AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands—The thought of what not to do when spending money on your business turned into a goldmine of practical advice Saturday at Webmaster Access.

“I don’t think you should spend money where you don’t have the opportunity to share your message,” Brad Mitchell, CEO of MojoHost, told the audience during the lead-off seminar titled “Taking Charge in North America.”

“When it comes to B2B marketing, some of the best promotion is absolutely free. Share your story.”

Mitchell joined a parade of seasoned executives on the Seminar Stage at the DoubleTree by Hilton for a series of educational sessions sponsored by Stripchat with an international theme. With talk ranging from banking in Amsterdam to nightlife in Bucharest to granny porn in Germany, there was hardly a dull moment at the 13th annual conference.

Panels dedicated to maximizing opportunities in various major regions around the world kept attendees engaged and informed on the second full day of the three-day show presented by iMonetizeIt, TopOffers and Aurora Global.

Moderated by veteran industry attorney Corey Silverstein inside the jammed-to-capacity Leeds 1 Meeting Room, the discussion about doing better business in North America also featured Jamie Rodriguez (Flirt4Free), Jo Merlone (Kiwi Sourcing), Katy (BongaCash) and Todd Spaits (YanksVR).

The founder and chief marketing officer of YanksCash, who holds an MBA from the University of Washington, said the foundation of his company is the 100-percent female-produced content on its flagship site, Yanks.com.

“You need a compelling story,” Spaits said. “You need to have a narrative that people want to be involved in.”

Switching topics, Silverstein noted it’s much harder than it used to be to make a profit in adult.

“Just throwing something up isn’t enough,” Silverstein said.

Mitchell agreed. The 17-year industry veteran, whose company manages an active client list of 700 but has an “inactive” list of 1000, remarked, “I think people don’t give enough thought to having a whole business plan or proper budget. …I’ve seen a generational changing of people every four or five years, and then there’s a portion of us you just can’t kill.

“The best piece of advice I can give is to build something of lasting value, something that has shelf life.”

Silverstein asked the panel to recommend what could be done to keep today’s affiliate intrigued.

“Number One is personalized care,” said Katy, who is senior affiliate manager for BongaCash. “Every affiliate now has a personal manager. The Number One mistake of affiliates is they don’t speak enough with their affiliate managers. They register, but don’t really go deeply into it.”

Flirt4Free’s Director of Product Jamie Rodriguez echoed the sentiment, citing an example of a new cam model who signs up for her platform but then doesn’t stay in contact.

“You’ll see better results by having that clear communication,” Rodriguez said.

Tucked between the lineup of international panels, Webmaster Access hosted a lively discussion with six industry heavyweights who took one of the most far-reaching topics of the weekend—“Age Verification and the U.K. Law.” 

Tim Henning of ASACP moderated the panel that included Steve Winyard (AV Secure), David Cooke (AgeID), Vince Charlton (AdultWork), Rudd Apsey (VeriMe), Alastair Graham (Xcreds) and Eric Paul Leue (Free Speech Coalition).

Speaking before a standing-room-only crowd, the group shared their knowledge about how to prepare for the U.K.’s Digital Economy Act, which takes effect in April 2018.

Cooke, the director of digital & new media for AgeID in Mindgeek’s London office, said it was “incredibly refreshing” to be consulted by U.K. government officials who are crafting the Act.

“They want to make a law that works,” Cooke said.

Apsey, the managing director of VeriMe who is well-versed in dealing with regulators, consumers and the moral lobbyists in the U.K., suggested that the whole world is watching how the adult industry will respond to the law.

“There are a lot of eyeballs on this,” Apsey said. “If we get it right in the U.K. the principle will be adapted in other parts of the world, like gaming and gambling.”

That Age Verification session paved the way for an entertaining panel focused on how to establish your business footprint in Eastern Europe. Experts from the region including Vuk Popovic (Quantox), Igor Komarenko (Aurora Global), Alex Osminin (TrafficHunt), Max Akhlestin (LeadBit) and Mugur Frunzetti (Studio 20) took the stage for the high-energy exchange moderated by YNOT co-owner Jay Kopita.

Frunzetti, who is based in Romania but earned his Master’s from Cal-Berkeley, owns a global network of live cam studios operating in Europe and the U.S. He called Romania one of the “safest” countries in the world to do business and “as long as you follow rules and get good written advice from your lawyer, you won’t have any problem” setting up shop in his country.

Komarenko, who is based in Ukraine, pointed out that low salaries in Eastern Europe—the average is 300-500 euros per month—make it challenging to start something there. Quantox’s Popovic agreed, saying the average salary in his home country of Serbia is €400 a month.

