Wow. Some people are just asking to be wiped out. wtf.

What a crazy night. Roller coaster even. The day started off with me calling a mechanic in another city and having an appointment set up to look at this vintage VW bus that B and I were eyeballing. We have been reading Bumfuzzle and I guess we got caught up in things. When I say vintage.. 30+ years old VW bus. Very cool without a doubt, but is it really us?

We have no intention of leaving life and hitting the road full time like the Bumfuzzles did (as I call them), that’s a little out there for us, we’ve worked far too hard to get where we are. It’s not about material possessions because we’re not that way really. We decided getting our hands deep in a VW bus adventure wasn’t really us. We have more important marshmallows to roast, for now anyway. Maybe someday we buy a tent and then look the fuck out, I tells ya.

ROAD TRIP!

It’s weird how we’ll see some people online we don’t know going crazy buying shit. New this, new that, it’s all about da’ bling. They’re trying to impress someone, fuck if I know who. Kind of amusing, how many people that you personally know live within their means? It’s messed up. We’re a world of debt aren’t we? It’s all about impressing others it seems, well, for some it is that way.

Bryci and I have a simple rule, can we buy it outright? No? It can wait.

We don’t need it that bad. It’s really weird, if I go back four+ years, when I had just started another network with B, we were flat broke. Well, not flat broke, but things were tight. If I got an affiliate check for promoting another site or sites that was more than $40 for the week… PARTAY UP IN HERE!

We made next to nothing, we were just starting new ventures, we were working 12-16 hours a day, we had no life, we had no nothing other than work, yet we’d go to the mall and buy shit we couldn’t afford. Why? I guess it made us feel better about the shit storm that become our life? haha Too honest?

I wish I could tell you I am kidding and perhaps this is a little too revealing for my blog, after all, on the internet everyone thinks people are rich or loaded because they work in this biz. Newsflash, 5% are, the other 95% say they are. I don’t mind telling you where we were, because I’m damn proud of where we were, and where we are today. Yesterday I got a new affiliate check for $50.

PARTAYTIME!

I’m kidding, relax. It was $51.

I have seen many things in my time online working with people, be them affiliates promoting sites I run or ran, or other webbies with other programs, or affiliates I know that just promote everyone, or models, webcam models and models who think they’re owed something extraordinary because holy shit, they showed boobies. Where’s ma’ check for $10,000 motherfucker? I showed nipples!

Here’s what I can tell you….

It’s simple, ready? wait.. get a pen.

No, seriously Get a pen.

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A PEN, JERRY, A PEN. GET A PEN.

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Okay. Here it is.

Hard work pays off.

That’s it.

Big shocker, I know.

Thing that is funny.. *very* few will take note and even fewer will actually work hard ongoing. Lazy is more popular and we all love a good “must be nice to make money like you do” story hey? It’s great when someone tells me it must be nice. I say whaaaat? I made $51 the other day from an affiliate check, want to split lunch? IT IS NICE but it’s not like the shit fell into my lap because I live at 210 Lucky Asshole Avenue. I work damn hard and that is all there is to it.

No, that isn’t actually how much I made on that check, however it is how much I am going to tell you I made. Honesty +1

How about this, I do well enough that I have a fine collection of half empty coke bottles littered across my desk.

Kind of gross to be honest. ewwwww

/note to self.

Self, clean your fucking desk, it’s gross.

/end note to self.

(you thought I was kidding didn’t you?)

Time to get some sleep me thinks. I’m all fucking over. I woke a little past 6:00am this morning, worked through most of the day on Bella, got a lot done (yaaaay crowd roars) and then fell asleep on the sofa at like, 5:30. THAT my dear friends, ass fucked me.

time for sleep.

In closing, work hard, stay away from clowns and always remember, something.

p.s.

I miss the Arizona Bella Mansion!

A couple pix off the iPhone from shooting the ladies in AZ

Bryci and Talia Shepard relaxing between shoots. Yes, I am a lucky man, we’ve covered this already. ty.

Shooting the one and only Katie Banks from http://katiebanks.com (ty to Bryci for the BTS pic.)

Here’s what I can tell you.

This guy needs to lose some weight.

