Interview With Jay @ YNOT.com!
  Interviewed By C-Pimp

C-Pimp: The Mighty YNOT! Thanks for taking the time to give me this opportunity Jay! I'm eager to discuss the new re-vamped YNOT site. For many of us, no introduction is necessary, but for the newbies out there, can you start off by givin' us the scoop on the history of YNOT and where it stands today in the online adult industry?

Jay: Well thank you very much C-Pimp! Alright… long story short… Rick Muenyong (now of AmateurMasters.com and Ranks.com fame) founded the YNOT Adult Network in February 1996, as an exclusive resource for Adult Webmasters. Back in those days, in order to become a new YNOT member, you would have to be voted in by established members. As YNOT grew, so did its reputation, which has paved the way to making the YNOT name synonymous with honesty and high ethical standards throughout the industry. Many early industry leaders cut their teeth at YNOT and attribute a lot of their success to getting their start here. Things evolved and improved over the years, and then about two years ago, Rick sold the YNOT Adult Network, including it's flagship site, YNOTMasters.com to Flying Crocodile, Inc. (FCI), the managing company of SexTracker. Then early in 2001, FCI sold YNOT to staff members Greg Geelan, Gary Grigoryan, and Bob Rice, making YNOT an employee-owned entity.

As far as where we currently stand in the online adult industry, we like to think we are at the top for resource sites in content, service, and ethics. We have over 2,500 service listings, up to 6,000 daily visiting webmasters, an exclusive Webmaster Directorysm with over 7,000 individual webmaster profiles, and a rock solid foundation that has stood the test of time. We want to always provide the highest possible degree of service to webmasters by offering the most essential tools to communicate knowledge, network, share traffic, and stay on the cutting edge of industry news and trends. Basically, YNOT aims to be the catalyst for uniting the Adult Webmaster community to enable our industry to be internally strong, responsible, professional and profitable, while being able to effectively manage and deter external threats.

C-Pimp: On a personal note, how did you first get into this business and what role do you currently play with YNOT?

Jay: I was getting burned out doing public relations in the mainstream entertainment industry for mostly B-list television stars and was in dire need of a career change. Then I came across an ad to work in the adult Internet in May 2000. I was able to apply much of my PR, Marketing, Media and Communications skills to this interesting new opportunity for more money, more freedom and less stress. The decision to take the job that was offered to me was a no brainer. I started out doing PR for Flying Crocodile who owned both SexTracker and YNOT at the time, so I was working for both companies. Then when YNOT became its own entity, Bob, Greg and Gary took me on as the Communications Director for the now named YNOT Network, LP. In addition to my involvement in the above areas, I also update a lot of the site's text content, write articles for the YNOT News, and manage the chat boards, Webmaster Directory, polls, and plenty of other non-technical stuff. As of last month, I am also YNOT Bob's sidekick on the SICCash YNOT Bob Humpday Lunch Radio Show every Wednesday on Albumside at http://www.Albumside.com

C-Pimp: Just a couple of days ago, YNOT introduced a brand new look and design to it's YNOTMasters.com site, boasting a variety of improvements and new services. One of the new areas is the new Classifieds section. Tell us a bit about that?

Jay: Well, if you are a webmaster with a limited advertising budget, or just want to get some extra exposure in a high webmaster traffic area, we wanted to make those options available. The classifieds are a very affordable and easy way to nail your marketing tripod: Networking, Promoting, and Advertising. You can buy, sell, employ or be employed by using our Classifieds section. There are literally dozens of categories and sub-categories to choose from to ensure that your ad will get noticed. A nice little added feature in the Classifieds section is a charge calculator, which is an interactive calculator based on JavaScript technology which will allow you to see what you will be charged on your credit card as you go. Classified rates are based on 4-week periods and start as low as only $20.

C-Pimp: I noticed a brand new advertising scheme for all your sponsors. I also read that you will now be "offering monthly reports to all our sponsors on their YNOT advertising campaigns." How do you feel the new Sponsor scheme will benefit your advertisers and what will these monthly statistic reports include?

Jay: The reports benefit our advertisers because they show them exactly how advertising through YNOT is giving them the most bang for their buck in the form of hard evidence. The reports also aid them in their decision as to what campaign works best for them at YNOT to maximize their return on investment (ROI). Regarding the new sponsor layout; we've integrated YNOTNews, read by 7,000 unique webmasters each week, into YNOTMasters, giving some of our advertisers more exposure at no additional cost. Our new site design also offers greater navigability, further increasing exposure to our sponsors, and since we'll be releasing new services soon, that will again put more eyeballs on our advertisers' banners at no additional cost.

C-Pimp: The brand new site loads incredibly fast and the break down of areas makes the site easier to navigate then ever before. How long did the whole process take and who does the designing for the YNOT Network?

Jay: Yeah, looks fantastic doesn't it ;-)! Well, the design work and programming is all handled by Gary, our VP of Operations, and Jim, our Senior Web Developer. Gary did all of the YNOT graphics and design, and Jim did all of the programming. Basically these mad-men blew off sleeping and worked around the clock for the better part of four months to get the new site design, along with its new services, graphics, interface work, page layouts, design and HTML in order for our recent launch. Many of the rest of us here at YNOT had some creative input as well as doing some testing to iron out any bugs. We had been talking about a lot of these exciting updates and changes early this year, but we didn't go full on into it until the summer.

