IN THE SPOTLIGHT

This week In The Spotlight we are featuring Matt Gardner, Executive VP of PSW Billing Solutions! Self described as creative, genuine, charismatic, friendly and loves interacting with people, I would have to say in the short six weeks that I have been interacting with this guy, these traits are right on the money! Simply put, the man has the skills as well as the award winning personality.IN THE SPOTLIGHT

This week In The Spotlight we are featuring Matt Gardner, Executive VP of PSW Billing Solutions! Self described as creative, genuine, charismatic, friendly and loves interacting with people, I would have to say in the short six weeks that I have been interacting with this guy, these traits are right on the money! Simply put, the man has the skills as well as the award winning personality. Get ready for a killer interview and several laughs along the way…

YNOT: Matt! I’ve got to say it was a pleasure meeting you and several of the PSW Billing crew at Internext. I’m stoked that you are gracing our pages here! Can you tell everyone a bit about yourself and what you do over there at PSW Billing?

Matt: 5’10”, dirty blonde hair, hazel eyes…

YNOT: HAHAHA!!!

Matt: LOL… my primary duties include brand strategy, marketing, user interface design, and, the most fun… public relations! You can usually catch me posting as “ExpertSeries” on most industry boards.

YNOT: What does PSW Billing do?

Matt: PSW provides smart third-party processing for subscription and shopping cart websites, so Jay, we’re all about the money (laughs).

Ok, this may sound rather fundamental, but we simply want to provide the most honest, genuine, and respectable billing services to other reputable and hardworking people in our industry.

As paysite owners since the early 90s, we’ve dealt with as much bullshit as anybody. But you get tired of that crap and we knew there had to be a better way to work. If you want to be in this business for the long haul, you’ve got to maintain meaningful relationships. And while the end result may mean that PSW has fast setup, low rates, weekly payouts and all that shit, it is only a part of what makes our clients happy. We’re about making money, sure. But who’s to say everyone can’t have a good time doing it? We party with our clients. We promote our clients. And, most importantly, we actually see them as living, breathing people. From the first email or phone call, clients are our friends. They are people with needs rather than companies with traffic and volume.

YNOT: Sounds a lot like how we like to operate at YNOT. That would probably explain why we hit it off so quickly!

Matt: Well, when you get right down to it, we believe that if you’ve lost respect for your clients as people, you don’t deserve to have clients. That’s a big part of why we started this company – to provide a pleasant alternative for people that were tired of the bullshit.

YNOT: Right on! Now in all honesty, a lot of other companies regardless of product out there might say something similar. What makes you guys truly different?

Matt: There are a number of things. Lets see, where to start… Ok, one of the more notable elements is that we don’t have sales people.

YNOT: Really?!

Matt: Yes. It’s one thing to let people know we exist, follow a good lead, or have clients give out a great recommendation. But, most of the time, you find that sales people are full of shit. They don’t care what’s best for the potential client – they just want their commission, their bonus, whatever. The conversation comes off pushy and overbearing and we feel like that’s getting you off with the wrong foot (pun intended). Funny thing is, same thing goes with our marketing – we refuse to work deals with people who are only looking out for themselves. The reason is simple: if you’re arrogant with us, chances are you’ll be pushy with our customers. Fuck that.

YNOT: Dude… I’m loving this!

A third major difference is that we actually come through on promises… and you’d be amazed at how surprised our clients are.

YNOT: It’s sad when people have come to just accept substandard service…

Matt: You’d think they had an eight-year-old kid doing their processing before us! Someone asks an offhand question which gets passed to the right person and answered. A client needs some special feature in our statistics, and we add it. A great person once said: “I was born to make you happy” – oh, wait, that was Britney Spears. But, honestly, that’s what we’re all about.

YNOT: You’re all about Britney Spears?

Matt: No. Well… umm… she IS the prime example of leveraging sex in the mainstream market. Talk about some impressive… oh, what were we talking about? (laughs)

YNOT: Making people happy?

Matt: Yes, we’re all about keeping our clients happy. And it’s really not that difficult, because we’ve hired great people.

YNOT: How did you get into the adult biz?

Matt: Well, my first “adult-oriented” work experience was back in high school with ASCII & ANSI art (making voluptuous women out of dollar signs and pound symbols).

YNOT: Nice! I always preferred the ballpoint pen and textbook method myself LOL…

Matt: As far as the industry, I was drawn in twice – both times related to the design skills I was lucky to foster early on. Freshman year of college, the guy across the hall was running one of the first celebrity picture sites with an AVS. The pages just had text linked directly to images. I started making suggestions and we ended up going in 50-50 after overhauling the entire site with graphics, banners and such (which ended being one of the largest consumers of university bandwidth – we were given warnings several times). Five or six grand a month was rolling in (good money for college students), and I, being the idiot I was, backed out for the pursuit of more “mainstream” work. For the next few months I watched him buy a GPS for his car, a new computer, and other various gear. I soon realized how stupid my choice was.

YNOT: Six grand a month in college! And you backed out! Please continue…

Matt: The next year, while drinking away that same stupidity at a party, I ran into some old associates from an ISP I worked for in high school. They had built an extremely powerful adult link trade system and needed a design guy to create some targets for the traffic. My industry career had officially started with the completion of my first paysite.

YNOT: Wow. I’d say you must have been kicking yourself, but you obviously were redeemed. How easy was it for you getting involved at such a young age?

