Page 46 - AVN July 2013

CROWDSOURCING | By Stewart Tongue
Beating ‘Summer Slowdown’ Tips on staying motivated during vacation season
When the temperatures rise with the season, there is always talk of a “summer slowdown” when it comes to adult online sales statistics. The theory states that as people find fun things
to do outdoors and start up their own summer flings, they tend to be less interested in adult content than they would otherwise be during frigid winter nights. That belief may or
may not be accurate, especially with the growing impact of mobile porn buyers who take their thirst for XXX content with them wherever they go. However, as one beautiful day
follows another, business owners are faced with the task of keeping their employees, vendors and themselves fully motivated to produce no matter how nice it looks outside their
offices. Here are some useful tips from industry insiders who have shown they know how to motivate themselves and the talented people around them.
TECH NEWS
Out of the Office
Some do their best to blur the line between work and play. “We plan outings to a fun bar or restaurant and invite their
families to join in,” said Joey Gabra, managing director of Affil4You. “Other times we may just make a random field trip
to see a movie that we all really want to see just to take a break from the walls that confine us each day.”
Others tap into the competitive juices of their team to turn mundane work into a more exciting set of goals. “It’s always
more difficult to motivate sitting in an office, on a nice summer day—even more so living in a city like Barcelona full of
hot, semi-naked women all over the streets in summer time,” said Joao of PinSex.com. “We do competitions on things
like who can get the most popular pin or get the most followers during a specific week. This way we get everyone to look
at it more like fun than work and that helps us all realize how lucky we are to be working with PinSex, instead of some
other boring job. We also have a great team, so there are always the weekends and the holidays that tend to be quite
exciting here and where there are tons of kinky and funny stories to share during the work week. To lighten things up
even more, we have a weekly breakfast together, where we all gather and talk about everything except work, but somehow
PinSex always comes into the conversation at some point. Work can be fun too.”
At JuicyAds the summer event schedule of adult trade shows also serves an important motivational purpose. “There is
no real slowdown at JuicyAds as we are constantly working with our clients new and old, enhancing their campaigns. We
are the ‘sexy advertising network,’ and I like to live up to the name by continuing to promote fun and exciting energy,”
said Jay V., owner of JuicyAds.com, noting that the hosted parties at various webmaster events. Mixing business with
pleasure and networking is an easy way to add excitement to any upcoming work schedule.
Irons in the Fire
Another way to maintain a competitive edge is by
continually getting into new products, services and
markets. “Traditionally they have always dubbed the
summer months as the Summer Slowdown. Sure,
things in the content biz tend to wind down for a few
months. But what keeps us going is that we have
several irons in the fire which will prove lucrative
once released, so knowing this keeps us focused and
motivated,” said $tan D’Aman, consultant to
AdultCentro. “Keep an eye out for our late August-
early September announcements, then you’ll know
what kept us inspired this summer.” Utilizing the
development schedule to make sure the pipeline of
new milestones runs concurrently with times of the
year that might otherwise slip away is an excellent
way of organizing workflow and keeping people
motivated.
Some successful brands pointed out that it always
comes down to the quality of the people working
with you. No matter what else you do to amp up the
excitement, you need to have the right crew in place
to make it count. Those ideas were best summed up
by Bradley, the director of operations at
iDealgasm.com. “As a rapidly growing company in its
second year of business, keeping the troops motivated
is thankfully something I rarely have to concern
myself with because most of the guys here have been
with us since the beginning and you’ll be hard-pressed
to find a more motivated group, no matter how
bright the sun is shining through the office
windows.”
Bradley attributes a lot of that to the history his
team has in other ventures. “Most of us come from
ten-plus years of traditional corporate management in
our backgrounds, some in the more liberal world of
daily deals, and others in the more conservative
environment of corporate finance. Anyone who’s had
that type of corporate education will tell you that for
better or worse those teachings stick, and motivating
the troops and keeping them on task is certainly
something the management team at iDealgasm are all
very familiar with doing. Luckily most of the chaps
in the office get to look at naked women all day, so
keeping them smiling is easy. For us keeping
everyone on point is a matter of maintaining an open
environment for communication. We’re in a very
privileged place of being able to work in an environ-
ment without silos. We all have our defined roles, but
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