A Nobody’s Guide to the Adult Industry

So, when we started this venture, we originally had two ideas in mind regarding where to shoot our adult content.  We could A. shoot at my house or B. rent a set.  I decided against option A, shooting at my house, pretty quickly when I thought about the amount of cars parked in front of the place, plus crew and porno stars coming in and out.  On top of that, I can’t imagine what my neighbors would think if they heard loud moaning from lesbian sex coming through the windows!  So, that was out.

Next, we thought we could rent a studio for a day or two.  We found some nice spots, but they range from $800-1500 per day, or about $100 bucks an hour.  So, doing some quick math, even if we rented it for a day, we’d have to bring everything in, set up all lighting and cameras (5 HD cameras plus a poker table camera system for our shoots), get everyone squared away, and break everything down afterwards…no way we’d be able to pull this off in one day considering that our shoots last about 12 hours.  So, two days would cost us $1600-3000 bucks per shoot.  Screw that…we came up with option C.  Let’s find a nice warehouse/flex space office and sign a monthly lease.  That way it could double as our set, and our offices/editing bay/recording studio/etc.  Well…easier said than done.

The first thing we ran into took me by surprise.  Probably 75% of the office spaces for rent that we contacted DO NOT rent to adult businesses.  I would have no problem believing that if we were trying to rent in Backhoe, Kansas, but this was the fucking San Fernando Valley…the porn mecca of the world!  And they won’t rent to us?!?  We found out pretty quick that when we called on a place, we’d tell them that we’re an adult business right up front, and that saved us a lot of time.  I didn’t want to take my time to go look at a space only to find out AFTERWARDS that they don’t rent to the adult industry.  So, out of the places we found that do rent to adult companies, they were averaging about $1.10/sq ft./month.  We were looking for a place somewhere between 1500 and 3000 sq ft. 

There were really only two contenders towards the end.  One ended up being too big and too expensive (2600 sq ft. for about $1.25/sq ft.= $3250/month.)  Plus it had dropped ceilings like an office building.  The other one we found and liked was 1800 sq ft. and $0.89/sq ft.  Killer deal…we took it almost immediately.  About 200-300 sq ft. was built out as an entry area, two office and a bathroom…the rest was all open space with really high ceilings.  It turned out to be perfect.  We converted the large office into an editing bay, and the small office into a makeup room for talent.

Here are some tips for finding a great adult studio location:

1.  Tell the renter that you’re an adult business right away.  This saves a lot of time.

2.  Look for warehouse space along resevoirs and railroad tracks.  These are going to be the cheapest places, and you’ll find a TON of them…those areas are zoned for these kinds of buildings.

3.  Go ahead and sign a longer lease if it lowers your rates.  Most rental agreements will do this for you but neglect to have an early termination clause in their lease agreement.  That means, that if you leave after a month, it’s the same as leaving after 2 or 3 years.

4.  Find out what other businesses are around your potential new spot.  This is important mainly for the noise factor.  If you find a nice cheap spot, and everyone around you is a cabinet maker, you won’t be able to shoot during business hours unless you REALLY soundproof the place.  Either that, or you’ll have to put up with table saw sounds in your porno.

5.  Exterior appeal doesn’t mean shit.  Our office looks like a ghetto outside, but is really nice once you step through the front door.  Talent may be nervous for a minute upon first pulling up, but believe me, they relax as soon as they step inside and see a beautiful set.  Plus, this saves you money if there are no groundskeeping fees (which some renters will try to slip into your lease agreement).

Hope that helps anyone looking for some studio space!

-Schw00d

It all started with an idea…more like a dream really.  I had a buddy who happened to be dating (nailing is more like it) a girl who turned out to be a porno star.  I can’t remember what her name was.  But I started thinking…wait a minute.  I have friends that are experts in all the necessary areas…business, networks, web sites, video production…plus a guy with access to a porno star…the pieces started coming together in my head.  I had also recently sold a condo for a nice profit and had some startup money…I was more than willing to drop 5k to get a site going…no problem!  I sat on the idea for about two weeks, and all the while it kept making more and more sense.  Hell…there’s TONS of money in the adult industry right?  All you have to do is take some pictures of some naked chick and put them up on a website, and all of a sudden you’re a millionaire right?  Well…wrong actually. 

