What do you think being "family" means?

Originally posted by gonzo@Jan 15 2005, 11:03 AM
Ive meant to come back to restimulate this thread but there really wasnt any reason to do so. So I will distill some comments..

One of the founding principals for Mike and Serge was simply

"The Family that does business together"

Its something that I think of each time I go to purchase hosting, content, etc etc.

As Anth said..."family ... my peers who can be trusted with my business as well as my friendship."

I know that services/goods I have purchased over the past year has been bought pretty much from only people from this resource.
Likewise with my traffic. I can tell you that the bulk of my traffic has gone to sponsors that have supported Oprano. AEBN is a good example of that. I dont have to worry about the rules changing or the latest way they do some creative accounting to reduce what they pay out. My check from them has consistantly grown. And in some cases with less traffic.

By in large our long term sponsors are ones that I can trust with my traffic as well as my friendship.

I would encourage each of you to seek out those that provide services and are active on Oprano. Weve started a seperate forum for up and coming people in our industry such as Nick Pappageorgio to let you know what it is they do.

When I was actively building free sites I always looked at sponsors to see what they had that I could leverage by including them in the design or the concept before it was built. Its resulted in some nice dividends as well.

One of our long time family members is about to put a major push on their new marketing effort. We are awaiting the artwork and then we will be putting on a major push for this company. I urge you to look closely at how they have revised what they are doing to rebrand to make you more cash. If you have a paysite this should be a MUST in adding to your members area.

As witnessed by the shrinking show size in Las Vegas and the lengthy thread on whats wrong with AVN... this business is consolidating. If you dont want to be squeezed out then maybe you should not only know what family is as well as practice from day to day in your business.

That being said... in the following months of this year we plan to expand the Oprano Family network to have our fingers in every aspect of this business. Nick and I are making good on our Dec 1st promise of Family, Honor, and the reawakening of Old School profits. While others are running around sucking on glass bottles and trying to copy yet another business model , we move forward.


The last ride has begun.... are you going to be left behind this time?

That is very interesting Gonzo. But I have to say, this business in its present form is very, very young. I am not quite sure why such a young business would have a last ride. I kind of smile when I hear expressions like "in the day" and "old school" for something that happened less than a decade ago. A lot of that stuff only worked because of the time and the naivety of both the consumer and the suppliers. I have no problem with the progression of business, but solid "old school" real world business practices, I feel, are going to become more prevalent and relevant in the next couple of years. I think the key is honesty for long term success. A fairly easy concept to understand, and a fairly easy concept to practice. "Old School Internet" went well over the top and has eroded consumer confidence and alerted folks like the ftc. How do you see addressing ftc and consumer confidence in the near future?