Question for Rob

[grande351]

I'm sure you get asked this ALL the time, but how did you get started? Or, more to the point, how did FTV get started? I've always been interested in photography, especially "pin-up" style, but have never persued it. I've always thought it would be a fun hobby. What advice could you offer to someone starting out?

[FTVGirls_Rob]

Wow... ok, here is a paragraph:
I started doing photography back in 1989, so a long time ago, mostly fashion-based stuff, and a few small stints in Playboy later in the mid-90s. It was always a hobby, never much for profit. Then I went to Dental school in Philadelphia, and since I needed some hobbies not to go insane, I went back to my photography. One of the girls I was dating one day asked if I'd do a masturbation video of her, and guess what, we did a couple. Then she brought a friend to do it, and it all of a sudden chain-reactioned to 70 different girls in over 2 years. Now these girls were all cute & hot, and never on camera before, and all for free! Of course, I couldn't use that content, but it kept my mind rolling about me one day shooting & selling this sort of thing (I still have these original VHS tapes lying in boxes... again a shame I couldn't use them). But dental school was the real thing, and my Job in dentistry took over after that.
All through this time, I also was running the ToHeroes gaming site, which I kept improving on over time, developing my graphic skills, and people management. Having 10,000 gamers many of which whine and cry and complain, you get very good at running a 'megasite'. Visit this page: http://www.toheroes.com/history/evolution/0.html to see how I got better with html & graphics over time.
By 2001, I was seriously considering opening up my site, and by early 2002 I had already started shooting. I invested about $40,000 from my savings doing dentistry paying models, etc... and getting enough content to start up my site. Fall 2002 the site opened up, and I used ccbill as my billing processor. (Its not hard to set up something with them, but they take as much as 18% of your profits). Hosting wasn't an issue either, first hosting on a friends' server, then on a ripoff server, then finally on a quality server company called Isprime.com till this day.

But to start a new site nowadays, isn't a good prognosis of success -- so many of my friends want to start one, and I do get emails about it so often. Realistically any new website started independent of the big companies is doomed to failure because:

-More and more people don't want to use their cards online
-More and more free stuff on the net
-More and more content being stolen and posted on freesites
-The economy has had a big impact on the adult industry
-Too many adult sites have completely saturated it all
-Adult surfers, members just are too jaded nowadays to pay for a site that is starting out, when there are so many big content sites out there.
-new, stricter 2257 laws

So if you start a site, expect to lose money, lots of it. If you're doing it for the fun of it, and just want it as an expensive hobby, then go for it.
I may be successful, but that is because I don't have 20 people working for me, and my costs are comparably low.


it just isn't the way it used to be...

[Ryan]

Realistically any new website started independent of the big companies is doomed to failure because:

-More and more people don't want to use their cards online
-More and more free stuff on the net
-More and more content being stolen and posted on freesites
-The economy has had a big impact on the adult industry
-Too many adult sites have completely saturated it all


Yeah, there's way too much free stuff out there - which is exactly why I don't keep an archive on my promotional site (unlike a lot of freesites). I'm sure as heck not gonna give away months (or years) of promotional content for free. It wouldn't help me, and it certainly wouldn't help your company.

Something I wondered recently, though - why even bother with affiliate programs? Why don't adult sites, like FTV, just create their own freesites and promote their paysites that way? That would definitely cut down on a lot of the free stuff that's out there. I mean, I wouldn't be making money promoting (not that I'm making anything now), but the industry may be a little better off.

____________________________
www.online-erotica.blogspot.com

[grande351]

Thanks for the honest and straightforward answers. I guess there really is something to being at the right place, at the right time! You pretty much confirmed my suspicions about starting a website in this day and age. I have no delusions whatsoever about ever doing this for a living! The market does seem to be way too saturated, with every conceiveable fetish and speciality being covered by it's own websites. Still, the art of photographing beautiful women is very intriguing to me.

[Satir]

Rob, that story was super... I thought you're only photographer. But you established whole FTV empire. Its real big work. What can you say about Chris? How did you meet?

[ugo]

Satir, who is Chris? ( Alison ? )

If it is so, it is a beautiful question to Rob.

[Satir]

Satir, who is Chris? ( Alison ? )

If it is so, it is a beautiful question to Rob.
Chris - is a cool guy from ftv team :).

[ugo]

Rob, I think that you are a good person. Very intelligent and prudent in the world internet full of dangers and confusion.:)

The porno is an industry of great commerce. But it is full of errors and deceptions.:(

Better that of You, Rob, that you have made your FTVGirls as fun and fresh and free stuff. Clean and simple. It is intelligent and good women.:):)

[ugo]

Excuse, friend Satir.:)
I had not understood well the name. (male or female).:o

[howling]

I think Chris is in charge of the affiliate program.

[geolarson2]

Oh, I know who you are now! Neat & super cool! I've got a question--my upper right 5 ...JK! (sorry, couldn't resist). I've seen a some of your fashion work, Rob. Very, very nice. Without knowing you were you, you actually helped resurrect my old interest in photography, and that from before I knew you were the creator of FTV, so I owe you a big thanks there.

