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Sexploitation has long been the bastion of men-male business owners serving the needs of male clients. Now a few female entrepreneurs have decided that online pornography offers them the opportunity to cash in on T&A, sometimes even their own.
Madeleine Altmann runs Boston-based Babes4U at www.Babes4U.com, Her site offers live video "performances" to paying clients (other notable women-run cyberporn sites include Persian Kitty and Danni's Hard Drive).
Altmann and partner Steffani Martin, who had been a distributor of adult content for satellite TV, started their business in May 1996. Altogether, they've invested about $100,000 of their own money in developing the site.
The service features women who perform live on video for customers as they "chat," peppering their replies with puns and double entendres about sex and computers. The service averages roughly 30,000 hits per day That's reasonable, but not exceptional, traffic for a porn site: On a recent Adult 100 list from www.digits.com, Amateur Hardcore tallied 95,000 hits per day, while Beanie Babies scored 27,000 hits per day.
Babes4U charges $19.95 for 20 minutes of personal interaction as clients watch grainy, jerky video. Altmann says she grosses $30,000 to $60,000 per month during the winter; the summer is slower. All her revenue comes from selling time, not from subscriptions, ads or merchandise.
Altmann, 34, started the service after graduate school mostly to make money. "Sex sells,"...