This is Bruce Friedman, the adult-side broker, and welcome to an Adult Site Broker Talk! Where each week we interview one of the movers and shakers of the adult industry, and we give you a tip on buying and selling websites. This week we’ll be speaking with Brad Jones of MeetKinksters. [Music] Adult Site Broker Talk is brought to you by Webmaster Access, September 12th through the 15th. The show will be in beautiful Cyprus at the stunning Grand Resort on the beach. Go to the events page on our website at adultsitebroker.com for a 25% discount for Adult Site Broker Talk. To register, go to Webmasteraccess.com. At Adult Site Broker, we’re proud to announce our latest project, TheWarOnPorn.com. You’ll find articles from industry websites as well as mainstream publications from around the world. It’s designed to raise awareness of our industry’s plight in the War On Porn and the numerous attacks on our industry and online free speech by hate groups, the religious right and politician. You’ll find all that and more at TheWarOnPorn.com. You’ve probably noticed our new podcast site at adultsidebroker.com. It has a more modern look with easier navigation and more information on our guests, including their social media links. For more, go to adultsidebrokertalk.com. And we’ve doubled our affiliate payouts on ASP Cash. Now, when your first sellers are buyers to us, you’re going to receive 20% of our broker commission on any and all sales that result from that referral for life. Check out ASPCache.com for more details and to sign up. Now, let’s feature our property of the week that’s for sale at Adult Site Broker. We’re proud to offer a unique sex toy, the Baldo. The Baldo has created something new, ball sex, and a range of devices that allow you to have ball sex. These devices are patented and trademarked in multiple countries. Baldo.com is their main international e-commerce site. This gives men a second penis that never goes soft, but with the added benefit of having an erotic sensation in the balls. Baldo cups the balls and makes them feel safe. The open sides of the baldo cage keep the balls where they’re designed to be. The cage and its inner core take the pressure off penetration and guides the balls inside their partner. When inside, a sensation of warmth rubbing from thrusting, stimulation of nerve endings, and pressure at the base of the penis, all work together to deliver what can be a very heavy ballgasm. All without using or touching the penis at all. In fact, Cosmopolitan magazine verified this in a review on Baldo. Baldo has received a flood of media attention with appearances on the Howard Stern Show and reviews in Cosmo, wired, vice, and sex cells. This has caused consistent sales spikes. The cartoon featuring Chuck the Balls has been watched over 400,000 times. Through additional investment, the company will be able to spend on advertising, affiliate marketing, and dedicated sales resources, the only things keeping ball sex from literally exploding. There were another 8 products in development which used the balls for ball sex, only $250,000. Now time for this week’s interview. Yes, today on Adult Side Broker Talk is Brad Jones of Meet King Sturs. Hey Brad, thanks for being with us today on Adult Side Broker Talk. Yeah, thanks Bruce. I’m really excited to chat with you. It’s my pleasure. Now Brad is founder and CTO of Meet King Sturs, the sex-positive relationships app. Before founding Meet King Sturs, he served as CTO at a web development agency following the freelance development career. In past lives, he worked as a political operative and investigative journalist. He’s a part-time paramedic and firefighter, and in his free time, you have any of that, huh? He enjoys diving. He lives full-time in his RV around the Inter-Mountain American West. Meet King Sturs is founded on the principle that people deserve fulfilling relationships, both in and out of the bedroom. Mainstream dating sites actively discourage sharing your sexual preferences and hook-up apps operate as if that’s all you’re after. As people around the world become more confident in their sexual identity, it’s time they are given tools to connect on the full spectrum of relationship compatibility. So, Brad, aren’t there enough dating apps? I mean, the market seems really saturated. Why do we need another one? Yeah, well, we’re going to find out. Starting a startup business is an adventure in testing your feces. I also have a little bit of a background in adult. It’s not dissimilar to adult content, which is there are riches and niches. People who are uninitiated in the adult business think that it’s all playboy playmates, you know, making very traditional sort of at this point, I guess, Gonzo is very traditional type of porn. But that’s the tip of the iceberg. Online dating, you know, is the better part of 2025 years old. We have very entrenched market players. And they’re owned only by a few small number of publicly traded companies, really. And they are working on a thesis that’s about 25 years old, which is that people are sort of after the kinds of relationships that people were after in the turn of the century. And the truth of the matter is people are becoming much more sexually liberated. And so, yes, I would be even crazier than I am if I were just starting up yet another bullshit AI dating startup or video dating or any of these ideas that a dime does. But there’s very few players in this space. I have competition, but it is lazy competition. And I think the market has room for another player that treats these