IN THE SPOTLIGHT

www.likewhoa.com

YNOT News is proud to bring you our webmaster interview series, In The Spotlight. Through these questions and answers you’ll learn a bit about familiar names in the adult Internet business, how they got started, what they love about the biz, and where they see the adult Web in five years.IN THE SPOTLIGHT

www.likewhoa.com

YNOT News is proud to bring you our webmaster interview series, In The Spotlight. Through these questions and answers you’ll learn a bit about familiar names in the adult Internet business, how they got started, what they love about the biz, and where they see the adult Web in five years. If there’s a particular someone you’d like to know more about, or if you’re interested in doing your own interview, please contact Bob.

Nick Tukhman is the CEO of Like Whoa, Inc., which is an Internet based company located in downtown Brooklyn, New York. Like Whoa provides Web hosting and Web design services, as well as advertising solutions, and Web traffic for e-commerce and other commercial Web sites. Like Whoa’s hosting services are established on top of the line Dell PowerEdge servers utilizing over 1.1 gigabits of bandwidth.

YNOT: What drew you to the industry and what type of work were you doing before you started in the biz?
Tukhman: Nothing much really, I mean the money seemed good, plus it was a good time for a change in my life… the Internet was great, but adult internet seemed exactly what I wanted to do at the time. As far as previous occupation, well, this is a bit funny, but there is not much you can do while being in high school and I thought I could do better then working at McDonalds.

YNOT: When did you get your start in the online adult business?
Tukhman: Late 1997 is when I got my start. I opened my first link site, which combined the features of Persian Kitty and Green Guy’s Link-O-Rama.

YNOT: What types of sites and/or targeted business did you start with?
Tukhman: My first site was a links directory, but in few months I moved on to free hosting, Porn Hotels, which was later, sold to SexTracker.

YNOT: Did you already have friends in the business?
Tukhman: Yes, I knew a few people. I cannot call them friends, but I can certainly say I knew a few people before I started.

YNOT: Give us your thoughts on how easy or difficult it was for you to get started.
Tukhman: Starting out was very difficult. I completely underestimated the difficulty of getting visitors to your site. It took me about 4 months to get my first site to get about 10,000 visitors per day. But as I began to get a tighter grip on the industry, I began to develop ideas, tweak things around, and making great leaps into several projects.

YNOT: Any interesting stories about the business that you’d like to share?
Tukhman: It’s interesting to me that when I just started, there were several people that I would come to ask for help and their attitude was just like “I can’t help you,” even though they seemed pretty successful, but later some of those people ended up working for me. Kind of funny actually.

YNOT: What changes would you like to see made in the adult Internet industry?
Tukhman: I would love to see more professionalism. Arrogant discussions on chat boards, gossip, and other things certainly put a black mark on our industry. I think our industry needs to mature a bit, but I guess since we are a growing industry everything will come as we grow.

YNOT: What do you love about the adult Internet industry?
Tukhman: I love the fact that fierce competitors can actually work together, if they are on the same level. I think this is a great example of what keeps our industry together.

YNOT: What do you dislike?
Tukhman: I’ve been too busy to notice things that I dislike. I think if everyone concentrates on their own businesses, adult net can be an even better place.

YNOT: Where do you see yourself in one year? Five years?
Tukhman: In one year, my company will be on the way to managing several big projects. It took us awhile to initiate our new projects, but we are finally ready to reveal them. We just opened up an excellent free host, PornHouses.com, we have a content plug-in coming out in about 2 weeks, PornPlug.com, and we have a counter that will pay getting released in about three weeks (I’ll withhold the name for now). In five years? That’s a little hard to predict.

YNOT: What are your thoughts on the future of the adult Internet industry?
Tukhman: I think this is going to be a great industry. We will see a lot of people go out of business. We are already noticing decreases in profits all across the board. But the positive side to it, only few will stand and those few will have to fight a tough battle for the market share of the adult net.

YNOT: If you had one bit advice you could offer new Webmasters, what would it be?
Tukhman: Keep learning, work hard and concentrate on innovating rather then “borrowing” ideas. Even if it’s a small change from the previous site, it just might work better.