Some of our staff found some good advice for new models written by one of our favorite models and since we are often asked about some of the issues she talks about, we thought it would be good to get her permission to repost her advice here. If you would like to read more of what Ariel X has to say, be sure to check out her blog at Ariel-x.com.
Ariel X has worked as a model with a lot of different people, so her advice is tempered with a lot of experiences that could be very valuable to girls looking to break into adult modeling. You might recognize some of the work she’s done with AltPorn A-List sites like Blue Blood (44 sets!) and CrazyBabe, as well as some of our favorite kinky sites like Ultimate Surrender, Whipped Ass, Wired Pussy, Device Bondage, plus she’s also worked with more mainstream publishers like Playboy and Hustler.
I get a lot of emails from girls and guys who are trying to break into the industry. I actually had one of my sister’s old high school friends recently write to me to ask me about herself getting into the industry. I wrote her this big long letter and I figured I would share it here on my blog in hopes of helping out others who may be interested. Most of what I wrote is very cliche but it rings true so you’re gonna have to hear it
here goes: If you are going to take nude pictures you need to think about how it will effect your future. Although you are secure with your body, you should understand that 99.9% of the world’s population frown upon nudity or anything remotely sexual that is performed in public ( on the Internet or anywhere not in the privacy of ones bedroom for that matter). Now you and I both know that this same 99.9% of the population will do the most scandalous things behind closed doors and they think what they do it okay because no one knows about it. Yet they will still judge people like myself who do it in honesty for the world to see.
So be prepared to be judge and not just by enemies. You will find that even close loved ones will judge you and try to make you feel like a bad person. You will lose some friends apparently but think of it as a blessing because those aren’t really the type of people you want in your life anyway.
You will need to really think of what your goals are. Why are you doing this? who are you doing this for? what do you expect to come from doing this?
You need to be realistic with your expectations. I was modeling for 3 years before I got any recognition from fans or directors and producers. I did a lot of tfp (trade) work for up and coming photographers. I didn’t want to pay to have my pictures taken but I also knew that no one was going to pay me to model being a Nobody. Some times I got burned and the photographers never sent me the content we shot supposedly for trade. That sucks but it happens and you can’t do anything about it other than bug the photographer every day until he sends you your content or changes his phone number LOL.
I can give you a list of websites you can make profiles on and network with photographers. If a photographers contacts you, it’s important to be respectful and punctual in getting back to their emails. Though you may be doing this for recreation, a lot of photographers do this for a living and want to be treated in a professional manner. If you write a photographer about shooting and he/she doesn’t respond don’t hound them about shooting any more. Chances are he/she just isn’t interested in shooting for one reason or another and their not responding is a polite way of declining your invitation.
Here are just a few websites you can create free profiles on: http://www.modelmayhem.com/ http://onemodelplace.com/ Beware of scams as they do happen. Both sites have great articles about how to avoid being scammed so please take a look at them. These websites are not dating sites so dont’ treat them like they are and if a photographer or another model asks you out on a date through the site, report them. I fucking hate when people write me on my modeling port and ask me on a date…get real and get professional (yes porn people have standards to…low standards but we have them LOL). If and when a photographer does contact you to do a shoot, check references. Ask who he/she’s shot with in the past and try to contact those models to get feedback. Obviously if he has a picture he took of a girl, he worked with that girl but you should always contact said girl to see how the shoot went for her. Did the guy creep out on her? did he whip his penis out midshoot (yes this happens)? Did she feel uncomfortable at any point of the shoot. Just because someone works with a lot of girls doesnt’ mean he’s not a creep!!!
The most important piece of information I can offer you is this: Always be true to yourself; do not compromise anything you believe in during a shoot. You control what you do in a shoot so don’t let ANYONE tell you what you should or should not do. If you want to do just topless do just topless. Don’t show full nude if that’s really not something you want to do. If you do tasteful nudes, do only that. Don’t go flashing your pink if that’s not something you are comfortable with. You will regret it and feel bad later. Do what you want to do because YOU want to do it, not because you want to make more money or want to make someone else happy.
If you have any questions I will be more than happy to answer them. These are the basics and pretty straight forward. Good luck!!!