kinds of consumers seriously. Yeah, and if you’re making a lot of money, you tend to get lazy, don’t you? Well, I think there could be a component of that. Certainly, like if you look at sort of an adjacent market to this, let’s talk about swinger apps, right? Every single swingers app out there has not had a redesign since 1998. And the reason why is because they don’t need to. And so I think the dating market is a little bit better than that. But yeah, if you’re making good money and you’re separating cash from, let’s be honest, generally speaking, men who are paying for access to women, it’s very easy to be complacent there. You know, my motivations are such that I’m trying to solve my own problem. I’m lucky to have discovered in my 30s that I couldn’t date vanilla women anymore. I’m straight. And so I made that a priority, but I’ve quickly found that you either have to go into a mainstream app and sort of telegraph that you’re looking for something specific sexually or go on a hookup app and be like, well, I’m actually looking for a little bit more than most people here. And so that’s that’s the thesis. Yeah, you know, and another thing that comes to mind, adult dating apps, 99% of them, I’m not going to say all, but virtually all use fake profiles. I have a funny sense that that’s something you’re not doing. My life would be a lot easier if I were. I mean, maybe call me naive, right? Because also I guess you have to do a bit naive to start a business in 2023, right? But, you know, the first time I got an email on LinkedIn, which is a complete cesspool, of course, you know, from a Russian app mill that was like, you know, the pricing wasn’t based on what features do you want in your app? It was how many fake profiles do you want? And it’s incredibly enticing. It’s a siren song to play that game because the cold start problem is super significant in the dating space, especially. You know, if you’re starting an adult website, right, there are places where you can go buy even exclusive content, right? And see a tube site. You can’t do that with dating. You have to have real profiles. And I spend a lot of my day deleting profile. The site is called Meet Kingsters. Okay, I am not burying the lead. And the thing about the BDSM world is that people who are into BDSM can sniff out bullshit and fake attitudes and fakeness very quickly. You have to do that to be safe in the BDSM world and you have to do that in order to get what you want. And so if I become a bastion for fake profiles, I’m going to be sunk. Yeah, makes perfect sense. And I could see where the people in the BDSM space would definitely be a lot brighter about that stuff. No doubt about it. So what makes Meet Kingsters different from other dating apps on the market today? Yeah, I think we’re sort of, there’s a few things. I think we’re sort of seeing a boomerang effect on swiping. Any individual feature is not a product make. So just not being a swipe app isn’t enough, but it is actually an interesting discriminator in this business in 2023. And also my closest competition, you know, let’s, you know, field, for instance, is a swipe app. And it’s interesting to see their marketing sort of say, you know, find me on field. How the fuck am I supposed to find you on field? It’s a swipe app. What am I supposed to swipe? And it’s basically the sort of they started their life as a thunder, the three some tender and got you to obviously quickly by tender. But you know, it shows how it’s like that’s great if you’re looking for a hook up, hook up app. But the point is that, you know, you can’t actually if I’m on a swipe app, I could swipe 20 to 200 or 2000 beautiful women. But if they’re not looking for the same thing, if they’re not submissive, if they’re not actually looking for a relationship, if they’re not smart, they’re not going to be for me. So searching is another feature that we’re rolling out this month. All announce it here. You get an exclusive is an interesting trust and safety feature where men can actually proactively share their background check results on their profile, which I think is an interesting discriminator because I want women to be comfortable on my platform. And what I hear from a lot of women is that gee, I would love to explore my not vanilla side, but I want to make sure that I’m safe. Nobody can guarantee your safety, but you can certainly put in a in layers of safety type features. So I believe background checks and I’ve got a great partner that can do that with a high degree of accuracy. So you’re doing that with all members? Well, it’s difficult to do with all members because they have to provide you sufficient information to perform the background check. But this vendor that I’m working with actually generally on a lot of platforms the way it works is if you’re thinking about meeting a guy, right, you’re going to set up a date, you can perform a background check on that person. But I believe it’s sort of flipping that script on adult dating apps, sex positive dating apps that are out there. You’re looking at about 90% men to women ratio and anybody who tells you that their ratio is better than that is is lying. And so I want to help these men because I am one of them, right? I can’t change the fact that I’m a man and was born that way and want to stay that way. You have to find a way to stand out. Yeah, because if you don’t think it’s some great hospitals out here in Thailand, by the way. Well, you know, here in Colorado where I’m talking to you from, you know, Trinidad was the, I think probably is