-mails and greatly prefer talking over AIM, I made a screenname that y’all can add & contact me at - poshnaps. So feel free to add me & comment or IM me with your screenname so I can add you to my currently sparse buddy list, haha. Then we can talk until the cows come home.
Things have been really busy on the home front - the BF started a new job, one of my grandparents is in the hospital, a litter of kittens was born, my broken foot finally re-healed properly so I’ve started working out again (yeah, it healed wrong the first time… ouch), and I was officially outed as a Skrull. I mean, wait, what? Anyhow, point being… I’m still lazy and sucky at writing right now. Sorry, y’all.
Post from: Not A Porn Star
The Infiltration Will Be Televised
I really need to start taking Echinacea or something. 2008-03-21 03:49:42 I have been sick as a dog the past week, and as such my XXX sites have seriously gotten neglected… I’ve barely had the energy to turn out the few paid posts that have gotten done for Posh Vice. Food poisoning + supercramps + migraines = I end up just taking loads of Tylenol PM so I can sleep until I feel a little less miserable. I’m finally feeling a little better, and it looks like it’s just in time - I got hired for a more in-depth paid review via Sponsored Reviews, and somehow I got ELEVEN new jobs - just in the past 24 hours - from PayU2Blog… um, holy crap. Is that normal? So I’ll be writing up a storm for the next few days, I guess.
In closing, I’ll just say this: I’m really pissed that the whole Lindsay Lohan sex tape thing was a hoax, because that would’ve been a fucking goldmine if Vivid or someone similar would’ve gotten their hands on it & made it promotable. More of young Hollywood need to go the Kim Kardashia
A Milestone for March ‘08 2008-03-15 16:41:40 We’re at the official halfway point of the month, and my profits for March ‘08 have broken $1K as of this morning. I’m so excited! That’s solely from my adult websites… the mainstream sites have been holding their own as well, though, especially since I’ve been paying them a lot more attention lately & getting paid posts left and right. So a big thanks to J, Tashina, and Jaimee for showing me the ropes & helping me get started.
I think after a few months of learning my way around the PPP companies, I’ll make another section of this site where I review & rate the different sponsors… similar to the FAQ/How-To guide about adult sites that I have planned. But for now, sign up for LinkWorth… I just completed my first post for them, and I’m really liking their service so far… not only was it the highest-paying post I’ve done yet, but it seems like they hook you up with advertisers who specifically choose
New Look For Spring: Version FIBEROPTICS! 2008-03-15 02:28:21 So, redesign time for notapornstar.com! How does everyone feel about the new theme? It might make me kinda weird, but I’ve loved the look of fiberoptics since I was little… I always wanted any toy that involved them. I guess it was the beginnings of my deep, dark secret which I’m only now starting to figure out - I may be a bit of a science nerd. But that’s neither here nor there… point being, there’s a new neon/techy-inspired layout in town, and I’m fishing for compliments! Gimme!
I have to agree with Tashina - so far it looks like PayU2Blog is going to be a nice, reliable source of income for the mainstream blogs. So far I’ve completed two assignments for them, and it seems like a new one pops up 1-2 hours after I’ve finished the previous blog. Nice.
Also, as per the request of the lovely J, within the next week or so I will be putting up a section where I outline what exactly it is that I do in the online adult industry, and ho
It’s a good day. 2008-03-13 13:25:36 I am in a completely fantastic mood today: not only has the weather outside gone from super-snowy to sunny and almost warm, but it’s only 2:00 PM and I’ve already made $174 today, not counting any mainstream paid posts/advertising profits. Holy shit, right? I’m kind of in disbelief… but SO excited. I know this is probably just a fluke, but I like to imagine someday this will be normal. How amazing would that be?
