INDUSTRY NEWS
In mid January and into early February of this year, Flying Crocodile Inc. (FCI) was mentioned all over major adult industry news resources. Back then, the news wasn’t good for FCI.INDUSTRY NEWS
In mid January and into early February of this year, Flying Crocodile Inc. (FCI) was mentioned all over major adult industry news resources. Back then, the news wasn’t good for FCI. The company, which was striving to be a major force a la Cyber Erotica, was facing imminent closure. Andrew Edmond, the brash, young, controversial CEO of FCI announced that he would be putting up his company’s properties for sale, including the popular Sex Tracker and Money Tree programs.
Shortly after the announcement of the sale, Edmond resigned. At the time, it was unclear what would become of the popular FCI entity.
So two months after Edmond’s resignation, what has become of FCI?
“We’re very pleased with the way things are going here,” said Shawn Boday, from FCI headquarters in Seattle. Boday, who along with Ross Perkins are two of the original founders and now owners of FCI, also added, “We have released some great products and we have improved our stat counters.”
New innovation and technology along with speedy implementation of services for webmasters is the modus operandi for the new face of FCI. “We’re tracking a lot more data for webmasters,” said Boday.
One major advancement that the new FCI has achieved is the launch of its new Money Tree option, where instead of pay outs coming from click-throughs or signups like most other programs, The new Money Tree option pays out according to surfer impressions. This program is called Money Tree CPM (CPM is a print advertising term, literally, “cost per thousand.”) Apparently, FCI has borrowed a page from mainstream advertising. The CPM method is based upon a traditional pay-per-impression business model.
What are the advantages of this program for webmasters? Say you have a banner on a site. Unless someone clicks on it or somebody goes for a signup, that’s the only way a webmaster gets revenue. If a webmaster loads the Money Tree banner on their page, they earn money.
How is this a win-win situation for FCI and the webmaster?
“It’s profitable for us because the way the program works,” says Boday, “we’ve set up an application where we believe the return for us is high enough where we can pay-per-impression.” Boday also mentions that most programs that pay-per-impression end up cheating the webmaster and aren’t used properly.
Ross Perkins enthusiastically said about the program,” There are no other companies currently doing this.”
When asked if the innovations with the Money Tree program would have been possible just a few months ago, Perkins answered,” The people who built the technology are the same … it’s just a matter of implementation.”
Also, FCI’s Sex Tracker stats counter now has an upgraded layout with multiple dimensional capabilities. 3-D graphic utilities are ahead of the innovation curve. Sex Tracker’s referrer stats are tracked and based upon raw, unique and new visitors. Perkins says that the display utilities for the raw, unique and new visitor stats will be available soon.
Perkins provides an example of why this technology is vital to the interests of webmasters:
“If you’re John Doe webmaster and you’re looking at referrer sites, site A has referred you 20 raw hits, 10 of which were unique, 1 was a new person. Site B sent 50 raw hits, but only one was unique, that person hit your site 50 times … with site B, you can’t determine the quality of traffic that’s sent your way.”
David Eisenberg, one of the creative directors at FCI said about the new Sex Tracker technology, “The new upgrade to our stats is a much needed improvement that showcases in a more contemporary way the amount of data and detail we can offer our webmasters in a much more intuitive and aesthetically pleasing manner.”
The unsung heroes of the new technological advances for FCI are the programming staff. “They really deserve the credit for the success of the new program,” said Eisenberg. “We relied heavily on the feedback we received along the way from a group of webmasters who were given advance access to the new technology.”
The New FCI has produced a new counter, which is now helping webmasters determine both quality and quantity of traffic. This is a major accomplishment for a company that once provided paychecks to over 100 employees, only to slash their staff to 12 back in January.
“I think it’s great that we’re the ones that are innovating this technology,” said Boday. “I think other companies might have had the idea, they just haven’t implemented it.” Rather than regurgitating ideas, Boday hopes that everything FCI is building is six months to a year ahead of what everyone else is doing. “That’s the only way we’re going to grow as an industry is staying ahead of the innovation curve,” added Boday.
Currently, FCI is the employer of 40 employees. “Forty people is a good comfy number,” said Perkins. “It’s a lot more difficult to find the tech people to implement ideas than to pay for them.”
“It’s not the new people we have,” says Boday. “We’re more invigorated and happier to be here now. Our goal is to rebuild our image to what it was 1 1/2 years ago. We’ve come out with some incredible products, but somewhere along the line we lost focus.”
FCI’s Public Relations director Jane Duvall echoed Boday’s sentiments. “Things are a lot more streamlined now. A lot of programming ideas were getting stuck. Having a a major corporate structure in this industry doesn’t work; you have to be quick and ready to make instantaneous changes. We were losing our agility … we have it back now … we’re smaller but scrappier.”
It’s evident that the new FCI is open to new ideas and new partnerships. Another new idea that has been implemented is the bonus payout from Money Tree. The current promotion, which FCI hopes to feature on a regular basis, increases payouts to $50 from $32.
Boday and Perkins mention that the feedback thus far has been extremely positive in regards to the new Money Tree and Sex Tracker stat programs. Boday also adds that webmasters who use the old program on Money Tree (pay-per-sale) can also simultaneously use the new cost-per-impression program.
“I feel almost as though we have gone full circle,” said Eisenberg. “Over a year and a half ago, we truly felt as though the work we were doing was meaningful and helpful to our webmasters … and along the way something changed.” That something, said Eisenberg, was too many levels of unnecessary management who really didn’t have any experience or the knowledge of the adult Internet.”
How does Eisenberg feel now? “I can’t stress enough how much of a change has happened here at FCI. Our entire culture feels different. There is a new sense of energy in our team and we are all very excited to get back on track and do what we do best: provide world class tools and services to the webmaster community.”
“We’re going to be here for a long time,” said Duvall. “There are probably still people who think we’re on our last leg. Our traffic hasn’t dropped. The counters are still doing excellent. The Money Tree program is great. If anyone has ideas, we want to provide the tools for the webmasters.”