still the sex change capital of the United States. So I get it, but if you’re going to stay a man, you’re at a bit of a disadvantage, numbers wise. And so you have to find ways to stand out. And so I believe that part of the success of a platform like mine is a feature set that will continue to evolve that helps men be better on the dating landscape. A lot of them won’t want to help, right? I have, I have tons of new members every day who are just thirsty dudes. You can’t change that. But the ones who are looking for a relationship, that’s the sweet spot. I’m trying to get an idea. Where does the background check come in? Is that optional for the guy? Yeah, it’s an extra add-on. But what it does is it allows you to proactively, and by the time this errors, it will be live. So I’ll just say it’s a feature launching imminently at the time we record this. So it is a way for men to proactively show that they are serious about volunteering information about themselves that helps show that they are someone worth dating somebody who is in this space who says, yes, I am a daddy done. Yes, I am the kind of person who you’re going to have to be very vulnerable with if we both want this kind of dynamic together, this BDSM power exchange kind of dynamic. And I’m going to go the extra mile to say, you know what? Here’s my background check. Right? It doesn’t guarantee that I’m a good person, but I’m going to lead with this. I’m going to help show you that I’m the kind of person who is serious about meeting because the feature, if you want to talk about features, the feature that is the killer feature is very simple. It’s selection bias. It is being willing to not want to be all things to all people, which is what most dating apps try to do. Or just make a quick buck selling you the illusion that this beautiful woman behind the spake profile that does not exist and will not write you back could possibly be real. I’m not interested in doing that because I’m not interested in stealing people’s money. I’m interested in earning it. And that might be an eye you take in this business, but I can’t sleep at night, you know, comfortably doing the form. Well, I understand we could talk about the ethics of adult dating, but it’s really neither here nor there because there are people doing very well with it. And more power to them, but at the same time, like you said, their public companies and they have their way of doing things and it’s not going to change. So what you do is certainly up to you and look, I think doing it honestly is always the best policy. There’s no two ways about it. So you’re talking about an app focused on relationships. However, we know through experience, many people are still going to join looking for hookups. How do you navigate this tension in your business model? Yeah, and I think this is a reason why I’m on a podcast called Adult Site Broker Talk. I have to go on podcasts called Good Clean, Vanilla Satisfying Relationships Talk 2. But I am going for a typical take and I think that’s the only way that you can have any chance of being successful with a new product in these kinds of markets. So yes, it’s going to be a tough slog, but also I can’t deny reality, which is that yes, a lot of people are going to join not necessarily agreeing with my thesis or not knowing really what they want. And they just see a site called Beaconsors and they want to quick cook up. Speaking within the industry, there are opportunities to redirect and resell and retard it, those kinds of customers in a productive way. And if somebody is listening to this saying, "Yeah, I have a product that is complimentary to that kind of person, we can talk." And the power of my platform is, "I’m a technical founder, and so I can iterate this product to target these kinds of people where you went into my paywall in part depends on the answers you give me to early questions. And your gender and what kind of relationship you’re looking for. And your email follow-ups are targeted to who you are and what you’re after. And if you end up making an affiliate purchase but not being a core customer of mine, then great, I’ve recovered some value out of you. And at the very least, I have not turned you sour on the product and people change and things change. No, that’s great. So you’ve discussed to destigmatizing sexual compatibility in relationships and it is added to appeal to mainstream audiences. The large public dating companies tend to shy away from this market segment. Now, do they know something you don’t? I mean, they know lots of things I don’t, right? I mean, the challenge of starting a new business is having those blind spots, right? But what they don’t know, and I do, is that there is opportunity in this market, and there are societal wins that are shifting in a way that I think a lot of the mainstream dating apps are just not prepared for. And you see that evidenced by the very clumsy way in which all industries handle things like pride month, right? It’s more than just putting a rainbow behind your logo, right? And then taking it down on July 1st. And it speaks to that authenticity piece that we sort of started this off with and how people can sniff it out. So I think my challenge is making the ideal customer, right? Which is in a large part women who understand that they want something not vanilla in a relationship, making them comfortable in exploring this side of them. So again, when it comes to partnerships, now that the core business is stabilized and, you know, I’ve got an app that is available on native stores and