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Much of www.2much.net’s 2003 success is due to the second quarter release of LiveCamNetwork 1.9, the company’s own software, which inadvertently created what 2Much President and Chief Executive Officer Mark Prince has come to call the LiveCamNetwork, or LCN.
“We build web-sites that feature the best live video and audio streaming on the market. But many sites out there do badly despite high quality, due to a lack of experience with e-marketing and a lack of content,” says Prince. The result was an upgrade featuring a real-time, interactive billing solution, and a performer database.
“What we do can be compared to iFriends, or rather the opposite of iFriends,” Prince explained. “A chat studio owner has performers he plugs into iFriends, and they make money chatting with the consenting public. But because big systems like that incorporate tens of thousands of models, this owner will set his performer in front of five or six cameras with five or six different identities, to increase chances of being selected. It’s expensive and complicated.”
With the LiveCamNetwork, the performers keep to one identity, their own, and can be enabled on 16, 36 and more websites at the same time. Rather than farming out multiple streams, the clients are drawn, via 2Much.net’s many sites, to the performer. “It’s easier,” states Prince, “more efficient and makes much more money.”
Prince has dubbed LiveCamNetwork 1.9’s interactive webcaster-database and real-time billing program MBase. “It’s a catch-all word, covering the performer grid and the accounting program. It means Model Base – instead of database – but I abbreviated it so it would be more mainstream and encompassing.”
Each website created by 2Much.net had their stable of performers, as well as their own traffic, independent of other sites powered by 2Much. “We put the performers from every site onto a common grid for every webmaster to pick and choose from. In doing this, we also combined the traffic from each site. We have hundreds of performers, now, and more are signing up as we speak.”
The result is new webmasters and investors are assured of instant content and immediate traffic when they buy the LiveCamNetwork 1.9 package. “The site (www.2much.net) explains it all, but has to be updated to include this information – about the performer database and traffic that comes with LiveCamNetwork. The traffic, obviously, is indirect – but it’s a stepping stone a couple weeks before native traffic is built up.”
Of the LiveCamNetwork, Prince said, “I was thinking from the inside out, at first. I was thinking of a shared database, so that even small, beginning operators would have a chance.” Prince remembered the early days, when 2much struggled against the rip-tides of the Internet. “I saw this as an opportunity that I wished I had back then. Joining a team that helps you stand on your own two feet. These shared performers aren’t just in a pool we’re dipping into. They’re the foundation of a new network, a niche network, which includes bulletin boards, webmaster and performer forums, and as many features as we’ll be able to cram without raising our fees.”
In fact, 2much generally offers much more support than purported in its sales pitch – for obvious reasons. “They have to learn to deal with their own businesses,” Prince says. “We help more than we should, with more support than anyone you could name, but then we’re nice people and our success is dependent on the success of our
clients. The better each is individually, the better we’re doing. But I don’t want to have to hire a whole tech support division. At least, not this month,” he laughed. “As is, we divide our time between delineated tasks and consulting, and helping callers.”
Of the traditional challenges faced by both providers and consumers of online video chat entertainment, the lack of quality content has always been primary. According to Tracy Martin, a principal of 2Much, “We’ve created a platform that solves this. Our network can support thousands of individual operators or webcasters, as we call them, within a super-structure that provides front- and back-end solutions to the issues of unlimited supply, distribution and accessibility.”
Before LiveCamNetwork 1.9, 2Much.net customers were, like all operators of video chat sites, dependent on not only successfully marketing their private website, but maintaining performer content on an in-house basis. Dominated by thousands of individual operators, each offering no more than a few entertainers at a single point in time, the industry was extremely fragmented.
“Now, each new website owner on the LiveCamNetwork has a virtual supply of entertainment and a business model that produces a cash flow on a global, 24/7 operating schedule,” said Greg Jones, 2Much Communications Director. “You can sign on cold, with no content, and start a niche website, just by picking a certain type of performer, and find a market that maybe wasn’t tapped before. You don’t need your own talent pool anymore.”
Noted the operator of WallStreetGals.com, a long-time client of 2Much Internet Services, “The LiveCamNetwork has already transformed my business. While we maintain a core group of proprietary entertainers, we can now grow our entertainment staff exponentially, by simply choosing from the MBase menu of performers. They’re even rated by the software, based on popularity and visitor-customer conversion. With greater variety, our repeat-client base increases, and our entertainers have the opportunity to double or triple their income because now they’re available on a network. We can leverage the success of each other’s ‘brands’ by wholesale and retail returns on our shared performers base.”
LiveCamNetwork 1.9 was expected to bolster revenues for all concerned, solidifying the foundations of small upstart sites as well as expanding the performer base and potential profits of established operators.
“But the thing almost got out of hand,” said Prince. “We had to do something with the MBase accounting program to simplify this explosion of cash flows. It turned into an octopus, a multi-dimensional cash cycle with no theoretical end in sight. And we did.”
“It’s great, I’m proud.” Prince smiled.
As independent entrepreneurs and webmasters continue to join or convert to LiveCamNetwork 1.9, Prince realizes there is strength in numbers. “The more websites join the network, the stronger and more profitable each one becomes. The stronger our network becomes, the more fortified each website is against the vagaries of the electronic market.”
In 2004, Prince is planning a major assault on his market. “We have some pretty fascinating and creative applications for LCN 1.9 coming in. I’ve got two Las Vegas hotel chains bidding for the software, and psychics and financial consultants looking into creating live-consultation sites.”
2Much pretty much coasted through the “great crash of 2000”, expanding its operations and client base steadily, hiring staff and adding marketing strategy consultation and services to the LiveCamNetwork 1.9 package. Now that financial analysts are finally predicting Technology and Internet stocks are about to rebound, 2Much is preparing to ride the new wave and bring its customers along with it.
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About the Author
Writer, Videographer, Journalist, Married with 3 Children, Greg Jones published fiction and journalism before becoming the Communications Director at 2Much Internet Services.
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