I HAVE TIRED TO BUY SOME OF YOUR VIDEOS. YOUR PAYMENT METHOD IS VERY BAD. FIRST WHY REQUIRE FAXING!! WHY NOT USE PAYPAL? SECOND THE FAX NUMBER DID NTO ANSWER FOR THREE DAYS. tHEN IT DID AND i FAXED THE FORM WITH MY CREDIT CARD INFO. I GAVE VALID CREDIT CARDS AND THEN GOT AN EMAIL, AFTER MORE THAN A WEEK, THAT SAID THE ORDER WAS CANCELLED BECAUSE THEY COULD NOT PROCESS THE PAYMENT. THEN LOW AND BEHOLD I GOT A CHARGE (FOR TWICE THE AMOUNT OF THE VIDEO) THAT MY CREDIT CARD SAID WOULD BE PAID IF I DID NOT CANCEL IT ( WHICH I DID OF COURSE BECASUE IT WAS ALMOST 4 WEEKS FROM THE ORDER DATE TO THE PAYMENT DUE DATE AND I HAD NOT RECEIVED THE VIDEO. OF COURSE BY THIS TIME I WOULD HAVE DROPPED ANY OTHER CONTACT OR ATTTEMPT TO BUY WITH ANY OTHER PRODUCT BUT YOU ARE SO SEXY THAT I WOULD STILL LIKE ONE OR MORE OF YOUR VIDEOS. YOU SHOULD FIRE YOUR PAYMENT PLANS AND GET AN EASY ONE TO USE. I WILL TRY TO BUY AGAIN IF I GET PERSONAL CONTACT AND INSTRUCTIONS.

DAVID EDSALL

David, I have addressed this issue so many times over the past two years. Paypal does not process any transactions on behalf of adult-theme products or content anymore. Since they dropped this bombshell early 2003, I have been searching for a new and better way to accept credit card transactions. It has been quite an ordeal. Read my article on The Rise and Fall of Amateur Porn.

Frankly the only headache I get from making my porn sites has been figuring out an effective way to bill people for products and/or content. I’m guessing I’m not alone, considering AVN Online Magazine devoted this month’s issue on billing.

I appreciate your continued support in spite of the fiasco you went through with YowCow. However, getting a billing system that is easy to use on both your and my end is a job in itself. Since referrals are the best way to really find out if a payment processor is good, I just check out other girls’ websites and see what they use. Often I don’t find out if a company sucks from the user end of it unless I hear about it from people like you.

Before I dabbled in the semi-pro adult world, long ago when I was a true amateur just posting my porn online for free, I swear J and I had so much more fun. *sigh*

Anyway, we’re out of town on vacation right now. I’ll be back at the end of the month. I’ll figure it all out when I return. Thanks again!

Back then, doing “amateur porn” meant taking pictures of the wife or the girlfriend. She’s not a model, stripper, or anyone the photographer had to pay to get a picture of. The photographer is her husband or boyfriend, not a guy with a photo studio. Photos were taken around the house, maybe on vacation, but definitely with just a point and click digital camera.

As more households got wired, the demand for internet porn grew as well. Professional models and strippers were hired by small porn companies wanting to cash in on the whole “amateur” scene. Professional photographers (or wanna-be’s with hi-res digital cameras) got out of the studio and tried to recapture the girl-next-door feel of amateur porn. Membership sites cropped up, charging monthly dues in exchange for access to a virtual peep show. Affiliate systems followed shortly, with webmasters raking in pretty good dough for driving traffic to membership pay sites.

As soon as money was involved, the word “amateur” became a diluted term, that evolved to mean someone who is not a big-name porn star like Jenna Jameson or Nina Hartley. Big-name porn stars and companies like Playboy and Hustler jumped on the bandwagon and created their own membership sites.

The competition created spam, and suddenly porn was not tucked away safely in sites marked as “adult” or in designated usenet newsgroups anymore. Porn showed up unsolicited in people’s email boxes, setting the trend for everything from mortgage loans to prescription drugs.

