IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Rick is the president of ConsumptionJunction.com, the biggest and the best entertainment website of its kind on the Internet. Meet a true professional in our industry with a great sense of humor about everything, including himself…

YNOT: I’m pleased to introduce one of the main dudes behind one of my favorite and certainly one of the busiest websites on the Internet.IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Rick is the president of ConsumptionJunction.com, the biggest and the best entertainment website of its kind on the Internet. Meet a true professional in our industry with a great sense of humor about everything, including himself…

YNOT: I’m pleased to introduce one of the main dudes behind one of my favorite and certainly one of the busiest websites on the Internet. Take it away Rick!

Rick: I’m Rick Latona a.k.a. Dick Daytona. El Presidente for the car wreck on the Internet where people stop and stare: Consumption Junction (CJ). I’ve been around the company for a long time, but I was brought in to give the company a more professional edge just about one year ago. My major focus at this time is to diversify the company so we have other assets besides CJ.

YNOT: Now I know that your site is more than just adult material. Tell everyone exactly what CJ is all about.

Rick: CJ is the bottom rung of entertainment – the only place that panders to the basic instincts of Man. With all that modern technology and the Internet have to offer, most websites still ignore the fundamental element that drives everything – people. And what do we know about people? People are fucking sick. Remove us from the trappings of civilization and morality, and we’re just a tribe of shaved apes who like to fuck, laugh, and watch things die. That’s what Consumption Junction does best.

YNOT: That’s beautiful. You are kind of like the revolutionary John Waters type (Director of Pink Flamingoes) of the Internet when he first hit the film scene over 30 years ago. He once said that if someone threw up while watching his films, that it was a success. I’m sure CJ has done the same.

Now, what do you feel sets CJ apart from your competitors?

Rick: Is that a trick question? Please let me know if you come across someone like us. I’d like to meet them. I’m sure they’d be a blast to hang out with. We are one of few companies that actually sell traffic. Pay site operators buy traffic from us. We focus on entertaining the consumers and increasing our traffic and we send the traffic off to our partners.

Marc and Rick from CJ

YNOT: Well, there are a few other entertainment sites out there that aim for the lowest common denominator but your content is definitely the best, and as well you make good use of your traffic. Incidentally, how much traffic to you typically see?

Rick: We get 300,000 daily uniques and average about 8,000 users logged in at one time.

YNOT: Amazing! You know I also have got to ask you – given that so many webmasters choose to be anonymous, especially those with extreme types of content, you guys are some of the most accessible and visible people I know of. What made you guys decide to have office cams and be so public?

Rick: We are actually increasing our exposure too. Recently we have added a 360-degree dome camera that enables the site visitor to scan our entire office. Fans love to interact with us. It is something we do to differentiate ourselves from our competitors. We’ve even started announcing trips that we take so fans can come and have a beer with us while we are traveling.

YNOT: Do you run into fans or even enemies that recognize you just on the street?

YNOT: So, given that you guys are equal opportunity offenders, how do you protect yourself legally? What problems have you run into?

Rick: We seem to get cease and desist orders almost daily. Recently we even got one from Ms. Cleo. As a general rule, we comply with their requests. It isn’t worth fighting over a single piece of content when you have 10,000 pieces of media on your site. All of our content is user submitted. So we have to rely on our fans for their authenticity. Fortunately, our fans have all agreed to our lawyer’s terms and conditions.

YNOT: That’s a good thing. So why did you get into this racket?

Rick: Should I say the standard “sex, drugs and rock and roll”? No, those things are actually going to kill us all. There is too much of that around here. We actually think that we can become a dominant player by good old fashion professionalism. When I look at the most successful companies in the business, they all have a high degree of professionalism. Level-headed people can make quite a bit of money in this industry. And that is what we all work for.

CJ crew ‘Pimpin out’ for the Player’s Ball party at Internext

YNOT: What type of work were you doing before you started in the biz?

Rick: I was the Managing Director of European Operations for a publicly traded web hosting company. I can’t tell you their name but I can tell you their stock symbol is INLD. One of the biggest reasons that CJ got big was because our founder Marc Womack hosted the site on his free employee hosting account. We were doing 12 terabytes of transfer per month before they asked for money.

YNOT: Can you give us a history of CJ and your rise to fame?

