Page 24 - AVN November 2017

WHO’S WHO
PORN FOR GEEKS
Model/entrepreneur Harriet Sugarcookie creates online magazine
about who she is.
“Harriet’s not really a character, it’s the person I always wanted to be,” Sugarcookie says. “I was shy—just into my comic
books and at home playing video games, too scared to talk to people.
“But online I could be that girl who is fun. Because that’s what the internet allows you to do and I guess as the website
has grown I’ve managed to become the person that I always wanted to be.”
Now as the creative force behind one of the most entertaining and original sites in all of porn, Sugarcookie’s quick wit
and sunny personality comes through in every new post. On any given week, her range includes writing relationship tips
such as “How to get your girlfriend to open up emotionally,” to a sexy blog entry about “My incredible weekend with
Tina Kay,” to a cooking segment called “Cute Food” in which she demonstrates how to make a “Zelda Triforce & Octopus
Sausages Bento Box.”
And yes, Sugarcookie also models, too, but only on occasion now that she’s so busy running an online lifestyle
magazine/adult site that doubled its revenue last year in the span of three months.
“We have a hundred-percent organic traffic,” Sugarcookie says. “It’s a monthly subscription base and we have a really
high retainability. We get a lot of re-bills—people are very loyal to us.”
Indeed what Sugarcookie and her partner and cameraman, Tommie McDonald, aka TinderTommie, have created is no
longer one of the adult industry’s best-kept secrets. It’s carved out a place in the business all its own thanks to some of the
stickiest content in porn.
“From the start I had the face, so to speak, and Tommie had the know-how from the tech side of things, setting up a
website and running a magazine-style business. But we both sort of just learned as we went along,” Sugarcookie, who now
resides in Budapest along with McDonald, tells AVN.
McDonald, who is also British, says, “We just complement each other well. There’s so many things Harriet can do that I
just wouldn’t know where to start.”
ONLINE I COULD BE THAT GIRL WHO IS FUN.
BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THE INTERNET
ALLOWS YOU TO DO, AND I GUESS AS THE WEBSITE HAS GROWN I’VE MANAGED
TO BECOME THE PERSON THAT I ALWAYS
WANTED TO BE.
—HARRIET SUGARCOOKIE
Harriet Sugarcookie at AVN; photo by Jeff Koga/@KogaFoto
minimum-wage jobs before wading into
adult entertainment.
“I worked in a shop in the day, a
restaurant at night, and a gallery on
the weekend—it was all right,” says the
HHarriet Sugarcookie juggled three different
founder of HarrietSugarcookie.com. “I
wasn’t very confident back then.”
Born in Vietnam and raised in Yorkshire,
England, the versatile model/blogger/
entrepreneur was shy and introverted.
“I was like a size 12 going on 14. I
had short hair and I was doing that Emo
scene kid thing,” Sugarcookie recalls. “My
background is my family moved around a
lot. I had a lot of trouble talking to people
and making friends. I definitely never
considered myself attractive or desirable.”
Then things changed.
“I guess it all happened when my
INTERVIEW | By Dan Miller
friend posted a photo of me online,”
Sugarcookie explains. “It was like that first
foray into the internet when I was getting
compliments. It was from guys who liked
Asian girls but it was still compliments.
And that really gave me the boost to work
on my self image and be more confident
talking to people, taking interest in my
looks—self-improvement in general.”
She started sharing more photos of
herself online and began finding out more
24 | AVN.com | 11.17
“I run all the social media stuff,” Sugarcookie explains. “I write all the articles on the website and do the interviews.”
The duo launched the site about three years ago in England—somehow pulling in three grand in their first month with
just two “crappy” videos of Sugarcookie from her live-camming days—and to this day their first month of earnings remains
the lowest month they’ve had.
“We only really started working a year ago,” Sugarcookie admits. “So the first two years we just cruised along, didn’t
employ anyone, didn’t have any expenses. We made enough that it was a comfortable life and then we were like, ‘Let’s try
being better, let’s try growing.’ And that’s what we’ve done.”
With the tag line “Porn for Geeks,” the site has evolved into a portal that is completely safe-for-work for non-members
with a wide variety of content all presented with Sugarcookie’s comic flair. Under one of the site’s main categories, “Geek
Stuff,” she posts videos of porn stars playing board games, movie and video game reviews, and blogs about cosplay ideas.
The “Lifestyle” category comes alive with Sugarcookie’s eclectic cooking recipes and her talent for documenting her
various adventures in the “Travel” section.
“The website itself is dictated a lot by our audience. We write geeky things because we’re ‘Porn for Geeks.’ We write
movie reviews they want to hear. People send in emails for dating and sex advice and I respond to them personally. We’re
not just giving porn, we’re giving the whole experience. You get to know more about me, you get to know more about my
interests, and it’s the same for the other girls that are on our site.”
Sugarcookie continues, “We have porn stars; we also have a very interesting range of exclusive girls. But everything
about our site is just very friendly, very open, very personal. I think people like that. I think people respect that and I think
that’s what they’re looking for.”
McDonald, who is the main performer in most of the site’s hardcore boy/girl videos, agrees.
“Having exclusive models is quite handy,” he says. “We realize because of the way we do things there’s a lot of girls that
would never do porn that would do porn for us, which is quite interesting. As far as looks goes they look a bit different—
they’re from different types of backgrounds. They seem to be selling really well. I guess you could say it’s a more modern
approach to a porn site.”
Nowadays Sugarcookie says the site includes more SFW content than hardcore.
“When we started it was almost exclusively Harriet Sugarcookie,” she says. “We did boy/girl videos and it was just us
two making sex tapes and putting them on the internet. As the business has grown my jobs and my responsibilities as one
of the owners running the company just take up so much time I don’t really have the need or the want to focus so much on
the performance side of things. I’m really interested in the other stuff.”