It has been a fun, exciting and profitable twelve years... but it's time to move along to something new.
TrueTeenBabes was originally dreamed-up and planned in the summer of 2000 by myself and a local high school student named Alia Shari. She was working part-time in my photo processing lab. Never did we think it would be anything other than a fun side project squeezed in among the other tasks we had going on at the time. What a huge mistake in thinking and planning that was.
The incentive for TrueTeenBabes came down to two very simple things... fun working with her cute friends and some extra income on the side.
It took us almost a year to hire models, shoot photos, and try to figure out how to build a website. We had absolutely zero experience with the website part and much of what we did to create the first version was done with the book "Websites for Dummies" being held open by a ruler jammed in the pages next to the keyboard. Funny to think about now... maybe a foolish way to do it at the time.
Just a few weeks before opening her and I started a tradition that continues to this day - dressing up silly for, and taking models to, Jimmy Buffett concerts. Late that evening her and I, still dressed in the party garb, sat in a Denny's all night diner and scratched out in the margins of a coffee stained newspaper the basic math of running a subscription website. Our goal that early morning of June 1st, 2001 was to open July 1st and try to make it to 500 subscribers by the end of the year.
We opened on July 4th and made it past the 500 subscriber mark on July 9th. We had no idea what to do. The response, the emails, the media attention and technical needs overwhelmed us. In some ways I'm still playing catch-up to this day 12 years later.
Those twelve years have flown by and in many ways they have worn me out. This site went from being a fun side project to a 7 day a week, 14-16 hour a day job so fast I felt I couldn't take time out to eat or breathe.
I thank all the fans for that because being busy meant that the site was a huge success. I've listed some of the fun statistics below. One truth is that at age 54 I'm tired and ready for something else. Trop-Rock singer-songwriter Scott Kirby may have said it best.
"My Doctors, My Lawyers, Say You're No Tom Sawyer, Ya Can't Keep Up Keepin This Pace"
It's now time to breathe and enjoy life a bit more. It's time to spend some of the money fans have been so generous to spend here all these years before I'm too old to enjoy it.
The plan is simple. Over the next few months I'll be wrapping up a bunch of business related things around town. By spring 2014 I expect to be living part-time in the United States Virgin Islands and simply relaxing with friends, maybe learning to sail a boat and working on a little book of short stories from around TrueTeenBabes.
Back home in Colorado the TrueTeenBabes archive will remain open.
There really isn't much more I can say... It's been one hell of a ride. More work than I ever expected, more models than I ever expected, more travel than I ever expected, more silly hassles than I ever expected and way the hell more fun than I ever expected.
July 4th, 2001 - Opening day with the first 15 models. Delayed from July 1st because I didn't know how to install the damn payment software and the company didn't have anybody available to help.
August 4th, 2013 - Closing day. Delayed a month simply because I had a few photo sets and videos that had never been seen.
4376 - Most subscribers at one time on August 1st, 2011. This number is a tiny bit misleading because a few weeks previous I ran a heavily discounted subscription price while celebrating the site's 10th anniversary.
826 - Number of subscribers that took advantage of the 10th Anniversary subscription sale in July 2011 and continued to subscribe at the discounted rate right up to closing day without missing a beat (like this guy).
4118 - Most subscribers at one time without a discount being offered. This was achieved shortly after a major copyright infringing website was taken offline in 2009 and was a 28% increase over the previous month - clearly showing how much copyright pirates can harm a small business.
103 - Months of the longest running continuous subscriber (8 years, 7 months).
87,451 - Total number of different email addresses that subscribed at least once since March 2004 when I started keeping records.
200 - Total number of teenage models that appeared here.
24,976 - Total number of DVD or Blu-Ray orders shipped out. Some shipments are a single DVD, others as many as 6 discs. The total of individual discs sold was not recorded.
