[Chronicler]

People who make snide comments wanna bitch about things and do NOTHING about the topic at hand. Funny how some people can hide on the internet and then all of a sudden grow a set because they think it will somehow exempt them from being responsible for their own shit.
--------------------------------
But like I sed... Homeland Security is a problem and lots of people just don't see HOW BAD, nor do they care unless it affects them directly. We can talk about it absently all day long, but I see no passion for freedom or truth coming from many of my fellow Americans and it pisses me off. These people are the reason 1984 is coming to a home near you.

[andrat2000]

Hi Melonie,

Could it help when all girls that may affected come together and move into a coorporate basis. That would mean giving up some individual parts but gaining a stronger business background. And probably all without the bad side effects of Photoclubs.

bye,
andrat2000

[ggk]

As far as the recording analogy goes, it is great that you are remaining independent.  But, I think the acts that sign onto a big label make most of their money from touring and products, so the name recognition and promotion of the band directly leads to the successful bands becoming rich.  Rock stars are rich you know.

Name your favorite unsigned band, and I bet I have never heard of them, and will probably not buy one of their t-shirts, records, or concert tickets.

If there is a huge busted model that hasn't been in Score, Photoclubs, Danni, or been mentioned here, please tell us who she is.  

[Maxi_Mounds]

Hi Melonie,
I've been talking with the people at IBill and CCBill about this MC thing and as far as I can tell you'll still be able to sell your products, just unable to accept MC as payment. They tell me that Visa, Discover and Amex are unaffected by the change. When it comes to subscription sales, the people at CCBill said it won't change anything except to give the subscriber the option to keep shopping or to complete their purchase and go back to your site. They'll still be able to accept MC. I hope this helps.

Luv,
Maxi  

[Chronicler]

There is some truth to that, but I bet you would be surprised at how many of them end up flat broke by the end of their contracts. I'm sorry I got pissed off and went on a tangent, but to me, the issue here is the flippin' Homeland Security Department pushing people around. I personally think somebody is afraid of losing control of markets, but that's just my opinion. I was trying to cite another example of Big Brother making it tough for the 'little guy', and ignoring hostile business practices by big corporations and the implications they have on small business and e-commerce.  

[ggk]

Homeland security is not why Mastercard is doing what they are doing. From what I understand, it is because of the amount of fraud in the online business, not just adult online business.  

Homeland security made it harder for the small guy, by charging Almost $1000 to get your credit card info gathered up. Melonie makes this all clear in her prior messages. She is just frustrated at the profits getting smaller for her due to these two things. That is what I read from her message.

Money mismanagement by Rock Stars is a different subject, than their ability to earn money.  Lots of big money makers wind up broke.  

[Chronicler]

Yeah, I suppose that's right. Lots of Rock Stars just blow their money foolishly as quickly as they make it. No argument there.

I just don't see how what Master Card is doing can be a totally separate issue seeing that this is all about conformity, and it deals directly with the cost, whomever should bear it, of investigating businesses to prevent money laundering, specifically those that fund terrorism. It goes totally against the archetypical concept of innocent until proven guilty, in that it will eventually affect the judicial branch as well, because sooner or later there will be rulings and precedent concerning these rights.

You are absolutely right that online fraud has been a problem for years and years, so there are quite a number of factors at work here. But the bottom line is that this 'preventative' policy forces the issue on one party or another, and all because the executive branch now has the ability to ignore 'inalienable rights' for the purpose of preventing terrorism. Who is paying for it? MasterCard? They are not the only ones, and will just use their corporate muscle to pass the costs along to individual taxpayers and consumers.

What Melonie stated in a previous reply is that MasterCard is using this as an excuse to do what they are doing, much like the RIAA tried to gain access to the findings of the gov't investigation immediately following 9-1-1 to find out who was pirating mp3 files. Although different in terms of the legal dogma surrounding each case, the bottom line is that WE, the small business and the consumer end up paying for it sooner or later.

If government had no effect on business, special interests would not even exist in this country. I just don't buy that three or four levels of separation can exempt the government from being the impetus behind this kind of business practice.

[ggk]

I doubt Mastercard was looking for an excuse to stop making money. That doesn't make sense. The government regulations are costing the merchants (melonie), not mastercard themselves. i.e. $750 fee Melonie spoke about. This is what they are using the government as an excuse for. To get paid to give the government info on her.

Ask yourself why a company like Mastercard would want to stop letting Melonie sell her products, when they make money on it?  Because of the government?  No, it is because the online fraud is a problem that must not make it worth it to them. Clear this up for us Melonie. I think I am just saying what you already said.

[Chronicler]

No I understand what you mean, and I don't want to be nothing but argumentative. What seems to be the issue she is directly facing is exactly what you pointed out, that the cost is being conveyed to the merchant, and that she is being lumped in with every potential online scam just because of the fact that her business is not run out of a traditional storefront by the company that processes her MC billing.

I'm simply trying to identify the chain of events leading up to that situation coming into being. The reason I went into all this jargon about music, is that I see a parallel here in terms of the intellectual property rights of an individual being diminished by and industrial conglomerate.

