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Fast on the heels of the Thumblogger server hack comes this news from GayBucks Chip about another big mainstream blogging host service with server failure:

“Just read about Journalspace on Slashdot and thought it might be a word to the wise for folks here.  Journalspace.com, a free blogging site, had some 14,000 bloggers.  Last week, they had a drive failure in their database server. They were using RAID 1 (drive mirroring) as their sole means of backup, meaning they had their server set so that anything written to one drive was mirrored to another; this theoretically allows you, in the event of a drive crash, to simply replace the bad drive and everything’s fine because the data is mirrored.

Many ISPs do this and some tell their customers that it eliminates the need for individual backups.

Unfortunately, Journalspace just discovered that the problem wasn’t that the drives failed, but that the data was overwritten and is completely unrecoverable. Someone or some thing caused all the data to be overwritten, and of course, since the drives were mirrored, the backup (mirror) was overwritten as well.

In other words, their entire business, and some 6 years worth of some 14,000 bloggers entries, are gone. They are simply giving up and closing down.

This should serve as a sobering reminder to double, triple, and quadruple check on your backup arrangements.

I recommend that people not trust their ISPs and make a copy of their own backups, at least several times a year, of all their sites, MySQL databases, HTML, etc. No matter whom your ISP is, I think it’s a wise move to keep copies of your sites, MySQL databases, etc somewhere other than in your ISP’s data center… download it to your local computer, copy it across to a server in somebody else’s data center, whatever it takes.

If you rely on an IT guru (as Journalspace did) to handle your backup arrangements, I also recommend that you ask somebody else to check it out, see what’s going on, and make sure that you have a bulletproof solution.

I also believe (even though NatNet tells me it’s “old school” and obsolete) in keeping archival tape backups, since tapes of the right type (SDLT or LTO) are considered more stable and reliable than hard drives, and are the storage medium that the Library of Congress uses to archive crucial media.

The owner of Journalspace realizes that it’s his own fault for not double-checking his IT guy’s decisions, so I’m posting this in hopes that people might take steps to ensure that their backup procedures are secure to prevent something like this from happening.”

That’s excellent advice Chip, here’s hoping others double check what is in place for their server backup system and actually take steps to prevent this from happening to them.

Followup:  This is posted on Journalspace:

We have six months to go on our hosting contract, so we’re selling the journalspace.com and journalspace.net domains to cover our costs until our contract runs out. 15% of the sale price will be donated to the Susan G. Komen For The Cure charity.

I personally don’t happen to have any blogs on Thumblogger, but I do have some on the Sexusblogs and Sensual Writer, and I’m just in shock to learn that the Thumblogger server located in Dallas, Texas got hacked and all the data erased.

Posted on Dec.24, 2008 to the AdultWebmasterGroup.com is this announcement from Twan:

“Yesterday we had a hacker on the thumblogger and backup server, who deleted all files. Yesterday afternoon I managed to get a new server online and recovered data from a old backup, to get the older blogs online again. Today i made the thumblogger control panel functional again.

The hacked harddisk of the backup server is currently flying from Dallas to The Netherlands as this is written. When it arrives a specialized company will try to recover the deleted data. Hopefully this will result in a more recent backup which i can then restore.

Today i’m going to try to get everything running smoothly again.”

As of today, it looks like they have only been able to restore posts/accounts up to about July 2008. I didn’t see any follow up posts from Twan as yet, so I can only assume he’s waiting on the drive or for the recovery team to perform a miracle.  There seems to be a bunch of domain name grabbing going on, which is sad that others feel the need to exploit an already dreadful situation. There are some webmasters who are loosing a very high percentage of their income while this is sorted out.

For myself, I’m going to be looking into ways of backing up those remote hosted blogs of mine, and be very glad that I have used several free adult blog host accounts and not put all of mine on one domain. A reminder to anyone wanting to spread their eggs around a bit more, check out the right column of this blog for a listing of free adult blog hosts you can use.

I do hope Twan can get those sites back up, I admire all that he has done and certainly grateful to be using some of his sites and tools. I’ll try to post an update when more news is available.

