Mixpanel Lands Chinese Social Game Developer Five Minutes, Continues Strong Growth

When it comes to social games, one of the most important keys to success is analytics. Fun gameplay is, of course, a big factor, but tweaking viral loops to boost your userbase can make the difference between a fun game no one plays and a hit. Mixpanel is a startup that’s playing an increasingly bigger role in this space, by offering developers tools to track analytics that go deeper than most other available services, like Google Analytics. Last night, I spoke with co-founder Suhail Doshi about the startup’s latest progress. The biggest news: Mixpanel recently signed major Chinese social game company Five Minutes, which is behind the hit cross-platform game Happy Farm and has 23 million daily users across all of its games. But Mixpanel doesn’t just do games — other customers include Slide, Justin.tv, and Posterous. Doshi says the amount of data flowing through Mixpanel is rapidly increasing, with “hundreds of millions” of datapoints a month (he declined to give exact figures, but did provide the graph below). Doshi says that much of Mixpanel’s success stems from its funnel analytics, which allow developers to determine where in their application’s flow users are dropping off, so they can optomize accordingly. Doshi explains that some other services offer funnel analytics as well, but that Mixpanel visualizes it in a way that has struck a chord with developers. Mixpanel launched out of the  Y Combinator program last summer, and got another major vote of confidence in February, when it received seed funding from PayPal and Slide founder Max Levchin and Bebo and Birthday Alarm founder Michael Birch — both of whom have extensive experience in analytics. CrunchBase Information Mixpanel Information provided by CrunchBase

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Mixpanel Lands Chinese Social Game Developer Five Minutes, Continues Strong Growth

Best of Playboy Magazine / Playmate Ideas !

Playboy : The Art of Beauty, is an auction that features famous original and naughty illustrations from the pages of the magazine over the decades—a Playboy collector’s dream. Among the featured artists are Harvey Kurtzman (Fannie Annie in the first photo), Alberto Vargas, Phil Interlandi and Buck Brown.

When Hugh Hefner first launched Playboy Magazine in 1953, it stirred controversy, and still does today. Many on the religious right and extreme feminists are opposed to it. They see Hefner as a pervert who exploits women, rather than a man who truly takes delight in the female form.

Playboy Magazine has also caused many family feuds over the years between husbands and wives, and horrified moms when they found one or two stashed under the beds of their sons—that will not end any time soon.

Whether you love Playboy for eye candy or for the articles (yeah, right), it is here to stay. That said, enjoy the 18 Playboy stories below : “The 17 pieces of original art in this collection represent some of the most extraordinary artists that Playboy has showcased over the past half-century,” Baker said. “Through these works, these Playboy artists offer their vision of the enduring beauty of the quintessential girl next door.”

Hereis the best playboy magazine ideas (from trendhunter.com) :

Playboy As A Fashion Guide – Nick Adams in Fall Fashion Style Section :

Playboy is trying to become more relevant and has had a monthly Playboy Style feature for a couple years. Now they have added some star power – male variety – in the form of Nick Adams who was in Chorus…

Ironic Outrage – Anna Faris Plays Playboy Bunny, Humiliated Over Nude Scene

Today’s hottest internet buzz is about Anna Faris, the new star of “House Bunny”. Anna was publicly outraged this week when she had to break her no nudity clause to fulfill her role acting as a Playboy…

Naughty Olympic Scandals – German Athletes Nude for Playboy

Four female German athletes competing in the Beijing Olympics are searing news wires with their decisions to pose nude for Playboy. The German edition of the girlie magazine have just released their September…

Olympic Fashion Evolutions – Playboy’s Visual History of Women’s Swimwear

Playboy is proving that watching well-built Olympian women in swimwear has taken big steps backwards the past two Olympic games. When Speedo added its LZR Racer swimsuit this year, it covered up more skin…

Fascination With Normal? – Playboy Recruits From The Olive Garden

Seems that Playboy star Kendra Wilkinson has a thing for Olive Garden, and even a thing for the Girls of Olive Garden. So Hef’s girlfriend decided after “literally hundreds” Olive Garden bread sticks that…