[melonie_charm]

Quote:
I doubt Mastercard was looking for an excuse to stop making money. That doesn't make sense. The government regulations are costing the merchants (melonie), not mastercard themselves. i.e. $750 fee Melonie spoke about. This is what they are using the government as an excuse for. To get paid to give the government info on her.

Ask yourself why a company like Mastercard would want to stop letting Melonie sell her products, when they make money on it?  Because of the government?  No, it is because the online fraud is a problem that must not make it worth it to them. Clear this up for us Melonie. I think I am just saying what you already said.  

You've got the right idea here.  An analogy that comes to mind is auto insurance rates.  Someone can be driving a $40,000 Cadillac and be charged less than $1000 a year for liability and comp insurance.  On the other hand, someone else can be driving a $40,000 Porsche Boxster and be charged $3000 a year for liability and comp insurance.  If you look at one specific person, the odds of them causing a serious and expensive accident are probably the same regardless of the type of vehicle he drives.  But if you look at the group of people who drive Cadillacs versus the group of people who drive Porsche Boxsters, the latter tend to have more accidents, which is the justification used by the insurance companies to charge such high insurance rates.  The exact same logic is being applied to conventional storefront businesses versus non-brick and mortar adult businesses in regard to credit card processing.

However, with car insurance, if a person has a track record of several years of driving with no accidents, their insurance cost will be greatly reduced regardless of whether they drive a Porsche.  Conversely, if someone who drives a Cadillac is involved in several accidents, their insurance costs will go up.  My complaint is that no such "fairness principle" is being applied to non-brick and mortar adult businesses even though they have been charged $750 for an investigation and even though that investigation has shown a total absence of fraud, chargebacks etc. for a period of several years.

Again, I WILL find some practical way around the new MasterCard limitations.  However, it is certain that these new limitations which were put in place under the guise of the Patriot Act will continue to result in much higher costs of doing business for myself, but higher profits for the credit card processing services, and higher profits/reduced losses for the credit card companies.  It is the combination of these two factors, my being charged an ungodly amount of extra money in annual fees and processing percentages regardless of my own business history, plus the processing services and credit card companies not sharing my "burden" in the name of Homeland Security but increasing their profits instead, which has me so pissed off.

But the ramifications which actually worry me the most are the changes that these new regulations will encourage in the big boob industry.  Not so much for myself, since I am well established and more or less financially secure, but for would-be new big boob girls.  These new regulations vastly increase the costs and complexity of starting an independent website, which serves as an incentive for new big boob girls to go the "working for someone else" route i.e. posing for PhotoClubs or other multi-girl website in exchange for non-earth shaking modeling fees once a year.  With a greatly reduced opportunity to earn money through internet endeavors, new big boob girls are really only left with one money making alternative - the feature circuit.  And as you probably already know, the serious money to be earned on the feature circuit is NOT earned in the clubs (see http://www.bodymiracle.com/ if you don't understand what I'm talking about).  Therefore these new credit card regulations are just "one more brick in the wall" between the entertainment business and the sex business.

The reason that you guys should take notice is that as opportunities for new big boob girls to earn money as entertainers are eroded more and more, there will be less and less likelihood that new big boob girls can justify the investment of getting the big boobs!  Vixen is unbelievably dedicated since she had to borrow money to get her bigger implants, and has continued to work in a local club plus an "odd job" to pay off the loan.  Any girls thinking of getting bigger boobs, but with less dedication, would certainly come to the conclusion that there is no longer enough income potential from the "entertainment" side of the business alone to justify the cost of huge breast implants.  On the flip side, if a new girl is comfortable in working on the "sex" side of the business, there is also very little financial  justification to invest in huge breast implants, since her earnings potential would not significantly increase because she got say 2000 cc implants instead of the 1000cc she already has.  Again, a couple of new girls like Christine may get bigger implants just because they want bigger implants, but there's really no financial equation to justify doing it. This is the likely reason that younger girls who are comfortable with the sex side of the big boobs business, i.e XXXena just to pick one example, have not gotten bigger implants and have expressed no plans to do so in the future.

Think about what that will mean to you in the way of huge boob girls say 5-10 years down the road. I'll be retired, as will I suspect a large number of big boob girls who are currently still working but who have been in the business for the past 10 years or so.  Except for Vixen and Crystal Gunns I know of no other NEW girls who have joined the ranks of big boob "entertainers" with 2000+ cc implants for the past couple of years.  No offense meant to Keisha, but she is by her own admission an amateur and has shown no plans to get involved in clubs, in Vegas conventions etc. This does not bode well for the future of the entertainment side of the big boobs business 5 to 10 years down the road. It bodes even worse for seeing any new girls repeating the process to get 3000cc or 4000cc implants, unless they are extremely dedicated and don't expect a financial payback of the costs imvolved.  

As more and more of the existing huge boob girls retire, and very probably go the same route as Busty Dusty or Wendy Whoppers or Traci Topps or Tiffany Towers, and as extremely few new girls step up to fill the cup size void, the Breast Expansion Archive may have to change its name to the Breast Reduction Archive !

