By Peter Berton
LOS ANGELES – Founded in 2007, the adult video studio Magnus began as a producer of niche porn videos. A keen eye on the evolving adult market and consumer tech advances, plus a willingness to break into new areas, resulted in an expansion to the studio’s range.
The result: Magnus has weathered downturns in the adult entertainment market. YNOT.com spoke to the studio’s general manager, Roupen Mouradian, about the secrets to success in a free-porn-saturated world.
YNOT: Take us back to the beginning. How did Magnus come to be?
Roupen Mouradian: I have been in the adult industry since 2003. My business partner and I first started with an online DVD and toy store. Then we progressed to services for DVD studios like authoring, design, printing and replication.
Eventually we founded our own studio, Magnus, and shot mostly gay and shemale content. Since then, we have expanded into many other niches and continue to try to evolve based on customer desires and available technologies.
Why an adult studio?
After being in the service industry and working with many DVD studios to create their DVDs and artwork, we realized the only step we were missing was to actually shoot or buy the content ourselves. We also knew DVD wasn’t going to be around long-term, so if we wanted to make our place in adult we had to go out of our comfort zone.
How has Magnus evolved over the years?
Originally we were focussed on gay and shemale [content]. It did very well for us, and we continue to have a strong presence in those niches.
More recently, though, I would say our most popular product has been our authentic Japanese content at Maiko XXX and all the individual paysites: Maiko Creampies, Maiko MILFs and Maiko Teens.
We also have many other parts of our network, such as the official Combat Zone website, the official CDI Digital website and our lesbian site, XXX Abigail.
Our CDI Digital website consists entirely of classic 1980s porn that we are digitizing and re-mastering from originals that have been locked up in storage for more than 20 years, so it is very exciting stuff.
How extensive is your gay library?
Our gay library is great. We shoot that content all over the world and offer a good variety of niches you can’t find anywhere [else], all grouped in one place.
Customers really like the variety. You can check out twinks or black guys or Asian guys all in one place, and best of all it’s almost all in [high-definition format]. Although it is a very popular part of our network, I would say our business is divided pretty evenly between our gay, shemale and straight [content]. For straight, though, our Asian seems to be what people like best.
What content performs best financially?
Our Maiko individual pay sites do the best — especially Maiko MILFs. For Asian or MILF traffic, its conversion is untouched.
The final, edited version of the scene is usually about 50 minutes [long], because we interview, tease, fuck and get some extra footage for each girl. It takes a lot of time and care to make these scenes, but the end product is worth it.
For gay, we were surprised how popular the FetishDudes.com site is. There’s so much fucking out there, sometimes it’s good to live out your other sexual fantasies that don’t involve actual sex.
How do you keep customers coming back?
We know you can get a lot of free porn out there, but we try to keep much of our content under lock and key, so you can’t just go to a tube site and see a lot of the scenes we offer. Of course, we throw out clips on all the tubes to give people a taste of what they can get [at our site], and we hope they see the value in our products.
We also try to make things convenient for our customers. Just recently, we started rolling out new, responsive layouts for all our pay sites. The new layouts, featuring our new HTML5 player, offer maximum compatibility and a great interface whether you want to browse our sites on your PC, tablet or mobile [device].
All of our videos come in [multiple] encodings to accommodate different platforms, along with an HD version customers can download and really get a crystal-clear picture of our scenes.
We’ll always keep coming up with ways to make what we sell better at a good price.
How has the adult business changed since you founded Magnus?
It sure was a lot easier to get customers back in 2007!
We’ve always focused on making good content — that’s never changed. Our quality standards are up there, because we want our customers to know there’s value in what they pay for.
In terms of technology, we try to stay at the front of the curve, because we know people who are paying for the latest gadgets will appreciate a site that lets them utilize that gadget to the max. Nobody wants to surf to a site on their iPad and realize they can’t play any of the videos. How are you supposed to jerk off in the bathroom like that?
What’s your plan for the future?
Our goal is to keep amassing content; keep offering our customers more and more scenes they can’t get anywhere else.
So often we see people sign up for a few months and maybe leave for a few months, but then come right back because they want to see what we have [that’s] new. We benefit from this, and our affiliates love the easy sales, too.
We’re also very excited about the eventual merger of the TV and the computer. As smart TVs start taking over households, we plan to offer membership packages dedicated to that market.
We are always on the lookout for new technologies that can help deliver our content in as many ways as possible. We’re also always working with new affiliates to find new ways to increase our exposure to potential customers. We have a dedicated, full-time team that implements features, delivers content, designs custom promotional materials — whatever is needed to get us in as many places as possible.