on web, which is also a differentiator. Now that I’m in a place to confidently take people’s business, those kinds of partnerships and even my branding can be tailored to the kind of customer that graduates from mainstream dating, right? So I think I have the great fortune of also being appealing to people in their middle age who are maybe have adult children who are now comfortable divorcing, have divorced because they come out of a loveless sexless marriage, have discovered that they need a sexually fulfilling relationship. So I think I’m going to go up, there’s over 50s dating apps, but there’s very little for somebody who says, you know what, that guy that I just broke up with who I married when I was 20 and didn’t even know, and the first person I ever slept with. And now I’m looking for something, you know, that’s the profile of user who has no other options in this market and I want to be able to serve one because I can sell the membership. Because I think life is too short to be in a sexually unfulfilling relationship. Exactly. So adult-oriented dating platforms, they tend to suffer from a significant imbalance, you alluded to this between male and female members. Now how are you going to address this? Yeah, I think this is a cousin to just all of the other questions around user acquisition. A great question people ask, and a natural one about dating apps is like, well where is it available? And it’s like, well, your ability to target geographic markets is entirely dependent on your resources. And, you know, we’ll talk a little bit, I’m sure about the business side of starting an app that has a significant cold start problem. But I think when it comes to recruiting women, and that’s what we’re talking about, is the in-person network effects are going to be very important. And you achieve that by the hard work of, for instance, sponsoring in-person events, right? We’ve done a little bit of trial at that in the Denver market where there’s a monthly kink-focused event at a very popular mic club. The kind of place where you can meet people, hand them a sticker, look them in the eye, and tell them about your value proposition, and tell them about features like being able to blur your photos before you match, or, you know, incognito mode, you know, just the selection bias. It would be very interesting to be able to blur their faces after they match, but anyway, that’s another problem. I mean, look, you know, this is a, that is a problem that every dating site has, which is you have no responsibility and no control over what happens when people connect. I wish I did. So, let’s talk trust and safety. Government regulators are increasingly looking at this space. Is there additional risk connecting people based on their sexual interests? Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. The adult industry, I think, writ large has this really strange problem that I do not see an answer to, which is how do you deal with puritanical regulators in Wyoming or Utah, right? Speaking of recent news or Florida or Texas or whatever place, trying to control your globally accessible, globally integrated business through local laws. And I think part of this is going to be the lesson that the adult industry, sort of on behalf of a lot of highly regulated, you know, industries, sin businesses, had to find out the hard way, which is that some level of self regulation is, a bit of a hedge to wild regulation coming down from Congress or something like that or the EU. So, being proactive there, there’s a lot of dating websites that are completely on autopilot and have absolutely zero to no content moderation and are there for cash for ab. I’d say most, yeah, sure, and AI certainly is going to make this kind of this question harder, but not being asleep at the wheel is a start and also being willing to say no to some to some business, but I will say that if you are willing to color within the lines a little bit, there’s a lot of leeway even today. I had far more trouble getting a traditional, I say traditional and air quotes high risk merchant account from, you know, the usual suspects where you get high risk merchant accounts way more trouble from them in underwriting and getting live in the Apple and Google Play stores. That’s just so weird because it’s flipped it used to be so much harder to get your app, especially in the Apple app store, Google Play has always been a little more liberal, but you’re right now things have just gotten so hard with credit card processing. Yeah, and I mean, there’s a trade off and everything because I would far more prefer my users to pay me on the web because a 3% discount rate or even 5% let’s say with all in with your fees is way better than the 15% and the 15% in the app stores is them throwing you a bone. That’s on your first million once you become successful it becomes 30% and so yeah, it’s totally screwed up, but I think that just speaks to the fact that the risk goal posts are always moving and that as you have seen the adult industry have some consolidation and a lot of the fly by night players just fall away. There’s still a plenty of them of course, you know, one of the things that drives me nuts is people thinking that just because you are in a sin business writer of vice business as it is seen from the outside that that is sort of some excuse to run your business in any less legitimate way. It’s really quite the opposite. I mean the people I know in this industry are more versed and more tend to be more legitimate than people ever are in mainstream. Yeah, I’ve