Matt: Early on, it was pretty easy. I think a lot of it had to do with the initial demand. There’s no doubt consumers started looking for porn online before anyone figured out how to market their product properly. So it was really just a matter of getting sites built and taking a cut of the ever-increasing traffic flow. But, like anything, the saturation started kicking in. If you wanted to make the big money you had to differentiate with exclusive content, strong branding or niche fulfillment. Some time later, out went the free trials – we were lucky to have an affiliate program set up and running. I guess it’s always been about staying a step ahead. And we were fortunate enough to always have talented people keeping on top of the latest developments and advertising techniques.

Do you remember when people discovered full screen mode? That made for some hilarious advertising. The funniest thing I ever saw was the full-screen popup that tried to look like your web browser. Forget about taking over your back button, these guys were taking over your entire surfing experience. To this day, I still wonder how many people don’t know how to close windows from the keyboard. I mean, seriously, the only other option is the task manager or the power button.

YNOT: You know what Matt? I think I’m going to be bugging you with questions on ICQ more often now! (laughs)

So… Got any good or embarrassing stories? You are not the type who embarrasses easily though is my guess…

Matt: On our way back from the Internext conference in Florida in August, we were selected for a special security check at the Miami airport. Like anyone that attended, we had plenty of paraphernalia from the show. So, there we are with five security people going through the bags. One of the ladies discovers some sex toys and gives us a little grin. Then they find the herbal Viagra. We were afraid we might get in trouble as the huge security guy says something in Spanish to one of the other security people. She tells us, “He wants to know if they’re natural.” Relieved, we tell him, “Yes, it’s herbal… Do you want some?” He turns a little red and shakes his head… with a slight smile on his face. We’re like, “Here, we’ve got plenty” throwing about 20 of the packages on the table. They all start picking them up and laughing. We show him the web address if he needs more – a shameless plug for whoever had that stuff at the conference: “Used by airport security” (laughs). He ended up carrying our baggage back out with a big smile on his face.

YNOT: Amazing. That’s a great story!

Shifting gears here… as billing companies are seriously under the microscope lately, especially due to the actions of one Michigan Attorney General, legally speaking here… do you have a wish list?

Matt: A wish list? I’m sure all the billing companies would be happy if credit card companies stopped putting out new regulations. Also, it would be great if consumers could gain more confidence in other payment methods. As far as the industry at large, I think everything is in relatively good shape. There are some assholes out there but it’s easy enough to avoid them.

YNOT: If we can’t avoid the assholes, how can we change them or make them see the light as it were (from where the “sun don’t shine”)?

Matt: Really, the first step is educating members of the adult Internet community. Educational and resource sites, like Cozy Academy and YNOTMasters, really do a great job holding the community together. Cyndalie over at Adult Chamber writes some really great articles that are all over the place. And the weekly radio shows by YNOT Bob and yourself and Danielle over at The Adult Webmaster really let you see what great people there are in this industry. And that’s how changes happen – you find people you can trust, people that understand what’s truly important, and work together to create a better situation for everyone.

YNOT: Well said! Now, you seem to have a pretty strong opinion on things one way or another… what do you love and hate most about our industry?

Matt: I like to tell my conservative grandparents about all the fun and exciting things in the world of porn. And they can’t wait to hear all the stories when I visit. (laughs)

Ok, really, there’s only one answer for each of those questions. Good people and bad people. Everything else extends from that. You can tell a company by the owners. And it’s always great meeting genuine people at trade shows. For example, Sarah Farber, the CEO of NetBilling, is one of the most honest people I’ve met. And that’s a great thing for PSW because, if a customer isn’t looking for third-party processing, we can hand them off to someone we trust.

YNOT: What is your outlook on the future of the Adult Internet?

Matt: I definitely don’t think it’s going away. Even if things get locked down tight in the U.S., the international markets will continue to thrive. And, while I don’t believe the credit card companies could back out of the arena, if they did, people would find a way to pay for it. Hell, we’d install bill shredders on the front of PCs so you could read the bill and destroy it in real time!

YNOT: HAHAHA!

Say, can you shed some light on the situation with Lancelot Security? I understand quite a few Webmasters got screwed and now PSW is stepping in and saving people some major headaches?

Matt: Well, I’m sure everyone heard about the financial fiasco that happened a few weeks back. From what we can gather, it hit Lancelot pretty hard. We had a flood of new clients report that they’ve gone out of business and we were able to view the announcement they sent out. It looks like between credit card fines and holdbacks, the company wasn’t able to stay afloat. We were pleasantly surprised to hear that PSW was recommended to some clients as a respectable alternative.

YNOT: Good for you guys! Anything new coming up for PSW?

Matt: Be sure to check out the new version of our new website at http://www.pswbilling.com!

YNOT: Boy, I really hate to end this, but unfortuately it’s getting to be about that time, so I’ll ask you one last fun question… have a favorite model?

Matt: Two words: Lexus Locklear. She’s a cutie. Speaking of that, if she ever needs an official site made, call me. She’s got an official free site but, oh, the things I would do to her… graphically, of course.

YNOT: Let me tell you Matt, this interview has been a blast. I really hope our Webmasters out there can see what kind of a kick-ass dude you are!

Matt: Jay, thanks SO MUCH for the opportunity. I’ll SEE YOU IN MEXICO!!!

YNOT: Thank YOU Matt! And thanks for sponsoring the shuttle transportation while we are all down there! That’s a great idea.

Be sure to check out Matt’s YNOT Chat Profile and then head on over to PSWBilling.com!