The paid posts have been rolling in - you can check them out at my mainstream/shopping blog here. I’ve mostly been writing via Smorty, although as previously mentioned, I’ve gotten a few assignments from Blogsvertise as well. I just got approved by PayU2Blog (thanks, Tashina) and LinkWorth (if you aren’t registered with them yet and you do paid posts, please please PLEASE sign up through that reflink - I will love you FO-EVAH! They help you sell both paid posts and text links, among other things). Still waiting to hear back from PayPer
February was awesome; let’s hope March rules as well. 2008-03-07 17:45:10 A few things, since I’ve been slacking on the personal blogging front:
-February was a milestone month for me, profit-wise. I did the math, and I made 150% of what I did in January, and finally broke the 1k mark. I’m very excited, as it seems that all the advice and lessons I was given by Steve & Kimo have really been helping. I have high hopes for March; we’re one week into the month and I’ve already broken $400. Of course, watch me have completely jinxed myself by bragging about it! Keep your fingers crossed that I can beat February - that is my new goal: every new month is a chance to beat the previous month.
-Things with Cash Uncovered were taken care of to my satisfaction. Kudos goes out to Phil; he handled all the drama very professionally and made an extra effort to ensure that things got smoothed out between us.
-I launched three new websites, although they’re all still very much in their early stages. The first is a mainstream blog that has to
Favicons Made Easy: The Wordpress Plugin Way 2008-02-28 06:46:53 You know, I may just be eternally in love with Pawan Agrawal, the guy who runs MaxBlogPress. The guy is constantly coming out with new, amazingly cool/useful WordPress plugins. The other day I raved about his newly-launched Psychic Search plugin; you can see my ravings about it in this blog post.
Anyhow, he recently created a new plugin that’s targeted specifically towards those of us who don’t have the know-how to make our own themes & aren’t particularly well-versed in much more than just tweaking pre-coded layouts. You can actually see it in action on this site already; notice the little star icon by my url/title? That’s courtesy of installing the new MaxBlogPress Favicon plugin.
Not only does having a “favicon” brand your results in web searches (if the surfer is using a certain Firefox extension like Google Icon) and thusly draw more notice to it; it also helps attract your bookmarker’s attention. If you’re like me and have a hug
AWE Top Webmasters List & Dreaming Up Domain Names 2008-02-19 11:42:15 Nice. I made the AWE top webmasters list again last period - this time for having the second highest average purchase ($141.42) - of course, I only had seven sales, but still… I love seeing my name on that list, makes me feel like I can actually succeed at this whole game. The person under me had an average of $124.67 with 77 sales. Can you IMAGINE. Some of these people make bring in a quarter of a million in sales every 15 days (top sales amount for last period: $254,133) - it’s just so hard to wrap my mind around that much income in such a small period of time.
The month’s just about half-way over and I’ve already beaten January’s income. My overall conversion ratio isn’t too bad - 1:491 for February. Really, the only discouraging thing this month is the eerily low rate of CCBill sales this month - I’ve had only ONE new signup for any CCBill website, and last month I was averaging at least one new CCBill signup each day. I’ve been push
The Cash Uncovered Drama Bomb: BRB, Bitching 2008-02-13 02:42:40 A friend of mine posted about my situation with Cash Uncovered on a webmaster message board that I don’t usually frequent. I didn’t ask him to make the post, he made it because he thought that it would expedite the process of getting the missing check situation resolved. Apparently, Steve overestimated the maturity levels of the guys at CU, and the thread turned into some wannabe drama-bomb clusterfuck.
I’ll just summarize the retarded ass shit that the CU guys pulled in that thread (and here, even, one of them decicded to showcase his absolutely ASTOUNDING reading comprehension by leaving a comment here that I’d already said was irrelevant to the missing checks). Now, I’ll be honest - I haven’t bothered to check the thread again after my last post in it over a day ago, because the responses they’ve given already made it pretty clear that they’re more interested in trolling/internet tough guy-ing than actually reading & processing wha
My new favorite WordPress plugin: Psychic Search! 2008-02-09 05:43:19 I’m on the MaxBlogPress mailing list, and a few days ago Pawan released a new plugin for WordPress that I am having way too much fun with. It’s all sneaky & snoopy, but I foresee it as being very useful, especially for my adult websites.
