This is part of a continuing series on how I, as a sole proprietor, manage my accounting. It is intended as a guide, and should not replace the advice you get from your accountant.

In this post I’ll be talking about Managing Bank Statements

Everyone hates reconciling his or her bank statements, but you need to do it. It’s made much easier if you maintain all your bank account activity in Quicken. I’ve been using Quicken for more than twenty years now, and don’t know what I’d do without it. Using Quicken, it takes only a few minutes to reconcile a statement, and you will be amazed at how many bank errors it catches.

A little trick I learned for reconciling ATM transactions is to enter the unique transaction number in the Quicken and check register memo field. This makes it much easier to match them up during reconciliation.

After posting my debit and ATM transactions to Quicken, I store the slips in separate envelopes. Later, when I’m reconciling a bank statement, I’ll pull from their envelopes the slips that are being matched to the statement. The slips are then place with the bank statement for permanent storage.

On the outside of each bank statement envelope, write down the date range and what account it’s for. Then file the statements in date order, by bank account and year. I bundle each year with a couple of rubber bands. This may seem a bit anal, but I’ve had to refer back to old statements enough that this level of organization makes it worth the effort.

In my next post I’ll discuss receipt management.

Have you noticed all the guys with uncut dicks lately? It’s more prevalent with the younger Twinkie boy types. Well, there are a couple of reasons for this trend.

Parents of the 80’s moved away from having their newborns circumcised, a practice that had been very popular for decades. Now these children of the 80’s are coming of age. Consequently much of the new young talent, or amateurs, we see today are uncut.

The second reason for this trend encompasses all age groups. Increasingly, the US Gay adult publishing industry is looking off shore for its supply of photo sets and videos. More specifically they shop for product in Eastern Europe and South America. It’s a simple matter of economics. A US publisher can get a hell of a lot more for the buck by working with suppliers in other countries. These countries typically do not practice circumcision so most, if not all, of these guys are uncut.

I’m not a big fan of the uncut look. Those tiny pencil dick boys don’t do anything for me. And I don’t think I’m in the minority, as it relates to US consumers.

Los Angeles - (November 18, 2005) – The Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP) announced that Brandon Shalton, President of Cydata Services, was the recipient of the ASACP Service Recognition Award during a presentation at the XBiz Awards. Since 2003 Brandon has provided his services, the use of his priority technology and acted as ASACP’s CTO. Brandon customized technology tools like web spidering programs and image processing applications for ASACP. These tools free up the Compliance and Site Review Manager to do more research on valid child pornography sites and facilitate more detailed statistical analysis. His spidering technology verifies that each Approved Member complies with the ASACP Code of Ethics. It is through these tools that that ASACP has the empirical data, which proves that the professional adult entertainment industry is not involved in child pornography (www.asacp.org/press/pr062405.html). “It’s ironic that while the adult industry is being persecuted to be the purveyors of child pornography, the data that ASACP has collected statistically proves that the distribution and access to child pornography occurs on non-adult web hosts, registrars, and billing companies”, said Shalton.

The most recent findings from Pew Internet & American Life tracking surveys and consumer behavior trends from the comScore Media Metrix consumer panel show that about 60 million American adults are using search engines on a typical day. The report stated that the number of those using search engines on an average day jumped from roughly 38 million in June 2004 to about 59 million in September 2005 – an increase of about 55%.

PEW/Internet concludes these findings have considerable consequences for the way people gather and use information online and the way e-commerce is conducted. “The evolution of search engines as everyday consumer Web tools has made them a vital resource for marketers,” said James Lamberti, vice president of comScore Networks. “Search engines are obviously a critical vehicle in reaching consumers during the buy cycle, but they also offer a rich source for consumer profiling, segmentation, and measurement of product demand. To-date, we have only witnessed the preliminary impact of search engines on e-commerce.”

If you publish a lot of AVS or free sites it’s a good idea to start keeping some records about each. It doesn’t have to be fancy. A simple text file will due. The idea is to have, in one place, important pieces of information about each site you publish. Actually its best to create a separate file for each domain you publish under.

So what should you collect? Well, with AVS sites I’d collect everything necessary to register the site with the AVS. I’d also document its site ID and the date it was published. Copy and paste the URLs directly from the browser while testing each site. This way you know they will be correct. Then you can copy and paste them from the text file when registering with the AVS, and you will never submit a site with bad URLs. With free sites, all you need is the title, URL, description and date published.

Why is all this extra work important? There are more reasons than I can think of, but I’ll give you a few examples:

• It virtually eliminates any errors when registering a site with an AVS
• It gives you a page to work from when submitting sites to links pages
• If you discover a new links page you will have everything needed to start registering all your sites.
• A copy of the document can be used as a checklist when making changes to a bunch of sites

I’ve lost count of the number of times this documentation has paid off for me. I guarantee you will not regret what little time it takes to maintain these files.

AVN Online reports that FSC communications director Tom Hymes announced he thinks a decision on the request for an injunction to halt 2257 will be out in a few days. The announcement was made yesterday during the legal briefing at Webmaster Access West.