Geeks in Playboy – “Hottest Female Bloggers” List

Playboy has chosen nine female bloggers to vote for in a new feature entitled, “Hottest Female Bloggers.” The list includes Boing Boing’s blonde co-editor, Xeni Jardin, San Francisco Chronicle columnist…

Fashion Bunny Ears – Raquel Zimmermann Channels Playboy for Hercules Magazine

The stunning Raquel Zimmermann channels Playboy bunnies and showgirls in a photo shoot for men’s magazine, Hercules. The styling of the shoot is reminiscent of the 70’s glamor, decadence and femme…

Condom Wearing Remotes – Playboy TV

I am not sure if this print ad for Playboy TV, which shows a TV remote control wearing a condom, does the TV channel any favors. I mean, we usually connect the use of condoms with two things: avoiding…

Sexy Mobile Branding – Playboy Phone: Alcatel OT-V770A

Alcatel unveiled several during CTIA Wireless 2008 in Las Vegas and one of the more popular with the men (really?) were its Playboy-branded handset ‘OT-V770A’ It comes in Gold, Pink, or Silver metallic…

Naughty Film for a Religious Festival? – Playboy TV for St Patricks Day

Nice to see Playboy TV supporting St Patrick’s day – a traditionally religious festival – by making their own film using strategically placed shamrocks. Not sure if this technically counts as porn but…

Burton Love Snowboard Series – A Playboy Burton Collaboration

Melt the snow with this collaboration between Burton and Playboy, who have joined forces to create the Burton Love Series snowboards that will hit the slopes at the end of 2008. These ‘love boards’ are…

Playboy Cigar Set – The Art of Combining Vices

This cigar set satisfies two vices in one fell swoop. It helps you do so and somehow lets you look suave in doing so. That is the magic of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy brand – a brand that has become synonymous…

Funded Hypocrisy – Formerly Embarassed Kyla Ebbert Now Posing for Playboy

Kyla Ebbert was the formerly embarrassed woman who was booted from Southwest Airlines for dressing too hot for takeoff. Recall that Kyla was suing Southwest Airlines, noting to the Today Show, “I was…

Consumer Driven Campaigns – Desperate Guys Seek Poolboy Jobs at Playboy Mansion

We have seen a number of consumer driven publicity events lately, where consumers create a blog or some sort of public spectacle in order to get the attention of a corporation. When these consumer driven…

Phone Sex – Playboy Will Run Previews On Mobile Phones

Playboy TV’s latest marketing strategy includes running softcore previews of their realty show ‘Double Entry’ on cell phones. Users who are unable to download streaming video won’t be left out – they’ll…

Playboy in Braille

Blind people enjoy pornography too. That’s what you’ll learn when you pick up a copy of Playboy in braille. Although, if you don’t know how to read braille, you won’t know the difference between an ad…

Magazine Cover Beach Towel – New Playboy Ad Campaign

Put yourself on the cover with the Playboy Beach Towel. The caption screams, “I can be the March Playmate,” which – of course – relates to a campaign to solicit new playmates. Regardless of whether or…

Tame Playboy Premiere sparks excitement in Muslim Indonesia

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Playboy magazine may no longer rate on the sexual cutting edge in some places, but the first edition in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, caused a stir Friday. ADVERTISEMENT… [More]

Leadership !

(Source : Fortune Magazine) — There’s a reason ESPN named John Wooden “coach of the century.” The former UCLA men’s basketball coach led his team to a record ten NCAA men’s championships, a tenure that opened the door to a second career as an authority on leadership – and, now, to the creation of an award at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management in his name. Fortune’s Andy Serwer was on hand when the coach, 97, presented the inaugural John Wooden Global Leadership Award to Starbucks (SBUX, Fortune 500) CEO Howard Schultz, 55 (who at presstime announced plans to close hundreds of stores) – and talked with the heavy-hitters about what makes a great leader.

Fortune: Is someone born a leader, or can leadership be taught?

Wooden: In my opinion you can be taught. You have to have certain qualities that demand respect, but the things that are so important in leadership can be taught. Not everyone can be a leader, though.

F: What is the key to successful leadership?

Wooden: The leader has to command the respect of all those under his supervision – and he must be open to those under his supervision. Effective leadership means having a lot of people working toward a common goal. And when you have that with no one caring who gets the credit, you’re going to accomplish a lot. If you have those just wanting the credit for themselves, you’re not going to get as much accomplished.