The plugin in question is called Psychic Search, and it essentially tracks what people search for on your website. I installed it last night and, looking at the records it’s pulling up for this website… um, I see that someone searched for… “poop”. Okay, that’s rather strange, but you get the picture.
Not only is this going to be pretty amusing for me (I’m the kind of weird person who gets a kick out of watching those live search engine feeds where you can see all the stuff random people are looking for on Google and the like), it’s also going to be a good kind of “secret weapon” for finding out what my audience wants to see. For example: I have the plugin installed on liquidL
Where is my mind? Somewhere off frolicking with my Adderall. 2008-02-07 00:54:17 Well, after Phil from Cash Uncovered promised to hit me up when he was in the office on Monday, we’re easing into Thursday morning without a peep from him or any of the other CU guys. It’s shaping up to be an exact repeat of last time: he promised to look into it and vanished into the ether. So I guess I should start crafting my GFY drama llama post, huh?
That whole mess aside, I have been having some seriously ADD days lately. I was diagnosed with it a few years back, and I usually take Adderall for it, but with how yucky I’ve been feeling lately (my stomach’s been going nuts every time I take pills all of a sudden), I’ve been skimping on my dosage a bit and it’s REALLY starting to show. Focusing on anything (even non-work like conversations and video games) is just kind of overwhelming and challenging, and getting work done has been like pulling teeth… I know I should go pop my pills, but I’m just SO sick of throwing up. At first I tho
I’m in a bit of a downer funk right now. Bleh. 2008-02-03 21:06:54 I don’t really have anything specific to talk about today, so this will be kind of a ramble. Fair warning.
I got a response from Cash Uncovered that somewhat irked me, they came at me with an attitude like a) I was silly for complaining about only $210 (way to not think long-term and realize that it might’ve been more had I not pulled all your links from my sites) and b) they never “ignored” me, even though in the same breath he acknowledged that he never followed up on his “checking with the bank” promise. I’m just getting a slightly condescending vibe from these guys, and it’s bothersome. I haven’t done anything wrong here, is it really so awful of me to expect to be paid the money you owed me, and for you to not drop contact in the middle of supposedly investigating why I haven’t received anything from you? Ugh.
Net Audio Ads supposedly went live on February 1st, but it seems they’ve hit a few speedbumps and there&rsq
My first non-paying affiliate program: Cash Uncovered? 2008-01-31 15:13:26 For the most part, I’ve had a pretty good experience in the online adult industry so far, especially when it comes to affiliate programs - they’re usually helpful, pay me on time and accurately, some even go the extra mile and help me get specific content for a themed website or give me promotional passwords (I’ve got to give Kate from Prissy Pays some props right now, she recently sent me some gamer-themed content from the Natalie Sparks member’s area for me to put up on Gamer Fetish).
Unfortunately, the time has come for me to face facts - I seem to have found a dud. It’s even more disappointing because Cash Uncovered converted really well, even on the small amount of traffic I sent their way. All time, I’m 1:216 with them, with 7 signups. That’s pretty awesome. Unfortunately, it’s not so awesome when I’ve had to drop their links because they’ve never bothered to pay me.
I even contacted them a few months ago, asking what wa
Net Audio Ads: Taking Geo-Targeted Ads To The Next Level 2008-01-28 03:50:04 Alright, I know I’ve put off the promised blog about the latest announcement from Net Audio Ads, but forgive me… I just got Xbox Live and it’s addictive as hell (if you want to play Uno or any other random game with me, leave a comment with you gamer tag & I’ll add you)… you wouldn’t believe how fast time can fly by when you’re playing Uno with strangers. Crazy. Anyhow, on to business. Here’s an from the latest Net Audio Ads blog & my thoughts.
