Webmaster's Corner

Interview with Sarettah

Paper Jewels

DFN: This week's interview is with VNWR Community Member, Sarettah
So tell us a little about yourself.
Sarettah: My name is Russ, I'm 47 and I live in Misery "The Blow Me State", US of A.

DFN: How or why did you pick your nick?
Sarettah: Back in 1982 I was playing with various BBS's. I needed a unique name. I had just gotten out of the Navy. My last four years in the Navy, I was stationed in "Hatteras". I got the name "sarettah" by turning "Hatteras" around backwards, figured that would be pretty unique. So far, I have only seen one other "sarettah" on the net, so I guess it worked.

DFN: How often do you try new building ideas, or using new sponsors?
Sarettah: I try new ideas and new Sponsors pretty much with each gallery I build. I figure with the number of Sponsors I have signed up with I have about 10,000 years before I have built galleries for each sponsor/site. I am newbie newbie, so I haven't even tried very many of the tried and true sales techniques out there, much less the 2 million or so ideas I get each day

DFN: And how often do you build new sites?
Sarettah: I have been trying to build 2 new free sites a week. I have not always met this goal, but then there are weeks where I manage to get 4 or 5 out, so I think it will all come out even in the end

DFN: How many hours a week are you able to put into your business?
Sarettah: That varies greatly. I shoot for at least 25 hours, but you know how life can be. Because my day job produces the greater majority of my income, I have to keep that as the top priority. Then my wife and I also operate a mainstream site that will eventually become our primary income, so that is the second priority. Then, I have kids, lol.. So my priorities sometimes end up down there somewhere between soccer games and feeding the Guinea pigs

DFN: Do you do everything by hand? or do you use some scripts to automate your work?
Sarettah: I do almost all of my html code by hand. I have developed several of my own custom programs, including a %100 dynamic site generator and desktop organization system, but I am not using them at this time. Eventually, I will be marketing programming to the adult webmaster community. To do that effectively, I need to understand "ALL" the ins and outs of the business. Right now, I am attempting to master the business. Once that is done, I will be working on a cohesive system to automate the entire building, submitting and tracking processes, from organizing the site structure, optimizing the images all the way to tracking individual surfers on their journeys through the site. Be looking for it in 100 years or so.

DFN: Do you have any tips for us on how you stay focused and organized working for yourself?
Sarettah: This is one of the hardest things. I use a variety of tools for organization, mainly custom stuff that I have designed specifically for content control etc. As far as staying focused, I start out each day with a blank sheet of paper. I then create a to-do list of pending tasks. I prioritize the list and then throughout the day, as I complete a task, I check it off. As new tasks appear, I write them down. The next morning the first thing on my to-do list is whatever was not finished yesterday. This gives me a reference for those moments when my brain goes blank and I sit there going "what the hell was I going to do anyway?." I just look at the list, pick the next uncompleted task and dive in.

DFN: Can you touch on how and why you got involved into this industry, and how long you have been doing it?
Sarettah: Depends on how you define the starting point. Way back when, a friend and I operated a bulletin board that was pretty much all adult oriented. We were not doing it for commercial though. It was a hobby board. We had the regular BBS stuff, games, etc. and we had about 5000 images. We allowed users to upload images and all that stuff. As far as the internet goes, I have been involved in the adult industry on the net since July 1999. For several years I worked for one of the biggest adult providers on the net. I was responsible for reporting the activity on about 250 web sites. We had programs that broke apart the log files, sorted all the hits, computed uniques and automatically formatted all the data into worksheets and mailed them to headquarters. After the dot com bust, the company had to do some laying off, I was one of the victims. At about this same time, my wife and I were starting in on our mainstream site. We were/are building a company that is web only. We have no physical storefront, just the website, where we market my wife's jewelry creations. We are to the point on it now of considering an affiliate program to help bring traffic through. Helping her put Paper Jewels together got me started into html code pretty heavy. As a hobby, I started working on some small adult sites. After a while I decided to get serious about it and then here I am.

DFN: Can you give a brief background on your history in this business, and where do you see yourself in one year and several years from now?
Sarettah: I hope to gain enough experience in site building to allow me to complete my content management and site generation project. I picture myself in the future providing programming to the adult webmaster community, more than doing my own personal sites. But, site building is fun, so I will probably always have some out there. In the far future? I picture myself on the beach, sitting, sunning.

DFN: What area in terms of site building do you specialize in, if any?? Free sites?? TGP's?? AVS's?? or any other revenue generator.
Sarettah: So far, I have been concentrating on free sites. I have done some TGP's. I have been looking into AVS sites, but have not yet started into them. I won a prize a while back that included a turnkey AVS premium design. I am trying to gather enough info to put that to good use.

DFN: What do you consider to be your strengths in this business?
Sarettah: My biggest strengths are my programming and database experiences. They allow me an insight into the actual mechanics of the web that not everyone has. My biggest weaknesses are that I often tend to think like a surfer, I really suck at telling someone to "go buy this because" and I tend to overthink situations too much. I can take any one dollar idea and turn it into something that costs a million to implement in about 2 seconds.

DFN: What is the best advice you were given when you were first getting started in this industry and what advice could you give a newbie just starting out these days?
Sarettah: The best advise I got in the beginning? Hmmm. that's a hard one. There was so much good advice given to me. Probably the best advice I got was "Don't get discouraged" and "keep posting". The best advice I could give any newbie would be to get your ass over to VNWR and start posting.

DFN: What do you think the worst thing going on with future of our industry right now? ...and what is the best?
Sarettah: The worst things I see going on with our industry is first and foremost, the overabundance of free pictures out there and secondly the assault on the industry by the feds and the credit card companies. I really think a new adult model is necessary. The best thing about the future is that the adult industry will continue to lead the way in electronic marketing. There will always be an adult industry, what it will look like is largely up to us to decide.