Page 40 - AVN March 2016

FEATURE
“Make sure you have a backup solution,”
Gharapetian noted. “Even if you do have good
banking, try to have a backup solution.”
The panelists also agreed the dynamic pricing
based on regions is something companies should
be considering.
Affil4you Managing Director Joey Gabra led the
mobile panel, bouncing questions off Jeff Wilson
(Flirt4Free), Chris O’Connell (Mikandi), Michael
O’Sullivan (HubPeople) and Fabian Frey (Cargo
Media).
“A big push for us in the next couple years is
to make the mobile experience as good or better
than the native experience,” said O’Connell, the
co-founder and CTO of Mikandi.
Gabra told the audience the future of mobile is
going to be “education, technology, gathering data
and how we collect money.”
“That’s what we need to focus on for the next
year and a half,” Gabra said, emphasizing that
companies need a sound mobile strategy to thrive
in today’s environment.
“I keep harping on wanting us to be educated.
It works better for the ecosystem. Whether it’s
mobile, VR, tablets, desktop—they’re all melding
together.”
He said he has plans in motion to launch a
“mobile university” called Mobidemics that will
facilitate expert analysis and ultimately be an
outreach tool for industry professionals.
Veteran adult digital pro Greg Dumas, a
marketing consultant for Cargo Media, moderated
the lively dating panel that included insights
from Jenny Gonzalez (DatingFactory), Kristell
Perez (FriendFinderNetworks), Alfonsus “AK”
Kusuma (Madzuma) and William Soares Pinto
(HubPeople).
The group discussed challenges such as
obtaining quality female profiles for dating sites.
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“It’s very easy to get male profiles. You open a
site and they just starting uploading them,” Dumas
cracked.
Gonzalez, the VP of sales and marketing for
Dating Factory, said her company has found a way
to combat dating profile spammers.
“Once you find them and block them they always
come back, so spammers have a separate site
they’re on,” Gonzalez said. “We send them to a
special environment where they talk to each other,
which is awesome.”
Dumas asked the group to discuss media buying
vs. affiliate traffic.
“Nowadays it seems like the guy that mows my
lawn has an ad network. Five years ago everybody
had a tube site. Now everybody out of a job has
an ad network,” Dumas said with tongue firmly in
cheek.
He noted that a great free tool is Google
Analytics, “where you can see whether the traffic is
working for you.”
“No one can just grab all your traffic and do
magic,” Gonzalez said. “That’s a big fat lie.”
Dumas added, “You have to be smart with your
traffic. It’s like money. It’s a commodity. You have
to use it wisely.”
Sean Phillips from SexyJobs led the seminar on
live cams, introducing the panel by estimating that between
10,000 and 20,000 models are camming at any given time
and there are approximately a quarter of a million models
in the world who do live camming.
The seasoned panel included Carole Wood
(ImLive), Shirley Lara (Chaturbate), Jamie Rodriguez
(Flirt4Free), Liz Rekevics (Streamate) and Kristell Perez
(FriendFinderNetworks).
The panelists discussed how to recruit and retain
bankable cam models in today’s ultra competitive cam
space.
Lara, the COO of Chaturbate, suggested using a
profile name that’s easy to spell and remember such as
Chaturbate’s Ramona Flour, who is known for her cooking
shows.
“She’s capitalizing on her personality,” Lara said.
Perez said steady payouts are important because “each
one of the models really has their own company.”
All agreed that cam models have arrived and are now part
of pop culture.
“It’s completely socially acceptable,” said ImLive’s Wood.
Because of the constant flow of cam models, it’s that
much more important to maintain that edge, Rodriguez
said, adding that “Models have to step up their game and
make their room that much more interesting. They aren’t
just the hottest girl on the site. There are lots of hot girls
on the site.”