After many long, painstaking trial runs, NakedSword is ready to announce the merger of the NakedSword and AEBN affiliate programs. NakedDollars will be closing, but all of your tools will be available on AEBN.net. This might sound like a lot, and it is, but they are ready for your questions and are waiting with answers.

AEBN.net will officially take over as the new main portal for NakedSword Promotion on Monday, June 30th. That means that after the 30th, you can expect one check from AEBN. You will also have more options for payment with AEBN.net. They offer both flat payouts and rev share, so you can choose. It’s a great incentive to keep doing the great job you have already begun.

The merger between AEBN and NakedSword took place in January, 2007 and part of what they’ve been working on is the unification of the affiliate programs. They spent the past 18 months getting everything in place for this transition, and are expecting it to go off without a hitch. However, on the off chance that something should go awry, they have your back. Just email Albert Jones (albert@nakedsword.com), their fabulous marketing director at NakedSword.com, and he will be happy to help you.

Given how much of the “free porn” that’s available is actually distributed by the sponsor sites themselves, and that the main traffic resources crafted and used to drive surfers to the paysite doorway are some sort of “free site”, I found the following article about how the Adult Film Industry is feeling challenged (translation: threatened) by all the sites offering free porn of extreme interest.

On one hand, we, as adult webmasters, use the free porn to create the desire for more pics and videos which hopefully translates into making a sale, but have we reached a point where there’s so much free porn out there that it’s making it harder and harder to find the surfer who’s willing to pull out the wallet to entertain his cock??

And then there are the surfers that feel its OK to download the contents of a paysite and then freely distribute it on torrent like sites, how does the Industry as a whole fight that drain to the pocket book? Most surfers don’t realize that it can (and does) cost thousands of dollars to produce one porn movie.  I could go on and on here, but I’ll stop for now and let you read what others have to say on the matter.

By Reuters
Fri Jan 11 13:24:19 PST 2008

After years of booming sales supported by videotapes, DVDs, and the Internet, the adult film industry is being challenged by easy video-sharing Web sites offering explicit content for free.

“We’re dealing with rampant piracy, tons of free content,” said Steven Hirsch, co-founder of privately held Vivid, among the best-known studios making sex films.

Vivid once earned 80 percent of its roughly $100 million a year from DVD sales, but last year that fell to 30 percent, Hirsch said in an interview.

The Internet challenge, a topic of discussion at the biggest adult film expo of the year in Las Vegas this week, has already presented itself to the music industry and other mainstream entertainment.

Much of the Internet competition for the U.S. porn world, largely based in Southern California, comes from Web sites like Toronto-based XTube.com, whose format is modeled after Google’s YouTube.

Some of the videos on the XTube site come from commercial studios while others are posted by amateurs.

“We’re not pirates. We are providing a service that people think they can use to pirate,” said Lance Cassidy, one of XTube’s founders.

The XTube model
The Web site has 200,000 free videos, typically 30 seconds to two minutes long, and about 1 percent of visitors buy DVDs or video streams, resulting in millions of dollars of annual revenue, sales director Curtis Potec said. About two thirds of XTube’s viewers are gay, Potec said.

“We’ve had tons and tons of people tell us this is the future of the adult industry,” Potec said. “Most of the money is ads, on any site, mainstream or adult.”

Scott Coffman, president of Adult Entertainment Broadcast Network (AEBN) in North Carolina, says his company started a YouTube-type site a year-and-a-half ago to generate revenue through advertising and drive traffic to pay-per-minute sites.

Read the rest of the Article >>>

2008 AVN Awards Winners Announced

And the winners are…

By Jared Rutter

Posted: 11:30 PM PST Jan 12, 2008 on AVN.com

LAS VEGAS – Adult Video News staged its 25th anniversary awards show last night at the Mandalay Bay Events Center with a maximum of good feeling and an absence of the self-congratulatory hype that might be expected to accompany such a milestone.

The show was swiftly paced and simply designed, with plenty of cable-TV-friendly movie clips, due perhaps to the fact that it will air on the Showtime network, “another giant step” for the awards, as co-host Tera Patrick pointed out.

