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2009 ~ Year of the Ox
Appropriate zodiac sign considering I have spent the year in Southeast Asia where there are plenty of Ox!
So far this year has brought some exciting new work, as well as positive developments with ongoing projects:
- Maja Magazine finally went live after nearly 2 years of development. Early reactions have been extremely positive.
- Work has continued on my CMS (PornCMS.com). I did several new upgrades in 2009, including the addition of a custom template editor, webcams, and integration of several traffic and content related plugins. Sales and development growth both stayed positive throughout the year.
- A new client from Germany came to visit me in Thailand for their project kick-off. They have some amazing exhibitionist-style videos shot all over Europe & Russia. The site went live on time in September (EroBerlin.com) and it has been selling extremely well considering the economy. This shows that a good site will sell regardless of the economic climate!
- On the other side of the coin, my long time client Matt of Matt's Models is nearing bankruptcy with a sales decline of more than 60% between May and Demember 2009. I mention this mainly as a cautionary tale, but also because he cancelled my webmaster contract at the end of the year while still owing over $18k US in back invoices. According to our last conversation, he has no intention of paying, so I felt obligated to share this story. Matt is now in pretty bad financial shape. He moved out of his luxury LA mansion and is now renting a room from one of his models. I'm not too concerned about the money, however, this is a cautionary tale for my clients. Over the last couple years my designers and I have offered FOUR redesign ideas to him. On the last redesign proposal we spent nearly 300 hours converting his 1,000+ videos and 2,500+ photo sets to Porn CMS. This was a proactive effort on my part after seeing declining sales and constant negative feedback from members and review sites. It was clear that the public wanted an update to his messy 10-year old design. Matt refused to modernize his site - and paid the ultimate price. Dinosaurs go extinct. That's a pretty old history lesson. The site still provides a modest income and he is now looking for a buyer. If you are interested, contact me and I will forward his information.
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