@Rose I can understand you and other models do not get a good impression out of this thread, this is not good press. I hope you will accept to have a look at what we've built once it's live, and let the actual craft speak for himself.
@DeezNA There are pretty much only the 2 of us talking in this thread, and it has been like that for a long long time now. We're not addressing anything anymore, but you painting who I am and my probable way of making business according to your interpretations about what I have said. Meanwhile I try to defend since I disagree - which is most probably a terrible strategy given the fact my posts have for consequence more answers, additional views, and none of your esteem coming back. Anyone looking at this thread must have negative feelings about me: your answers are better written and structured, you are someone while I am nobody, and it's goddamn long read.
I have not opted for "damage control" though, and I am still not, because I still believe that you could change your mind about me - or at least consider you have over-interpreted a few things I have said. I hope you will consider what I write in an objective way. I hope
@msbiancabaker @Rose @PicNic @SaffronBurke @TeganTate who now consider risky ever engaging in one of my endeavors will take the time to read as well and let me know what they think.
DeezNA said:
I am addressing you the way that I am because, since you started to view me as directly challenging your business model premise and possibly confrontational, you have been pretty much ignoring the things you don't want to hear and addressing chosen bullet-points extracted out of whatever content I give you and dodging the rest. All the while claiming transparency as being of the utmost importance. You have been doing this since the very beginning, this is just blatant fact.
I always have seen you as challenging my business model premise. As a matter of fact, since the first time we talked around a cam-site idea, you were always challenging the business model. This is a good thing, and I have valued your feedbacks as you mentioned several times.
I tried to reply as comprehensively as possible each time. Yet there are elements which I do not know about in this point of time, that's why I said I cannot answer about it until I got to know it. I have addressed what I had opinions about: being transparent means I can only show what I have. You are kinda asking me to make up answers for the sake of transparency, would you have me answer to specifics which I do not know about and cannot know about right now?
DeezNA said:
You only listen to whoever seems to be the most in agreement with you or whoever you see as being a "successful model" in your eyes; if that changes at any point, their feedback and perspective loses all merit. This speaks volumes to not only the way you perceive and choose to interpret feedback but also how you choose to treat others in a business environment, both of which are extremely poor ways to conduct business and are very discouraging given that you would be at the forefront of providing "assistance" or "troubleshooting" when/if you get this service off the ground. Lest we all forget, you are representing your service here - not just Gerald himself.
You can feel free to continue following this manner of conduct, those that disagree with your methods do not control your actions whatsoever unless you allow them, but it's pretty apparent that it's not the most successful method of networking and market research in the world.
I listened to everyone. You've been challenging me since the beginning, and I have changed my ideas according to your feedbacks.. isn't that sort of proof?
Now, for example, when a model comes and make a testimony about not having payment processing on her personal site because it lacked convenience.. yes I give more importance to her answer in a way. Why? Simply because finding proofs of value is always more difficult than finding people saying there is no value. Many things have already been done, and as you noted yourself there are already many services offering more or less what we want to offer. But to that person, in that case, what we want to offer would be different from what is already on the market and offer a real, tangible, distinctive value! So I should go and try to find more persons in a similar case, or at least do my possible to get to know more bout this person, don't you agree?
If I was Henry Fucking Ford, or anywhere near him, I could design a product servicing most of the cam models. But this is not my case, and not within my budget as well, so I try to find a segment, cam models experiencing very specific difficulties and design a solution that is a true fit for them. This is my chance of getting to know cam models better overtime, learn more about their job and increasingly design a better solution - a solution being of help to more cam models. This is why I value "positives" more than "negatives". This is how we are trained to start businesses, from one segment to more global adoption.
DeezNA said:
I would never put my money in the hands of someone that will only give me honest answers if I am "nice" to them or give me customer/client support if I they decided I "deserved" or "earned" it. I would recommend the same for anyone else in the industry.
That really is not my perspective on things. I believe that's part of the things you over-interpreted but let's see if you reconsider.
DeezNA said:
It may seem to you like an "easy" industry to get into, one that demands less "talent" and professionalism, but the one thing you may not have taken into account is that this industry is utterly crawling with scumbags and parasites that simply want to make a buck off of the risks we will actually take.
Please read carefully the only thing I have written in that regard:
Gerald said:
Also I'm not a "net-pimp" wannabe, adult industry just appears to be an easier business in some regards: many talented people refuse to work in it due to morals / not having to tell their friends & family etc. So opportunities are more numerous.
I never said coming to adult industry was less talent demanding, I said many talented people - people who can easily choose who & what they are going to work for - are choosing not to work in adult industry for personal reasons. This leaves more room to "scumbags and parasites" indeed since it results in a less intensive competition, but it also offers a tremendous opportunity: pushing many "scumbags and parasites" out of business while making a great company. In mainstream the latter is more difficult to achieve, because as the competition is more intensive, its harder to make a profit, and hence most of these people are already out of business!