But that doesn’t mean there is any lack of talent in terms of finding talented web developers in Eastern Europe, the group added.

“The quality is very high,” Komarenko said.

Alex Osminin, the CEO of TrafficHunt, revealed that porn is actually illegal in Ukraine.

“If you do adult in Ukraine, don’t tell anybody,” he joked. But fortunately the law is old and “nobody care” unless it’s out in the open, Osminin added.

Komarenko, a native of Kiev, said a person technically could be jailed “even if you have porn on your hard drive.”

Somehow, the banter shifted to the club scene in Eastern Europe, prompting Popovic to declare he has traveled the world and finds the only place with better nightlife than Belgrade is Bucharest.

YNOT’s Jay Kopita concurred.

“If I had the means and the time I would live in Bucharest,” Kopita said. 

The “Profiting in Germany” panel, led by Porndoe’s Head of Business Development Yannick Ferreri, featured insights from Francis Kinder (TrafficPartner), Sebastian König (Exoclick), Patrick Friedrich (ECardon Payments), Andy Wullmer (SGM Media); Lars Bleck (affiliate) and Paul Kluzak (CCBill).

Kluzak, the European sales executive for CCBill who has been with the Arizona-based firm for 15 years, said his grandfather immigrated from Germany to the U.S.

“You need to have a bank where your traffic is,” Kluzak said. “If you don’t, conversions will be shit.”

Francis Kinder, the senior sales manager for TrafficPartner who has worked in marketing since 2011, shared that in his view, “Age is more important than geo.”

“Age targeting is also important,” said Kinder, who is responsible for the acquisition of new traffic sources for TrafficPartner, one of the largest operators of Casual Dating communities in Europe. “There’s a big difference between an 18-year-old user and a 60-year-old user. A product targeted for an older audience will make the most money.”

The panel emphasized “localization,” or focusing on niches that perform better in specific regions.

“In Germany, the granny stuff never gets old,” cracked Lars Bleck, who started with an international online advertising network in 2005 and this month began working as an independent affiliate with a focus on dating and media buying.

“It’s true,” Ferreri added. “It sells like fucking crazy.”

Sebastian König, the German market specialist for ExoClick, said, “For us, granny dating is the big thing. Germans are kinky fucks.”

Ferreri stressed the importance of having translators for each country to keep pages true to the native language and way of speaking.

“If you don’t have that native speaker they’ll spot you very quickly,” Ferreri said.

“Blowjob is different in every language, but the sign language is the same.”

In the hometown favorite “Navigating the Netherlands” panel, AVN Hall of Fame webmaster Patrick The Hun, founder of The Hun’s Yellow Pages, said “it’s hard to get a loan” here if you own an adult company.

“They only give you a loan if you can prove you don’t need it,” The Hun said, drawing laughter from another wall-to-wall audience.

He was joined by moderator Norman Hauwert (Leaseweb) and fellow panelists Bram (DatingCash), Jacco Kwakkel (YourChoice.nl), Mike de Jong (Verotel), Leon Dijksman (Telefuture) and MojoHost’s Brad Mitchell, who recently set up a Dutch corporation for his industry-leading web hosting company.

“We thought we would be serving our customers better if we set up Dutch banking,” Mitchell reasoned. “An LLC in Netherlands is a BV. It’s a lot more paperwork here than in the US.”

Hauwert, a hosting veteran also known as “The Batman,” noted “it’s easier to receive your customers outside of Amsterdam.”

“Getting here—parking your car here—it’s a nightmare and expensive,” he said. “Make sure you stay in the area of Schiphol [Airport], especially when you’re doing international business.”

Mike de Jong, who does global business development for Verotel, said in The Netherlands credit cards are the last form of payment citizens use.  

“We’re active in 22 countries doing carrier billing and this is the worst country,” de Jong said.

It is legal to shoot porn in a private residence in The Netherlands, the group reassured.

“Be careful about shooting in church,” cracked The Hun.

In a first for Webmaster Access, Japan received a spotlight as the team from Japanese media giant DMM.com—parent company of R18.com—delivered a special presentation about their remarkable market share in the country.

Angela Azzarone led the discussion with her colleagues Paolo Ragone, Mingchang Tsai, Alain Garcia and Haruka.

Garcia, a native of Spain who is DMM’s overseas department manager, said DMM.com—founded in 1999—boasts 25 million registered users, employs 3000 people and did $1.8 billion in sales last year.

They offer a whopping 40 different products and services, including adult videos, Manga, solar panels, robots, games, live chat, dating, adult toys and more. Without disclosing specific sales figures for their adult division, Garcia estimated it is in the “hundreds of millions of dollars a year.”