NetAudioAds has made an addition to the back office that will allow you to sign up to sell advertising.
We are having no trouble lining up the big advertisers but we need small niche advertisers like Joe’s Pizza (fictitious example). NetAudioAds is good at procuring the big advertisers but may be missing opportunities at the local level that you may be able to tap in to.
Imagine Joe’s Pizza announcing their 2 for 1 special to a single zip code. How many small businesses out there thri
Can you really be a porn site without any porn? 2008-01-24 04:58:43 I’m slightly annoyed by the fact that some ad sponsors and blog directories have been categorizing this website as “XXX”; it makes me wonder if they’ve really even bothered to actually read anything that I’ve posted. I noticed that even on StumbleUpon, I’m classed as pornography. That’s an interesting feat to accomplish when the only photo/video hosted on this entire website is the vector graphic of a fully-clothed woman in the header. I’m left to assume that either even just mentioning the “P” word gets you classed as an adult website/objectionable content, because really… most of what I discuss here (especially lately) has been mainstream affiliate programs, sales, etc. I do link to OTHER websites that have adult content, but I wasn’t really aware that linking to a website meant you were in the same category. Maybe I’m just applying too much logic here and not enough knee-jerk reaction on the basis of the Read more:Porn
Business on the upswing, but the technicolor yawn is kinda bringing me down. 2008-01-23 20:52:49 It seems as though all of the lessons Steve & Kimo are giving me are starting to pay off… I’ve had some boosts in certain search engine keywords (like this gallery that’s ranking #2 - at least for me - for I Dream Of Erica). I’ve been averaging at least one sale a day, which is better than before: pretty much all my sales were clumped on the weekends, but during the rest of the week I’d be lucky to have one sale. My weekends are still doing better than my weekdays (I came really close to $100 this past Saturday), but it’s nice to have daily sales… very reassuring and encouraging.
That said, sorry for not updating for a few days. I get really terrible migraines, so I was trying out Vicodin for them… turns out I’m either allergic or intolerant to Vicodin: each time I took one, I ended up spending all night throwing up and with an even WORSE headache. At first I thought I had food poisoning, since the first night it happened I&r
The age of CAM GIRL DRAMA isn’t over, y’all. 2008-01-17 02:49:59 As I mentioned earlier, some time ago I ran a small camgirl website. Not one of the adult ones - I was 17 or so, and it was just my daily blog that happened to have a sporadically-updated webcam snapshot on the front page. My severe lack of dedication to the webcam game & my general aversion to getting lots of “post your boobs” IMs from random strangers (I rarely, if ever, signed onto my site-specific AIM name because of this) caused me to never really make it to the big leagues. I did make some awesome nerd-style internet friends that I still keep in touch with to this day (the lovely Jaimee being one of them - and holy shit, she IMed me right as I typed her name, how mind-meld-ish).
I still read other girls’ websites and posted in a few forums and kept up with internetgossip.net and other such fun stuff. I was marginally informed, and it always seemed to be that Nay (currently going by Ashton Von) was the pint-sized princess of camgirls. Chick was like 14 or som Read more:Cam
Pay-Per-Play Audio Ads: On The Fence 2008-01-14 18:48:50 I originally read about the new Net Audio Ads affiliate program via the Art Of Money blog, and was reminded of it again today by Michael Aulia’s post on the same subject. I’m both intrigued and turned off by the concept. While the premise of a no-click-needed money-making affiliate program is definitely appealing, I can’t help but wonder if an ad on auto-play being the first impression a website to a new viewer is really that smart of an idea.
