It was a great honor for me to do an interview with an industry
pioneer like Karl Hamilton. From working 60-70 hours a week
to running several large studios. This is truly a success
story you don't want to miss.
JBM:
Thank you for taking the time from your busy schedule to answer
a few questions Karl. You are famous for your feeds site.
How did the idea for privatefeeds.com come about?
KARL:
Oh boy...thats digging far back...but if I recall well me
and my partner at
the time knew some people that were killing in this biz so
we started
looking around and doing our homeworks. We finally decided
to go all the way
and launch content, live feeds and paysites. We quickly found
out we needed
to focus on what was our best product and that was the feeds.
That is a
lesson we learned the hard way...don't launch too many different
things...focus is the key to success! .
JBM:
What was the biggest challenge for you personally on the road
to
success in this industry?
KARL:
Breaking even was quite a challenge indeed but more than that
getting our
new technology off the ground was the biggest one...after
the second try we
can now say that we made it happen!
JBM:
I heard you used to actually drive the girls home
yourself when private feeds first started. Nowadays of course
your job is a lot easier then it was back then. How much has
the amount of hard work you put in during the first years,
paid off today?
KARL:
Ha! Yeah that was a part of my life that I'm glad
I'm over with, working 14-16 hours a day 7 days a week for
over a year and a half...lets say it did pay off enormously
specially considering I now own 100% of the companies. We
were able to grow thanks to our many affiliates and invest
all our profits in the new techno, but hell I don't regret
a thing.
JBM:
Do you think there's still room for more live cam studios?
Or would
you say that the market is becoming crowded much like everything
else in
adult?
KARL:
I don't think it's a great idea to launch a new cam site from
scratch right
now as the competition is pretty fierce and one will need
to have very good
contacts and excellent cashflow to make it happen. We see
many starting and
unfortunately closing after a year or two because they underestimate
the
amount of work involved in keeping fraud at acceptable levels,
maximal
uptime and good relations with your studios.
JBM:
Have you left any money on the table? If you were to go back
to the
beginning what are some things you would have done differently
to make
more money.
KARL:
For a good while I tough I would have left some, but since
your asking now, I couldn't be happier of our results! Since
July of last year we've been growing nicely and I'm not afraid
to say we should reach the mark of 3x monthly sales grow in
one year by the time we get to our one year anniversary of
the new techno.
JBM:
How much does the live cam affiliate set up differ from the
stan dart
paysite program? Retention? Billing? Content?
KARL:
Well it would depend on the specific business model but essentially
the
interactive aspect of the content leads to an increase in
retention and the
amount billed for your average user. For the affiliate it's
always nice to
land a large client on revshare, we've had customers spend
upwards of $10k
in a month.
JBM:
Tell us about the new video technology you guys have developed.
KARL:
After a year of development we launched a new techno based
on a codec coming from a Scottish company. We launched it
in April 2004 and lived one of the worst 3 weeks of our existence.
We switched back to the old techno then took our courage with
both hands, trashed that year of work and started all over.
I think having gone trough this much trouble really makes
us appreciate our new baby but by seeing the sales go crazy
with very little marketing effort we can see how much our
clients love it. The next step after making it good enough
for our clients to eat it up we had to find a way to make
it handle very large loads of traffic. Well since april 1st
we moved our servers and almost doubled the number. We've
been load balancing the whole thing and blasting it with large
new sources of traffic, its holding the road and I'm proud
to say servers are sleeping.
JBM:
Are you at all concerned with the recent changes in U.S. government
regulations regarding adult content on the internet?
KARL:
Nope, we're in canada and in europe so not really reachable,
on the other
hand we are compliant with all the new regulations. We did
have to make
certain changes when the 2257 came out but we were already
pretty much all
set.
JBM:
What's the most embarrassing thing you've had to do in your
line of
work? Have you ever had to fire a performer for being.......
well "ugly"?
KARL:
Oh boy! Yeah back when I had the studio in the same premises
as the
programming and service we didn't really ask the girls to
get naked and show
us what they'd look like...so we'd send them in front of the
cam and checked
the goods on the servers to see how our judgement was. Well...sometimes
it
was poor...and we had to actually tell them that unfortunately
they weren't
hot enough or photogenic enough, would earn us some begging
and crying.
I remember one time my cousin I hadn't seen for many years
had shown up for
an interview and wanted a job...but she was just too plain
stupid and
ugly...but right before I told her she admitted it was a joke
and that she
was my cousin...phew!
please don't tell her I said that about her
JBM:
Personally I think the quality of the models has
increased
dramatically over the past few years. How would you compare
the content
being produced today (both live and static) with the content
available
back in the late 90s?
KARL:
I wasn't anywhere near the adult biz back in the
late 90's but hell I can
see lots of improvements! On our side the girls are dead gorgeous
coming
from east europe, they can't get any better and I sometimes
wonder what the
fuck I'm doing here!
JBM:
Do you have any ventures outside of adult?
KARL:
I'm into lots of stuff including real estate, wood drying,
travel agencies, stocks....but my main income is from the
adult biz.
JBM:
What is the craziest thing you've ever seen a performer
do on a webcam?
KARL:
Haha, snorkel! Yeah I even had a model coming to
work in house a few years back and when she saw the same client
that she used to see come by at the other website she used
to work for come to our website and ask the same thing she
really cracked up! This guy would ask the models to fill up
their scuba mask with water and pretend they would be swimming
naked in the room...and he would actually come a couple times
a week, one of our girls was getting real good at it LOL
JBM:
You have 10 million dollars to invest, and you have 24 hours
to invest it.
KARL:
I say diversify...so I would go definitely a good
part in guaranteed capital
and rest in high risk ventures of all kinds. The smart answer
would probably
be get a good 8-10% interest rate on the whole thing and live
by the
interests...but I like the risk hehe
JBM:
Do you have anyone you admire on a personal or a
professional level?
KARL:
I'd have to say Lars at cams.com, I don't know the
guy very well but I have
to admit he's done quite a nice job bringing his company to
the top.
JBM:
How much of a role do you think "luck"
plays in creating a
successful business structure?
KARL:
I don't really think luck has anything to do with
growing a business in a competitive market. Being at the right
time at the right place for example in the adult biz back
in 95 might be considered luck but again the guys who made
it then had the guts to go for it and spend the time on something
they had no idea would be such a gold mine.
JBM:
Why are you always the first person to grab the bill
when you go out to a restaurant?
KARL:
Ha! Do you know me ? I love food and our offices
are located directly in the heart of downtown montreal. I
love to wine and dine my guests and treat them to 'La Queue
de Cheval' or the 737 across the street. Ask Greg if he liked
the sushi ;)
JBM:
For the final question tell us more about LiveBucks.com
and why the readers should invest their traffic into your
affiliate program.
KARL:
We've got a lot of new products based on some different
business models in
development...all related to the live stuff that will be coming
out soon
enough.
Lately we've been concentrating on ramping up the male performers
with good
results.
Also we've been busy creating some webmaster tools for affiliates
to promote
our current products as well as some of the new models we
have in
development. We just put a new dynamic banner tool online,
it allows you to
custom create an online performer table to your own specs,
you can view a
quick example here : http://www.sexcamlist.com/
and if you haven't had a
chance to check out the video yet, have a look at the broadband
:
http://www.privatefeeds.com/_liveroom/index.htm
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