worked with people who have come to me over the years because in my web development business and they know that I’m open to working in more highly regulated industries that other people shy away from. And they’re like, oh, well, you know, I got a strike account opened up and it’s just fine. It’s like, well, yeah, just because you haven’t been caught yet. Being lucky is not the same as being good. Yeah, or PayPal. Good luck. Yeah, and they don’t understand that basically there’s only a handful of players in the market and once you get blacklisted, but also they’re going away with your money. Yeah, when they say a strike account for a doll that always cracks me up, it just, I don’t know, it’s hard for me to believe. They obviously haven’t done their homework or they haven’t come to our consulting company and asked us some questions before they invested in what they’re doing, which they should talk to somebody who knows what the hell they’re talking about before they ever get started because if they don’t, it’s going to end up costing them money. Like you said, they’ll just run away with your money. No doubt about it. Yeah, and there’s, but there’s plenty of people out there with advice and you have to take it with the grain of salt. But also, you know, the third time you hear somebody tell you that something’s a bad idea, maybe you should listen. Yeah, look, I mean, I know who accepts adult business and who the top players are and who the secondary players are and who the people are to stay away from and who the mainstream people are that you shouldn’t even try to do business with. And that goes for processing, that goes for email services, that goes for all hosting, that goes for a lot of things. A good part of the mainstream world is not accepting to us and people just don’t realize that when they go into adult and they find out the hard way. And it’s unfortunate because they have bad experiences and those could have been avoided if they had gotten some opinions first. So the dating vertical suffers from a significant cold start problem. We talked about that briefly earlier. Nobody wants to join a site where there’s nobody near them, but you have to start somewhere. How is meat kingsters attempting to overcome this issue? Yeah, and we have talked about that a little bit. I think the I think events are part of it. And this speaks to partnerships that I am open to hearing from folks in your audience, especially. It’s interesting. There are a lot of dating apps that are available only on native and there are a lot that are especially the older platforms that are available only on web. And there’s actually a very little crossover. And so I think there’s an opportunity also to leverage partnerships, your traditional affiliate marketing partnerships for sure, but also partnerships outside of that in adjacent businesses. The gay community also, right? I happen to be straight, but I have a good amount of gay users. And gay users are different kinds of consumers. They connect differently. They spend money. They also form trust differently. And so I think there are opportunities there that will yield some results. But you have to hustle at it. And you have to think outside of the box. And so I’m open to connecting with people who are up for thinking outside of the box, especially for instance on educational content. And I like to put a spotlight on it. There needs to be more good sex positive educational content available on the internet. People see a lot of fake sex in porn. But porn can also be, and I’ll speak personally, porn can be aspirational in the sense that it allows you to see things that are new to you. And I think there’s a huge opportunity. If anybody is out there producing ethically produced adult content that helps people to connect with this side of themselves, I would love to chat with them because I think that kind of content, ethically produced porn side things like that, those are the kinds of consumers who think about what they are consuming. And aspire to be a little bit like the things that they are watching in a healthy way. Absolutely. So let’s talk marketing. Do you have an affiliate program and if so, how does it work? Yeah, so I am early one in that process because I don’t want to get it wrong from the outset. But I think affiliate is going to be an important part of my future. And so I think by the time this airs especially, I will have enough data having launched on web to have the kinds of offers for webmasters with the kind of traffic that we’ve just talked about. I am not looking for traffic straight off of a tube site. I got enough thirsty guys. What I am looking for when I’m in that position is to partner with affiliates who have the kind of traffic that really they don’t have enough places to send. There’s plenty of porn traffic out there. And there’s plenty of, as you talked about, traditional adult sex dating, friend finder kind of traffic. But if you have users who fit this profile, where can you send them? How many new vibrator brands can you send your female leaning traffic to? Because it’s two-way street. Affiliate is two-way street. You have to have good webmasters with good traffic who understand that it’s not going to be worth it for them to send you a bunch of shit traffic. And you’ve got to have fresh product to send people to because people are tired of clicking on the same links and seeing the same things. And so I’d love to hear from people who fit that sort of description writ large because dating also provides you a lot of opportunity. You