You may have noticed a new look here at AltPorn.net, and along with that new look are some great new features for our readers. There is still lots of work to be done and a few areas may act wonky for a couple days, but we’re very excited about the upgrades. It’s hard to believe that AltPorn.net has been around since 2003 and we’re just launching what we see as .v2. So, check it out, register yourself a profile. Upload some pics. Start a blog. Make some friends. Participate in our new forum. Add your twitter to your profile. watch some video trailers. And enjoy all the good stuff we’ve always offered too.
If you have any problems or questions or difficulties, please you our new contact form.
We got an email about three weeks ago from a girl who is the subject of a new solo girl site we’d written up a few days prior. She emailed us to make the request that we remove the article about the site launch and not ever promote the site she was hired to model for at all. It was her hope that no high traffic sites like APN would promote the specialty solo girl site she had been hired to model for. Given the specific circumstances, we’ve decided to comply with her request. In return for the favor of removing any mention of that site (article, links, and galleries have been removed), and partially because it’s been weeks and we still haven’t gotten any sort of thanks at all for honoring her dire request, I’m going to make this post in it’s place, because this situation brings up some important issues worth talking about. Here is her email request:
I know you probably won’t, but if you could, I’d like for the post about XXXXXXXXXX to be removed. See.. I’m “XXXXX” and although it’s something I did knowingly, I’d prefer it not be marketed on high traffic sites unless someone is paying you to do so.. then it is out of my hands. I did what I had to do to get through a pregnancy in a shitty economy where neither myself nor my boyfriend had jobs.
If you can find it in your morale to take it down, I would find that very considerate of you. Thank you.
This brought up a few questions, so I sent them out to her in order to make what I feel is the best judgment. Here are the questions and answers:
What other sites have you modeled for? Do you feel bad about all of them, or just this one?
SuicideGirls. I’ve also done tons of other work earlier in my career including magazine work for Hustler, BarelyLegal. I did a set for Digital Dream girls as well. I’ve gone under the name Samantha, Pistolita and most recently XXXXX.. for this site. I only regret this one, simply because it involves my child. And unfortunately I had no other income options at the time, being pregnant I couldn’t get a job before needing maternity leave. I was between a rock and a hard place at the time, and have already been paid for all my work with the site. So no royalties are given to me from member joins. Therefore, I would rather not see it advertised.
Did you give the money you made from doing the job back? If not, do you plan to?
Like I previously stated, I can’t take away what I did. The money I made during the 4 months of shooting for the site got me through the last 4 months and the first 2 months of my childs life. So I can’t just give back the money. That’s $XXXX that I don’t have anymore. I can’t take the site down. I just ask that you not advertise it on your site. I’ve had 3 friends already see it and ask me about it.
How do we know it’s really you? People write to us more frequently than you might guess, pretending to be various models. We are more likely to honor your request if we know it is genuine.
I’m not going to post the results of that last one because it would be creepy, but I do believe it is her, so that answer was satisfactory.
Starting with the obvious or maybe rhetorical at least, why does it seem like it’s always a SuicideGirl in this kind of drama? Experienced or not, every model should really know by now that they should assume their friends are going to see what they do and that should always be a consideration. If you don’t know, now you know.
But, beyond that, she doesn’t get royalties? Duh. We hear this ‘no royalties’ complaint a lot from girls, but that’s almost never the terms they worked under in the first place. Very few sites have anything resembling a royalty system and if that is what a model wants, she should have negotiated that when the deal was made to begin with. It doesn’t matter how long the job is, one hour, a half day, or even four months, if she takes a flat fee job, she gets exactly that, a flat fee. The world isn’t evil for not giving her something she didn’t have a deal to get in the first place. The model on the cover of Vogue doesn’t get a percentage of sales, and she doesn’t get to pull the magazine off all the news racks just because she doesn’t like the dress they hired her to wear. I have a lot of respect for the hard working models that put a lot into what they do, but I’ve also seen too many that quickly start accusing others of being immoral or crooked whenever they don’t get whatever they want, even if it wasn’t what they agreed to from the start.
You want to run your own site? Then run your own site. You want to get royalties? Then make a partnership deal that includes royalties. You want to get paid hourly, or a day rate even, for modeling work? That’s good too. But do not whine to the world that you didn’t get what you were never supposed to get in the first place. It makes it hard to respect you as an intelligent person.
