IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Terry is the president and founder of HotWired Networks . This company is Terry’s baby, and Terry “works very hard to raise it properly.” Like many other adult Internet movers and shakers, Terry designs the company’s graphics, puts together scripts, sells, takes calls, performs customer service, makes deals, shoots content, updates feeds, puts up cams…IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Terry is the president and founder of HotWired Networks . This company is Terry’s baby, and Terry “works very hard to raise it properly.” Like many other adult Internet movers and shakers, Terry designs the company’s graphics, puts together scripts, sells, takes calls, performs customer service, makes deals, shoots content, updates feeds, puts up cams… Terry says, “I am very hands on and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

HotWired Networks offers some of the largest selection of live gay feeds on the net, if not the largest. Terry describes the company’s allure: “From twink to hardcore and in-between, everything a new gay paysite would need is offered in one package or ala carte. We also offer uniqueness within our straight paysite content. We have 4 plug-ins featuring exclusive-to-us public nudity. Living in Key West, we are home to this type of action, so the content is literally filmed right in our own backyard! We are very hands on within our company, so everything is held to a very high standard. If I wouldn’t buy it, I won’t sell it.”

It is Terry’s mission to consistently provide the best product possible, “to be helpful and friendly to our customers and affiliates, to be a well-known force in this industry yet maintain our personality and love of life.”

YNOT: What drew you to the industry?
Terry: I think it’s probably always a strange coincidence that draws people into this industry. I owned a small company that designed websites for local business in the islands down here in Florida. My office was shared with a local ISP. One day some old fat guys walked in and said they were looking for someone to set up this house with cameras so they could move girls in and set up a website. Sounded like fun, so I said I’d give it a shot. The guys eventually went bankrupt out of stupidity, but I learned a lot from the experience.

YNOT: What type of work were you doing, if any, before you started in the biz?
Terry: Simple web design.

YNOT: When did you get your start in the online adult business?
Terry: After the above-mentioned money drain went under, my next project was KeyWestDudes. We put our all into the project. We traveled to an Internext show in New Orleans and just met the right people. We got all the encouragement and help it would take for us to take our company to the next level. KeyWestDudes became a very web-famous feed, and we had the means to tackle other things.

YNOT: What types of sites and/or targeted business did you start with?
Terry: We started with just KeyWestDudes, our gay voyeur house. Then we added PeepAtDudes to our line-up and realized we needed a name to market and sell these feeds under. HotWired Content was born.

YNOT: Where did you begin gathering info about the business?
Terry: We got a lot of info at our first show in New Orleans. The seasoned webmasters were so helpful and so open arms! We surfed and surfed the various resource sites, went to the chats, talked on the boards and brainstormed together. It took a long time and a little bit of being screwed over to gather the extensive knowledge we now possess.

YNOT: Did you already have friends in the business?
Terry: Nah, I had enemies. (LOL) We really got lucky. We met up with Karl of Bedfellow.com early on, and he was such a supporter for us. Then we met up with the crazy cast of CCBill.com , and they really pushed us to achieve. Everytime it started to seem impossible or too difficult to break into, there would be someone there shining light at the end of the tunnel.

YNOT: Give us your thoughts on how easy or difficult it was for you to get started.
Terry: Getting started is easy, I think. Making it past the first year… that’s the hard part. Especially in content, when you’re putting more in than you’re getting back for such a long time. Unless you have parents handing you money or a rich investor, you make a lot of sacrifices for your dream.

YNOT: Any funny or interesting stories about the business that you’d like to share?
Terry: Man there was this morning in Vegas… I woke up with an empty bottle of rum, a dry mouth, and a blow-up doll between my legs… (J/K!)

YNOT: What changes would you like to see made in the adult Internet industry?
Terry: I would like to see more acceptance from the mainstream world. I think it would be a good thing in a lot of ways for this industry to be recognized for the actual business side of it, as well as for all the good things many of us do for charities and one another. I would also love to see more interaction and working together being done among the single webmasters and the seasoned companies. Working together, making deals, brainstorming… it can only help us all.

YNOT: What do you love about the adult Internet industry?
Terry: I love “most of” the people! I love how low-key it usually is to be in this business. Not that I don’t put in 80 or so hours a week, but they’re good hours, and I have lots of friends around here keeping me sane.

YNOT: What do you dislike?
Terry: I do tend to see myself and the people I work with as one big happy family. I like having an open policy to helping and getting to know others new and old to the industry. I hate it when one bad person tries to ruin that openness that I so enjoy.

YNOT: Where do you see yourself in one year? Five years?
Terry: This is so tough to answer. One year ago, I couldn’t have envisioned where I am now. I can hope that in one year, I will be in the same place, only better. In five years, I want to be living on my own private island with my wife and kids and that blow up doll I left in Vegas.

YNOT: What are your thoughts on the future of the adult Internet industry?
Terry: I try not to be this serious. Can I tell a joke instead? Honestly, I see that glass half-full. The adult industry has always been here, it’s only gotten stronger and better and cleaner. It’s not going anywhere. It’s headed towards that warm fuzzy mainstream place I was talking about.

YNOT: If you had one bit of advice you could offer new webmasters, what would it be?
Terry: Buy HotWired Content! HehHeh. Research, research, research. Just get out there and talk to lots of people, be happy and funny and optimistic, and good things will happen because good people will notice you.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

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