Why the five month gap in the latest posts from the prior ones?
Sorry, by “being busted” I mean, a model being found out by her family, not us being busted running an illegal business!!
Average age is around 20. They are not trained at all, but they are prepared.
Sorry! Been busy developing the business - found the emailed thread notifications in my inbox when I was clearing it out.
Yeah, but who would win between them and Batman?
Thanks, abby- I was wondering how this discussion got bumped up from April.
Everybody.
Abby, what’s the average turnover for your staff? Do you find you’ve employed more creative than business positions or the other way around?
How long is the model application process? How about the time from shooting to release?
Also, I have to say that not only is it a good site, I actually use it to demonstrate to others what good site design has.
My own testimonial for Abby’s site is that it’s the only porn I can get my wife to view without her blasting me about how fake / forced / unnatural the settings are and about how cruel the industry is to the models. And, truthfully, that’s what I like about it, too. I believe that I am proof that the business does not have to pander to the creeps. There are plenty of people out here who like sex, and like to play with it in a healthy way, e.g. visiting a site like that. Keep it up, Abs.
xo, C.
Porn-positive lesbian chiming in. 
Thank you for refreshing this thread. I caught it briefly out of the corner of my eye and have had crappy luck finding it in searches. Apologies if I’m asking redundant questions. Please skip them if already answered.
Are you constantly fighting off bids and pressure to sell your operation to your competitors? Are you ever tempted to “sell out”?
How many toaster ovens have you acquired over the years? 
This is really a serious question. What demographics are represented by your models? Are they mostly lesbian/bi to start with, or is it something that they discover through their work for you? Do any of them (GonG participants in particular) consider themselves “straight”?
Do you get hate mail from the lesbian separatists and the anti-porn ranks? Who sends you the most hate mail?
Have you ever been interviewed by any of the lesbian rags? Do you sell any of your stuff anywhere but through your site?
Do you currently, or do you plan to include offerings with androgynous/butch models?
Does any of your stuff end up on “porntube” or whatever it is called? Have you ever legally pursued copyright violations?
That’s all for now.
We’re at about 10% staff turnover. I understand an average across all industries is 20%, so we’re doing pretty good I think.
hm. Good questions. I guess it’s about half and half. I believe what we do is very much a craft (as opposed to an art), and so I employ technicians with a good eye, more than obtusively creative people.
Model application process can be a low as a few days - they call us, we tell them about it, book an interview. At the int, we talk more, show them stuff, take some test shots. They get rated by me on their suitability, then the pre-production booking team take over. We try to get new models booked in as quick as we can, but we’re limited by their schedules (most models have “real” jobs, or are full time students).
Time from shooting to release varies - around four weeks for a solo shoot, mainly because we have a backlog of solo shoots. Some other types of shoots we have less of, so they appear on the site as little as a week after they are shot.
We also add “behind the scenes” stuff to the site the day of the shoot, as a bit of a teaser.
You do? goodness! In what context? Please send me an email off-list - always interested in hearing about new ways the site is used! Thanks!
I am not constantly fighting off offers, but we have had some. They are attractive - a lot more than I would have thought. Not tempted to sell out yet (at any price), but I can imagine a time when I might be…
Um… one, I think.
Big range of socio-economic - from the really classy expensive suburbs, private school all the way, to left-school-at-15 outer 'burbs. Most are employed or Students, but some are unemployed. Those that are employed are in lower-paying, menial jobs - shoe shops, bank teller, shop clerks, etc. But then, so are most 18 to 23 year old women… We have shot a bunch of professionals, tho - lawyer, police officer, teachers, nurses, etc.
Most of our solo models are straight (as far as we know - we don’t ask). The models involved in GG stuff are usually bi or at least very experimental. We have shot a bunch of lesbians (either sworn, or “at this time in my life…”).
Very occasionally, I get hate mail from feminists, tho usually they see my site and say “well, I think porn is evil, but at least you’re the lesser evil”. Hey I’ll take any compliments I can get!
The most hate mail… I guess it falls into a few categories:
Stylistic complaints: people who think we don’t get it - they say we should shave our models, get some high heels and make up on them, maybe then they’ll join the site. Some of this stuff is very aggressive (strangely). They always ignore the fact that we aim to cover a specific niche. I usually tell 'em if they want a truck, go buy a truck - we sell hi fi gear. (just to confuse them).