Some girls partner to do their sites with professionals, and some of those girls get a percentage of the earnings, but most of the time, it’s work for hire modeling, sometimes followed by work for hire participation, if they are lucky. Here is how it works: The site owner pays her to model, then pays a photographer and/or videographer to shoot with her, then pays retoucher/editor to make the media nice looking, then pays designer and coder to build a good looking salable site, then pays the host to put the site up and cover bandwidth usages, and then pays another designer to build sales tools like promotional galleries, banners, then sometimes even pays public relations reps and/or affiliate reps to get the word out about the site launch, etc. and at the end of the day, they hope that all those costs come out to be less than they earn back by having ‘high traffic sites’ like APN promote the finished project to people who might be interested enough to join it. That is a lot of work and a lot of investment into what will hopefully turn into a successful site. If a model gets her cut and then tells all the big sites not to promote what was created with her content, that is immoral. It’s bad business at the very least. Everybody has bills to pay. Her child doesn’t deserve to eat any more than all the other people doing their job to put food on their table.
Models, a word of advice. Think about what you are doing before you agree to do it. Think about why you are doing it and whether you will be happy once it is done. You owe the people you are working with honest commitment to your agreements. Creating erotic media is not evil or immoral and if you think it is, you have no business in this field at all. Taking the money and burning the people who hired you to do a job is wrong. It is wrong to be accusing other people of being immoral just because you selectively changed your mind on an agreement as well.
Idealistic concepts get thrown around a lot in the world of AltPorn, ethical standards, feminist ideals, creative freedom, participant rights, standards of respect, etc. and a lot of the sites that have been around a while do deserve their merit badges in these categories, some more than others. Recently, Killshot of EroticBPM shared some of his thoughts on the perception of ethics in altporn and we’re happy to have the opportunity to share his insights here too. I’m looking forward to some of the likely discussion of some of the issues he brings up, so please, we’d like to hear your thoughts as well.
I recently started reading LuckIsBack.com to keep up on what is happening in the mainstream porn industry.
I read a series of posts about Michelle Avanti’s story on being a troubled young girl who gets into porn, gets addicted to drugs and alcohol, is tricked by her agent into doing scenes she didn’t want to do, is injured, beaten, catches multiple STD’s and finally finds Jesus, gets out of the industry and is currently getting ready to have a baby.
This got me thinking about ethics in porn and the perception of Altporn being more ethical than mainstream porn.
When I started this site, I did not sit down and think about ethics. It was just a creative project started from a silly idea. There was no plan with rules and a code of conduct, but as a person with strong personal ethics and ideals, what would become my full time job and business would be a direct reflection of my ethics.
Aside from their appearance, how I represented the models would arguably become one of the biggest marketing gimmicks for the alt porn industry. However, at the time it was more out of necessity than any big ethical choice.
I found rave & club girls attractive, I figured other people found them attractive, and in building a porn site around a community based on that scene. It only made sense to let the girls express themselves and let them be who they were in the photos. Girls who had any modeling experience found it refreshing to not need to take out their piercings, cover their tattoos and wear stupid outfits.
Along with this came models ability to choose how much or how little they wanted to show.
The little known ethical choice I soon made in connection with this was paying models the same no matter how much or how little they decided to display. The girl who doesn’t spread her legs gets the same amount as the girl who has anal sex with her boyfriend. This ensured that models were never being coerced into doing something they were not comfortable with, simply because they needed or wanted the money.
The expressive freedom and choice enjoyed by the models created content that was appealing to not just men but also women, and not just women, but feminists. Getting the seal of approval from feminists was not too common in the porn industry and the media loved this angle. Women were taking off their clothes because they wanted to express themselves, not because they were troubled young drug addicts being coerced into doing unspeakable things. Thus, altporn became ethical porn. Or so it appeared.
As the altporn scene began to take shape, appearing feminist was a priority among new sites and any females involved became the face of new sites with male partners taking less public roles. I think that people felt it was essential in order to get press and credibility. Oddly, it seemed the sites which were actually run by women got less attention for being feminist because they didn’t get involved in the contest of running around declaring that they too are women. I too failed to play this game and probably lost out on some attention because of it.