F: What do you think, Howard?

Schultz: I would agree with that. The hardest thing about being a leader is demonstrating or showing vulnerability. And that has a lot to do with trust. The interesting thing is the similarities between sports and business. The analogies have been made many times. But [business] is a team sport, and there can be more than one leader. And when the leader demonstrates vulnerability and sensibility and brings people together, the team wins.

F: Where do leaders often fall short?

Wooden: Many leaders don’t listen, and it is one of the greatest methods we have of learning. You need to listen to those under your supervision and to those who are above you. We’d all be a lot wiser if we listened more – not just hearing the words, but listening and not thinking about what we’re going to say.

F: Coach, I have to ask you, are you a Starbucks fan?

Wooden: Well, as I told Mr. Schultz earlier, if he’d get some doughnuts to go with the coffee, I’d like it. [Editor's note: Starbucks sells doughnuts.]

Schultz: I want you to know that when you told me that this afternoon, I immediately called the office. And we are going to hand-deliver doughnuts to your home. And you have to stop calling me “Mr. Schultz.”

How to make better decisions ?

Like many of the tips on happiness, once read they appear self-evident, but they have empirically been proven to help :

• Don’t fear the consequences: if things go wrong it won’t be as bad as you think it will be and you will adapt accordingly
• Go with your gut instincts
• Consider your emotions
• Play the devil’s advocate
• Keep your eye on the ball: try not to succumb to the anchoring effect
• Don’t cry over spilt milk: focus on future costs and benefits, sunk costs are a think of the past
• Look at it another way: pose the question differently to avoid the framing effect
• Beware social pressure
• Limit your options
• Have someone else choose

How to suceed in Blogging Business ?

There are simply too many advantages to enabling a web site with fresh, themed content that is well structured for SEO benefits and that also offers a great platform for creative promotion, not to consider it in the online marketing mix. However, the mis-perceptions about what a blog is and is not abound, even with self-described “blogging experts”.

Despite that, I think it’s a perfectly reasonable question for a company to ask: “Why should we have a blog and what will it do for us?” Answering that question in the most effective way possible starts with understanding the business and marketing goals of the company. Too many SEOs and blogging consultants focus on the mechanical capabilities of a blog and not on the business goals that can be met.

Blogs are simply tools and are only as effective as the programs and people put in place to use them. The degree to which company goals can be met with the applications and current/future benefits of a blog are what we use to determine whether a business blog is appropriate or not.

Effective marketing initiatives have goals and measures of success. Blogs as marketing and PR tools are no different. Some of the measurable effects from business blogging include:

• Media attention
• Speaking requests
• Customer loyalty
• Inbound links to the blog
• Search engine ranking for the corporate site
• Corporate website traffic
• Leads/sales initiated
• Volume of blog traffic
• Technorati and other credible rankings
• Search engine ranking for the blog
• Increased company visibility within the industry
• Increased media coverage
• Improved customer loyalty
• Increased sales leads/revenue/new customers

If the majority of these measures (although each is not equally valuable) can support a company’s online marketing and/or PR objectives, then it makes sense to continue down the blogging path. Other considerations include:

• Hosting platform and limitations
• URL considerations – sub directory, sub domain, different domain
• Client side IT support/requirements/limitations
• Client side blog editorial and strategic ownership
• Client side content sources
• Meshing the blog content schedule with the company/web site marketing plan and communications/messaging objectives
• Client side resource allocation for research, writing, media creation and editorial
• Coordinated promotion of key blog posts
• Coordination of blog posts with offline, search marketing or media relations outreach initiatives
• Blog software, template customization and optimization
• Blog productivity plug-ins and anti SPAM tools
• Third party widgets and tools
• Training on blogging best practices
• Keyword glossaries
• Blogger relations and community outreach
• Developing a social network, profile development and channels of distribution/promotion
• Ongoing blog promotion – RSS, SEO, blog PR, social media
• Blog analytics and monitoring
• Blogging policy, legal considerations and copyright issues
• Trackback and comment policy
• Comment handling
• Quantifying the expense for outside consultants and internal resources for blogging and making estimates for a return on investment

This is a long list and many blogging consultants will tell you how easy it is to throw up a blog and they’re right. It IS easy to go to blogger.com or wordpress.com and create a blog within minutes. So why all the “considerations” you ask?