can do revshare, you can do cost per sale, you can figure out what works for you and for me. And I think this will be an interesting opportunity for folks who need something new in their affiliate portfolio. Sure. Have you raised capital for the business and how are you finding the fundraising capital landscape in 2023? Also, any issues fundraising for an adult product, especially one that could be maybe just a bit controversial? Yeah, I mean, the macroeconomic situation sucks, right? I think we can all agree on that. However, it’s weird. I’d love to get your thoughts on this, being in a broker business. It’s like, we keep being told that we’re going to go into a recession. Where’s the fucking recession? And that really has a chilling effect on capital no matter what you’re fundraising for. So yes, I am fundraising. I have an open or at least the time we’re speaking. I have an open campaign for crowdfunding equity. So it’s real equity. It’s on we funder and it’s on our website. You can look at that. It’s an opportunity for people who are not accredited investors to be able to participate. That’s an option. And, you know, I’m actively looking for angel investments and potentially VC money. But I think you have to do a double barrel approach. You have to be ready to continue to bootstrap. But also my growth would be greatly accelerated with, you know, the kind of capital that is modest for a lot of similar businesses, right? I think I’d work a technical founder. I would have to raise $250,000 just to get to where I am. But, you know, I’ve been able to get to where I am with entirely sweat equity. And I have paying customers and some traction. And so I think that does change the landscape a little bit. But yes, I mean, I think in general, it would be really great for the capital that is out in the market right now that is open to sex positive products to show themselves a little bit more prominently because there is a market making failure here that I think would serve VCs and angels just as much as founders because it’s difficult to identify. Those who are into this business and, you know, Bruce, I know you’re out there. You have your name everywhere. You’re everywhere. I, you know, in my short time in the business, I see you everywhere. And you’re unafraid of letting people know that you’re in this business. I think the business consequences in 2023 if somebody knowing that you’re in the adult business are not as great as your fear. And if VCs are out there, look, VCs job is to look for the diamonds and the rough that have potential for explosive growth. If they’re not looking in the adult business, they’re not doing themselves any favors by missing out on a lot of potential deals. That’s very true. So your solo tech founder, how is this a strength or weakness at the state in your growth? Yeah, I mean, I think I just spoke to one strength, which is that I meet a lot of people and it’s true. I’m sure in traditional adults as well where you have a little bit more knowledge and strength than I do. But being able to bring a product to market and MVP to market, if you don’t have a technical founder on your team, I don’t care what you’re building, adults are not. You know, you’re already $100,000, $200,000 in the whole. If you want a decent product, you can go to India or China and get something, but it’s not going to be good. So probably for the $10,000 that you think you’re going to spend and get something off the shelf, and you don’t have a partner that’s a technical founder that’s invested the way that you will be. So that’s an advantage. The disadvantage is that very few people are good at everything. For instance, my product is, I have a great logo because I outsourced it. It’s one of the few things about source. The rest of my UX and UI, it’s usable, it’s fine, but it’s very off the shelf and it’s not particularly where I want it to be because I’m not a designer. And also marketing. Marketing is the kind of thing that, yes, I’m limited by capital, but I’m also limited by the fact that, you know, I will admit that that is not my specialty. But I think, you know, moving forward, if you have a founder who thinks that they could do all of the things, they’re lying, they’re also kidding themselves. I’ve met so many people who claim to be an expert at everything and it turns out there are an expert at nothing. Yeah, and I think, you know, to go out in public and say, you know, in a very marketing heavy business that your expertise is not necessarily a marketing, you know, that could be risky for me, but it’s like just be honest. Right, because it’s like everybody’s got, you know, like when it comes to raising capital, it’s like, I’m not raising capital because a lot of founders think that raising clear next round makes them successful. I don’t believe that. I’m raising capital because, you know, even $10,000 or $20,000 to spruce up the UI and UX and marketing will have dividends far greater than me having brought on a co-founder, you know, to do that. And now they own half the company or whatever. And so I think, you know, there’s, there’s many ways to skin that cap, but, you know, also as evidenced by like we talked about the swing or apps that look like they’re straight out of 1998, right? Your product, then dating is the user generated content, right? Look at, you know, Tinder’s UI and UX has not changed substantially since they launched because it doesn’t need to. Yeah, well, like I talked about before, they’re making money. So it’s not like the need is there, right? Yeah, I mean, although