ADVISORY: Today’s installment contains tasteful language about a topic some readers might find borderline-icky.

LAST FRIDAY, I reported on a recent in-person chat with some “amateur” adult-website operator-models.

Since that in-person meeting, I continued to correspond via email with Oasis, who’d organized the “bar meet” at which I’d met her and two other Netporn queens (and their ever-supportive husbands). Here’s some of our virtual conversation:

• When and how did you get into this kind of site?

  I first started my site a little more than three years ago. It started as a one-page ad to advertise a video Lance [the husband] and I had made together. The response from that one page was just completely overwhelming, and the entire site just grew from there.

• How many amateur sites might be out there?

  When I first started there were only two or three of us. Now the number is probably somewhere in the high hundreds, if not in the thousands…

• What do you think makes your work stand out from some of these other sites?

  According to all my fans, the reason that they like my site so much is because it always looks like I’m having fun! Which I am!

  It shows that we really do this because we enjoy it, and it’s our lifestyle, not just because we thought we could make some money off of it.

  I also do my best to involve my fans in the site and in my life. I answer all my e-mail personally; I travel around the country hosting bar meets where fans can come out and party with us; and I even host parties in my house. I think all of this creates a bond between me and the surfers, and I think that bond is very important.

• What does the term “amateur adult site” mean, particularly since some of them charge money for access?

  It basically means we are real people who mostly do this for fun. We’re not professional actresses or models or dancers…. Just the girl next door who happens to like getting naked in front of a camera and sharing herself over the web. 🙂

• Any advice to would-be webmistresses?

  Do this because you want to do it, because it’s fun and you enjoy it.

• What are some of the secrets for making a site such as yours more popular and/or profitable?

  Get to know your fans and do what you can to connect with them… same as any other business. Know your target audience.

• Besides other adult webmistresses, have you had many female fans?

  Women aren’t my main audience, but over the years I have had several female fans. On a couple occassions I’ve even had single women come to the bar meets to hang out with us 🙂

• What might the amateur-site phenomenon mean about sexual expression or women’s empowerment?

  I think the Internet has done a whole lot in connecting the average woman to a part of their lives and a community that they might not have otherwise known existed. It has certainly brought into focus the fact that the average woman really does enjoy sex and isn’t afraid anymore to show it!

• Anything else you’d like my readers? Myths or misconceptions about these sites you’d like to dispel?

  The most popular myth (and one I myself believed before I got into this whole thing) associated with this industry is that men control it and the women involved are being debased/manipulated/exploited. That may have some small truth in a few cases in mainstream (what I call L.A.) porn, but in the amateur adult Internet world it is absolutely false.

  The absolute best part about this industry is that we women can be a part of it, and be extremely successful in it, by doing whatever we want to do, whenever and however we want to do it. There are no producers saying, “Do this or you’ll be fired.”

  This is totally an outlet for our own sexuality, and as such it is very empowering. On the Internet, our boundaries have been lifted and we’re free to explore who we are at our own pace.

  Running an amateur website is definitely a positive process of self-examination and personal growth. I can think of few other avenues that allow such freedom.

TOMORROW: A look ahead toward Halloween (a mere three months away).

ELSEWHERE: Minneapolis’s Museum of Questionable Medical Devices has everything from a “Foot Operated Breast Enlarger” (1976) to a “Violet Ray Generator” (1915)… Kinky fantasies from way back when, at a Page of Antique Weirdness…