I was over dinner with my two best friends when the epiphany of starting an adult web site came to us. You may have had the same experience, talking with your friends or even thinking to your self that you could make some serious money in the adult industry.I was over dinner with my two best friends when the epiphany of starting an adult web site came to us. You may have had the same experience, talking with your friends or even thinking to your self that you could make some serious money in the adult industry. I mean, how hard could it be?

Well, we found out the “hard way” just how difficult it really was.

We started by doing research on the adult hosting companies out there. This is where we first heard about turnkey vendors for adult sites. The appeal of having a site and back end feeds designed and hosted was great.

Again, we took on the task of performing research on the turnkey vendors that we discovered. We called the various vendors to ask about their services, we performed searches on the Internet to see if there was anything “fishy”, we even took a look at some of the sites that they claimed to have created. All in all, we thought that we were doing a great job finding out as much as we could about these vendors. Little did we know that our inexperience in the adult industry would be the foundation for us losing almost $4,000!

The turnkey vendor that we selected was based out of New York City, a convenience for my partners and I because we lived near by. We spoke with the owner several times to discuss what we’d get, how much money was involved and what was expected of us in order to launch a successful site. The owner told us that the process was simple; he said that he’s been doing this for over nine years and that he was sought after in the adult industry. We were also told that there is no contract, only a non-binding agreement that we could download off his website.

Here’s what we paid for:

1. Website design

2. iBill PinCoding interface

3. 50 Gigs of backend content (per month)

4. Real time sales tracking

5. Website hosting

6. 24 hour technical support

7. Ultimate Marketing Plan (web site submission, and additional meta tagged link pages)

8. Ongoing consulting services

Here’s what we got:

1. Website design

a. Dated graphics and an “all flash” site (very embarrassing and exactly what we DID NOT ask for).

b. Banner ads were placed on the site by the owner. We were never told about these banner ads until we saw the site. We tried to take them down, however the owner would put them back on the site, saying, “It’s our policy that our banner ads are on your site.”

c. The owner also never informed us about the 404 redirects that he enabled on our site. All in all what we actually got for the money that we paid was a marketing vessel for the owner’s other sites.

2. iBill PinCoding interface that generated errors every time you tried to log in. We also never received a master/free account to go in and check on the site. We had to purchase a regular membership.

3. Content feed that NEVER completely worked, there was always at least one broken link, or an access denied error. Of the videos that were available, you could barely make out the content due to its poor quality. A disturbing quote from the owner will never leave my head, “Don’t worry if your content feeds don’t work, your website members have other links they can click on.”

4. No sales tracking was offered, and no affiliate codes or login were ever provided for our site.

5. Web site hosting was actually decent; the only complaint we had was that we couldn’t see all the directories on our web site when we FTP’d in, making editing impossible.

6. No 24-hour technical support was available. The number we were given went to voice mail that was never returned.

7. Ultimate Marketing Plan was never provided. When we asked for the money back, the owner said, “There is no way you’re getting that back, you can’t prove that you paid for that.” Even though we had the signed copy of the check we sent him, with the words “Marketing Plan” in the notes field of the check.

8. Consulting Services that consisted of the owner telling us to sign up with various affiliate programs with his affiliate ID. After we signed up for all of them, he couldn’t offer any other consulting services to us.

The problems with this vendor started after we made our initial down payment for the site. The owner would literally call us two times a day to tell us that he needed the rest of the money in order to pay his graphic artists, or for his content feed, even though we had a written agreement that we had six months to pay the balance. These phone calls where so obsessive and annoying, we actually considered call blocking this guy’s phone number.

This went on until we paid for everything in full. The day this happened the phone calls stopped. However this wasn’t necessarily for the best. When we wanted to make changes to the site, or had questions about why the content feed was never working it was rare to get through. Several voice mail messages and e-mails had to be sent in order to get a response, and the response that we received was barely what we wanted to hear.

We then paid for some traffic from ConsumptionJunction.com, and they had the integrity and decency to get on the phone and tell us our site needed serious work before we’d have a chance of doing well.

We decided to redesign the site ourselves. It took two full days to put together a site from scratch, fortunately not a problem for me due to previous corporate Webmaster and graphic artist history.

We had some fantastic help for the redesign from the very professional and extremely giving gentlemen at Consumption Junction. They walked us through various strategies, gave us helpful hints on what has worked for them in the past, and even provided us with usernames and passwords for some of their sites, so we could get an idea of how they approached their high conversion rates. If it wasn’t for the help and support of Marc and Sean from Consumption Junction, we probably wouldn’t be in this business anymore.

After the site was redesigned we contacted iBill and changed from PinCodes to password management – a far simpler and more reliable approach (at least for us) for providing memberships for your consumers. We also changed DNS over to our new and very reliable hosting company DWHS. With help from people like Charles at DWHS, we were able to successfully have our site up and running in minutes.

So here we are, about ready to launch our new site, barely any cash left for marketing, and almost embarrassed to admit that we got caught up in a scam. As tough as it is to admit, we know we’ll make it, and we’ll make it because we have drive, determination, utter resilience and new and trustworthy friends like Marc and Sean from Consumption Junction.

In my experience, it’s very unprofessional to go around bad-mouthing and name-calling. But, the whole reason we’re writing this article is to help prevent new Webmasters from making the same mistakes we made. We feel that if we do not identify the company that we’ve had such a bad experience with, we’re really not helping anyone. Should anyone wish to know the name of the company in question, please feel free to contact me at dino@modena-inc.com.

For the record, these were only our experiences and it’s possible that others who have worked with the company in question have not had similar experiences. That said, we feel that the company in question took advantage of us and we will never do business with the owner or his company again.

Dino is the 29-year old CEO of MODENA Group, LLC, a successful web development and graphic design firm based in Maryland. Dino has been a Webmaster for companies like MindSpring, and BMG. He’s worked as a Vice President and Director in his career and can be easily researched on the web discussing topics such as building your own search engines, designing animated gifs and discussing ethics in the IT industry.

His partners Martin (CTO) and Xavier (CFO) have been in the Internet business since they’ve graduated. Currently living in Maryland as well, they are the backbone of MODENA Group, LLC, as they steer through the occasionally rough waters of the adult Webmaster business.

MODENA Group, LLC adult web sites include:

BitchFlix.com
SuperPornMart.com
MODENA-inc.com

To contact Dino email dino@modena-inc.com.