match group that owns Tinder, right? I mean, they just launched Archer, which is their new gay product. I mean, there is innovation out there, but the question is at what speed? Yeah, well, it’s also what their priority is, right? So what’s a hand for me, Kingsters, in terms of new features, you mentioned some, maybe you can give us an idea on what you see in the crystal ball. Yeah, you know, new features, I appreciate talking about new features because I think you have to be careful about confusing features with progress, right? This is another trap that I see in my fellow co-founders in the dating industry is constantly piling on new features for which there is questionable utility before you have part of market fit. So I’m trying to be aware of that. The trusted safety features that we’ve already talked about here, I think, are market differentiating. And I think the in-person connection component outside of dating, right? So the industry loves to talk about social discovery now instead of just dating. I think the BDSM community, for instance, like if you meet somebody and at, you know, one of these events that we sponsor and you want to connect with them, they’re like, oh, you have fat life and it’s like, yeah, like fat life sucks, but yeah, I’m there. And let me load up this clunky web UI and find you on fat life, right? It’s like they explicitly don’t want to be in the dating space, but I think also they have become lazy and complacent when it comes to, you know, I think meet Kingsters could be a social discovery app that facilitates dating and connection by being the platform for you to organize your munch or slash. And people in the BDSM world will know those terms and everybody else will, you know, be confused at what I’m talking about. But like the BDSM community is right for a disruptive player that it’s like, maybe you’re not, maybe you’re not looking to date somebody right now, but you are looking for a way to safely connect with other people. So I think meet Kingsters just like every other dating app out there has to be thinking about social connection that is also beyond relationships and it does speak also to a lot of people who are over online dating and want to be able to meet in person. And if you are a kinky person, you have to put yourself in kinky places. And so I think there’s a lot of opportunity there to serve the in person offline BDSM community with some good tech. So you’re live on both mobile and web. What differences have you found between these two channels? Yeah, I mean, we’ve spoken a little bit about the business side of that, which is that, you know, dealing with the app stores is really weird. But, you know, thankfully, one of the easier parts of this journey that I didn’t think was going to be easy web is it’s interesting. The grinder just announced maybe a month before I went live on web that they were going live on web and grinder, I mean, grinders on the New York Stock Exchange. And I think it’s good for the health of the web, right? I mean, I’m an old school sort of internet geek, right? You remember the AOL walled garden, right? It’s sort of like the AOL walled garden where like you’re not going to really get a lot of genuine content and interaction by people when it all has to be acceptable to our overlords and kruppuccino. And so web, it has possibilities like affiliate marketing, but it also has possibilities like we talked about partnerships for content that is inaccessible on native, right? I can’t provide people with sex education content in the app stores, right? It’s not in a way that I would want to, not where you can see a nipple, but you could certainly link to it. Well, no, you can. I mean, I will be bold and say, I mean, we could talk about edge cases all day, right? And ways around these kinds of things, right? Like Reddit, for instance, is the loophole through which a lot of adult content gets to be visible on mobile, but if you’re not at the size of Reddit, I can’t even tell my native app users that it’s cheaper to buy a membership on the web because it violates the terms of service of the app stores. I have to communicate it out of ban and the same is sort of true with adult content. I don’t allow explicit content on my platform right now, even though I could allow it to be uploaded on web and viewed on native, but I think that there is power in leveraging the strengths of these various platforms in such a way that it’s like being safe for the app stores means that my platform does not devolve into all dick picks all the time. But by the same token, I can carefully allow the kinds of content on the web that is too spicy for native, but not too spicy for my brand. And I think there are some opportunities there and, you know, even beyond the obvious ones of like you can only do affiliate on web, you cannot really do affiliate on native. There’s no attribution and so nobody will will touch it. What’s interesting, what advice would you have for founders considering entering this market besides not do it? I was at an industry get together last week where a very old school guy who’s actually very active in Christian dating, that was his advice. Don’t do it. So it’s too late for me. Definitely say if you’re looking for good mental health and financial stability anytime soon, yeah, don’t do it. I would say certainly don’t get into this business if you do not have a truly unique value proposition. I mentioned this at the outside right about AI or video dating or even people who try to sort of do like speed dating or any of the personality