After the Dot-com crash at the turn of the millenium, internet porn continued to grow, but we are now seeing the decline of this once-vibrant industry.

First, Paypal issued a policy against adult-theme transactions. It was a stab in the back of every amateur cam girl who signed up for Paypal during its humble beginnings. There have since been other companies patterned after the Paypal paradigm, but getting someone to sign up for another company is difficult after they’ve already jumped through the hoops for Paypal.

Next, Visa required all adult websites to pay a $700 one-time registration fee plus $300 annual fee. This alone separated the amateurs from the pros. Big corporate sites had no problem coughing up the $1000 investment. For the one-woman amateur site, however, it felt like having a “pimp” to pay dues to.

The latest pressure on amateur porn is the Revised Title 18 U.S.C. 2257 Record-Keeping Requirements by the Department of Justice. This regulation has good intentions – to keep minors out of pornography. Porn producers are held responsible for inspecting and keeping records of performers’ IDs, making sure they are of legal age at the time they are performing sexual acts on camera.

The regulation mandates that such records be kept at the producer’s place of business, where investigators authorized by the Attorney General may show up without advance notice to inspect them. Furthermore, this street address must be posted on the website along with a statement of compliance. P.O. boxes are not allowed.

For the amateur pornographer, however, the logistics of complying with this rule may prove to be complicated because of one major detail: most “amateurs” operate at home. This is a cam girl’s worst nightmare: her home address posted on her website as an open invitation for stalkers.

It seems that the only way amateur porn can survive is by taming its wild ways. “Visual depictions of simulated sexually explicit conduct” (italics is mine) are exempted , but “a statement attesting that the matter is not covered by the record-keeping requirements of 18 U.S.C. 2257″ must still be made.

The Free Speech Coalition is currently putting a case together to contest this version of Title 18 U.S.C. 2257. If another revision is made to allow a third-party Custodian of Records, perhaps home-made porn can survive without amateurs having to sacrifice the privacy and sanctity of their homes. Until then, the only people who can safely comply are porn companies who shoot porn at a business location, and guys who don’t mind publicizing the address to their bachelor pads.

Jay and I spent Saturday night at a friend’s place. I love it there! The Victorian has all these toys, and children’s arts and crafts. The yard has a lot of tall trees and big leafy shrubs. My favorite part is the treehouse. It made me feel like Alice in Wonderland growing large inside the white rabbit’s house.

“I think I am now getting very close to the definition of an AMATEUR. I want to thank everyone who has written in to set me straight. =) I have all these letters in the last section today and they are great reading. Let me give you a couple quick tips from Craig and May to quickly pick the amateur for the pro. First, if you are wearing ’stilletos’, forget babe, you have given up your amateur status and are now a pro. I know this to be true. Now, if you live somewhere in ‘LA’ and cannot be emailed, your amateur days are over honey. You are now a pro level pro =) There are more fun ideas and comments on this subject below.

WHAT’S AN AMATEUR from Craig the Programmer
Craig writes…I’m sure some may disagree with me but I believe the major difference between and amateur and a pro on the net in the adult industry is mainly the photo style and the models used.

By dictionary definition unless someone is taking pics of his gf and tossing them online any woman getting paid for her photos online would be considered a professional.

By the photo style standpoint though there are some unique differences.

Amateur (imo they should be):

- locale -> Not standing in front of a blank wall or an obvious set.
Bedrooms, living rooms, under the table at your local Denny’s etc.

- lighting -> Typically photos taken with pure flash photography, little dimmer than what you would get from a professional photographer, you can still see everything but things are slightly darker than say what you would see in a playboy

- models used -> Major issue here. Amateur models are typically (or should be) your every day type of male or female. People with little or no plastic surgery, people who just love being exhibitionists but aren’t completely obsessed with looking like a cookie cutter porn star. This would include women with small or saggy breasts…women with a little more meat on your bones than the average bulimic model, etc.