I’m creating this blog because I want to relate the experiences I’ve had getting into the adult industry to anyone out there thinking the same thing.  Not to discourage or encourage…but just to relate stories and information.  Overall, I have to say that it was easier than I ever imagined to get into the adult industry, but more difficult than I ever imagined to make money doing so.  Anyway…back to my story, and back to exactly how I ended up where I am today.

As I was saying, I sat on the idea for about two weeks.  I kept thinking…’Ok…I have all of the people I would like to be a part of the project in mind, but how the fuck do I ask them if they want to be a part of a porno website?’  How would I approach them?  What would their girlfriends think?  Well…it was easier than I thought it would be.  I first went to the guy who was banging the porno star.  I had recently attended a home poker game where someone was telling me about this adult site he was a webmaster for…he said that the site, in its prime had 13,000 subscribers at 30 bucks a month.  Some quick math told me that equated to almost 400k PER MONTH!  That’s what we call (in technical terms) a shitload.  The overhead couldn’t be even a fraction of that right?  He also said that the site hadn’t been updated in over 2 years, and was still making over 100k per month…the owner was practically retired.  Well…basically, I started by relating that story to my buddy, and his eyes lit up like mine had when I first heard it.  That’s more money than any of us had ever dealt with before…but hey…there are worse problems to have in life.  Well…long story short, we now had a team of two. 

The second guy I approached was a friend who had an MBA and knew all about starting up businesses.  He was even easier to get on board…so now we were three. 

The last buddy I approached was a webmaster who had been working on building online stores for clothing companies…perfect right?  I approached him last because, besides me, he was the only other guy who had a steady girlfriend (who is also a friend of mine)…I gave it about a 50/50 chance that he would shoot me down immediately.  Thankfully though, he didn’t, and we now had all of the cards in place.  I (Schw00d) had the money as well as video editing experience and the organizational skills to put this whole thing together.  Lips McGavin was our point man for dealing with talent, managers, promotional people, etc…basically, he’s a great ‘people person.’  Plus, he can score music and mix sound.  Buck Wheezy is the webmaster and designer, plus a proficient poker player (that’ll come in handy later).  And finally, Pornoblo Escobar has the professional business experience to structure us right in the beginning, and make everything legit.  On top of all that, we lived in the San Fernando Valley…known affectionately as the porn capital of the world.

Ok…excellent…we have a team dedicated to making this happen.  What do we do now?  Well…we need an idea.  Originally, we were going to try to get Lips’ chick in on the deal and set up a solo site with pictures, video…maybe a blog and a webcam…that’s about as simple as it comes.  Hell, there are 14 year old kids with enough tech savvy to make that happen…it should be easy for us.  Then we started talking about it more and more, and realized that if we want to be successful, we need to go bigger…WAY bigger.  After a week or two of discussions, we gave birth to PartyGirlPoker.com.  We loved the format of NBC’s Poker After Dark, and basically ripped off that idea, but added nudity and sex.  Porno and poker go together like peanut butter and jelly.  We searched the web and surprisingly, we couldn’t find any websites out there that were doing the same thing…we couldn’t believe that we were the first people to think of this idea.  Sure, there were websites where you could play poker with pictures of no-so-hot chicks in various stages of undress, and there had been a similar strip poker show that went defunct in 2003 (it was too cheesy though…not realistic at all), but we couldn’t find anyone out there with our vision of how to combine these two moneymakers into a single show.

So now you know how we got our start.  What I haven’t told you yet is the learning curve involved…it’s HUGE.  Or the money necessary…also huge.  I will keep blogging about the issues we ran into including:

Finding a place to shoot
Building our set
The real costs involved in adult production
Telling people that you’re now a porno producer, and the stigma involved
Hiring porn stars
Getting noticed
Advertising and marketing

And so much more…stay tuned, and remember…if you build it…they won’t always come.  But if you build it right, you’ve got a hell of a good shot.

-Schw00d