The big winners were two heavily nominated features, the film Layout (Vivid) and the video Upload (Sex Z Pictures). Each won eight awards. Evil Angel, as it has so often in the past, walked away with the giant’s share of the prizes, 18 in all.

Read the Article >>>

GayGravy is proud to announce that they have acquired one of the most successful programs in the gay porn market, PrideAccess.com. Pride Access is a hit site with a great concept as it gives surfers access to tons of sites covering all gay niches with only one membership fee. The overall ratio over the years is 1 in 112 - That’s the first page unique ratio. To kick off the new ownership they will be paying $75 PPS on EVERY SALE sent to PrideAccess.com or any of its 5 new sites this Sunday, January 20th 2008.

The 5 new sites are:
Armed Recruits, Police Pride, King of Porn, Black Meat Taboo, and Thug4thug.

Webmasters can register here, and with immediate approval, start grabbing your advertising materials for the big Sunday payoff. Feel free to contact the following reps for anything you need:Rob: ICQ: 525-989 Email: rob@sobvsites.com
Ant: ICQ: 451-989-846 Email: anthony@sobvsites.com
JJ: ICQ: 102-973-593 Email: jason@sobvsites.com

 Making the Sale by Stephen Yagielowicz

I’ve seen a lot of comments on the boards of late concerning the growing difficulties in making sales — difficulties driven by a number of factors, including one that doesn’t get an awful lot of recognition: an operator’s understanding of basic marketing concepts such as AIDA, as well as the psychology surrounding these concepts.

AIDA, an acronym within marketing circles for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action, is used to describe the four common steps within the consumer’s purchasing decision cycle; and is a concept that I saw vividly demonstrated in a porn purchase I made a while ago, when I saw an adult magazine on a newsstand – and I just had to have it.

No common occurrence, it may have been well over a decade since the last time I bought a men’s magazine; and while I purchase many periodicals, in today’s digital age, I don’t seek out print publications for my porn fix. Indeed, with the exception of the occasional pay-per-view cable television episode of Naked News, I don’t tend to purchase any type of adult entertainment, given the volume of it available for free online and the size of my own personal collection of homemade erotica; featuring myself and my favorite model.

But as this story illustrates, it’s not that I’m unwilling to pay for porn, it’s just that so few producers, publishers or website owners do a good-enough job of selling their wares that I’m willing to pay for them: And I’m not alone, as the current market conditions confirm.

Read the rest of this article >>>

As 2007 neared the finish line there was a tendency among webmasters to look closely at their bottom line, even to the exclusion of some other facts and trends that may directly impact next year’s balance sheet significantly.

For that reason, XBIZ is taking a moment to highlight some very important changes that have already started to impact our industry and may become dominant reasons as to why some companies succeed next year while others miss out.

TECH ADVANCEMENTS
At its core the online adult industry is as much about the rising tide of technology as it is about the carnal heat of onscreen performers. In the U.S. two major advancements took root in the consumer tech segment during 2007 and both are guaranteed to grow even more rapidly as we move forward: the advent of Verizon FIOS and the introduction of the iPhone.

Read this Article >>>

 

SAN FRANCISCO — Hot House Entertainment plans to unveil its affiliate program Hot House Cash during Internext this weekend in Las Vegas. The San Francisco-based gay porn studio will offer the program on its two new membership sites, The Backroom and The Dungeon, with payouts up to 50 percent. The company plans to introduce new affiliate manager Alan Breslaw at the show. “Between Alan’s sales experience and the consistent level of excellence in Hot House products, I have no doubt that the launch of Hot House Cash will have been totally worth the wait,” said Brent Smith, Hot House’s vice president and creative director.

Hot House is one of the few studios that releases its new movies in its membership sites first before making them available on DVD or broadcast. Hot House Cash plans to offer affiliates a wide selection of tools to drive traffic to the sites, including Flash video players, hosted video and photo galleries and banners. 

For more information, please contact:
Alan Breslaw
Hot House Affiliate Manager
alan@hothouse.com

Los Angeles, CA (January 7, 2008) – The Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP) has been named to the 2008 Associations Advance America Honor Roll, a national awards competition sponsored by the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) and The Center for Association Leadership, Washington, DC.