Things that are easy to get into are typically easy to get out of. The vast majority of blogs started are abandoned. TopRank’s point of view is that it doesn’t make sense to start a blog unless we do so in strategic support of a company’s business goals. With the potential for significant impact on business, marketing and PR goals, it makes sense to do all that you can to ensure success – making sure all bases are covered. Blogging is new territory for most companies and being able to do so with a deeply experienced marketing partner can save a lot of headache, money, resources, time and embarrassment from failure.

Make no mistake, I am personally very biased towards the business building and marketing benefits of business blogs. Using a blog to promote our TopRank brand over the past 3, going on 4 years, has had considerable results that we’re very happy with. When an agency that offers business blog consulting services can successfully implement for themselves the services and consulting offered to clients, it says a lot about the agency’s capabilities.

As it goes with successful visibility on search engines for SEO related terms, the same goes for successful blog marketing programs with the adage, “If you can do it for yourself, you can do it for others”. What I would add to that is that it must be for the right reasons, expectations and measures of success or don’t bother.

Essential Checklist for Starting your Blog

1. Register a domain name with your name and redirect to your blog.
2. Get a “Creative Commons License”
3. Get a feedburner account and direct feeds through feedburner
4. Implement subscription chiclets
5. Enable search
6. Claim your blog at Technorati
7. Allow users to get your blog via email
8. Link to your profile
9. Link to your photo album
10. Announce your blog to the world
11. Provide a way to contact you
12. Link to your bookmarks
13. Create meaningful categories and chunk content
14. Put your photo on the home page
15. Ensure that your RSS feeds are OK
16. Geo-tag your blog at Feedmap
17. Include a blog link in your email signature

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em !

You know how you’ll be trying to do work, and the Internet will inexorably drag you into porn? That’s exactly what happened to Andrew Conru’s career.

A mechanical engineering doctoral student at Stanford who grew up with churchgoing Lutheran parents in northern Indiana–the kind of guy who holds the door for everyone until he gets stuck there so long that someone has to make a joke so he can let go–Conru started the first online dating site, WebPersonals, in the early ’90s. He sold it in 1995, pocketed a minor windfall, and started all over again.

Now he owns 27 sites under an umbrella company called Various, controlling twice as much online dating traffic as better-known rivals Match.com and Yahoo (Charts) Personals. But his clients tend to be much more fun. That’s because most of them post pictures in which they’re having sex. When you’ve already seen your date naked, it’s a lot easier to focus on what she’s saying.

Of all the dating sites Conru has launched–ones for Latinos, seniors, Asians, Jews, churchgoers–the biggest by far is AdultFriendFinder, which accounts for more than 60 percent of Various’s revenue. Conru says his privately held, 450-person company brings in well over $200 million in annual revenue, averaging 40 percent growth for the past nine years. With more than 35 million visitors in 2006 and 75,000 new users registering each day, AFF ranks among the 100 most popular sites in the United States.

It’s become so mainstream that a joke about it appeared in the Diane Keaton and Mandy Moore romantic comedy Because I Said So. “In Hugh Hefner’s day, it was ‘It’s OK to look at sexuality,’” Conru says. “Now it’s OK to be sexual.”

This coming from a gawky, bespectacled guy nicknamed the Professor who collects 1930s movie posters but whose AFF profile states “I’ve had a ménage à trois.” If that’s the least bit true, AdultFriendFinder is a very effective service.

The ultimate fighting machines

Various’s headquarters in Palo Alto isn’t what you’d expect from a major competitor to the likes of Match.com. Through the years the company has gradually taken over almost all of the offices in the dingy, motel-like complex where it moved a decade ago. One of the few non-Various doors has a sign reading “Vineyard Christian Fellowship.” Conru says Vineyard is a very nice neighbor.

Even inside Various’s doors, the company feels less like an industry leader than like a bunch of random businesses. Some people are coding for SeniorFriendFinder, others are doing customer service for FilipinoFriendFinder. It’s like one of those magazine companies where the Christmas-sweatered woman edits Cat Fancy next door to the long-haired Guitar Player rocker dude.