tests. These are all as Y combination puts it tar pit ideas. The kinds of ideas where you’re like talking to your buddies over beers and you’re like, yeah, man, I’m going to start a dating app where it’s like you only get matched with hot girls and it’s like, okay, you know, good luck with that. You know, I could still be wrong about my value proposition, but at least I am not among, you know, torrents of competition doing the exact same thing. I think there is something to be said for the hard things are hard. And if they weren’t hard, everybody else would be doing them. So certainly I would say if you’re not a technical founder, find one and you really should have, I would say, I mean, if you’re in the US at least $100,000 in the bank to keep yourself afloat during the hard times. Big time. Now that we’ve covered the business stuff, where’s the best of diving? Yeah, man, and I know I’m talking to you in Asia. I’m in a land block state for diving, but it is a great joy in my life. I was going to say the Colorado River, not a great place to dive. But Colorado speaking, interestingly enough, has per capita the highest number of certified divers of any state in the US. Well, of course they do. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I need to get back to Palau. I’m actually curious if you’ve ever been to Palau. No, we’re sent. It is in Micronesia. I was going to say, I guess I would have known. So, where is it? The only real way to find it is sort of just go on the web and Google it. But it’s basically do east of Indonesia. You get there through Guam, sort of north of Fiji. And amazing. I mean, people talk about, you know, I don’t know if we’re ruining the earth or if the earth’s ruining us or whatever, but it is one of the last wild places. People should, I think, life is short. I think, you know, part of the reason why I’m doing this business is because I want people to have good relationships while they can and not deny themselves the benefit of somebody who believes the same things about life and sex and relationships as they do. And part of that also is just then, if you haven’t traveled recently, like just force yourself to do it because by the time you’re 80, it’s going to be too late. And you got to live your life and enjoy it. So, you know, I’m glad that you, you know, I think you’re the kind of guy that believes that. And I think people in the adult industry, generally speaking, I have found are people who love to live life and are doing this because it provides them a lifestyle business. And that’s why I’m doing it. I could go and so be a CTO at a web development firm somewhere pushing bits of bites around for clients, but it’s not fulfilling the main. No, I get to end. Yeah, this, I mean, this part of the world obviously is very, very popular for that type of thing. I’m not a diver myself. I’ve done some snorkeling, but not a huge water person. I know there’s some spots out here you definitely would enjoy as well. Well, Brad, I’d like to thank you for being our guest today on Adult Sight broker talk. And I hope we’ll get a chance to do this again soon. Yeah, I appreciate it. And, you know, I have a office hours link on my website, meet.kingsters.dating. I love to hear you have customers and potential partners and anybody who’s listening to this and is in this business. I’d love to have virtual coffee with you and you can put time on my calendar and I’d love to chat. Fabulous. Thank you, Brad. My broker tip today is part five of what to do to make your site more valuable for when you decide to sell it later. Last week we talked about new ways to monetize your site. Next, eliminate unneeded expenses. Constantly make sure you’re not spending money you don’t need to. Make sure there isn’t duplication in your staffing. From time to time, check services you pay for like hosting and see if there are better and less expensive options. Take it from me. I’ve done this and saved a bunch. Plus got higher quality hosting in the process. Again, ask us for recommendations. Along with this, make your profit and loss statements show more profit. Increasing sales and reducing expenses obviously does just that. Make sure your P&L statement accurately reflects your company’s actual cost. Not a bunch of personal expenses you put in. This will cost you money when you sell. It may help you with the tax man to put that stuff on your tax return, but it hurts you if you show that stuff on your profit and loss statement when you sell. Remember, every dollar in profit increases the value of your website as much as three to four times. This is why you need a good experienced broker to help lead you through the process. We’ve gotten people thousands of dollars more on their sale just by adjusting the P&L statement to reflect actual business expenses as opposed to a bunch of BS. We’ll talk about this subject more next week. And next week we’ll be speaking with performer and director Yoshi Kawasaki. Adult site broker talk has been brought to you by Webmaster Access September 12th through the 15th. The show will be in beautiful Cyprus at the stunning Grand Resort on the beach. Go to the events page on our website at adultsitebroker.com for a 25% discount for adult site broker talk listeners. To register, go to webmasteraccess.com. And that’s it for this week’s adult site broker talk. I’d once again like to thank my guest for Brad Jones of Meet Kinksters. Talk to you again next week on adult site broker talk. I’m Bruce Friedman. [Music] [Music]
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