As droves of amateur models came out to participate in these altporn sites, many quickly found that their experiences varied widely with each site having its own set of rules, expectations, pay rates, even penalties. Many models somehow expected that a good experience on one alt site would equal a good experience on another alt site. Alt porn it turned out, was not homogeneous.
With alt porn growing closer to mainstream porn just as alternative subculture finds its way into mainstream culture. The importance of appearing feminist has died off. Instead, more and more hardcore alt is making an appearance and more sites are being started purely as a business choice and less as a DIY project.
When it is no longer a collaboration between model, photographer, and creator. The model simply becomes a product. This is not inherently bad, but it leaves far more opportunity for ethics to be thrown out in favor of maximum profit.
The same booking agent that got an unwilling Michelle Avanti to do a 75 man bukakke scene 2 weeks into her career could tomorrow be pressuring a fresh alt model to do a gangbang scene for an alt film.
At this point, what even defines alt?
I honestly don’t know.
Lux Alptraum said goodbye to alt on fleshbot last year. Maybe she is right, but Ebpm isn’t going anywhere yet. So get your altporn here like it’s 1999!
I’ve continued to make what I feel are important ethical choices over the years, like not selling out to a mainstream company because I didn’t think it would be fair to the models, and even today deciding to keep my pay rates the same despite rates falling through the floor on numerous other sites.
I have a feeling that the other good alt webmasters I know are not going to change their ethics, but new up and coming models should be aware that Alt does not automatically mean ethical, it does not automatically mean feminist, and just like in mainstream porn, you should do your research. Separate the good from the bad, and choose who you work with carefully.
Here is a roundup of interesting reading (and viewing) brought to us by our friends over at Sugasm. I recommend at least checking out the 20 question interview with sexy Syd Blakovich, but these all have some good stuff in them.
San Fransisco Bay Guardian’s intrepid Juliette Tang continues her journey into the altporn world, to paraphrase their description. In her endeavor to explore the world of AltPorn, she has been conducting a series of profiles and interviews, and we really enjoyed the opportunity to talk with her about our favorite genre. Her latest interview with AltPorn.net’s own Cutter Smith covers a wide range of issues and topics. Cutter did have input on a number of questions from a lot of us over here, but we do agree about his ‘veritable encyclopedia of altporn knowledge’ and we’d love to hear your feedback on the interview too.
Recently, I chatted with Annaliese of the famous altporn site God’s Girls about nudity, tattoos, and DIY photography. In this installment of altporn interviews, I got the chance to talk to Cutter Smith of Altporn.net, the blog to read if you’re a fan of altporn. We literally talked about everything — Cutter is a veritable encyclopedia of altporn knowledge, and his site reflects his thoughtful, intelligent, and knowledgeable obsession with observation of his favorite genre of porn.
SFBG:First, what is the story behind Altporn.net?…
We got the notice on this a little too late to get our papers in order this year, but this will definitely be on my travel wish list come next January. The Amsterdam Alternative Erotica Film Festival just ran, from January 15th through the 18th, in Roetersstraat Amsterdam. This is the second one that they have done, annually, and the event is growing very quickly. The list of screenings and panels is very impressive and looks like a great time with some really unique and creative things to see and experience. Lots of artist/director talks, performances, and as always, too many hot looking after parties for one weekend. Check out the site, it’s got a lot of little video interviews from the event. Maybe we’ll see you there next year.
The first Dutch film festival entirely dedicated to alternative, artistic and radical erotica, returns! Big-screen sexuality coming from a myriad of different angles and artistic perspectives, to celebrate a positive appreciation of the erotic in all of its richness and diversity.
Killshot, altporn O.G. and long time friend of APN, who has been running EroticBPM for nearly a decade, worked with Fatal Beauty, and also launched SpicePlay in 2004, shared his thoughts on the latest heavily funded venture in the altporn user generated content adult membership site category, Zivity. His points on PayPal and the inherent issues of unfair competition raise some real questions. A lot of people, particularly in the DIY adult site community lost a lot of money when PayPal suddenly radically changed it’s rules on adult sales and many of them are still reasonably bitter on the point. We have some questions as well about how models and photographers can get excited to contribute for free to a site that might eventually give them a potential payout based on traffic and popularity they have to generate for themselves by spamming their friends for ‘votes’ when they could easily make more money simply joining the affiliate programs of nearly any other altporn site and promoting just as hard. Killshot also points out some interesting similarities Zivity has with his Spiceplay site, which we miss a lot. It had some great interactive features and some really innovative ways of sharing the wealth with it’s participants.