Behind one door on the bottom floor, several writers are working on AFF’s online magazine. A man whose pen name is Colonel Lingus is writing a column about his recent trip to the Adult Entertainment Expo. A woman is reviewing a piece on how to make the most convincing ejaculate for your user photo. Other staffers are digging up “investigative” pieces for March, which they’ve declared, without congressional approval, to be Fantasy Month.

In a bigger office upstairs, Various chief product director Lunatic E’sex–his legal name since he was 21–works with a team that kicks more than 1,000 fake users off AFF each day, people who are trying to solicit visitors to their own adult sites. E’sex, who sports long dark hair, sunglasses, a leather choker, and Guinness-worthy long nails, is particularly good at telling real sex freaks from the fake ones.

Though, to be honest, it’s not that hard. The fake ones are usually incredibly hot women. For a site that gets more traffic than any other adult site in the world, there’s a severe lack of pornworthy images. That’s because the 24 million users from 195 countries (116,000 members in China thus far) are real people, not actresses or models, and many are 40 or older and almost always male, hunting for a very small percentage of women.

Also, it appears that there are a whole lot more swingers out there than anyone thought: Couples make up 10 percent of all accounts and, according to Conru, tend to be the most active. If you wondered what those doughy older people on Real Sex do when they’re not being filmed by HBO, they’re logging in at AFF.

A sex toy story

Sandy Hamilton, a 42-year-old former veterinary technician who lives in Fort Worth, Texas, is so dedicated to the site that she no longer watches TV. If she’s home, she’s on AFF, often putting on free live-cam shows for 1,300 members. She met her ex-roommate on the site and, as the photos on her profile attest, has also met quite a few men very, very intimately.

“I’m not interested in having a relationship right now,” Hamilton says. “Love does me dirty.” Instead, she prefers to meet guys online. The courting ritual goes like this: She sends the required two e-mails back and forth to unlock personal e-mail addresses and real names. Then she’ll have a long, deep phone conversation. After that, she arranges a time to get together, leaves her door unlocked, and gets in bed naked.

“Tim,” 50, met his 28-year-old fiancée on the site, though they tell friends they met at the Coke display at Wal-Mart (Charts). They still have sex with other Peoria, Ill., AFF users about twice a month, and one of those couples will serve as bridesmaid and groomsman at their wedding in May.

“Ours is kind of a Cinderella story,” Tim says. “A lot of people on the site look up to us and ask us for advice.”

These are precisely the people, Conru has learned, who make the best customers. And he’s been looking for customers for a long time. Despite his engineering background, engineering personality, and engineering looks, he has always considered himself an entrepreneur. He started his first enterprise when he was 8, selling his parents’ vegetables to neighbors. (“I learned a lot of business stuff back then,” he says. “No matter how bad I wanted to sell a 10-pound zucchini, no one wanted to buy it.”)

He started five more businesses while he was in grad school. From 1993 to 1997, Conru would work all day on his companies, including a Web development firm, and work on his doctoral thesis at night. The morning he finished it, he threw his notes in the garbage and went in to work as usual.

After figuring out that building websites for others wasn’t nearly as lucrative as creating his own permanent revenue stream, he started another matchmaking site, not entirely unlike the one he had sold to an Australian company.

FriendFinder was intended as a site where people could find buddies for poker or fishing or golf. “When I first started, I thought I could help people,” he says while eating a chicken sandwich he started only after finishing all the salad on his plate. “I was going to give more options to people who weren’t social and didn’t get out much.”

People, perhaps, like mechanical engineering grad students at Stanford who grew up with churchgoing Lutheran parents in northern Indiana.

Getting in the skin game

A few days after the site went live, however, Conru found that people were posting naked pictures of themselves, looking for partners for activities that clearly were not golf. So he deleted them. They’d post them again. And he’d delete them again.

“I decided to create a release valve,” he says about the launch of AdultFriendFinder. “Six months later the adult site was as big as the regular site.”