What you will likely have instead is new girls with natural large breasts such as the current crop of young Japanese DDD cup girls and "voluptuous" British girls.  However, this basically spells the death of new material for the growing breast fetish (unless you don't count growing bellies and growing asses at the same time) and also spells the end of "impossibly slim and stacked" new models with trim bodies plus huge round and firm implanted breasts.

[ggk]

I do see what you are saying. The credit card companies are lumping everyone together, and making a fortune in the process, by charging the big fee to everyone, not matter their track record, or size of company.

It looks like the difficulty in running your own website has been going on long before the Credit Card thing with Mastercard happened.  Christine, Vixen, and yourself have complained about this difficulty and how it doesn't make much money to do it.  

Since Score, Danni, Photoclubs, Ifriends, and the Bearchive have been around for quite awhile, I don't see how they are can be blamed for the problem. They could represent the remaining way to help increase exposure and make some income in this new age, without having to escort, but continuing to dance in clubs.  Since most of the Big Bust girls that I have ever heard of model for all or at least one of these companies, it must make economic sense, or some other type of sense for them to do so.

In the end I agree that the 80's are over, and the Big bust Craze at gentlemen's clubs have given way to a porn star craze making it less economically feasible to pay for the surgery and deal with the inconvenience that it must take to be a big boob star. This is bad for the feature and fan alike.

As far as the music/boob connection, I am saying this: Without the big record conglomerates would the guys from Creed be rich right now?

Without the boob congolmerate of Score, would you have ever heard of Chloe Vevrier, and if not, how would you find chloevevrier.com?


 

[Chronicler]

Quote:

As far as the music/boob connection, I am saying this: Without the big record conglomerates would the guys from Creed be rich right now?

Without the boob congolmerate of Score, would you have ever heard of Chloe Vevrier, and if not, how would you find chloevevrier.com?

Valid point. Great question, and a difficult one to address. I think perhaps not, but there are some things to consider in that the promotion power of the big conglomerate seems to dominate in terms of distribution channels. You are right in that the rock-superstar is a product of corporate muscle.

I suppose part of that equation is that there are exceptions to that rule, one which may be slightly dated, is if a person looks at old Metallica, which sold a gold record with no radio or TV exposure simply because it filled a void in the supply for people who happen to like that sort of music. They didn't get big corporate backing until after Elektra realized that those guys were going to sell records, period.

I suppose big boob modeling is different in that the talent pool is much less saturated, and always has been, yet the demand for big boob models is much greater than a particular genre of music it would seem. With music, many artists sign their rights away hoping against hope that they are the next Creed, when the likelihood of that is improbable, having no realization of what that means until it is too late. The same aspect is true of a big boob model who sells her rights to her own pictures away for a one time modeling fee. It all seems to do with controlling the means of distribution in order to reel in the talent, which is then subject to harsh treatment because they have absolutely no alternative. Many of the artists/models find themselves at a loss with all of the legalities and complications associated with the risk of doing business, so it is enticing to many of them to think about just doing what they do, and not worrying about all of the other things that go along with making money from their products, and that is where big business not only cashes in, but uses that as a means to corner the industry, which is what I am afraid seems to be happening to big boob modeling.  

[Zasha]

Creed.  You had to mention them.

Oh God.

If I see that guy in his cruciform pose ONE MORE TIME, I'm going to hiptoss my television out the window and **113**.

[ggk]

I have to believe that the big conglomerate boob sites have value to the models. If the modelling doesn't pay enough and it doesn't help their career, I doubt any of them would ever do it. Ask Christine Allure why she wanted to be in Score magazine, and Melonie said it was a dream of hers to be in it.

We can agree to disagree that the big companies have value to artists and models, but if they did not, I don't believe they could exist.

I don't believe Melonie is saying she threw away her rights, or wishes she had never modelled for a fee. In fact I read that she models for Score once or twice a year.

It appears to me that the newest model Melonie mentioned, Crystal Gunns, has her own site crystalgunns.com, models for Score and photoclubs, not sure if she does Ifriends or Danni, and dances as a headline feature in clubs.  Is her career in trouble?  It may be, but if someone knows for sure I would like to hear it.

Sorry about bringing up creed.

[Chronicler]

Well, if this is a trend that other services/cc companies are going to follow, then think about the cost of operating your own big boob e-Business, like Melonie. It really leaves no choice but to use the corporate publisher, or pay the damn $750 for ONE processing service not to mention all the other fees and such. The corporate publisher is not going to pay the model anything NEAR what she is truly worth because they know she has no alternative but to pay ridiculous amounts of money into just being able to sell her product legally.

Same has always been true in the recording industry, which is why the RIAA is desperate right now because no more does the artist have to rely on their services just to be seen or heard. What would cost me $3 per unit to record, publish, and distribute professionally, you pay $16.95 for in a record store like Tower because five people get their hands on the product before it even hits the street. I could sell just as high quality a product for $9 and make over 300% profit if I sold direct (before taxes), and throw half of that into promotion and still make mad jack.