Rick: CJ was first conceived by the ancient Hebrews as an entertaining form of rebellion against the Pharaohs. At the time, it consisted primarily of the discreet, underground circulation of stone tablets upon which were painstakingly etched portraits of Jewish slaves humorously posing their testicles next to the mummified remains of the cruel Egyptian masters. During the 40-year walk through the desert, the spirit of CJ spread throughout the Fertile Crescent, where it flourished under the rule of many of history’s most oppressive dictatorial governments. During feudal times, peasants would place crude paintings of the King or an unpopular royal in the bottom of public chamber pots. It was even rumored that the 69th of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses was originally concerned with Pope Leo X’s penchant for women with prolapsed rectums, or “Ass Tulips” as we call them today. In the Americas, archeological evidence has hinted at the existence of an Aztec god referred to as Los Grande Seejaydotcom, to whom the injuns would often sacrifice goats and small children. Finally, with the dawning of the Internet Age, C.J. took its current form, a website where 5 million people a month send in the funniest pictures and videos they can find.

YNOT: Wow, and here I thought all along that it was developed by a bunch of regular guys a few years back with a lot upstairs, a penchant for excessive behavior and too much time to kill…

Can you share with us one of your many wild stories?

Rick: That’s a difficult question – so many events, yet so little recollection. There was the time I slapped Wiseman in the ass with a 2×4 as hard as I could. I ran away afterwards like a scared little bitch because I didn’t want to get hit back.

I fell off the roof of a 4-story house in Amsterdam one time while trying to get a better view of a rainbow and now appreciate the life God has given us.

YNOT: Never a dull moment, eh?

Say, are you getting any better at golf? You almost took my head off down in Mexico.

Rick: Jay, you know how good of a golfer I am. Seriously, I suck. But I’ve been taking a lot of lessons and recently I hit the ball in the air.

YNOT: I’ve never seen anybody defy the law of physics like you. We’ll have to play up in Montreal during Cybernet Expo.

So on a more serious note, what changes would you like to see made in the adult Internet industry? What areas in your opinion need to be improved?

Rick: I hear people talk a lot about “shaving” statistics and the like. I still don’t understand why anyone would do such a thing. I can tell you as the president of a company that makes most of its revenue off of affiliate programs that it is never a concern. We don’t worry about whether someone is shaving because I don’t want to even think about it. I don’t like the fact that people are so untrusting. I actually created my own term for judging pay sites. I call it RPM or Revenue Per 1000 exposures. If I run 100,000 banners of site A and it makes 20 dollars and 100,000 of site B and it makes 40 dollars, I’ll go with site B. If someone shaves the stats they will be dropped like a used placenta because it shows up in our RPM report. Everyone else could adopt the same set of standards. Pay site operators will follow the money.

Rick Latona

YNOT: If you had to pinpoint your favorite professional aspect of the biz, what would it be?

Rick: I love the freewheeling cowboy aspect of cutting deals. You can’t go to other industry tradeshows and mingle with decision makers as easily as you can in the adult industry. It’s great that someone with gumption can enter this business and make something of himself in a relatively short period of time.

YNOT: Where do you see yourself in the long run?

Rick: I mentioned earlier that we are diversifying. We run over a billion advertisements a month so we can start any type of business that we want. We launched www.flashings.com recently. By the end of the year we will have a network of businesses. But we won’t have our own affiliate program until we can offer the best damn webmaster program on the planet. So look for our booth at one of the trade shows during the summer of 2003.

YNOT: Excellent. I was hoping that you guys would have a booth one of the upcoming shows. I’m sure you will get real creative with it.

What is your outlook on the future of the adult Internet?

Rick: It’s going to continue growing. But the old school needs to stay on their toes. Newer companies like AEBN, the new Top Bucks and Ox Cash (BangBus.com) are taking the world by storm. You have to innovate to gain market share in this business just like any other business.

YNOT: Got any newbie advice?

Work hard. Anything worth having is worth fighting for. Automate, automate, automate! If you don’t, you will give all of your profits to your increasing payroll budget.

YNOT: Where did you grow up by the way?

Rick: Flushing, New York. I know, it sounds like a good idea at times.

YNOT: Before we close this up, describe yourself in five adjectives for us.

Rick: I’m not good at describing myself so I asked five friends and got the following list: Aggressive, fat, prone to bouts of excess, confident and memorable.

YNOT: Anything else you want to add?

Rick: Do any of those penis enlargement programs actually work?

To learn more about Rick please visit his YNOT webmaster profile. Also be sure to check out http://www.consumptionjunction.com.

CJ is doing a 50% off special on banner placements and also a “Buy 3, Get 2 Free” on picture sponsorships. This special will be honored for deals closed by 7PM (EDT) on Friday, May 31. Please contact marc@consumptionjunction.com or call toll free at 800-305-4130 for more details. Check it out!!!