Also, he is probably rich.

Upside, he’ll never, ever need to buy a chair again.

So recently I had a member of Bella get all cranky pants with me. He felt that things were taking far too long, and this was unacceptable and if we can’t do the job properly, we should hire someone who can. I read this and honestly laughed out loud. I don’t mean that to sound egotistical, perhaps I should explain some back story here to fill in the blanks.

When we launched Bryci’s site, we wanted it to be similar to a few we’d seen online in the way the back end worked. We wanted some cool options for members, not just the same ol same ol. We looked at a few back end software pieces, knowing full we’d be customizing whatever we got our hands on. The one I wanted, didn’t do exactly what i wanted it to do so instead of dropping some serious money to get it installed, we opted for a simpler approach.

We went with a back end that I’d wager the majority of adult sites use. It’s basic and it worked. It wasn’t what we wanted to be honest, but it was easy to get going quick and that’s what we needed at the time. We used it moving forward for other sites as well, again, it was basic. photos, videos, that’s about it. Nothing to write home about but given that the majority of sites used the same back end engine, fuck it, it’ll work.

No, it won’t work. This is the problem, we started to encounter issues with the back end engine. The thumbs were not loading right here and there, small errors here and there. We contacted the company that did the engine, and after 4 months of trying to get them to at least reply to us, we said fuck it. I wanted to hire them to do some engine work so they could fix things but no, they couldn’t even be bothered to respond. No worries, other companies out there, ya know?

So I started to do some homework.. and we decided once we were back from Arizona we’d tackle this head on, once and for all. Making Bella the network we wanted it to be. Not just some ‘good enough’ network. See, that’s my issue with a lot of sites out there, they’re lazy or the girls are lazy or the webbies are lazy. Not all sites fall into this category, of course, you know the sites that rock and the ones that don’t. Not calling anyone out, heh, just saying not all sites are built the same…. we wanted Bella to be the site others are measured against.

So we got things going and sadly, the engine wasn’t doing what we wanted it to. We wanted certain things, and we knew we’d be customizing anyway but we needed things at a certain level before we could get started on our side. We stopped adding fresh videos to the old member’s areas because things were fucking up, corrupting all over and it would double the work load, which is counter productive unless I am missing something. We could put things at risk or we could say screw it and move in a different direction. We decided to move in a different direction.

We knew it was a monster undertaking so we asked the company that created the new software who they’d suggest for development. They gave us two companies, the two best out there for this software. I contacted these companies and got quotes for time frames. For one site, I was quoted 25 business days from one company, the other company said 20-25 business days. A business day for those out of the loop, is Mon-Fri so 25 business days is 5 weeks.

This time quote was not the uploading of content, the inputting of sets, the descriptions for sets, the thumbnailing for sets, the organization of sets, this quote is for the creation of the sites so they are ready for me then to add the content. So, Bella has how many sites? Seven.

Bellapass.com – Bryci.com – KatieBanks.com – TaliaShepard.com – MonroeLee.com – AvaDawn.com – BellaStars.com

Do some math with me.. 7 x 20 = 140. 7 x 25 = 175.

So the quotes were give would run us between 140 – 175 business days. In weeks, that’s 28 – 35 weeks. Now, average that out to months with an average month having what, 4 weeks? 7 – 8.75 months.

So, if we’d have gone with these other companies, we’d have been in rebuilding phase for between 7-9 months. Ouch. Again, this was just for the sites being built, this isn’t for the content being added/set up etc so that would have added 1-2 more months easy. umm.. no. Not an option.

We finally took over development of the new network around the middle of last month, middle of March area. This is when we were given the software, working, the way we asked for it to work. We then started to customize the code, and now that I am done that, I am busy inputting, adding content, getting things ready.

In short.. to this one member that was pissed and cranky, he suggested we hire someone to do the work if we couldn’t handle it. Doing it your way, 7-9 months minimum. Doing it my way… 2 months tops? See, contrary to this guy’s mindset, I actually do know what I am doing. 14 years experience doing websites means that yes, along the way I picked up a few things.