C-Pimp: How many people currently make up the YNOT Family? How many heads does the YNOT network have under its umbrella keeping everything together on a daily basis?

Jay: It's hard to say because everyone is like family to us LOL! But I believe there are nine of us that are full time staffers with YNOT, and another five that are either part time, do contract work, broker traffic, or manage the YNOT Network affiliate surfer traffic programs (http://www.ynotmasters.com/azone/) SuperLinks, WutzNew and MyPorn.

C-Pimp: What do you enjoy most about the business we are all in and on the flip side what do you just hate the most? On that note, what do you think you would be doing if you weren't working with YNOT at this very moment?

Jay: Hands down, I dig the people, the subject material, and the freedom the most. It helps that I've enjoyed porn for over 20 years now ;-) I work in my fricking underwear for God's sake and have fun every day I go to work, which is basically walking from one bedroom to the other. Try doing that in corporate America! Also, I love the fact that I am utilizing my skills to the best of my ability. This business, and particularly YNOT, bring out the best in me, and make me want to work hard and succeed. On the flip side, like everyone else, I hate the scum in our industry, the child pornographers, the rip-off artists, the spammers, and the assholes that derive pleasure from trying to bring other people down with their attitudes and bullshit words. Until much of the childish low self-esteem, poor business ethics and anti-social behavior stops among the minority in our industry, we will always not be taken as seriously as an industry as we should be to both those in and outside of it.

If I wasn't working at YNOT right now… Oh man! That's something I don't want to even think about! Well, I'd probably be slaving away in some PR agency or studio and promoting random television shows and being a publicist for various Hollywood actors, and trying to convince myself and others that I'm promoting a good product, when often times it's not. I would also probably be using Rogaine by now and taking blood pressure medication.

C-Pimp: Aside from YNOT, any other projects you are currently working on or expect to down the line? Anything in the works for YNOT as well that you would like to share?

Jay: Yeah, I am doing some freelance PR, media relations and consulting for Bondage.com, and have done so for Sex.com and TrafficDude.com before, so needless to say my days are pretty long. As far as new stuff going on at YNOT, there are always tons of things in development here, but what I can share at this time is the following:

• More design work being done with http://www.YNOTBob.com.
• Offering a fantastic and affordable opportunity for webmasters to get any or all of their programming done for them at http://www.YNOTMasters.com/coders
• Rolling out our own Domain Name Registration service in the near future for the lowest possible rate to webmasters.
• Development of a "Related Areas" section, which will group related content together at YNOT from every page. This navigational feature will contain links to other sections of our site that directly relate to the content you're viewing, so the webmaster can easily locate content of their interest anywhere here.
• Major improvements to our Articles and Info pages with the addition of several dozen categories and subcategories to enable our current library of over 1000 articles to all be live simultaneously. As well, the navigation will be much easier, and the entire database will be searchable.

C-Pimp: I started out my own adult online ventures thanks to YNOT back in 1997, a friend sent me over and the rest is history. The name is easy as hell to remember, I have to ask you this, how did the name come about? Why YNOT?

Jay: It does have a nice ring to it, and is easy to remember, doesn't it? I have to tell you, this is a popular question asked of YNOT, and usually my answer is, well, why not call us YNOT? Or I'd make up some lame acronym like "You Need Our Team" or something like that.

But in reality, we have Rick Muenyong to thank for the YNOT name! According to Rick, the name "YNOT" was evolved after his many attempts to find a perfect, short memorable name to capture the essence of what the network was representing six years ago. He wanted the webmaster network to be part of the actual name, since the entire basis of the service was all about webmaster networking. After asking himself over and over "Why am I doing this", "Why should webmasters want to join" etc., his answer was simply "Why Not" and it soon evolved to "YNOT", and so on and so forth. Basically he was fresh out of high school with a ton on the ball and nothing to lose and everything to gain. He had a vision to do something different with no clear plan of where it would lead, and just went balls out and did it. So… YNOT! :-)

C-Pimp: Before we go, what kind of advice can you give our newbie readers eager to grab their piece of the pie in this great Adult Online Industry? A Cozy Tip you would like to share with everyone!

Jay: This industry can be exactly what you make of it. There are no easy rides anymore, so prepare to put in insane amounts of time, and be patient. There is going to be a lot of trial and error. You can either choose to be miserable or shady or a recluse, or you can choose to be honest, sociable, and giving. We're all human and we're all going for basically the same thing in our industry – money and happiness. We are not in this industry for the corporate atmosphere, so first and foremost have fun with what you do, or you are just wasting your time.

C-Pimp: Well Jay, that just about does it for this one, wanna thank you for your time and congratulate the entire YNOT team on the Job well done! Hope it all works out real Cozy for ya! Anything you would like to add or share with us before we close this up?

Jay: Well thank you very much, and I would just like to say congrats to you and the entire Cozy team for your successful launch of the Cozy Academy! In closing I just want to add that every day anyone that tries to make this industry a better place to be involved in, is a good day.