Garcia kept the startling figures coming, noting DMM began releasing virtual reality content last December and already has 2000 VR movies in its library.

“Sales for VR last month was three million dollars—just for VR,” Garcia added matter-of-factly.

DMM releases 2000 adult movies—each two to three hours in length—every month. Perhaps most notable, Garcia said adult performers’ genitalia is censored in Japan—in other words, it’s illegal to show it.

“Japanese porn is the weirdest porn in the world, even more than German porn,” said Paolo Ragone, a native of Italy who is the global marketing planner in charge of DMM’s affiliate management system, campaign optimization and traffic acquisition.

“It’s traumatizing to work in the Japanese porn industry, but it’s fun,” Ragone added with a grin.

Haruka, who is in charge of social media and events, said DMM is placing more emphasis on content creation for blogs going foreward in addition to maintaining a specific strategy for Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr.

Responding to a variety of audience questions, Garcia revealed that in Japan “99 percent” of the cam girls log on at a studio location “like it’s their office.”

“They don’t like to do it from home by themselves. They think it’s a joke,” Garcia said.

Mingchang Tsai, a native of Taiwan who is global marketing division chief, told the audience that “we don’t sell traffic” from DMM.com.

“We do have some exclusive publishers working with us and we sell their traffic—billions of impressions every single day and millions of clicks,” Tsai said.

With six seminars complete, attendees got ready for the Big Bash at the Sea Palace, the country’s first floating restaurant, across from the hotel. Sponsored by Epoch, Stripchat and Gamma, the bash went off on the second floor of the scenic landmark, characterized by Chinese pagoda-style architecture and its authentic Cantonese cuisine.

Amsterdam-based DJ Nafthaly Ramona kept the party moving, while guests enjoyed the open bar and views of the canal and skyline. The final full day of Webmaster Access gets underway at 11 a.m. with Speed Networking and the “Up Close and Virtual” seminar.

For additional coverage of WMA, click here.

Photo from left: Eric Paul Leue, Vince Charlton, Rudd Apsey, Alastair Graham, David Cooke & Steve Winyard, courtesy of ShootXEvents.

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands—Igor Komarenko built rockets in Eastern Europe before moving into the adult tech sector.

“In the Ukraine you are not getting a good salary, so I had to switch to adult stuff,” Komarenko, now the chief marketing officer at Aurora Global, said with a smile Friday afternoon as the annual Meet Market got underway at Webmaster Access.

Komarenko orchestrated a marketing strategy for his niche-leading adult dating and webcam company that generates 20 million visitors a month across a portfolio of 20-plus dating brands.

“I started from dating and then switched to cams and now I'm also working on two traffic companies and do gaming and gambling verticals,” added Komarenko, who has degrees in engineering and marketing.

The native of Ukraine is part of the multi-national group of tech industry executives gathered this weekend at the DoubleTree by Hilton for the 13th annual Webmaster Access conference, presented this year by iMonetizeIt, TopOffers and Aurora.

Komarenko will bring his background in rocket science and seven years of experience in online marketing to the seminar stage at this Sunday’s “Dating Dominance” panel set for 1 p.m.

More than a thousand adult entertainment professionals made their way through the sold-out Meet Market set up inside the Eastwood Restaurant, where 50-plus show sponsors showcased their latest product developments, chatted with newcomers and passed out armloads of fancy swag.

David Rosado held down the MindGeek/AdultForce table during his first trip to Amsterdam, where he gave away AF-branded fidget spinners, boxes of M&Ms and Brazzers t-shirts.

“This is like legal crack,” Rosado said, demonstrating the addictive nature of the stress-relieving spinner. “You just grab it and spin. It’s all the craze right now.”

He said his Montreal-based company is doing a lot with gaming and recently launched TransAngels.com.

“I’ve been doing the media buying for three months now,” Rosado said. “I was in support—billing and retentions—basically customer service before.” 

Across from Mindgeek, the MastersinCash team actually brought a regulation foosball table to Meet Market, making them one of the popular stops on the circuit.

But it wasn’t all fun and games at the busiest networking event in Europe.

Steve Winyard, the co-founder and chief marketing officer for AVSecure, which provides a world-class age verification solution, said he was looking forward to Saturday’s panel about “Age Verification,” one of the most pressing issues in the webmaster community.

Scheduled for noon today, the discussion will focus on the state of age verification on adult sites and how to prepare your business for the U.K.’s Digital Economy Act, which takes effect in April 2018.

Winyard’s London-based company focuses on consumer anonymity, allowing merchants to comply with the Digital Economy Act and the new UK age verification law.

