LUCA
Tell us about the ERO Awards
LUCA: In 2015 I announced that I wanted to launch a new award, many professionals and companies were asking me, who is behind you? My answer was (probably too) simple ‘me!’ or probably too daring. But some of the best ideas come from the most difficult experiences,
While almost all of the other awards started from a (big) company and/or a group of other companies which heavily supported them, especially with money, EroAward was born as a one man with one idea. The whole story of the 4 years of organizing this probably can give enough materials to write a book, and in only 4 years I’ve learned much more about this industry and the people that I thought I knew, than what I learned in the 10 years before, during which I participated at many congresses, awards, summits and fairs, and showed love & support towards many……..
My name is Luca and I am the main organizer. I have studied business and have an MBA in Marketing & E-commerce. Around 2006 I started as a webmaster, affiliate, then cam studio, model trainer and model promoter. In 2009 I wrote the Jobs4Adults.com – Adult Webmaster Bible / Sexy marketing and how to make money with(out) Adult Industry on Internet, in which I was anticipating many trends that today are a reality. Many ideas were so new that people were laughing at me… But they aren’t laughing anymore!
From writing a book on how to came the idea of offering services for Top (Adult) Stars CamMillionaires.com mainly as marketing, but also for developing alternative strings of income. Writing articles that were appreciated on different known magazines and sites, and also participating in many expert panels or even offering myself seminars where professionals & models would fill the rooms and attend even 2 hours and half of non-stop presentation (Do you know what it takes to have a person’s attention at least for 1 minute??? Also, ask me in private how many big companies hadn’t at their presentations at least half of the people that I had, and at least for the 20% of the time that my public listened to me! 😉 ), gave me the courage to make the next (logical) move and to announce the creation of a new WebCam Summit www.CamSum.com and a new awards for the Adult Cams www.EroticCamAwards.com in 2015.
I guess, chronologically, we were the 3rd award dedicated to Adult Webcams from Europe and the 4th in the world, and our first edition coincided with the 2nd or maximum 3rd edition of the others who appeared before us. Later, from EroticCamAwards in 2016, we evolved to EroAward, where we included Porn, beside webcams in 2017, and started with 2018 we moved to the Erotic Award, dedicated to models, professionals and companies from webcam, porn, erotism, sexy influencers, strippers and everything that can be considered Erotic.
But although we hadn’t big companies near us until now, like other awards, we did had a very important partner from the day 1: Conrad Son http://www.conradson.com the famous Spanish-Catalan porn producer and salons organiser, his partner Evita de Luna ( https://onlyfans.com/evitadelunabcn ) and their team! Without them, would have been extremely difficult to reach until the 4th edition.
What makes the EroAward different from other adult industry awards?
LUCA: I prefer to avoid comparing our award with some specific ones, so I will explain what we believe that we bring new on the market from all the awards that exist. But as you mentioned these 2, I guess is cool to remind that Xbiz was the first big award and big company to have a very friendly approach with us from day 1, which is quite surprisingly, because during the 10 years before organising EroAward, when I was attending adult industry events, I’ve met lots of professionals and companies representatives, many of them during few years, we were friends on many social medias, and it was logical for me to expect a friendly or at least a normal attitude from them towards our giant efforts to build 2 new events from scratch, who could benefit all, especially a new award, which like any award brings huge support to any industry! But things in life don’t always obey (any) logic, and although (fortunatelly) I’ve lost almost all (fake) friends that I made during 10 years before EroAward, in the next 4 I’ve made a huge much bigger group of true friends, admirers and partners, and many of them showed their interest for partnerships on the medium and long term #EroAwardArmy
So, with the Americans from Xbiz we were media partners from our first year, in 2016, and in 2018 we were THE ONLY award from Europe with whom they signed a media partnership agreement and which appeared on their list of international events! 😉 We love Xbiz! :*
My Favorite Pornstar: What makes the EroAward different?
Luca: Since we started, we made our first big mistake: thinking that we can also do what others do, probably change a few things which can also make us an interesting award. But we were very wrong. First of all, the classic model based (mainly) on sponsorships has lots of limitations.
Today we can say that there are 2 categories of awards: The awards based on sponsorships from companies, where practically the companies and professionals buy their awards for themselves, or for their models and partners. So, the voting process is 100% fake! The awards are mainly focused on these sponsors, which in majority are companies. So, for the independent or average models, there are ZERO chances to ever get at least a nomination! There are only a reduced number of people who vote, a small period of time for voting (1-3 months) and a small number of votes, as votes actually don’t matter.
EroAward, the First Independent Award, an award that finance itself and is based on the categories who most showed interest on us: models, fans and promoters. And as we focus on the 90% of the industry, some called us The Award of the People, same like bitcoin. Of course we also partnered with sponsors from our first edition and we will continue to do so, but the more innovations we can bring, the more we can differentiate us from the others and the more value we can bring on the market. We run all year, we also promote the models, not only models promoting the awards like others do, we are based on real votes from fans, we have the largest number of categories for models covering almost all the fetishes and focusing on the Financial Domination with our main sponsor www.SupremeGoddesses.com. With EroAwardShop ( shop.EroAward.com ) we want to offer an alternative stream of income for models, with the biggest commission offered on the market (86% for the models). From 2019, we became bitcoin ambassadors, by considering us the Bitcoin Adult Industry Award with our project EroAwardShop, where we want to encourage the models, fans and promoters to adopt this most advanced new form of money (cryptocurrency). We were the first congress to give seminars about Bitcoin for CamModels & Porn Stars and the first to organize expert panels for Financial Domination the hottest fetish nowadays!
