IN THE SPOTLIGHT

SuperX Hosting

This week we have a dual interview with Haralds and Rachel from Superb Internet Corp., the parent company of SuperX Adult Hosting, providing quality web hosting services since 1997.IN THE SPOTLIGHT

SuperX Hosting

This week we have a dual interview with Haralds and Rachel from Superb Internet Corp., the parent company of SuperX Adult Hosting, providing quality web hosting services since 1997. Check out their story!

YNOT: Welcome to both of you! Let’s kick things off here with some introductions and company background to familiarize everyone out there.

Haralds: I am the President and CEO of Superb Internet Corp., the parent company of SuperX. I founded the company in the summer of 1996. The SuperX division was started in 1997.

Rachel: I’m in charge of marketing SuperX Adult Hosting online, and managing its affiliate program.

YNOT: What is your company’s mission?

Rachel: Our customer service and tech support teams have won numerous awards. The support we offer our hosting customers is unbeatable in the industry.

YNOT: How do you protect yourself legally considering that hosting companies can really be under the microscope for some of the sites that they host?

Haralds: We haven’t run into any legal problems. We believe that our service agreements protect us well.

YNOT: You both have been involved in the adult Internet for quite some time. What drew you in and how did you get started?

Rachel: In my case, it’s more a matter of what drew me back! I was an Internet marketing specialist with Starnet (Sizzle, Chisel and Redlight) and then SEG/Sweet Entertainment Group (Buttcam, Sweet Loads). For various reasons I decided to get out of the adult industry and go “legit,” though tempted by an offer for employment with Python Media (hubby hates Toronto, couldn’t happen!) So off I went to work for a number of software companies, and though the people were nice and the products I was marketing were good… ultimately, it was boring! Then I applied at Superb Internet Corp. and they asked me to focus on marketing SuperX, the adult hosting division, and I jumped on the chance to get my feet back into the wonderful world of smut. Now I am working to promote it, hoping that if it is wildly successful, Haralds will send me to the conventions that I’ve been missing for years.

YNOT: What were you doing before Superb, Haralds?

Haralds: Before Superb Internet Corp. I was the President and CEO of Superb Entertainment, an interactive entertainment development company (1994 – 1996). I was fortunate to work with many very talented writers, music composers and graphic artists at that time and worked hands-on with those talented people in storyline, level, and mix of sound and action design.

When I started Superb Internet Corp., everything was planned out in advance and the company was profitable within two weeks of being started. My biggest regret is not starting Superb Internet in 1994 – that was the prime time to start a web hosting company. 1996 was two years too late, but, still a good time for it.

YNOT: How about you Rachel?

Rachel: Right before I got into marketing porn I was doing customer and tech support for Starnet, and a lot of it was billing problems. Most commonly it was wives finding the charges from the porn sites on their invoices. Numerous times a woman would call, asking what this charge was for, and I’d try to avoid stating too clearly what it was, but usually they’d pry. At least a dozen times it was gay porn their husbands were viewing, and so then I’d play counselor as the wives sobbed on the phone for hours.

YNOT: I’m sorry, but that last comment made me laugh out loud! (Was that wrong?) I was going to ask you guys for a funny story and you kinda beat me to the punch Rachel. Oh what the hell… do you have any others?

Rachel: Well, our adult hosting business and non-adult hosting business are separate, though the tech support and customer service is the same. It’s ALWAYS funny for me to watch these straight-laced technical wizards try to determine if something is porn or not. Just recently this happened with a BDSM store we have hosting with us, and this one guy was looking at nipple clamps and CBT devices trying to determine if this was really “adult content.”

YNOT: What problems in the world of hosting would you like to see fixed?

Rachel: Well, as a hosting company a big concern of ours is illegal spamming. Obviously getting a block of IPs blocked is really bad for our business. I’d like to see the ethical marketers come out on top.

YNOT: How do you think you can make that happen?

Rachel: In our case, we are happy to work with and support legitimate online marketers, but we have zero tolerance for illegal spamming from our servers. This is all we can do on our end, by offering our support to both individual clients and industry organizations that focus on legitimate email marketing practices.

YNOT: Any future plans for SuperX?

Rachel: Well, I see sneaking my way back into the smut biz by making SuperX the premier adult web hosting company. I plan on our reputation for incredible offerings and award winning support swaying a lot of site owners away from the competition and into business with us. My top priority is getting the word out over the next year, and then getting us represented in the tradeshows and conventions over the next year. In the meantime, we have an excellent reseller program, should anyone be inclined to run a “hosting business.”

YNOT: Do you guys have any newbie advice?

Haralds: For anyone starting a new adult site, my two pieces of advice would be to (a) limit the free content and monitor the stats daily to ensure that traffic is within reasonable levels (one of the most frequent mistakes we see is that a new site puts up too much free content and then is stuck with 10 or even 100 times more traffic than they expected), and (b) to be careful in choosing a hosting provider – be sure to choose a stable, reliable, well-connected company with top support (such as, hmm… SuperX, perhaps?), and also ensure that the bandwidth is unlimited and you only have to pay for traffic (bandwidth limits result in slow, choppy performance and lost potential pay customers). Another point I’d suggest is that all membership-based sites should be using one of the many available ways to proactively, automatically detect and terminate “hijacked” accounts (more than one simultaneous login with the same login/password). Having a password to a pay account stolen and not having it being automatically detected and closed can also greatly push up the traffic use (and thus the bill for hosting) of the site.

Rachel: As far as setting up new sites, it’s so competitive now. I’d recommend focusing on keeping whatever customers you get with you as long as possible by providing them with continuous new content. I’ve been on both sides of the industry now. I worked marketing sites, and now that I’m no longer as involved in marketing sites I actually have to pay for my porn now. The sites that keep me paying my dues monthly are the ones that continuously add new content, and send me newsletters reminding me of this new content. I feel these companies are focusing not just on signing new members, but keeping the ones they have.

YNOT: So Rachel, it sounds like you are a fan of porn?

Rachel: I personally love porn. I don’t have free access the way I used to, so I actually pay for my smut now.

YNOT: What is your favorite kind of content?

Rachel: My personal favorite is artistic fetish, with high quality images.

YNOT: I want to thank you both for taking time out to do this interview for us this week!

Everybody be sure to check out SuperX Hosting at http://www.superx.net!

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