Fans of the Gothic niche, come one, come all! This week In The Spotlight we have AmeliaG from Blue Blood’s Spooky Cash. This woman has it going on when it comes to the dark and sexy world of Goth girls and the fetishes often associated with this highly targeted niche.Fans of the Gothic niche, come one, come all! This week In The Spotlight we have AmeliaG from Blue Blood’s Spooky Cash. This woman has it going on when it comes to the dark and sexy world of Goth girls and the fetishes often associated with this highly targeted niche. Her primary sites include http://www.spookycash.com, http://www.rubberdollies.com, http://www.barelyevil.com and http://www.gothicsluts.com. Let’s meet the gal behind the scenes and discover her colorful and spooky rise to fame…
LAJ: Greetings Amelia! Before I get you to tell all here about your life story, and bug you for some memberships afterwards given that I’m a big Goth fan, tell us about your websites and what kinds of services you provide.
AmeliaG: Blue Blood’s Spooky Cash is my Webmaster affiliate program. It pays out 50/50 and we have hosted galleries, picture of the day, some partner content, no leaks affiliate tours, and a wealth of banners. I’m always interested in Webmaster feedback on what would best help them sell my sites and I often work out special selling materials with extremely large Webmasters.
The current membership sites I have available for Webmasters to promote are GothicSluts.com, BarelyEvil.com, and the new RubberDollies.com. In adult niche terms, GothicSluts.com is sort of the spooky take on a “Babes” site. It has a bit of boy/girl and girl/girl, but primarily GothicSluts.com has a pinup feel. BarelyEvil.com is the spooky take on a teens and strange insertions site, with just a bit of blasphemous spice. RubberDollies.com, my youngest baby, is spooky high gloss latex fetish.
LAJ: Definitely some “bad girl” material that sells so well with its targeted audiences. It’s obvious that for true connoisseurs of the Goth niche, you absolutely have to understand the culture very well. What is your background? Is it safe to say you are the queen of your niche?
AmeliaG: I’ve got an old school view of what is Gothic as being a really dark and beautiful subset of punk. Sort of the “deathrock” perspective. I have a strong DIY drive and I really pioneered erotica in this genre. I did both punk and sf/horror ‘zines before I created Blue Blood. I liked the idea of porn. My first non-music writing clip was for Hustler’s Chic. My honors thesis was titled: “Cross-Cultural and Historical Vampire Legends as a Paradigm for Aggressive Human Sexuality.”
LAJ: If you have that around somewhere I’d love to see it. Tell us more…
AmeliaG: I lived in a punk rock group house in DC, which was very influential in the local Goth-industrial scene and fandom convention circuit. I was really excited about all of that and I wanted something that really celebrated my subculture. I felt like so many of my friends were so creative and talented but unlikely to be given an opportunity for their work to be seen, so I wanted to create a venue to showcase it. Blue Blood in print rapidly grew from a black and white matte, high-production, value zine, to a full-color, glossy, internationally-distributed magazine. I became the person the New York Times Magazine would call if they needed a quote on vampires.
LAJ: That’s pretty prestigious considering the Goth scene that no doubt exists in NY. And I’ll also have to hit you up sometime and get some Black Flag or Minor Threat stories from you if you got ’em. So what was the most important part of Blue Blood?
AmeliaG: The most important part of Blue Blood was probably the pictorials featuring real life couples showing off their genuine sexuality. From the very first issue, the magazine also included erotic fiction by name authors from the horror, science fiction, and fantasy arena. Blue Blood kicked off each issue with an entertainment section where I tried to expose people to artists from all media who they might not otherwise have given a chance. My theory was that, if you are dating someone new, you might be more open to giving a band he or she likes a fair listen. So, if readers were excited by the photography and fiction, then maybe the reviews would also expand their horizons.
LAJ: How do you set yourself apart from your competitors? Is your competition generally friendly or hostile?
AmeliaG: Ha, ha, you got an earful the other night.
LAJ: Yes, I sure did! Now I would like you to give it to everyone else!