Probably we can mention 2 more types of awards, but we also explain why we believe they have limited impact:
– the online awards. As they haven’t sponsorships or serious independent sources of income, they can’t grow and become important, so, they remain very small from all points of views.
– the awards organized by some companies, for their models and professionals, that’s why they represent a very small part of the industry. They only represent themselves.
Since the Ero Awards conception how has it developed?
LUCA: As I said before, we started as Erotic Cam Awards in 2015-2016, focused on adult webcams, then we included also Porn from 2017 with EroAward and with 2018 we added the erotism and the sexy influencers. From 2019 we want to launch EroAwardShop (shop.EroAward.com) – an alternative stream of income for models, with the biggest commission offered on the market (86% for the models), based on bitcoins.
The project www.SupremeGoddesses.com by our sponsors, will be developed in partnership with us, and will be the first site only for financial domination with payments made in bitcoin (70% of the earnings for the females or trans Goddess).
My Favorite Pornstar: Is there any competition between Ero, XBiz and VENUS Awards?
Luca: As I said above, with Xbiz we were 2 years media partners and in 1 of these years we were the only one from Europe that they partnered with. In Spain we are partners with XtarsAward organised by SalonEroticoDeMurcia.com (FuturSex). And as you can see at www.CamSum.com site we partner also with some events from Colombia and 2 from Russia.
And yes, some events treated us normally, others ignored us, some were even friendly and we also have a few that we are competing against each other. And the competition is good for everybody as long as it has some limits… Unfortunately, or fortunately, we had also events organizers or other professionals or companies who think/thought that they can afford to attack us. It was a great achievement for us that some people felt threatened by a new (small) award when we humbly started. They felt threatened because they felt small comparing to our vision, although we opened the door to everybody from the very beginning. But many times, the bad experiences and the bad people, are a greater source of inspiration, or at least a very good one. Massive success is our only revenge and we will keep avoiding those with a wrong attitude.
Where do you see the Ero Awards in 5 years time?
LUCA: In 5 years there will be 2 types of awards: EroAward and the others. We see us as a fully independent award, who can finance itself from multiple sources of income. But also an award who develops big strategic partnerships with some of the biggest players who want to join us as partners & sponsors. We can’t be the best, the biggest & the most important if we aren’t also financially successful. In 5 years we see us as a big award and big company, that can have lots of positive influence over the whole industry, at different levels.
My Favorite Pornstar: What are the voting categories for 2019 and how are the winners decided?
Luca: We have lots of categories that can be found on our first page http://eroticcamawards.com . The winners are decided by the number of votes. Anybody can vote maximum 1 time per day after they register here http://eroticcamawards.com/register.html .
My Favorite Pornstar: Where do you see the future of the adult entertainment industry?Â
Luca: First of all, I see bitcoin and cryptocurrencies everywhere!!! 🙂 They will change our lives COMPLETELY and they will do the same with the Adult Entertainment! Others: the artificial intelligence based Avatars invasion on camsites with some making much more money than any other human model, with lots of companies competing to create adult entertainer avatars, 3D, virtual reality, artificial intelligence at every level, 5G and internet of things, human like sexdolls, more opening of Asian markets, more Asian cammodels & pornstars, and generally much more people entering into Adult entertainment, a more tolerant society towards sex workers, the increase of the Gay markets, huge growth of the Swingers services & consumers…and last but not least, a big global increase of the Financial Domination fetish, where probably the www.SupremeGoddesses.com will be the leader. 😉
According to Freeones, Japan has the second highest amount of pornstars, does Ero Awards have any plans of an event in Asia??
LUCA: Organising an event or award, costs A LOT of money, efforts, time and depends on lots of people and companies. And unfortunately, many professionals and companies think that it doesn’t matter if they respect their promises / agreements or not…And their unprofessional and unserious behaviour, in the end has effects over the final (in)success of the event. Some people when they see that something went wrong at an award, they think that is only the organisers’ fault, and they fail to see that the final results depends also on each of the participants.
Luckily, during these 4 years we have thought a lot how we can optimise the things in order to reduce the risks that are not depending on us, to be able to finance ourselves and also to diversify the tools we may use to be able to deliver a successful nomination over the internet, but also a great live Gala.
Finally we think now we have a successful formula which gives us hopes that we can replicate it on different countries and even on different continents, in case we decide to create more than 1 award per year. So, probably in the future we can try Asia, but also South America, Eastern Europe.
How has the stigma around the adult industry affected the Ero Awards?
LUCA: I think that this stigma is everyday smaller and consuming or producing adult products & services, seems everyday more normal.
Personally I am more worried about the professionals and companies who commit abuses or have a shit attitude towards their colleagues…They give a bad image for the industry and it seems that we are far from being ìa familyî as some say or lie…Unfortunately, the industry sometimes seems like a group of gangs fighting or even trying to kill each other. This is what for me it smells worse.
As about strategies to reduce the public stigma or the negative effects that some professionals and companies (might) have, at EroAward we launched from the very beginning social campaigns where we can positively and intelligently use the huge power of seduction that sex has:
In the 1st year, we launched #Donate2Wiki Donate to Wikipedia! #CultureIsSexy; in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th years, we grew this initiative to #OpenYourBook #CultureIsSexy an EroAward global campaigning to support culture and redefine beauty, as opposed to the superficial Open Your Mind (which translated more like be ready to watch or try whatever). We believe that the books are the best way to open any mind. On the 4th year we created White Rose Charitable Foundation – a platform where we can bring together different social issues, causes and people who need help, and people, organizations or companies who want to offer their support. http://eroticcamawards.com/whiterose.html
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