Lately I have been hearing more and more about Zivity, a new adult site that pretends not to be an adult site. I largely ignored it even after seeing a few mentions by some members here at Ebpm. Then I heard some more details from a friend and started to check into it more.
I signed up for a beta account and got access a couple days later. I looked around a bit and was not really impressed because parts of it as even fleshbot noticed seemed pretty similar to what I did with spiceplay. (Sharing revenue with models based on members giving credits to models or each other.) And they even have a patent pending on that.
Yeah there are some pretty girls, some of them are naked, some of them are not, and there is all the basic social features you can expect to have. But nothing else really notable.
The thing that caught my eye the most was the fact that they take paypal. Most people wouldn’t think twice about that. But talk to anyone in the adult biz and you will probably hear the same story about their account getting banned. Or you may even hear stories about paypal once upon a time courting the business of adult websites (myself included) only to ban them all a few months later when Ebay bought them out.
So why does Zivity get a free pass?
Well, it turns out that Founders Fund and Blue Run Ventures put up the $8 Million in VC funding to get Zivity started. The same people behind paypal and numerous other tech startups. And the people behind Zivity is quite impressive.
Jon Elvekrog – CEO
According to his bio on Zivity, he has worked for HP, TIBCO, Volex, and helped build LinkExchange
Scott Banister – Chairman and Co-Founder
Founder of ListBot which sold to Microsoft
VP of Idealab – sold to AOL
Co-Founder of Ironport – Sold to Cisco for $830 million
Cyan Banister – Co Founder and Editor in Chief
Scott Banister’s wife – Details on her background are lacking
*edit* Cyan was kind enough to link me to her linkedin profile. She was a senior manager at IronPort and has had a successful career in recruiting for bay area startups. */edit*
Jeffrey Wescott – Co Founder
Former Ironport engineer
Jordan Ritter – CTO
Napster Co Founder
Cloudmark CTO
Columbia Music Entertainment CTO
John Manoogian III – Director of User Experience and Product Design
Worked at Organic Inc
Designed Yahoo’s homepage and UI
Claims to have invented social bookmarking
So why is this a big deal to me?
The fact that they can use paypal and no other adult company can is only a minor annoyance.
The fact that they are attempting to patent something that is neither new or innovative is a little more concerning and makes sense coming from an industry that is increasingly patenting anything obvious just for the sake of having a large patent portfolio and then suing people.
Non Obvious innovations that took hard work to develop certainly deserve to be patented for a period of time. Obvious patents only serve to stifle innovation and end up doing far more harm than good.
However, the biggest thing that has me going is why are they doing this? Why would all these people decide to get into the adult business? If the VC investors hope to see their money back. Zivity would likely need to maintain a paid membership of over 100,000 users. I really don’t see them lasting long.
However, if they are successful. I feel that it will be another sad day for all the creative people out there who don’t have access to piles of money but have plenty of amazing ideas.
Part of what makes the internet great is the ability to share ideas, art, and collaborate with other people to create new things. When big companies and big money comes along and lock down ideas with patents and further stifle creativity by throwing so much money at their project that other people do not even get noticed. Well, it makes the internet less diverse, it puts a lot of money in the hands of a few people, and it certainly takes away a lot of the fun.
Maybe I would feel better if Zivity had come along and done something truly different. But I just don’t see it.
Hilarious. Free hot emo alt girl videos and pictures. The Emo Beaverhunt blog has several free daily site updates of the hottest naked amateur emo alt teens. Features hot girls with wild hair and piercings from sites like My Emo Bitch, Amateur Emo Girls,
erotic, web-based, self-portraiture project, where women from around the world submit a series of digital photographs that they have shot of themselves naked
Favorites
Digg
Del.icio.us
Facebook
Furl
Magnolia
StumbleUpon
Google
Yahoo MyWeb