Rob's right (rats!). Starting up now is wickedly harder than it was when he launched FTV. The Internet was still relatively young, and he got in with a niche market. A lot of his competitors from back then have disappeared, their images bought and resold I have no idea how many times. And unlike some of the other big names in the softcore line, those created with the Internet, he does his own work. Other sites, such as Domai, Met-Art, ATK, MPL and so on buy their images from a host of photographers (and I mean absolutely no disrespect to those sites). That makes what Rob has managed to do all the more remarkable in my opinion. And makes it all the more obvious that when someone tries to replicate his success or style, it tends to fall flat. He has an eye for what he does, and now after reading his story, I understand how he was able to come into the scene the way he did, with a vision already established in his own mind. Photography isn't just pointing in a direction and pressing the shutter release. Its reading the composition of a scene through that little viewfinder (or off the back display if you, like Rob, are lucky enough to have a very good digital SLR), doing the math in your head to adjust your light, aperture and shutter speed to get the right colour balance (yeah, you can do some adjusting on the PC or in the lab, but you can only do so much, so you better get it as close to right to begin with, dig?).

I am and have been very impressed with what Rob has accomplished for a long time now. I know, I probably sound like a broken record since I've said that many times already, but its true. Starting up, whether you do it as Rob did with softcore in a niche market, softcore glamour, hardcore, bondage, or if you go an entirely different route and go into wildlife photography, landscapes/nature or whatever, it isn;t easy to get noticed. Rob was fortunate to have gotten by noticed, and that was due in part to a sound business plan, I'm sure, Chris's work behind the scenes with FTVCash, plus his own art--and in my view, this is art, many images as worthy to be in print at galleries as Adams, Weston, Morey and so on. Many folks out here, I'm sure, look at FTVGirls, Danielle FTV, Lia 19 & Alison Angel with a certain amount of envy. If only we had been in the right place, at the right time, with the talent ...Dare to dream, huh? Lightning may strike in the same place twice, but how often? Seriously, I'd like to know so I can be there next time ;)!!!

As Rob said, he started out with gentlewomen he knew in college. Everyone starts somewhere, and the first rule of photography (and I assume cinematography) is to shoot as much and as often as you can. There's just no substitute for work than work, period. (Obviously Rob got a lot of practice in even before FTVGirls opened.)

As the market's flooded, people have become jaded, as Rob pointed out. Just as "gonzo" ruined erotica for me for several years in the 90s, I'm sure that this desire to "cash in quick" has played its part in dumbing down the adult side of the web. And when you consider that for the amount of time Rob spends with the gentlewomen (a day, maybe two), the rates that are typically paid (think anywhere from a couple hundred for a couple hours just to do a shoot like Rob does, up into the thousands for the amount of time he spends with them, what's asked of them, &c.). Equipment costs are high. Rob I'm sure will spend some time eventually talking about how he has upgraded his cameras since he started, but what he's using now is a very high quality camera, and that costs money. Add to that his digital HD-DVD camera and you're looking at a couple thousand just for the basic hardware (talent not included), more for software and things add up, and you haven't even gone online yet. For that matter, you might not have even managed to produce anything worth viewing online, let alone something someone would want to pay to see. Then you have your servers to pay for, insurance, business license, taxes, record keeping (2257 record-keeping requirements are cumbersome, and getting more and more so not only due to new laws, but also because of the number of stage names some women use, their real name, and cross-referencing the whole lot!), bandwidth concerns, especially if you want to grow your business and so on and so forth. Rob may have started for 40K just a few years ago, but I'd be surprised if he could get going today, even with what FTVGirls offers, for twice that amount. I guess in a way we can all blame Rob for making things harder for any one aspiring to follow in his footsteps to get off the ground--gee, thanks, Rob, ya big ..., why I oughta ...;).

And before anyone asks, I thought about it a couple years back, did my research, and found that with the way the market is, and with the resources I have, it simply was not possible. That doesn't mean it isn't worth looking into as a hobby, as folks like Jon Cohen of Looknsee Photography have done, but as a money-making proposition its hard to see someone starting up like Rob did, or if you manage to actually make a name for yourself or produce something extraordinary, then you may even be able to sell a set or two to a site like those above. If you're line near a college or university, you stand maybe a better chance of finding a gentlewoman willing to work with you for under $100 for an hour or two (softcore) or if you're really, really lucky maybe she'll work for TFP or TFCD (time-for-prints or time-for-CD), and still sign a release that allows you to try and make a buck (or500) off the images by re-selling or licensing them to a third party site. In any event, don't let that stop any of you from giving it a try--just remember it takes a lot of work and that takes a lot of passion, determination and just plain stubbornness.

[The Deuce]

Man, I have to get out of the midwest. To quote the creation of FTV , "One of the girls I was dating one day asked if I'd do a masturbation video of her, and guess what, we did a couple."

Why god, why can't this happen to me. Some guy's have all the luck, or is it logistics?

Thanks for sharing your story Rob, your still my hero.