I mean, one of the most-hated aspects of websites like MySpace is when people leave their songs on auto-play. Is there anybody out there that actually enjoys being essentially jumped via audio? It makes me suspicious that any first-time viewer that visits my website will hear the auto-play, and immediately close out my site, never to return again. I mean, I know my reaction to embedded audio tends to go that way - I either click out of the site, or if it’s a site I know has something specifically desirable on it, I immedia
My back still hurts, though. 2008-01-12 15:07:38 I’ve been pretty stressed out lately; mostly due to the combination of not doing as well as I’d like to be doing sales-wise and the fact that my boyfriend is currently unemployed - I’m pretty much supporting the entire household on my craptacular earnings right now, and it’s been keeping me up at night. As much as I like running websites, I’ve been very discouraged and the notion that I should throw in the towel and get a “real” job keeps nagging at me.
Even though I am working at something, being productive, and getting paid, I still always have this underlying feeling like I’m lazy for not going out and getting some shitty retail job for $7/hr like everyone else. I’m sure part of this comes from the general attitude among most people I know IRL that what I’m doing can’t REALLY pay the bills, that any online/work-from-home money-making scheme is a scam or a cop-out. The other part is that at its heart, this type of thing is unreliable. Even if you usually make a
Upgrade U? 2008-01-09 16:09:37 So I ended up upgrading to a dedicated server from Webair - my websites hosted with them went live on it earlier today. It’s not even so much that they talked me into it, but Kimo has been working on convincing me to get a dedicated for, oh, the past two months or so. So we’ll see how it works out - they’ve been much more responsive ever since I bitched about my previous issues contacting them on GFY. Surprise, right?
Recently launched Celebrity Sex Comics, mostly to have a place to continually promote both celebrity sex tapes (I love Kim Kardashian, I can’t help it) and my beloved Free Sinful Comics. It’s already been doing decently, I posted a leaked clip of the Vivica Fox blowjob tape that’s been circulating lately, and searches for that and “celebrity sex comics” have brought in a decent amount of people without hardly any other promotion by me, yet. That was a strangely phrased sentence for sure, but you get the point I hope!
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I’ve got free money and a gamer fetish. 2008-01-02 05:17:08 Happy New Year, everyone! My new year has already gotten off to a good start - at least luck-wise. Adult Webmaster Empire has a drawing every pay period for their active webmasters (read: those sending in sales) and I was just notified that I won $250. Free money is always good! I love AWE, though. Their camgirls are probable in my top three moneymakers, I even made their top 50 webmasters list once. For a small-time webmaster like me, that was awesome.
I’ve been dedicating a good amount of time to my newest website, Gamer Fetish. I’m actually incorporating some all-text posts into this one, trying to make it a tiny bit more than just another porn website. The galleries feature, of course, hot chicks playing video games naked (or in other states of sexiness) and most of the text posts are either reviews of games/gaming websites or recaps of cool shit I find across the internet that would probably interest a gaming crowd. It’s been fun thus far, though I’m surpri
I feel like I’m screaming into a black hole. 2007-12-27 18:45:10 I had this great, thoughtful & in-depth post typed out last night, all about my insecurities and struggles in this business… but literally just as I hit submit, my hosting decided to shit out on me. I checked every single website of mine, and all the ones hosted with Webair had vanished. After waiting on someone to actually sign into their supposed “24/7 Live Support” for about 15 minutes, and putting in a support ticket with no response, I posted in their thread on a high-traffic webmaster forum noting that my sites were all inexplicably down and that I couldn’t get ahold of anyone to help me. Within three minutes of that post, my sites were magically back up.
I got an accompanying e-mail that simply stated:
“Hello.
We apologize for the difficulties.
We have corrected the problem and your websites are working now.
Thank you.”
Okay, but why the fuck did it happen in the first place? When I pay for hosting I expect my websites to Read more:Black
How To Piss Me Off, Part One: Crowds & Shopping 2007-12-23 00:33:57 I have always REALLY hated shopping in crowds - it just makes me so irritable, so fast. I tend to have very little patience for people who act like dumbasses, and the seemingly endless supply of people who aimlessly wander into my way while I’m trying to get my shit done drives me insane. It seems like there are always a few groups of idiots yammering away at each other in the center of busy aisles while oblivious to everyone trying to get around them, or it’s the similarly tuned out “standing RIGHT IN YOUR WAY, staring into space” people that get me the most. It seems like most shoppers just have no fucking idea what’s going on around them, and that goes tenfold for the Holiday season.