AmeliaG: You happened to ask me about this on the first day after I had decided to stop answering questions about this with a “No comment.” I think the Blue Blood sites GothicSluts.com, BarelyEvil.com, and RubberDollies.com all have a certain flavor of their own, but I am aware that there are other sites marketed as being in my niche.
The most important difference between me and what competitors I might have is that every single one of them had a copy of one of my magazines or a membership in one of my sites before they launched a site in the niche.
In the past, I’ve helped a lot of indie and supposedly indie sites start out with traffic and advice and content and press coverage. Having had some of those people engage in what could be considered underhanded practices once they got the benefit of knowing me, I’m a little gun shy now. I’ll still hook people up if I think they are cool, but I’m more careful now to take care of the sort of folks who will remember favors and give props.
As far as some of the big programs go, they are just doing business, but I sure would like it if the ones with Goth or tattoo and piercing traffic upsold my sites because I’ve got the content their surfers are looking for and we’d all get paid.
LAJ: Loyalty is a very tough thing to come by in this industry. It’s so often that no good deed goes unpunished.
What’s your background and where did you live? Everyone is a freak to some degree in our industry (yes, myself included)… what’s your story?
AmeliaG: I’m just kind of a weirdo. Always have marched to the beat of my own drummer. I’ve got a lot of different interests. I was born in London and I’ve lived all over the world. When I got to college, it was my twelfth school in twelve years. I love Los Angeles. First place I ever lived where I was like, “I think I’ll stay here a while.” In Los Angeles, it is okay to be a freak and be successful.
LAJ: Yup… this is definitely a city where you can reinvent yourself and do your own thing.
What made you finally take the plunge into the Internet side of things? How has it been working out for you thus far?
AmeliaG: The bottom dropped out of the magazine market, but I was still driven to create. So we started putting online a lot of the stuff which used to go in the entertainment section. Plus we had a free sort of ad site for the print magazine. And, for a while there, people kept stealing the pictures we were offering for free and selling them without giving us credit. At the time, the fact that people were chopping off the credits bothered me way more than the money factor. There was a point in time where every single supposedly Gothic pay site, AVS, or free site I came across had photos I had either published in Blue Blood or shot with Forrest Black. Forrest was so diligent in policing the newsgroups that he actually had songs written about him.
LAJ: Very interesting…
AmeliaG: As Blue Blood in print started having some problems, I started freelancing a lot more, but it seemed like such a waste to be making my friends wear wigs and cover up their cool tattoos. Over time, we just sort of built up a back catalog of images that didn’t have a place to be seen. As an artist, it is really important to me that what I create be seen.
The initial version of GothicSluts.com was partly just an exercise in teaching myself ImageReady and having a not totally public place to post nude sets that didn’t fit in any of the magazines.
When I got the first check, my eyeballs almost fell out of my head. I still have punk rock discomfort with getting paid for what I do, even though I work all the time. But I do a lot of things out-of-pocket to give back to the scene and that helps.
LAJ: Any companies or Webmasters help you get going on the Internet?
AmeliaG: As far as companies go, I’ve done writing and/or photography for all of the major adult publishing houses either online or in print or both: Playboy, Penthouse, Crescent, AVN, Hustler. Although creatively it is not really where my head is at, I think Hustler would be my favorite there. I think Larry Flynt would have made a great governor because he has managed to get really paid while treating people right.
I shoot as a team with Forrest Black. He is also a wiz at site information structuring and brings mainstream experience with clients such as Capitol Records and eTrade to the Spooky Cash sites. Forrest Black is amazingly multitalented and has also been in charge of design for all of my print projects for years now.
For a long time, all the Blue Blood sites and other projects were sort of off in their own little universe. I run most of the more established Gothic and related traffic sources and my traffic can convert at like one in a hundred for my own sites. I think I was also maybe a little scared that somehow poking my head out of my corner of the ‘Net would somehow make what I was creating less pure. At this point, I think the rest of the world has noticed my niche and folks who are going to promote it might as well promote the real deal that surfers are looking for. Especially now that we pay on all rebills. Also the new RubberDollies.com site has more appeal for general fetish and of course latex traffic. I still feel a little shy on the boards, but I enjoy reading what a lot of people have to say and a bunch of folks have been super nice and made me feel welcome. That has been really awesome. And that nice GrimShawn introduced me to you.