Conru soon discovered something even more interesting than the fact that people in Peoria are willing to act on their elaborate fantasy lives. He found he could build a community through exclusion. Most other social-networking sites, from Match.com (Charts) and eHarmony to MySpace (Charts) and YouTube (Charts), are based on the assumption that the site that amasses the most users wins.

Conru, on the other hand, believed that people would pay more to be part of a small group of like-minded souls. After all, you don’t shop for a mate at Wal-Mart; you want to go to a cool bar. And if that bar brings in the kind of crowd you like, you’ll pay more for the drinks. The average AFF user pays $20 a month; others shell out as much as $50.

“The more niche you get, the more value per member,” Conru explains. “People pay money for a filter.” He wasn’t bothering to charge members of his religious dating site, BigChurch.com, until the guy who ran it insisted. Registrations jumped immediately. “He was right,” Conru says. “On the Web there are not enough filters for sincerity.”

While most websites then were taking in venture capital, Conru grew the business organically, in part because the VCs didn’t want to have anything to do with his nudie pictures, but also because he’d taken funding for an earlier startup and wound up disappointed with his cut.

“When you start out, you don’t need a lot of money, as the Web 2.0 crowd finally figured out,” he says. “All I really needed was a computer.” And when you discover a world where people pay you to put up their homemade porn, you can keep your costs pretty low.

Selling sex on cells

To expand without investment capital, Conru invented a massive affiliate program, in effect outsourcing his marketing to the public. Anyone who could direct traffic to his sites would get a cut of the business they sent his way, in the deal structure of their choosing (per click, per registration, or as a lifetime cut of the money spent by the referral). Various now has more than 500,000 of these affiliates.

Michael McQuown, whose company Thunder Road places ads for AFF, makes at least a third of his revenue from Various. And he prefers sending users AFF’s way, since it converts traffic to signups the most often. “They pioneered the first really good affiliate program,” McQuown says, “and they still have the best one.”

The affiliate program helped Various to grow, between 1998 and 2001, from 16 employees to 80, forcing Conru to act less like an entrepreneur and more like a CEO–a role he didn’t exactly embrace. “That’s a bumpy ride,” he says. “You go from being one of the guys to running the company. It’s a tough skill for a founder, learning to be hands-off.”

Having never had a boss except in a few summer jobs, Conru had little idea about how to deal with employees he barely knew. So he brought in a human resources coordinator, choosing Natalie Cedeno–a devout Christian who was initially so uncomfortable with AFF that she would ask other employees to spell out dirty words to her–because she was a POW interrogator during Desert Storm. Conru figured those skills would be useful not just for hiring but also for jettisoning people he’d hired too quickly during the boom.

“In 2000 it was so hard to find people that we hired a homeless guy because he could type,” Conru says. “He slept under the desk. We just required that he keep his shoes on.”

During Cedeno’s first three weeks, she canned more than 30 people. “It was emotionally hard,” Conru says. Cedeno also initiated strict compliance rules, such as a time-card system, believing that Various was particularly vulnerable to lawsuits because of the risqué nature of the business. “She said, ‘Do you know what COBRA is?’ And I said, ‘Yes. It’s a snake,’” Conru says. “I knew it was something you threw at people when they left.”
Entrepreneur finds ’suite’ dreams

But as AFF grew, Conru’s entrepreneurial jones was feeling less and less sated. So he kept launching new sites. So many, in fact, that he’s able to decorate the walls near his corner office with posters of the failures (Slim.com, Nicecards.com, Sharerent.com, and others). About half of the things he’s tried over the years ultimately flamed out, he says. “You need to do as many as possible simultaneously and see what sticks. Especially on the Internet, where the cost of entry is so low.”

And when things fail, he doesn’t feel as bad because he has so much other stuff going on. This may be the same theory AFF users employ with dating.

A few years ago, he also started to expand by buying other companies. Back when he ran his small Web development shop in 1994, Conru had hired Lars Mapstead to bang out HTML for $11 an hour. It didn’t take Mapstead long to figure out that he could make a lot more by starting his own Web development company.

So he did. And the two stayed friends, which is surprising once you get a glance at Mapstead. A 37-year-old blond surfer dude with a big shock of chin hair, he wears loud Hawaiian shirts and is known in the industry as Legendary Lars. Since it’s too cold for the Hawaiian shirt, today he’s wearing a ski cap that says “Legendary” and a T-shirt that also says “Legendary.” It’s unlikely that his underwear does not say “Legendary.”

