Female Friendly
Not all women involved in the adult entertainment industry are found in front of the camera or come from uneducated rural backgrounds.
Yesterday I had lunch with Pamela, a woman who left corporate America for the wonderful world of porn to find out why she made the jump.
To my surprise, she told of an industry that accepts and respects women who know what they are doing and can get the job done.
“When I first entered the world of adult entertainment, as a woman, the natural response from the guys was ‘Are you talent?’ ” she said. “But that reaction is not that different from my former life in the brick-and-mortar world. I have always worked in male-dominated industries and have been the lone woman in a room full of men who thought I was someone's assistant or the "token" female hire for the company.”
Pamela started her career in marketing for a small industrial equipment company in Cleveland and eventually moved on to start her own company when she was 23.
After completing her MBA, she moved on to take the position of West Coast regional manager with responsibility for an $8 million territory — again, in an industry dominated by men.
Covering 11 states required traveling about 80-90 percent of the time, so the quality of life wasn't all that great.
“I wanted to have my own business again, and I wanted to do something fun,” she said. “The general population would believe that my corporate career choices were much better or more appropriate places for a woman to work, and that I would be treated "better," but I can tell them that they would be dead wrong!”
She has been interested in the world of porn for about five years, and knew that she didn't want to be a producer or content.
“When DVDs For A Buck (an adult movie club that allows its members to create and/or expand their own adult movie collection) presented itself to me, I knew it was a perfect fit,” she said. “Having spent a number of years in marketing and sales for distribution companies, I jumped at the chance to apply my skills to the company.”
Her previous life in the corporate world was exhausting, but had been an excellent training ground for attending webmaster events — the travel, the partying, the late nights — one right after the other, all while working with various people to help grow the business.
“The sales methodology for adult online is a little different in that while you can, and do, buy advertising, you are also "selling" your program to other webmasters so that they will help you promote your product,” she said.
Being online also means that getting feedback from your customer is a little more difficult.
Since you're not in front of them, you rely more on statistics and performance, which can take a little longer to give you a complete picture of what is really going on, not to mention the potential lag time of finding out if what you're tweaking is working or not.
“What I have learned from the industry so far is that it is a more hospitable environment for professional women than most brick-and-mortar industries are,” she said. “I believe that a large part of the acceptance of women in adult is because there are so many women working in all areas of adult.”
From her experience, as long as you are professional and have a good attitude, you can sit down and have a very productive conversation regarding traffic swaps, upselling techniques, new business ideas and promotions with any other program and not be encumbered with the label of "female."
“It doesn't matter here,” she said. “
However she warns that the adult industry, like many others, can be an all-consuming 24/7 business.
“Work hard, but make sure that you take care of yourself in the process,” she said. “Without the relaxation part, you become less effective.”
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