Publishing print zines in a house with thirteen people with funny-colored hair, plus couch surfers stealing my ramen, where we regularly staple-gunned a cockroach to the wall as a warning to the others… well… that was hard. Doing Web sites rocks!
LAJ: Hahaha… I knew people like you back in the day. I was always the “grunge” guy who came over looking for what music was cool, bumming cigarettes out to everyone and hitting on all your friends.
What kinds of guys (or girls) do Gothic girls go for?
AmeliaG: Guys who work for YNOT of course. And Webmasters who send more than 20 joins a day.
LAJ: Haha!
AmeliaG: Seriously, I think one of the intriguing things about Gothic sensuality is that the scene is pretty open to people trying out a lot of different sexual configurations. Especially for women, experimenting with bisexuality is totally accepted and I think girls in the scene are attracted to all sorts of different guys and girls. I know personal style counts a lot for most people. Strength of character and intensity of personality are also really important to me personally. I also like large natural breasts. Generally speaking, I’d say with weird hair and the right outfit and you are in, but knowledge of music or literature or movies or a good sense of humor can do the trick too. Tattoos are a plus too.
LAJ: Do you have any additional comments about the industry, good or bad in general? I know that you’ve been ripped off by a lot of people, but at the same time like you said, you received a decent reception when you made the transition from print to Internet…
AmeliaG: The thing I like least about the Internet is that people can copy what an innovator does so quickly that I think it discourages creativity. A copy of something is never going to be as good as the original, but it means that, while you can get credit for being the best, it is harder to get credit for being first and you can’t talk about a project until it is 100% done.
LAJ: I hear you loud and clear on that.
AmeliaG: On the good side, I’m really psyched at how much I am liking the other people involved in the adult Internet now that I am meeting them. I think the Internet business is pretty perfect for go-getters who don’t totally fit the mold and I think it is really cool how many people in online adult have rich life experiences I can either really relate to or be interested in or both. I’ve been really enjoying reading the boards and going to the parties.
LAJ: Have the latest situations with Acacia or Visa or any of the legal prosecutions underway affected how you do business?
AmeliaG: Well, given that I started out processing through Globill, the Visa thing was kind of a hit in that it knocked my processor out, so I have to resell to all my rebilling members. In a weird way, it was a plus, however, because I moved over to CCBill. I really love my rep Lange over there. Lange made it so we only had like six hours of downtime with the Globill switch. And CCBill’s affiliate interface is just so elegant. I think it is a lot easier to promote sites which process with CCBill. For one thing, I know that personally I will sign up for CCBill-processed programs, even if I only have one place to put up a link because of their feature of combining affiliate accounts under one payment ID. All those links add up.
As far as prosecutions go, I’m not concerned in the slightest. I’m an attorney’s daughter, so I’ve always really dotted my I’s and crossed my T’s with regards to paperwork and such.
LAJ: You are very fortunate in that regard.
AmeliaG: If I think shooting a particular activity could be questionable, I try to steer clear, even if the model really wants to do it. And, while I find the art vs. craft and porn vs. erotica debate tedious, I do genuinely have something to say with the erotic pictures I shoot and publish.
LAJ: This has been a really great interview Amelia! Always fun to meet different and interesting people. Especially those with backgrounds such as yours dealing with and living a subculture that has been a huge interest of mine since adolescence.
Let’s take this interview out with a big ol’ plug for you!
AmeliaG: One of the benefits I give Webmasters who promote Blue Blood’s Spooky Cash is to put them on VIP guest lists for parties. The last party I had the Blue Blood girls of GothicSluts.com and BarelyEvil.com perform at, I pulled in members of Danzig, Marilyn Manson, Social Distortion, The Murderdolls, Orgy, and more. It was off the hook and the Webmasters who came all told me they had a blast.
LAJ: There you have it folks. Get out there and start promoting Blue Blood’s Spooky Cash!
Do you know a Webmaster or company with a great story to tell? Someone innovative, unique or perhaps even entertaining? Tell us about this them for future consideration to be “In The Spotlight” here at YNOTNews!