Once Mapstead got into the adult space, first with chat rooms and then with Cams.com (phone sex with a video-camera), he and Conru agreed not to invade each other’s turf. In their own little porn Treaty of Tordesillas, Conru got online communities and Mapstead got live video. In 2005, when the lines started to blur, they merged, with Mapstead getting about 10 percent of Various.

And 100 percent of the attention. Conru, who has avoided interviews through the years and has flown only once since an engine caught fire on a flight from Hawaii eight years ago, has made Mapstead the face of Various. That becomes most apparent every January, when Mapstead drags Conru to Las Vegas for the Adult Entertainment Expo’s Players Ball, where guests dress as pimps and hookers. “He lasts for 15 minutes, then says, ‘There’s nobody to talk to about business here,’” Mapstead says. “Then he goes upstairs to code.”

Live rich, retire richer

Mapstead also generates many of the ideas for new ventures. “Every time he comes up with something, I start thinking, ‘How much work is this going to be?’” Conru says. “There are times I tell Lars not to come up with any more. It’s like he’s beating me up with ideas.” In the past two years, the two have expanded Various from 200 to 450 employees, adding Cams.com workers in Las Vegas and customer service reps in Taiwan and the Philippines.

Conru sees this as another tipping point for the company. “You have to become like a VC,” he says. “My role will be acting as a mentor to a bunch of entrepreneurs. I don’t know if I’m the right person to do that.”

Part of the issue is that if Conru hopes to continue his current growth rate, he can’t just come up with ideas for new sites. He’ll have to acquire more companies. This year his goal is to buy six businesses–preferably outside the adult industry. So far he’s done well with the three purchases he’s made (Gradfinder.com, Bondage.com, and a personals site called Fast Cupid), but he’s been weighing other choices for an uncharacteristically long time.

“Most acquisitions lose money,” he explains. “It’s kind of like playing poker. Poker is a dangerous game. If you’re doing well, you think it’s skill, and if you’re doing poorly, it’s the cards.” Conru also plans to start some mainstream companies based on the features he’s built for his adult sites. For instance, he hopes to use code from Cams.com and AFF to allow tutors in India to teach English to people in China. “We already have the sunk cost,” he says. “We may as well try it in another area.”

This is a good time to segue out of the adult market and online dating, because both of those industries are hurting. Not only has the Web dating niche matured out of its growth phase, but the porn gold rush is over too. “People used to go to bulletin boards, but now they go straight to the search engines, so there’s this tollbooth effect,” Conru says. “All the money is going to the search engines.”

But Conru can’t sell his business and start over, even though that’s exactly what he would have done years ago if he hadn’t slipped into the adult world. He can’t sell because AFF is far too big for any adult company to afford and far too dirty for any mainstream company to stomach. And because most investment banks don’t want to get involved with pictures of people having sex in their own bedrooms–let alone kitchens, living rooms, motel rooms, airplane bathrooms, and Renaissance fairs–he’ll likely never get a fair price for going public.

So unless he can diversify himself out of the vice niche, something not even Philip Morris has been able to do, Conru is destined for a life in porn. He’s at peace with that, though. “I never thought I’d be in the adult business,” he says. “But the people are more fun. They’re less stuffy.” Besides, if he hadn’t, it’s a fair guess that he would never have had that threesome.

Succeed !

Think you can’t afford to implement any effective marketing tactics? Think again. Here are five ways to make a splash on a shoestring budget.

1. Talk to your clients. It’s amazing how much money businesses spend to gather market information and attract new clients when they have a wealth of opportunity and information in their existing client base. One of the best ways to increase revenue is to talk to existing customers. Ideally, this should be done by someone outside your company so clients are willing to be honest and open.

