Mark Tiarra--Shaking Up Business, Preparing For A Shakedown
If you run a pay site or know someone who does, you've probably engaged in a debate recently over the future of online porn.
It's no secret that a lot of adult webmasters have become frustrated lately with the amount of porn now freely available from the recent glut of new Thumbnail Gallery Posts. Many webmasters contend that these new sites, with all their links to free adult content, have resulted in lower sign-up and conversion rates. After all, why sign up for a pay site if you can get porn for free?
Then, there's people purchasing premade adult sites, investing in "get rich quick" porn schemes.
But Mark Tiarra says not to worry -- he sees a shakeout coming.
"In the end it will take care of itself," he says. "Without sign-ups, there is no ad money and thus free sites lose income and fall away."
If there's anyone in the position to predict the future of the industry, it's Tiarra. As a consultant involved in the industry since 1996, he has worked on over 2,000 sites and served a client roster of hundreds, helping webmasters build, promote and profit from their adult Web sites. His extensive work with notable companies like Max Cash garnered him the moniker "Elder Statesman of Online Porn" from the New York Times, and he is regularly asked to speak on topics related to Internet marketing.
Tiarra has made quite a name for himself, particularly for someone who stumbled in to the industry more or less by accident.
"I was designing pages for people and doing print design when I got the desire to create an adult site that would be more of a shrine to beautiful women," he says. " I spent a lot of time on the graphics and had one of the most popular free sites within a few weeks of putting it up in late 1996."
Following the success of his free site, Tiarra established United Adult Sites, a not-for-profit organization designed to help adult webmasters protect their First Amendment and business rights. After a successful run as an advocacy and protection group, Tiarra folded UAS last year when he was asked to lead the Global Internet Association, an organization comprised of some of the industry's most important players. The GIA was created to protect the adult industry from issues that affect it has a whole, including credit card fraud and content issues.
"The GIA... had much better financial backing," he says. "I worked there to help get it started and now it's in the hands of people who understand the political game more fully and can devote a full time effort to it. There was no need to keep the smaller UAS afloat when the GIA was doing a better job at it."
Tiarra now puts all of his effort in to TiarraCorp, his full-service consulting firm. Tiarra offers a complete roster of services, including everything from Web site and banner design to setting up advertising campaigns.
"Advertising is always in the most demand," he says. "Everyone wants traffic. A lot of those clients become consulting clients too when they find out I can help them realize a much better profit margin."
Of course, Tiarra's road to success was not without its bumps and bruises. In fact, he says had he one thing to change about his rapid climb to the top, it would have been to slow down. "I lost tremendous sums of money being overly aggressive with buyouts and investments and not doing proper due diligence," he says. "Like most people in this business, I learned as I went."
As a glut of TGPs, pay sites and new consulting firms enter the online adult world, Tiarra says fully expects the industry will see a dot-com shakeout like the one the mainstream Internet is experiencing. But is he worried his list of clients may be compromised by new competitors? If he is, he isn't letting on. In the end, Tiarra says, the ones best equipped to help clients build profitable sites will survive.
"Plenty of firms do work that looks nice," he says. "Very few understand the depth needed to build sites that make real money."