So I just passed the one month mark doing the new back end. We would have liked to be doing it in Feb or the start of March but things were set up wrong by the company doing it, then we had to wait to get that sorted out. They finally handed the keys over to me around March 14th so now, I am kicking ass and nailing this out.

I am *aiming* for the end of this month but I’m human, I’m one guy and no, I am not hiring someone else to do this, I’d have to train them and then one screw up puts it all in jeopardy. I had to teach myself a programming language for this, from scratch and yeah, took me a few days to figure things out but I’m picking up speed as I go.

The sites are not coming out as they are done, everything will launch at the same time. Why? I can’t tell you this yet. :p

There is good reason though, and you’ll know soon enough. Yes, it’s worth the wait. This shit is crazy. I have rewritten some of the code to do some new things and I’m pretty sure many of you will like what we’ve come up with. Every day we get closer to the end goal, and once we’re live, the sites all go back to regular updates. All video updates will be there, same as webcam archived shows etc.

So although it’s taking some time, relax, smile, if you’re unhappy and uber pissed, by all means, cancel your membership. I’d rather you cancel and feel happy then stay and shit on the girls for something they have no control over. The network still has updates right now, as well as cam shows live weekly.

In the end, and I might be alone on this… this is the internet. If a site not having a video actually pisses you off, you need to get out more. This is supposed to be entertainment, not the air you breath.

So, things are happening, as I sit typing this, my other Mac Pro is sitting beside me processing like a mofo.

So there we are, hope this explains a few things for those not sure about things. As always, I am one email away so email me if you have questions, concerns, thoughts about relish?

So yesterday was so full of lazy Sunday it’s stupid. I slept in to 3:43pm. Almost 4pm. Yes, I am awesome. I should point out two things, I take the weekends off lately, or rather, I am supposed but I never do. When i don’t take a day off here or there, what happens? You get burned out right? Well, I wasn’t taking time off. I was getting burnt out, quickly. It’s been GO GO GO GO since January when we were off in AZ. If I am not rebuilding Bella, I am doing HD video encodes, getting photo sets ready, coming up with the way things will work, play nicely together etc, all the while trying to have a “life” outside of work with Bryci and my bad ass dog, Jack.

So, B started to kick my ass, making me take weekends off. I always sort of fought her on the topic a little because I’m feeling the stress, trying to get things live faster. I would compromise and take Sunday off, but still work Saturday but I wasn’t *really* doing that to the degree I was supposed to.

Then a couple dat nights ago, Bryci and I went bowling and we both got sick. There was a family bowling beside us, three kids I think. We’re sharing the bowling balls and I’m sure getting germs from them, inside 1-2 days, we started to feel tired, stiff, shitty. Here we are a week or so later and we’re still hurting. Bryci worse than myself. I’m trying to force her to get better as best as I can, so when you see a cam show cancelled, that’s me canceling them because she’s in rough shape right now.

Myself, I’d say I am about a 4/10 on the sickness scale, 10/10 being sick as can be. I’d say B is around the 8/10 area, no joke. She needs to prop these huge pillows behind her so she sleeps on a 45 degree angle, otherwise she can’t get to sleep because she keeps coughing. Poor lady.

So, where was I…

Yesterday, I woke at almost 4pm thanks to Jack barking. I joked that I’d be back in bed early that night with Nyquil. Well, apparently Bryci read my blog because at 11:30pm she was ordering me to take Nyquil and call it a night. I was in bed before midnight, just a little over 8 hours after sleeping for 14 hours the day before.

This should be interesting…

I woke this morning from a dream of B and I driving down a stretch of highway in our new camper, what we don’t actually own keep in mind. Great dream.. damn you Bumfuzzle.com! (awesome site, check it out).

So I am waking up and I notice it’s not exactly daylight yet.. what time is it I ponder? i check and it’s 6:05am. I am wide awake. I reason to myself that I have slept a lot in the last day or so. I’m wide awake, do I force myself back to sleep or do I say fack this and wake, get slammin at work?

I’m wide awake, I might as well make myself useful. I’m going to write a blog post in a moment to bring you up to speed on Bella for those that are curious where we’re at with things. When it’s done, it’ll be right above this post. :p

Morning world! Have a kick ass week, I know I will!