When you assess perceptions, you don’t need to talk to hundreds of individuals; simply choose 5 to ten clients and contact them to ask if they’d participate in a phone interview. Here’s how it works:

* Send a letter asking permission to have someone contact them about your company.
* Have the interviewer call and ask value-based questions such as:

What problems were you trying to solve or what challenges were you facing when you considered the services of Company ABC?
How important were Company ABC’s services in solving your problems or addressing your challenges?
What did you value most about this company’s work?
What other products or services do you wish they offered that could help you with other business challenges?
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After all the interviews have been conducted, compile the information to discover trends and themes.
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Send a thank-you letter to every client who participated. Include key lessons from the interviews and explain the specific changes you plan to make to your business based on this information.

The important part here is to use what you learn. If you don’t make changes to your business, then you’ve wasted everyone’s time. One company that recently did this tripled its business in one year—the owners learned what people wanted, how their solution made a difference, how to present it, and how to price it, and then proceeded to make changes that improved those areas.

Keys to success: The conversation with your customers is just that, a conversation. Don’t fire questions at them; instead, have the interviewer engage in a conversation and gather as much valuable data as you can. Remember, it’s not about how satisfied they are—it’s about how much they valued your product or service.

2. Creatively package your marketing campaigns. A postcard is one way to market your business. But how about putting a small box together with a fork, knife, spoon and a custom printed napkin that invites your prospect to “have lunch on us?” Think outside the box, and your marketing campaigns will have more impact.

And don’t be afraid to see what other people in other industries are doing and adapt that to your business. Think about the little details that will get attention. I once did a marketing program to the food industry that had a brochure vacuum-sealed in the same plastic used to wrap bacon. The same piece sent to technology companies used static shield envelopes. This campaign earned 96% recognition when follow-up calls were placed.

Keys to success: Set a clear objective for your marketing campaign, and identify how you’ll measure its success. Then follow up to measure the results and adjust the program if necessary.

3. Get the word out with publicity. Think you can’t do PR or publicity without employing the services of a high-priced firm? You can! Although a good firm brings tremendous contacts and experience, most small companies can do enough PR on their own to spark the public’s interest. One great resource for the media unsavvy comes from Shock PR, a Holliston, Massachusetts-based public relations firm. Their product, PR in a Box, delivers templates, tips and step-by-step instructions on how to prepare releases and pitch stories that will intrigue the media.

Keys to success: In one word, leverage. Though it does happen, don’t expect one story placement to generate thousands in revenue. Your success depends on leveraging each press release, each article and each published mention. Put it all on your Web site: Create a news page and add a What’s New area on your home page. Add it to your marketing kit and send the piece to clients, colleagues and professional organizations. Include a note in your newsletter that says ‘Recently Seen In…’ And remember: PR is more cost-effective and more credible than advertising.

4. Leverage existing relationships. Most people know at least 200 people. Do the math: If you know 200 people and they each know 200 people, that’s 40,000 potential contacts! Spend time developing relationships with the people you already know—clients, colleagues, people you meet through professional networking organizations, friends and even family.

Start by making a list of all the people you know. Next, prioritize your list into As, Bs and Cs. As are your advocates. These are the people who feel strongly about you. They’re the “cheerleaders” who would refer business to you right now. Bs could become advocates if they knew more about you, so you need to spend time with these people to educate them. Cs are those people you don’t communicate with often enough. You may keep them in the loop, but they need more time and nurturing before they’d refer any business your way. If there are any names that remain, delete them.

Keys to success: Educate, don’t sell. The key here is to build relationships. These develop over time as you create credibility and trust. To be truly effective, you must always be on the lookout for ways you can help your network. Start from the perspective of giving more than you ask, and your network will become your most valuable marketing tool.

5. Commit to e-mail marketing. Marketing through e-mail is flexible, cost-effective, easy to measure (assuming you put the right tracking in place), and high impact. It allows you to easily drive traffic to your Web site, reach a broad geographic audience and stay in frequent contact with your customers and prospects. E-mail marketing allows you to market your services and establish your expertise with your audience.

Use it for newsletters, new product announcements or to share your publicity success—the ideas are endless. But know that this flexibility and ease-of-use can cause problems. Remember, this is a marketing campaign. So be sure to think it through, develop an appropriate message, create a piece that reflects your brand, know your objectives, and make sure the information is valuable for your market, or people will quickly unsubscribe.

Keys to success: Don’t be seen as a “spammer”! Send e-mail only to those people who have given permission. When someone asks to be removed, respond immediately.