There have been a couple of very interesting events in the last few days in regards to Tube sites. Gallery Traffic Services started selling ad spots for Xtube a “tube” site that often posts full 20-30 minute and longer videos. These types of sites have caused a lot of controversy and I still believe they are a business model that is born to fail. That sais as soon as GTS announced they were selling ad spots on these sites there was a pretty big backlash with several people announcing they would no longer buy submit passes or gallery spots from GTS and would instead deal directly with the site owners. If these people really hold true to their word it could prove to be a real statement of how unhappy people are with tube sites.

Another interesting tube related item is that that news has gone out that redtube is for sale. It was rumored to be offered for sale last year at a price in the area of 1 million dollars and they got no takers. I would be interested to see what they want for it now.

I have always said that the tube sites will begin having a real problem making money and that trouble will lead to them needing to dramatically change their business model or cause them to go out of business. I think these new developments are some evidence that I might be correct about this. More on these topics as I find them out.

Today was a sad day for a lot of adult webmasters. Texasdreams, a webmaster who was involved with Home Grown Video for a long time was found dead in his apartment. A while back he said he was not feeling well and left the company. He believed, in part, that the stress of the business was hurting his health and he needed to take care of himself.

For a long time nobody heard from him and he seemed to have just disappeared. That is not uncommon – especially in the adult biz, but even those that knew him privately said they could not get in touch with him. The manager of the apartment complex he was living in grew worried when they couldn’t contact him so they contacted Home Grown and learned of his health issue. The manger and a member of the Home Grown staff went into the apartment and found him. He appears to have been dead for around a month.

I met Mark AKA Texasdreams a couple of times and knew him as a good, honest guy who worked hard and was a straight shooter. I don’t know what saddens me more. That he died, or that it took a month before anyone knew he was dead. I know he didn’t have a lot of friends of family, but I had no idea he was that out of contact with people.

My condolences go out to his friends, co-workers and colleagues and any unknown family that he may have.

If you run any more than a few blogs you have been in the situation where you have asked, "can I automate this?" I have looked and there are some good programs out there that help you organize blogs. What I wanted was something simple and easy to use that would let me make new posts to all my blogs from one interface. I found what I was after in Live Writer. Im planning a full article about this piece of software and its pros and cons, but wanted to give you a heads up. If you havent tried it, they just updated it with a ton of new features and it is amazing. It is probably the best new thing for blogging to come along in a long time. You can write posts, create new categories, upload and crop pictures and much more right from one interface. Best of all it is free.

Keep an eye out for my full article on this soon.

There is a new version of the Chameleon Submitter program released today. I have been using it for a few days and can say that some of the new function are really cool. There are some nice new recip previews and other features like the ability to just select the the movies from your gallery folder and it auto fills in the size, total time and type of movies into the submitter form. Here is a list of things that have been changed:

I wrote a review of the chameleon submitter and other products here if you want to check that out.

It seems like just a few years ago that a new young program called Deecash bust onto the scene. They had some cool sites and worked hard to make their affiliates happy and provide their customers with good content. Recently Dee and his program have been on a roll acquiring other affiliate programs like Epic Cash and Triple X Cash. These were solid programs before Dee got involved, and have an even brighter future now. 

When I interviewed Dee I had the feeling he was not done buying up programs and I was right, but I think he shocked many people when he bought Mayor’s Money. Mike AKA Mayor is one of those old school guys that have been around for a long time and have built up a rock solid reputation. I am happy for both parties involved here. The Deecash team also brought Wizzo over from Mayor’s Money which is a solid addition to his management team and should be a huge asset to their company’s future.

So I just wanted to take this post to let people know about the purchase and to congratulate all of those involved.