First of all a big welcome to those of you coming from Rolling Stone.com, The Wall Street Journal and other mainstream media outlets. At first this site may seem a bit esoteric but I encourage you to scroll down and look for and read posts that are of interest to you. There is a mix of things on here but one thing is for sure, if you are curious about the industry and or the people in it, the politics that affect it and the issues that I deal with as a pornographer, there is a good chance that your curiosities are addressed in this site someplace. Use the search bar, the categories and I hope you find this site to be an honest resource.
Tip If you want a laugh reading the category “Stripper Quotes” is a fun start!
For my regular readers I have a question:
How would you feel if I made MikeSouth.com a safe for work site? By that I simply mean that all photos on the site, including ads would be G rated. The content won’t change otherwise.
The reasoning is that I am getting a lot of mainstream attention and the policies are such that they are reluctant to provide a direct link here because it isnt safe for work, so to speak, The upside is High quality links from very high quality mainstream publications, that improves my search engine rankings exponentially.
The downside is that it kinda feels like selling out, after all I believe you dance with “the one what brung ya” so to speak, and it is the adult industry that got me here. y’alls thoughts are appreciated, as always!
11 Responses
I certainly have no issue with making the site SFW. Exposing mainstream media to the realities of the biz should be enlightening to many. Some already “get it”, but many are still woefully misinformed.
A couple days a week I spend a day at a client’s office and there is always that possibility someone walks by behind the desk I am at and sees my computer. So, I can not visit your site on those days. I would assume many people who work in open offices where it is possible someone can walk by and see the screen feel the same way. You aren’t “selling out”because nobody is paying you in hopes of changing what you write. However, you will get more traffic if people can read you from an office environment. Which, if you want to get mainstream people learning and reading, is appealing.
I don’t think anyone comes here to look at naked women, they come here to read what you have to say. So, an SFW site would be a good idea if you want to grow. And if someone freaks out because they can’t see tits or a bunch of “bukkake models” on your homepage, tell them to piss off 🙂
As a long time visitor to mikesouth.com, I think you gotta do what is best for you in the long run. Speaking for me only, I’ve never come here for naked pictures but for the dialogue. I’ve always enjoyed the site best when performers were also posting, but I don’t suppose that changes whether it is or isn’t safe for work.
So, as to that issue, I work primarily from a home office or on the road in hotel rooms. So, for all but about 15 working days a year, it would have no impact on me whatsoever – and again, I wouldn’t visit more or less if it was SFW.
At the same time, even if the images were safe for the workplace, I would never log on to a site about the porn industry when I’m in our corporate office, even though I have a private office with a solid door. I would have no idea if our IT administer is monitoring sites visited (I used to do consulting to a major law firm in DC. Once when I was working in their offices, their IT folks circulated a list of websites being visited from office computers; it was both shocking and sent a message) and would worry that someone would either walk in or I’d start working on something else and forget to close a window.
G-rated would be the way to go. 🙂 Don’t think visitors come here for x-rated photos & such to begin with.
Remember once upon a time when all adult magazines had a g-rated pic on the cover or at least a plastic covering that was black & only showed the face & title? Remember when we all only used g-rated pics to sell porn online & how much more money we made?
______________________________________________
Thus using only g-rated pics is NOT a betrayal.
Smooches,
Sam
I would be reluctant to make that change, Mike. Maintaining a safe for work site would also limit how we can comment. As it is now I don’t have to worry if I feel the need to use profanity or call someone a nasty name. With a safe for work site we would be limited as to how we can express how we feel about the subject of the day to the detriment of discourse on this site. As you have alluded to many times the comment section is the most productive part of the site many times. I don’t have a problem with removing nudity from the site (there isn’t much of that on here anyway) but making a safe for work site involves a lot more than just no tits and ass and would greatly negatively affect the comments section.
I do understand that you need to do what you feel is best, though — porn doesn’t make the money it used to and profits from Southern Bukkake may not be able to subsidize this site any/much longer, you yourself have said this site is expensive to maintain — especially with you having to maintain your own server in your home, a safe for work site might allow you to rent server space and bandwidth from Amazon Web Services or Google for at least this site which would probably save you hundreds of dollars a month on your home electric bill, internet service and server maintenance/upgrades (how many people have to maintain a rack-mount server farm in their spare bedroom nowadays — pretty much just porn people).
5 years ago. Yeah. Now? Not so much Mike. Sorry but your out the loop dude.
mharris… the SFW is so if someone walks by they don’t see girls with dicks up their ass or tits hanging out. Not to hide “words” they cant’ see from a distance. SFW does not have anything to do with text.. it has to do with the photos parading across your screen. If the site itself is a no go because someone in IT is monitoring the URLS, that is a different issue all together and the site just can;t be visited period.
So, swear to your hearts content.
It probably wouldn’t hurt anything to make it G-Rated. I’ve been coming to this site for many years and I barely even notice the nude pics. I come for the latest and greatest articles from Mike South. I’d love to see you profit more and more considering how much work and attention you give to your site and us fans!
More creditabilty to you as well as the industry is always a positive thing.
Joe, I am the one “out of the loop” as Billy puts it, then. My understanding was that “safe for work” included not having profanity or explicit conversation on the site as well as no dick, pussy or breast pictures. You can note I have been retired since the end of 2004 and my career since the internet was created in the mid 80’s has been either at an institution that explicitly allowed for any site to be used on my university’s mainframe terminals or later on a PC connected to a LAN which included a mainframe computer or at the credit unions I would have been the one doing the monitoring — and I didn’t bother to monitor (actually didn’t even know how) because all three people with access were management (include me in the three persons with access) and certainly wouldn’t have logged onto porn at work (I personally would not be caught dead with porn on my work computer, when I was at work that is what I did). By your definition this site is almost safe for work as it is, I am only finding three pictures on the landing page by the strictest definition I can come up with that would need to be edited or changed and one is because it implies bondage, not for T&A issues.
SFW is a subject that Lurking could probably discuss in great detail. Obviously it has changed drastically since I would have theoretically dealt with it.
swap out this pic Nikki Daniels Bukkake and you look good to go. Its not like the adult industry is sending you checks, so its not selling out.