By M.Christian

YNOT – Webmistress Sylvia founded the first geo-based escort guide on the internet, Lovings.com, in 1996. She has had her hands on the site’s operation and design throughout its more than 15 years in business, and to say she is an opinionated witness to the entire history of adult entertainment on the web would be a gross understatement.

She sat down with YNOT.com to dish about why the adult web is the best and the hardest field of endeavor, bar none; the reason anyone bothered to embrace the new technology way back in the day, and what she calls “the shell game of respectability.”

YNOT.com: How would you describe Lovings.com to someone who’d never heard of it?
Sylvia: The spiel? “We’re the ultimate adult entertainment guide for Northern California, with focus on the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento.”

Informally? Lovings.com is the oldest internet adult guide for San Francisco Bay and Sacramento, and we’re still going strong. We focus on creating a friendly, playful and respectful place to find and advertise escorts, sensual massage and other adult entertainment.

The favorite compliment I ever got was from a site visitor who told me, “I don’t feel dirty or bad about myself when I come to your website to find an escort. Thank you.”

How did you start Lovings.com, and what are your goals for the company? Have your goals changed since 1996?
Long, long ago, in 1996, I became sick of teaching art history at the local art college. I wanted to get back into the fields I graduated from: graphic design, advertising and photography. At the same time, I was getting heavily into computers and had been on the baby internet for a while already, beginning with the ancient age of text-only bulletin boards.

As my circle of friends included a number of adult entertainers and sex workers, I knew the field of graphic and marketing services for adult entertainers was completely open. This was the era of super-expensive newspaper ads and absolutely no respect for anything adult that didn’t bring tens of thousands of dollars per account. Independent entertainers were treated like garbage by marketing reps, and no “decent” advertising agency would touch them with a long — expensive — stick.

So, I built a computer, and with my awesome ex-husband as business partner, sales person and [chief financial officer], I started an advertising and design agency for adult entertainers. In addition to hoping to live off what we earned, we wanted to send a message that adult entertainers are people, entitled to honesty, professionalism and quality services like everyone else. We wanted their customers to know they’re normal, healthy and decent human beings too, And that things sexual are not intrinsically evil, dirty and bad.

As your company is rather unusual, you must have some very interesting challenges. Will you share some of your more unique marketing and business experiences?
One of the biggest challenges for any adult business is finding “mainstream” services that will accept us, from marketing providers to online payment processors. GoogleAds, for example, stopped accepting escort-related advertising about a year ago. Our online processor, AlertPay, stopped accepting payments for escort advertising this month [August 2011]. Facebook has never allowed adult advertising. VISA is putting more and more obstacles in front of adult businesses, too. All the day-to-day support “mainstream” businesses take for granted is a constantly moving target for those of us in adult.

On the other hand, I love working with adult entertainers! Our customers are more loyal, honest and trustworthy than most. In addition to advertising, we also design websites, both adult and non-adult. In 15 years of web development, I’ve never had a problem with an adult customer. During the same time, every single non-adult web design job has been nothing but trouble. I had to suspend more than 70 percent of the websites in order to collect the final payment.

How have you used various internet marketing and social media sites to promote your company?
We’ve tried everything over the years: banners, blogging, Facebook, forums, Twitter, MerchantCircle, Google Places, as well as offline advertising such as newspapers, magazines, fliers, radio, Yellow Pages and even a TV ad. Two sources are consistently successful: Google natural results (we’re among the first three results for all our most important terms such as “San Francisco escorts” — yay!), and Twitter. Our blog is also doing very well, although Twitter has eaten into the blogging time big time.

What advice would you give to someone who is entering the adult business world for the first time? What about someone who is considering using social media?
Don’t do either. You won’t sleep, eat or have sex ever again. [laughs]

Seriously, adult is a business like any other. Don’t expect to make a million bucks without a million bucks’ worth of work. Finding a good niche that has not been saturated is important, too. But most importantly, go where the heart leads. If you have passion for what you do, everything else comes. Some of the most successful adult businesses are a direct result of the founders’ passions — look at FetLife.

The same is true for social media: Choose the sites that fit your style, because you’ll be spending a lot of time on them. Choose whom you friend or follow wisely. Most of your reach will be the result of interacting with your audience. Take a look at my post “7 tips for Twitter success” for more detailed info.

What do you see in the future for Lovings.com and businesses like yours?
The nature of the internet is to be fluid. We have to reinvent ourselves all the time. It’s a pain in the booty, but also a great joy to run an internet business. Fully embracing the mobile and pads platform for both content delivery and advertising is a must. (I finally broke down and got a smartphone. Android, of course … it’s a geek’s phone.) I also see more site interaction, social interaction, instant visitor-advertiser connections, and whatever else shows up in the next year or two that will make websites more interactive in real-time.

M.Christian is a YNOT.com contributing editor and an author of literary erotica that blends the spectrum of sexual preferences and desires with horror and science fiction. Want to get in touch? Email him.