“It’s critical,” Winyard told AVN. “It’s not something you can get around. The law is there. The regulator is coming [to the seminar] as well—he’ll be in the audience. If a company is not compliant with the UK law, MasterCard will shut off their global processor, not just UK. So it’s not something you can skirt around.

“And that’s why things like AVSecure are so useful. It’s third party. It’s not one of the porn companies doing it. It’s a professionally run business that allows consumers to be safe.

“We launched it beginning of the year but we’ve been working on the concept of it for probably three years and now all the technology’s been built and we’re evolving our thinking on how to do things all the time.”

The day wasn’t without its fashion statements, whether is was the bright red suits of the Kinkoid executives or the blue DatingFactory blazer worn by Niklas Fagerstrom, an affiliate manager who made the trip from Malta.

“It’s nice, I really enjoy it,” the Swedish-born Fagerstrom said as he surveyed the wall-to-wall crowd. “I’m trying to find new partners. I have to ask everyone.”

On the other side of Eastwood, 11-year industry veteran Yuval Kijel, who is a former tennis instructor and manages Streamate’s white-label solution, Cambuilder, discussed the U.S. Open women’s semifinals from the night before and also predicted Rafael Nadal would prevail in Friday’s night’s men’s semi against Juan Martin Del Potro in New York.

Turning to business, Kijel said Streamate is pushing its new Black Label product, which has been performing well on Pornhub.

“It’s our major new thing,” Kijel explained. “We’ve been working on it for a year and a half. It’s been running on Pornhub for a good part of the year already. And it’s on other sites, like Fuckbook. But we are really starting to push it now strong.

“Basically what it is it’s a much different integration of webcams. We offer a site owner to operate a cam site within his site. He doesn’t need to send traffic anywhere. Everything happens within his site. We think it’s the next level of webcam integration.”

Kijel continued, “Our model is white-labels. We saw a need from site owners for a different integration. Basically don’t send it to another domain, but keep it on your own domain. It’s not good for everyone; it’s more complicated than white labels. For big sites with a lot of traffic like Pornhub and others it’s perfect. The revenues are just crushing it.”

Speaking of blazing strides, Jim Austin, the head of business of development for the Cyprus-based Stripchat, told AVN his live-cam site is enjoying a steady surge thanks to its sustained push in North America.

Stripchat now features top-performing U.S. models in full-page print ads in AVN magazine.

“We’re kind of offering that as a reward for our models that are really paying attention,” Austin said. “We give them the extra exposure with the magazine ads and things like that.

“The growth is really good at Stripchat right now because we’re still at that level where have a lot of room to go up. The team is in place so there are a lot more people around to do stuff, so it’s not so much that everything’s got to be done by me right now.”

Stripchat, which relaunched in May 2016, is the live-cam brand in the xHamster group, one of the largest adult online communities in the world. They also are sponsoring the WMA Seminar Program which is 12 panels deep starting with five different international-themed sessions today.

Andrea Fioriniello, business development manager for AdultCentro, returned to the capital of Holland all the way from his home in Lancaster, Pa., to promote FanCentro and MCProfits this weekend.

“Because next week we will add FanCentro to MCProfits so our affiliates will be able to promote a premium Snapchat account from the FanCentro database directory for a revenue share,” Fioriniello said. “We will be the only affiliate program that will be able to provide a Snapchat premium offer to our affiliates.

“We launched FanCentro in Vegas this year and it’s been growing since—exponentially. We have porn stars, we have cam girls, we have YouTubers…We have many kinds of social media influencers. We just now thought it is the time for affiliates to get their share and the models can increase their revenue also with a separate traffic that is affiliate traffic.”

Fioriniello continued, “Most of the models they only promote their social media, so it’s a different kind of traffic. It’s a different user base. So we want also models to profit from our affiliates and vice versa.”

AdultCentro, known for its creative giveaways, did not disappoint this year with its metal rechargeable lighters, pasties and ghost emoji-emblazoned “I Love Nudes” baseball caps.

It would not be an Amsterdam show without smoking-inspired giveaways, such as the weed grinders being handed out by Head of Publishing Vladimir Kramenko, aka Chris, from iMonetizeIt by TrafficHunt, and Olga K., the head of advertisers.

“We are working with the smart link, it’s the best in the world,” Kramenko said.

Olga added, “Now we have exclusive products in dating or PPL and exclusive offers for our publishers.”

The native of Kiev noted her company also flourishes in the mainstream vertical.

“We have smart links in some niches,” Olga said. “If it’s dating, it’s only dating site. If it’s adult, it’s only adult site. If it’s mainstream, it’s only mainstream. We target traffic.”