The FSC also announced yesterday they filed suit in federal district court in Salt Lake City, Utah, challenging the constitutionality and legality of that state’s anti-spam “child protection registry” law, which went into effect July 15, 2005. As of this writing, the details of that suit at on the home page of the FSC’s web site.

One of the things that astonishes me about the adult entertainment industry is the total lack of professionalism in advertising. With few exceptions, publishers in this industry expect advertisers to make media buys in the blind – both print and on-line. Their offerings are so far removed from that of mainstream it borders on insulting. Worse, some of these publishers have the balls to talk down to you when pressed for answers to commonly asked questions.

I get really annoyed with an ad rep, for a major print magazine, telling me I don’t understand advertising, right after I’ve asked what their demographics are. What’s not to understand? Either they reach my target market, or they don’t. I’m not going to make a $3,000.00 media buy if the Gay consumer is not reading the magazine. This is not rocket science.

Then there are sites that won’t even tell you how much traffic they get. One site that comes to mind is a popular adult webmaster board. Volume of traffic is the most basic component in determining your return on investment (ROI). Demographics are, to a point, a given on a site like this, but you still want some detail. If I’m a sponsor program, I want to know what percentage of the traffic is affiliate webmasters, program owners, service providers and so on. As a sponsor program, volume of traffic and what percentage of that traffic is affiliate webmasters, is important information.

It is understandable that some publishers do not have detailed demographics. But any print magazine can, and should, have that data. Webmaster boards, that require a login, also have the capability of gathering demographics.

No mater how much detail you are given by a publisher, it’s still smart to test that publisher’s effectiveness. Any advertiser that will not let you test, or track, your ad effectiveness should be highly suspect. There are a lot of publishers in this industry that want a six-month commitment up front. Run…don’t walk from those deals. Any publisher worth its salt will allow you a test run.

The same goes for tracking ad effectiveness. There is a very popular links site in this industry that will not let you use any special URL or tracking code in an advertisement. BIG red flag! There can be only one reason why they won’t allow advertisers to track their ad’s effectiveness.

Some publishers out there will claim you don’t need this data, because you will be branding your company’s product or service. That’s a bunch of crap! Why would a sponsor program care about branding themselves when the only readers are other sponsor programs? Even with a branding strategy, you need to know that your advertising dollar is reaching your target market.

That said, I’m amazed at how many in this industry plunk down the cash without knowing how effective their ad investment will be. Simply put, your advertising effectiveness is determined by your ROI. A lot goes into determining your return on investment. In future articles I’ll talk about the basics of determining ROI, and the specifics involved for each target market. As an example, calculating ROI for consumer advertising is very different from that of affiliate recruitment.

Ever have a bunch of .mpeg movie files that you would like to convert to .wmv? I’ve found a package that will convert a wide range of video formats, and it will do them in batch! While there are other packages out there, I found River Past Video Cleaner does a good job. It’s easy to learn and reasonably stable. They offer a free trial, and for 30 bucks you can’t go wrong on the price.

The FSC sent their membership the October issue of “Free Speaker” magazine. The magazine was shipped to members without a confidential wrapper, as is commonly done in the adult business. Many of us in this industry work from our homes, and keep the source of our income private from neighbors and friends. I’m really quite surprised this is lost on the decision makers at the FSC.

This is one of many articles I’ll post for those of you interested in producing your own content. My focus will be more on working with the models and equipment, than dealing with the legal (2257) stuff.

Shooting with an onboard flash will make your photos look more amateur, and may give you problems with red eye. You may also run into problems with the flash over exposing areas of the model’s body. For a more professional look, you need to use some sort of external lighting system. Professional flash or floodlights are expensive, and the flash systems may not be compatible with your digital camera. You can save a lot of money by working with floodlights that were never intended or designed for photography. But these cost saving options have their drawbacks.

Simple clamp on floodlights that you can pick up at most hardware stores may deliver the light you need. It depends on your camera. The problem is they use a standard household (incandescent) light bulb. These bulbs actually produce a yellow light that your eyes cannot see, but the camera will. Some of the better quality digital cameras can compensate for this. The only way to know if your camera can is to read up on setting the camera’s white balance, and take some test shots.

Halogen shop lights are another option, but with one exception, they also cast a yellow light. The exception is the Regent PHL300 Painter’s light that uses color-correcting lenses. You may have to buy these on-line, as they are difficult to find in hardware stores. As I recall, they cost around thirty dollars each, and come with a spare bulb that stores in a special compartment built into the lamp.

Another problem with both incandescent and halogen lighting is heat. The halogens, in particular, can heat up a room real fast, making the shooting environment very uncomfortable. You also need a lot more room to work with the halogen lights, as they can easily over expose the subject if placed too close.

Another potential problem is that you really need to mount these lights up high, so they do not cast shadows on your subject or backdrop. I mention this, because the Regent PHL300 Painter’s lights are not designed for mounting to a wall or ceiling.

With that said, I’ll get into lighting set up in another article.