Search for Tomorrow: Spike Goldberg on New Ways to Find Content

Self-professed “porn nerd” Spike Goldberg was interested in creating an amateur porn series online; he met Homegrown Video’s Farrell Timlake, who made him a partner in Homegrown’s parent entity; by 2000, Homegrown was the go-to source for online amateur videos. In 2013 Goldberg was promoted to CEO of Homegrown Video, bringing more than a decade of hands-on experience, industry relationships, and strong business ethics to the position. This article originally ran in the January 2014 issue of AVN magazine. When I started online, a domain was all you needed to make money. You could put up a picture of anyone half-naked and find a way to cash in on it. Of course, all good things do come to an end. In the case of the adult industry online, it didn’t happen overnight, but it did over years. Like watching continents drift apart, we suddenly are standing at the edge of a new reality. A slight shift in Google’s algorithms or subtle change in public perceptions and suddenly many domains no longer seem to hold the weight or value they used to carry. There are two important exceptions worth noting: first, if a domain is a brand, or based around a brand; and second, if there is an emotional factor for the buyer involved in the purchase. Beyond those two factors, in today’s market, it’s hard for me to understand why anyone would choose to buy an expensive domain based on the keywords in the URL alone. In the old days, trying to brand something was a matter of hunting down a domain that generated enough type-ins to earn substantial and sustainable organic traffic. Ideally, the goal was to get a domain that covered a niche. Supposedly, the traffic would have been targeted and easiest to convert, as the theory went. This was true in the beginning, but the world shifted, primarily because of the way Google changed user interaction with domains. In the past, visitors typing in a specific niche keyword would ask Google to make sure it was sending them to the sites that best catered to that niche. However, oftentimes sites would merely use the niche keyword domain as a lure, then pull a “bait and switch”—causing the user to end up at a destination domain that barely serviced his or her respective interests. So Google constantly adjusted and tweaked its results to try and deliver sites that actually fulfilled the purpose and intent of the consumer’s demands. Eventually, this shifted importance away from the keyword, toward a consensus of relevance. When the mobile phone revolution came around, users could do a voice search in order to find something. No longer was the exact domain the most important factor. The more descriptive and accurate the search, the better the search results. You might not find a website called “hairy white MILFs fucking black guys with big dicks” but if you search that string, you are likely to find a site like Dogfart.com, for example. The domain might not tell you what you want, but the content definitely delivers what the surfer is looking to find. This inevitably will continue to compound as time goes on. Each new generation that is entering into the market is going to be less inclined to find content the same way its predecessors had found it. To succeed, each new generation of marketers will have to adjust to evolving modes of user behavior. Opportunity definitely still exists. Yes, it’s not the same opportunity as it was 10 years ago. Those were the days of old. They are not coming back. The new opportunity comes in the form of new technologies, new ways users are making connections, and changing attitudes of potential customers. What is to come? For those who have had a chance to speak with me at a show, I often ask this question: What is your plan for the next five years? The answers are always interesting but they essentially boil down to three themes. One group is always confident things will stay sort of the same. Another group thinks all hope is lost and there will not be five years left in this industry. Finally, there is a third group making adjustments, innovating, and changing the way they see things in order to evolve with the market dynamically. Time and history have shown that if you stay in that first group you will miss out on new opportunities. If you let yourself fall into that second group your beliefs become self-fulfilling. It’s that third group of evolutionary entrepreneurs who find ways to work in the new reality and thrive. Often, the process of accepting that change has taken place is harder for people than the work necessary to adapt to it.