India’s Yatin Anand earned his Master’s degree in Management in France before landing a job as an account manager at TrafficFactory, which reaches millions of users with its geo-targeting technology and real-time bidding model and was the sponsor of this year’s Meet Market.

Anand said working for the parent company of tube-site heavyweight XVideos means creating campaigns with some of the best converting traffic on the internet.

“It has been great working here,” Anand said. “We are No. 1, which we know from all the advertisers always saying that it’s amazing premium quality traffic.”

Anand, who is based at the TrafficFactory headquarters in Prague, said his team includes account managers from Russia, Germany, Japan, India, Brazil and Spain.

“We are very multicultural to cater to all kinds of advertisers, so we have different kind of account managers to target different markets,” he noted.

His Japanese colleague, Taka, said XVideos' network facilitates more than 4 billion daily ad impressions, making it “kind of easy for advertisers.”

“Our network specializes in CPC,” Taka noted. “They’re buying the clicks. They’re buying the quality.”

Matt Mund manned the Mobius Payments booth, pointing to the company’s Chargeback Defense Program—implemented earlier this year—that has been able to reduce chargebacks by “up to 50 percent for some of our merchants.”

The Director of Sales, who started at Mobius four years ago after working in the hospital administration field, said WMA is “always a good show.”

“You see the EU clients that don’t come over to the States that often and meet new people, so it’s good. It’s well organized, a fun time,” said Mund, a native of St. Louis who moved to LA in 2001. 

It was hard to miss the BongaCash crew, which came out with a big presence and was handing out condoms, lighters, pens and black graphic t-shirts that said “Earn Crazy Bro #BongaCash.”

“We upgraded our interface for mobile and desktop,” said Jim from BongaCash, a native of Estonia whose company has offices throughout Europe and one in Miami. “Then it’s the white-labels indexed by search engines. Then we upgraded our program options for PPS especially.”

Jim said he used to sell parts for industrial scales before finding BongaCash.

“For example in airports or in ports they have huge scales where you put your product. I was selling the parts for the scales for two or three years. But it’s too boring, this one is like crazy,” he added.

Working for BongaCash may be crazy, but Christian F. from Webclicks says his upward trending site is FuckingAwesome. This weekend they are launching the site for affiliates.

“We’re trying to drum up a little bit of excitement for it,” said Christian, who along with his team was handing out FuckingAwesome caps and t-shirts to passersby. “We’re trying to make the highest-end porn, but at the same time we’re trying to make it fun—like fun stories.

“We’re already way beyond our initial targets.”

Christian’s colleague Brad Johns, the chief marketing officer, will be speaking on Sunday’s “Titans of Traffic” panel before they roll out a new series Monday called Fantasy Factory.

“People go to the website and they type in their fantasies and then it comes true,” Christian revealed.

Bianca, the advertising manager for the mobile advertising platform, BitterStrawberry, emphasized that “all our technology is in house.”

“The newest feature for us is a hybrid link that was designed and created by BitterStrawberry so this is our strong thing now,” said Bianca, who resides in Bucharest, Romania. “Also for our publishers with this hyperlink they are able to create their own campaigns, based on their niche, traffic and geos. They can choose their targeting and send the right traffic. It’s like a smart link but it’s customized. It’s customized by the publisher based on his niche. They can choose the targeting.”

Near the entrance to the Meet Market, the Vancouver-based Yorgos Biris told AVN he does the marketing for Sextronix and that “we’re writing new offers to our affiliates for dating products.”

“And we’re going to launch a big bunch of 4K content,” Biris teased, while offering hand fresheners that looked like highlighters to attendees.

VIP Offers went all in with the smoking accessory theme for its freebies as former college baseball catcher James Sharp, the account manager for the LA-based firm, had a selection of rolling papers, lighters, ashtrays, mints and hats in his swag section.

“We’re a direct advertiser,” Sharp said. “We’re promoting all of our direct dating offers, adult games and pay-site offers. We run across all English-speaking geos.”

Sharp, who was born and raised in LA, worked as a paralegal doing real estate law before finding VIP Offers four years ago.

“I had an old friend who I played baseball with back in college, he hit me up and said come over here and check this out,” Sharp recalled. “Once I did I said I have to do this and I made the move, put my two weeks in. … We have six guys out here and about 70 or 80 people in our LA office.”

As the Meet Market wound down, dozens of attendees headed to the city for dinner before getting ready for the highly anticipated GFY bash at the SkyLounge on the rooftop of the DoubleTree. 

For a closer look at Saturday's packed schedule, visit WebmasterAccess.com.

Photo of AdultCentro models by Mari Blue/ShootXEvents. For additional show coverage, click here.