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.My Holly Moss Interview

We chat Monday afternoon (February 28, 2005) by telephone while she's driving to Pasadena.

Holly: "How do you make your money?"

Duke: "From advertising."

Holly: "Who are your major advertisers?"

Duke: "Sex.com, Homegrown Video."

Holly: "They've been with you for a while."

Duke: "How astute of you."

Holly: "It's hard to keep up these days. We've been around a long time. Now everybody is so spread out. As far as the webmaster world, there are so many niches. You have the companies that are very corporate."

Duke: "I remember when I could get a $1000 a month for a banner on my front page."

Holly: "Now it's all about ROI (Return On Investment). What can you do for me?

"So what do you want from me?"

Duke: "I have questions. When you were a girl, what did you want to be when you grew up?"

Holly: "I always wanted to work in an office. I always loved the whole corporate takeover thing. From about age ten, I loved to go into my dad's office and photocopy.

"I'm originally from Iran. We came here when I was seven. Over there, it was all about surviving. Here was the land of America -- Apple, Nike... Remember the '80s?"

Duke: "Is there a large Iranian Porn Mafia?"

Holly: "There's an Armenian Porn Mafia [Adultcheck, TriTech, CyberAge, and the whole diminishing world of AVS -- Adult Verification Service]. Alec Helmy from XBiz is Persian [and the co-owner of a high profile video company]."

Holly's younger sister Bonnie worked for CyberAge for three years.

Luke: "When did you first start using a computer?"

Holly: "When I was 12. My dad is a programmer. He forced it upon us. Then it became easy. My dad used to make me do these little programming languages. It wasn't fun. It was just how I spent time with my dad. When graphics and Photoshop came, that was fun. I made imitation cards and stuff like that."

Duke: "What kind of crowd did you hang out with in highschool?"

Holly: "I was straightlaced. I had to be in. I couldn't go out. I had strict parents."

Duke: "Did you mainly hang out with other Persians?"

Holly: "No, because we live in the Valley and most Persians are on the West Side.

"I'm not really a traditional Persian girl though in some regards I am.

"I studied marketing at Cal State Northridge [graduating in 1994]."

Duke: "At what age did you leave home?"

Holly: "Ohmig-d, you're going to die. I only left home two years ago.

"My parents are totally cool. They know what I do.

"HMossConsulting is going to be PR and marketing. HMossProcessing I'm just going to be the broker for. First I was doing more alternative billing. Now it seems like everybody wants merchant accounts [to do their own billing]. I'm setting up people offshore. That's what I like to do. It's easy. It's not porn related. It's numbers and helping people find a home and educating them. PR is good. I just want to work with a couple of good companies. I don't want to do porn PR."

Duke: "When and where did you start in adult?"

Holly: "Babenet from 1996-98. I started out in customer service and switched to marketing. No hanky panky was going on there."

Duke: "What do you mean? Babenet has always been scammers."

Holly: "Not in the beginning."

Yeah, and I'm sure Pablo Escobar was a nice kid who made some bad choices.

Duke: "They were installing stuff on people's computers."

Holly: "Not in '96.

"Because there were too many owners and nothing was consistent..."

Duke: "When did you realize they were pulling a bunch of scams?"

Holly: "You know what? Back then they weren't."

Duke: "Oh, come now, Holly."

Yeah, and IGallery was on the up-and-up.

Holly: "What was it they were scamming? They hardly had any [customers]."

I remember I signed up for their reseller program in the summer of 1997. I was due several thousand dollars when they sent me an email and claimed I had violated their Terms of Service and I would not be paid a penny. I hate Babenet. I hate the men (Andy Garoni, Nolan Quan, Robert Gould, Sanger Robinson and Justin Hirsch) behind Babenet. I hope they all rot in prison.

Holly: "Then we launched content [live feeds etc]. Then I got good selling content. Back then, nobody sold live video feeds. Ron Levi gave us the idea to sell our video feeds for $1,000. A single girl dancing in a room. He would get a cut of that.

"That's when I started posting and chatting on YNOT. I thought, damn, this stuff is easy. I didn't even get a commission.

"Greg Dumas at IGallery had a meeting with me. He said they were going to start a non-adult division. Then obviously when I got there, we never had a chance to do non-adult.

"IGallery was great for me. I worked there for five-and-a-half years. At the end, I was VP of sales and marketing. You knew me from then, right?"

Duke: "Yes."

Holly: "We saw each other at a party, right?"

Duke: "Right.

"Have you ever been arrested?"

Holly: "No. I'm plain Jane. I'm like you, the voyeur. You like writing about things and hearing about things but probably you live a boring life. I like to lead a sane life. I don't do drugs. I do get drunk fast. I'm a one beer girl."

Duke: "Do you get drunk often?"

Holly: "NO."

Duke: "What side of the plate do you bat from?"

Holly: "What do you mean? Am I left-handed or right-handed? I don't understand. Is that sexual?"

Duke: "Oh no, no, no, no, umm, yes. It's an American metaphor. Do you prefer guys or girls?"

Holly: "Of course I prefer guys. I love men. Men are hot.

"So what do you think of me, Holly, overall? The things that come to your mind?"

Duke: "Bubbly, friendly and professional?"

Holly: "Ok. Do you think she makes decent money? Do you think she likes what she does?"

Duke: "I'm sure you make good money."

Holly: "Yeah, we haven't dealt with each other. How do you make money? What else?"

I sell my body and soul on Santa Monica Blvd.

Holly: "What's your relationship to AVN?"

Duke: "It's tended to be fractious. They are the industry trade magazine and I am the maverick. I enjoy picking on them."

Gossip About Internet Consultant Holly Moss

Holly Moss, founder of Women in Adult

I call my source.

Duke: "I had a lovely chat with Holly Moss Monday."

Deep Throat: "You've been dying to tell me about this for three days already."

Duke: "She was lovely. She was so nice. She didn't give me any scoop, but..."

Deep Throat: "Of course she's nice. She doesn't know anything. Holly is good at what she does. She is a personality. She is very dingy and a real ditz and a lot of people question how she got as far as he did. She really doesn't know a lot of the mechanics. She worked at IGallery for about four years. She had no idea how filthy the company was that she worked for. She was so in the dark, like Aly Drummond was at Python. She had no idea they were spamming. They were just girls who were never going to get inside information but at the same time they didn't believe what they heard from other people. They were company people."

Duke: "She was so nice."

Deep Throat: "She's very nice. She's at all the functions. She's always sweet and bubbly. Her sister Bonnie is sharp as a tack and incredibly sexy. You like that look. You'll find them both very sexy. You want a Persian, but you want a Persian Jew. That's one thing that Evan Horowitz (Xpays) and David Schlesinger (Vivid) had."

Bonnie Moss Marketing Director