- more hardcore than your average porn star…in the sense if you’re watching a true amateur video…they act differently than what you would see in a professional video. As an analogy it would be the difference between filming a caged lion over one running free in the wild. They’re both lions but act very differently.

- another thing is the sound…most amateur videos use no music and all you hear are the moanings/groanings etc….many professional videos tend to use just bad music over any sounds at all (although some do both)

Professional:

- Very stereotypical. Big breasted, always wearing stilletos, usually pure blonde/brunette/raven dyed, very structured sex (aka first women goes down on guy, then guy goes down on women, penetration, few different positions, anal, cumshot). Every situation in the video is virtually the same. Kind of like watching a power rangers or sailor moon episode. Very scripted and cliche.

- Models: Obvious custom made individuals, breast implants, liposuction, facelifts etc….women you can’t really relate to ever being around (unless you work in the industry =D)

- Locale is obvious sets, usually very bright lighting and typically nasty music.

So basically the difference I see between the two is based on what you desire. Amateur tends to be more ‘the girl next door’ kind of philosophy of you maybe peeping through her bedroom window whereas professional is more being part of your local swingers club.

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WHAT’S AN AMATEUR from Sexy May
May writes… I am one of the “culprits” that coin the term “amateur”. Although my site is commercial, we turn a huge profit, and I have been doing this for 3 years or so, I still consider myself amateur for these reasons:

I make the site myself, my husband photos me. When I started, I knew nothing about the business, so I was definitely an amateur, because I was making a lot of mistakes back then! In fact if it wasn’t for your newsletter, I would still be in the dark ages, and I’m not kidding. We even host with Naked Hosting because of your newsletter.

We make and sell copies of video tapes we make here at home, our videos are very amateur, as there is nothing pro about it, just raw unedited footage of sexy situations. Some people like it this way, because it’s real. Often pro porn tapes jump to the action instantly, where ours shows the whole process, and it’s a slower build up that can be very sexy. There is an intimate reality to this that edited footage loses. We maintain the Andy Warhol “real time” feeling, which is “closer to life”, and therefore is amateur video.

Another thing which is obvious, there are people out there that like and search for the term “amateur”. It’s a great keyword. I assume they feel like they are getting something special, direct from the source. When one buys a commercial porn tape, you can bet the sexy babe did not make the copy you receive, as with my products, I actually do it all. That’s my handwriting on the box when items ship out. It is this relationship the buyer has with an amateur site that is unique. One can contact the amateurs, they are approachable and real. Pros are somewhere in LA and they cannot be emailed, written to, or contacted easily. Amateurs are easy to contact as their site is usually just them. If surfers did not react to the term, it would not be so popular, so it is the psychology the term creates that causes it to be used again and again.

I think amateur is technically a wrong term, as a professional is defined as someone that is paid for their service, and our site requires one to sign up to get into the full site. “Amateur” helps let the web surfer know that they are visiting a site made at home by no more than a couple people. I think the term just helps them feel closer, although by definition it is incorrect. Just as language continues to develop on the net, we have to adhere to the terms in order to communicate to others. Amateur lets people know I make the site myself… or at least that is what I assume it makes them think. As my web design gets slicker and slicker, I have to do something to remind my visitors that it’s just me in here, not a corporation of 300 people. The term amateur helps do just that.

Perhaps we could use this opportunity to come up with a term that describes a site such as mine more appropriately… “Homemade”? Maybe your readers will have the proper solution.

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WHAT’S AN AMATEUR from Indian Joe
Indian Joe writes:

PRO = Jenna Jameson. Nina Hartley. Asia Carrera. – they do movies and they make a living at porn. I think being a PRO brings a certain amount of fame as well. They are on a higher quality level too as far as pictures, movies whatever.

AMATEUR = Amateur girls don’t do this for a living. They have a website, they do everything themselves, they take their own photos from their home. From what I see, most Amateurs you don’t know their names. They just have a certain look to them that for most is more appealing then the plastic porno women. This is not to say that some amateurs can’t have breast implants – just most don’t.”

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