Content complaints: people who demand we shoot more boy-girl stuff, or models-defecating-on-models stuff, or more models playing with baloons, or more models with limbs in casts. These start off nice, and usually end quite aggressive. They always promise a massive influx of new customers (I have actually been sucked in to this vortex once, and did a special shoot for “loonies” (as balloon-and-girl enthusiasts call themselves) (hot tip: DO NOT POP the BALLOONS, or the hate mail gets serious). The response was piss poor, even tho we dotted all the i’s…
Rip off complaints: people who join the website assuming we had something that catered to their fetish (without checking first) and complain bitterly about how we “lured them in” just to rip them off. Often, these people are not happy with a refund, and promise to inform their chamber of commerce about my actions (why they assume I pay levvies to their chamber of commerce in a different country, I’ll never know). Sometimes, they threaten to get their lawyer involved.
Not to incite a riot, but this is the kinda customer service issues we have to deal with a lot, and as alluded to earlier, most of these irrational complaints come from American folks. As I said earlier, these things used to really frustrate me, but now we have mechanisms in place for dealing with these things, it’s just a curosity.
No. We have not really pushed that angle - we don’t claim that our stuff is made for women (or couples), tho anecdotal feedback is that it’s popular with those people. Incidentally, I don’t design our stuff to be attractive to women (or men, I guess). I just make it, and if people like it, great.
A bunch of places sell our lines of DVD’s, and we’ll prolly do a coffee table book next year. The website is def the prime source of income.
We have some currently, but not many. We shoot the people as they come to us, and get a pretty wide variety. There’s just not many butch chicks around, and our shooting ratio of them reflects that, I reckon.
Yah, occasionally, tho that’s not really a problem. The big file sharing networks are more of an issue, however - they have the entire contents of our site available, and stuff. Very annoying.
Yah, a few times a week.
Awesome response. Many thanks. The only thing I wish I’d phrased differently was the toaster oven question(s). I wasn’t trying to ask about you personally, but I appreciate the personal response. 
I was trying to ask if you had any insight as to whether many models enter your doors (professionally) on one end of the spectrum of being sexually attracted to the same sex, and leave your doors at the other end…but you address that question eventually anyway.
This totally cracked me up. I’ve been on these boards for a few years now, but I have never been so tempted to ask permission to use a quote in a sig. So…can I?
I don’t know what that earns folks in the “toaster oven” incentive system. A hamster maybe?
Thanks for doing this thread, Abby. I missed it first time around, and I’m being educated this time. I took a look at the site, and went through the tour. A few questions:
(1) Why don’t you accept PayPal? Personally, I’d feel very uncomfortable giving my credit card number to a company outside the US. PayPal, on the other hand, is no problem, because all I’m giving out is my email address.
(2) Has browser incompatibility been an issue for you? I deal with a lot of major sites that don’t get it right, and you have more tech complexity than most of them.
(3) Do you pretty much keep everything you’ve ever had, or do you cull out old stuff from time to time?
(4) Do models share copyright with you? Could they use the photos for a personal project of their own, or is this simple work-for-hire where you own all rights?
Thanks!
It’s my understanding that Paypal, technically, does not want itself used to support the porn industry.
I could be wrong on this end, of course.
Is it possible to make any generalizations about the type of people who prefer your genre of porn? Do you see one type of customer over and over again that maybe you wouldn’t see at a traditional porn site?
I really like your site – I’ve never considered myself much of a porn fan, but mainly because traditional stuff has always seemed phony to me, and I’m annoyed by things like high heels, oversized fake boobs, too much makeup up, etc.
ha! Sure!
PayPal actively deny adult operators to use their services (on moral grounds, I think). Pretty annoying
However, a credit card is just as safe - you can always query a CC charge with your bank, and they always give you the benefit of the doubt (sometimes to our chargrin) and refund you.
Yes, it’s always an issue, but one we manage pretty effectively. It always cramps our style in terms of design, and take a lot of time, but it’s a fact of life. Best decision we made was to stop supporting IE for Mac (grr), and IE 5. We got SOOOO many complaints, but everyone else was better for it!
I presume you mean, do we keep it online, available to members? Yes, we do, pretty much everything, apart from some videos we shot real early that are just embarrassing technically.
The models do not share copyright - we own all the rights to the media we capture, but we do allow models to use their stuff for personal reasons.
The only type of customer we see over and over again is a good one!
Ok, sorry. Men - most of our customers have THAT in common.
That’s about it - our stuff is appealing to most people, cos it’s sexy. Some people have to get over the whole amateur model thing, but “sexy” kinda transcends that (so long as the model is not revolting).
I JUST noticed the thread and I wanted to say that my wife and I both love your site.
If only there was someone doing what you’re doing in the boy/girl shoot business, I’d never leave my computer room again. (probably a good thing, therefore, that no one appears to be =P)
Abby, dear, have I been drinking too much or are the ladies on your front page artificially modestized? The black “bras” and “panties” are so evenly coloured they scream “PAINTSHOPPED!” and not professionally so.
Ah, I see that it is after the age question.
If I may ask: how much (in USD) will a model typically get paid for a single soloshoot? And how much for a GoG-shoot?