DeezNA said:
As professionals, since the food on our table depends on it, we are required to take extreme caution and thoroughly screen every person or business we choose to work with - and we get really fucking good at it.
I understand, I still hope to regain my original place as "uncategorized yet". If you want to thoroughly screen me, I gave my real identity on the forum. And it will be displayed on the site when its live.
DeezNA said:
So, like I said several times in this thread, it's your job to build value to us; to prove that you are worth trusting and that your product provides value that overtakes the losses we might suffer. When I go through your list of "value" that you are providing and show you that every single one of them is already available from a competitor right now, or is nearly false advertising on your part... it's a reminder that you are not proving what makes you different or better.
It is my job to build value to
some of you, so that for
those people our product provides value that overtakes the losses we might suffer. It is very related to the point about positive & negative feedbacks.
When you go through my list of "values", you are going through with the eyes of an US based model. Gift rocket is great and available there, many companies offer payment processing as well. So
from your perspective my product lacks value and is not proving different or better
than what you can currently access.
Now please read again that testimony, and see how the situation is different in her case and how our product could be pertinent in this specific case:
"I don´t have a paymet processer because it was just too much work for me,
it´s expensive, I don´t want to deal with chargebacks and
living in Colombia, not ony is it
EXTREMELY difficult to legalise my money and get a bank to accept my ´obscene´ choice of work,
payment processers don´t like dealing with
Colombian banks. THe
only local one
doesn´t like adult work."
Epoch, CCBill, and many other payments processors, do not offer their services to south american cam models. If you want to verify this information, I invite you to go to:
-
https://www.ccbill.com/online-merchants/merchant-signup.php
-
https://epoch.com/business_services/signup?locale=en
I have said it several times, but you did not look like believing me on those points. Please do not assume I am being dishonest, trying to to scam models etc. because I am simply to offer something which is not pertaining to your case. I believe our solution could be nice for US models as well, as it would offer at least as good rates as Customs4U and help them accept credit card payments on their site too without paying $500 or $1000 of upfront costs!
DeezNA said:
When you publicly contest those points out of defensiveness rather than realism (bloating numbers and skewing perspective to make percentages look smaller or bigger, arguing that mediocrity should be 'enough' rather than opting for quality, etc.), you merely look stubborn. You have every right to be, you can decide you're going to build fucking sailboats from now on, I really don't give a shit, but in reality, that reflects on every aspect of your business and your mentality as a business owner/developer.
My numbers are not bloated, please feel free to double check. What do you make this assumption from? I have not seen any question from you regarding my numbers, which you now claim are bloated. I would gladly answer if you have any?
Saying that 100 over which you add 25% processing fees result in 80% revshare - not 75% - because 125 * 0,8 = 100 is not skewing perspective. That's the rule of three.
DeezNA said:
Several of us, myself obviously included, offered our time and insight into any aspect of this query you desired for free. No strings attached. You decided to reply initially with profile messages trying to buy the exact information we are offering you, which is really weird... and then opt for our feedback on this thread when that obviously didn't pan out.
Reply with profile messages? what does that mean? I tried to buy samples of custom video requests, anonymous texts sent by customers. I was never offered this information which I tried to buy, either for free or money.
DeezNA said:
You then accepted our feedback, changed your business model, came back and then got grumpy after we found even more problems. You started taking shit personally - interestingly enough, none of us are and we're helping you design the entire goddamn thing. You then returned to your original "pay for information" tactic (which worked so well the first time...)after we contributed game-changing feedback to your project. Your defense now? "I only pay for specific information." So... the feedback we gave you for free has no value? That's a little insulting.
I changed business model, got mostly feedbacks from you and msbiancabaker who convinced me that we had to protect from chargebacks. Bianca did not see why she should use our solution instead of customs4u because "we would both offer 100%" and I failed to make her understand that our fees added to her customer would be lower - which is good for her - and would work perfectly on mobile - which is not the case of C4U.
I have not become grumpy, I have let you know - with a bad tone - that you were mistaking yourself when arguing that convenience had no value. I apologized for the bad tone, and I am sorry about it.
I am still willing to pay for information for models who would have value using our services, because I would like to know how many payments they process a month and other things related to their income which is not things I have ever seen models sharing precisely for free.
I do not see anything wrong with that, and it most definitely does not mean that your feedback has no value: this is
you taking shit personally. Potentially. But actually I think it just goes with over-interpreting what I meant.
So well, I hope this gives some perspective and possibly put me out of the "scumbags and parasites category". Before talking product again, if you and other people of the ACF community would still like providing me with feedbacks, let's wait for a site up and running.
Have a nice day,
Gérald