I did much of my Christmas shopping online this year for that very reason (plus I simply found a lot of kickass internet deals, and a lot of people are getting some seriously cool shit from Think Geek) - but today I had to be brave. I had to venture into the madness that is
Diving into the mainstream pool headfirst…eek. 2007-12-18 17:15:53 I’ve been slowly trying to break into mainstream websites lately; first with Gamer Hero, the website that I run with my boyfriend - it’s basically an outlet for him to talk about anything and everything related to (obviously) gaming. The second mainstream website I launched was Posh Vice, a shopping website dedicated more to unique finds, sort of up the vein of Daily Candy and Outblush. I’ve had these two websites up for about a month each, and while they each get the occasional spike in traffic due to social linking sites, for the most part they’ve not yet been very successful. I realized, perhaps too late, that I don’t really know any way to get traffic to a mainstream site other than search engine. With adult it’s easy - there are hundreds of link dumps and babelogs where you can submit your galleries. With mainstream… I don’t know yet. I don’t really have any contacts or “mentors” like I did when getting started in Read more:pool
Being productive is for losers. 2007-12-16 12:00:52 I have a serious case of the lazy right now. I registered the domain cherrydelish.com earlier, and while I’ve got the layout up and the sidebar/links/POTDs pretty well set up… I just cannot bring myself to dredge up the motivation to make any galleries right now. I’ve got some photosets from True Tere, Kari Sweets, and The Wet Peach picked out as my first few galleries - even went so far as to make thumbnails & upload the Tere photos - but once I open that text editor, I’m just… blah.
Oh well. I updated two of my other sites already today (a Scarlett Pain gallery on Lux Alterna & a gallery of Micah Moore at superherofetish), I’ve been pretty productive… right?
I’m already freakishly tired, even though because of my incredibly fucked sleeping schedule, I went to bed at 3PM and woke up at something crazy like 2AM. This is what happens when I try to go without sleeping pills; my natural/inner clock is just reversed from the rest o
Dawson Miller: Porn, Religion & Consequences 2007-12-13 02:39:21 I just watched the Dawson Miller interview video that’s been circulating around the adult webmaster community lately. Dawson - real name Justine - gives an interesting point of view & behind the scenes look of how solo girl sites work, and how the decision to become an internet solo girl is made. Of course, her experiences differs from most solo girls in that she essentially screwed over her webmasters by backing out after all the content had been shot - most solo girls don’t do that. So while the journal entries on dawnsonmiller.com are fabricated and there’s no live webcam shows, most girls actually do have a hand in their sites. I’m hoping that any non-industry porn viewers that see this video don’t automatically assume that all solo girls websites are like this - a big part of the appeal of those girls is the interaction and personality they put into their member’s areas.
In regards to what made her change her mind, I think it’s extreme Read more:Porn
Look, an introductory post…. ew. 2007-12-09 02:10:24 Writing the launch post for any e/n type of site always pretty much sucks. You always feel like it’s the defining post of your site, even though within a few weeks it’ll probably be buried in the archives, lost to all but the most devoted readers. I feel like I should be giving you some nutshell idea of what this blog will be about, full of sparkling wit and lots of reminders that I am a GIRL on the INTERNET and I have BOOBS. Y’know, because that’s really the only reason anyone’s going to end up here, right?
I’m not 100% sure what the fuck will be going on in this blog - the vague idea was to blog about what it’s like being a twenty-something chick behind-the-scened of the adult website industry. I’ve only been running porn sites for about a year, so I’m no heavy hitter or anything - you won’t see me at the conventions and Playboy mansion parties just yet (though I won’t turn down invitations - by all means, please).
If
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