Aside from a last-minute gift for a bachelor party, I have never bought porn (and, aside from a bag of pot I bought for my brother when he visited, I have never purchased drugs; with luck, when he visits after November 2, he’ll be able to buy his own at Ralph’s or something). I get everything for free.
That is why it is tremendously helpful for me to hear the lengths people will go to get porn and what they will do to collate, categorize, and maintain their physical and virtual porn stashes.
Jimmy Cooper launched Starlet Sheet this summer. Cooper, a New York-based pornhound with a background in advertising and some serious Excel skills, has crafted a database that tracks, every which way, the free offerings of sponsored porn sites.
“It took forever to set this up,” Cooper says. “I track more than 300 girls by name, age, height, cup size, website, Twitter account; whichever way they can be tracked.”
Purchasers of the Starlet Sheet pay $9 for a fully searchable Excel spreadsheet that users can then customize with their own notes. The spreadsheet includes links to free clips and videos as well as built-in media for each of the stars.
“There’s no popups or anything annoying, it just goes straight to the gallery or the free section of the sponsoring site,” Cooper says. “You don’t have to go through a bunch of BS searching for porn online.”
I don’t know what I would do about porn if I didn’t get it for free. But I remember when my porn collection consisted of a single copy of Penthouse for four years and then, when I got a stack of DVDs my first day at AVN, thinking that I was being given a tour of the Overlook Hotel’s massive pantries by a porny Dick Hallorann.
But people like Cooper, and perhaps even people like you, are the very foundation of the porn consumer base and you require new people all the time. Maybe that is the urge that populates the world. That is comforting. It also ensures that you wouldn’t get too attached to a single Kami Andrews DVD.
I asked Cooper about piracy and he stressed that he links to the sponsored sections of free sites; sites that offer generous tours of their content before requiring membership, as well as performers’ websites.
“In many cases, the free stuff can serve as advertising,” Cooper says. “Last year, I bought the ‘Oil Overload 3’ DVD because, after seeing the Mason Moore scene on Spankwire, I knew that that was what I wanted to watch with the girl I was hooking up with at the time.”
Because Cooper clearly addresses a need and because he is doubtless representative of a lot of fans who find it difficult to navigate all the free content out there (“Starlet Sheet is like a bullet-proof Range Rover taking you through the jungle of porn,” he says), Starlet Sheet sounds liker a great resource for people not fortunate enough to have their porn arrive in large trucks.
UPDATE: See comments section for the use Cooper made of pirate sites before seeing the effect they had on the porn industry.
Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Nate Glass—pirate hunter
See also: Starlet Sheet
“Starlet Sheet is like a bullet-proof Range Rover taking you through the jungle of porn,”
Ahah, YES.
Almost no one is buying porn anymore precisely because one can get free porn so easily these days (to my relative shame I’ve probably spent thousands through the years, but am down to a website subscription every couple months, which is still far more than most).
But I love a crackpot business venture so I wish him best of luck I guess.
He really should offer an update system given the 19 year olds from Minnesota stepping off the Greyhound in Burbank RIGHT FUCKING NOW on their way to feed the insatiable beast known as “the pornhound.”
Hi Gram,
Thanks for the mention!
I just want to clarify a couple things.
I apologize if there was a mis-communication, but there is ABSOLUTELY NO pirated content on the Starlet Sheets. None whatsoever. I sent you a link to download the product and you can check them all and I guarantee that you will not find a single one. There aren’t even any Brazzers links.
I mentioned The Oil Overload thing because it was indeed my original intent to includes such links, but I opted to not do so after doing further research on the effect of piracy by reading several years worth of PRVT financial statements and getting a better sense of the industry’s stance on the issue.
With that being said, I will admit that a large portion of the ‘research’ that I did in coming up with the list of well over 300 Porn Stars was indeed done on those sites, but I have not visited them since doing the research. In a perfect world those sites could be used as an asset to the industry, but it’s not perfect world and it’s unlikely to happen.
Also, I don’t necessarily look at it as if buying the Starlet Sheet is the same as buying porn. I think it’s more about buying information and paying for convenience. Case in point. Earlier this morning, I could have cooked my own breakfast, had a glass of water, and walked two blocks to get cigarettes at Duane Reade. Instead, I went to the deli downstairs and paid $17 dollars for a diet coke, bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, and a pack of cigarettes. That $4 or $5 extra that I spent wasn’t for the hangover food and nicotine itself, it was for the convenience of not having to mess up the kitchen and then go wait in line at Duane Reade. And the time it would take to do so. Money well spent. For people who don’t know the names of over 300 Porn Stars and where to access their paid content off the top of their head, that same logic applies to the Starlet Sheet. You’re paying for the convenience and the luxury of having that information at your fingertips without having to wade through a bunch of crap online. Not only that, but buyers of the product can also get over $70 in discounts and maybe get a DVD at no additional cost. If someone doesn’t think they should pay for porn, it probably means that they never have and they therefore don’t know that the quality of content they can pay for is leaps and bounds better than the stuff they can find for free by trolling on the internet. The discounted rates allow for them to try out a pay site for less than they normally would even when factoring in the $8 cost of the product.
And the crap online isn’t just the pirated stuff. It’s neglected 5 year old websites, crappy websites that exchange links with a bunch of other crappy websites, websites that are a perceived to be ‘free’ and legitimate but flood their own message boards with links to websites with whom they do traffic trades, an overuse of pop ups, redirects by people that sell traffic, and probably a few other things that I can’t think of off the top of my head. So many years of unchecked growth has caused a huge mess that somehow needs to be cleaned up.
Also, JR, I plan on doing updated sheets with the new girls so long as I can bring in enough revenue to sustain the business. Starlet Sheet Débutants, which is a section currently the website, was originally meant to be an addendum to the product but I put it on the website instead so as it would help the website get traffic. There are already 32 ‘Débutants’ on the website. If I did that new Starlet Sheet today, I’d probably be able to add about a dozen more and, like you said, girls are stepping off the bus every day.
Jimmy
jimmycooper@starletsheet.com