140,000 - Approximate miles traveled from my Colorado homebase to shoot models on locations outside the studio. This would include Laguna Beach, California (1), Miami, Florida (8), St. Pete Beach, Florida (6), Oahu, Hawaii (3) and the United States Virgin Islands (3). This figure does not include normal travel between Colorado and Florida when I had studios in both states; December 2004 through December 2010.
16 - Total number of different computers used over the years in the office for running the business, editing photos, editing videos, billing and other tasks. 3 Windows 98 systems in the early years, followed by 6 using Windows XP, 1 using Windows Vista, 2 MACs and now 4 using Windows 7. The original Windows 98 machine Alia used in 2001 is still collecting dust under a desk in my office. That AMD Athlon processor seemed like a rocketship at the time but these days a common smart phone has about the same amount of power.
0 - Total amount of debt. I used my American Express card for traveling to photoshoots before the site opened but since that time TrueTeenBabes, and the entire company, have been 100% debt free. Not a single credit card or bank loan has been used in the past 11 years. Every expensive trip was paid for in advance. Every model has been paid her full amount due the day of the shoot. In the case of models with solo sites their earnings are based on sales and they have always been paid on a set day each and every month. Every camera, strobe light, model outfit or high heel was paid for in advance.
0 - Zero is also the number of hairs I have left on my 54 year old head after the past 12 years of this crazy TrueTeenBabes adventure.
1,000,000+ - The number of THANK YOUs I owe everybody that came along for, and supported, the 12 year TrueTeenBabes ride.
Well this is awkward!
At no point in time did I ever expect this website to be online 10 years later. And, not only be online, but running very successfully. It truly is bizarre! Today I'm checking in to look back at the past ten years and to update a few of the items discussed above.
At the time of closing as a weekly updating subscription website and becoming an archive content store in August 2013 I expected the website to hang around another year or two with a few fans checking in now and then buying old photo sets and videos to complete collections. I did not expect many new customers and the primary reason to stay online was to keep a loyal employee busy and to drive traffic to other projects the company had at the time.
That was the wrong assumption and here ten years later we continue to see a large number of new customers collecting photo and videos of the original 200 TrueTeenBabes models.
The plan I had about moving to the United States Virgin Islands failed within just a few months when the waterfront bar deal I was counting on failed and I found myself back home in Littleton by early 2014. Likely a good thing as the bar property was destroyed by Hurricane Irma in 2017 and never reopened.
In Littleton I continued to manage the photo studio as a rental, reopened the TrueBabes college girl / nudie / 18+ website for a year to stay busy, and just sort of hung out.
By 2017 I was closer to being a "ski bum retired dude" and had moved to Avon, Colorado (home of Beaver Creak Ski Resort) and the TrueTeenBabes website had been rebuilt to use an updated shopping cart system.
During this same time frame social media had grown like crazy and teenage females around the country had started profiles in a sort of bikini model style on Instagram but had not yet found a way to monetize them. Some of them reached out to us looking for help in fall 2019 but I didn't get involved because, well, I was back to the idea of living part time in the Caribbean and had been spending time in the popular surfing destination of Rincon, Puerto Rico..
Then 2020 arrived and Covid-19 changed everything.
March 2020 all my travel plans evaporate and some of my friends in the website business have lost jobs or had their hours reduced. Within days we circled back around to the Instagram models and parents and start discussing how to proceed.
May 2020 the company opened a new system named TrueModels Network that acted as a single access point to a network of subscription sites managed by individual photographers or parents. We did the subscriber management and payment stuff, while they did their own content production, website design and updating.
It worked good for those that understood it but many found it tough to manage compared to easy to use phone APPs like Instagram and TikTok. It remains open at this time and runs fine for those the use it, but something less complicated to use was needed.
March 2022 the company opened a new system named TrueModels.com. This new system was more like the content creator site Patreon. Not perfect, but easier for those working from a phone.
August 2023 that TrueModels.com system closed after a pretty successful 18 month run. The reasons to close came down to technical knowledge and skills. The truth is that as a photo studio that does some website hosting for our own projects we couldn't keep up with the more knowledgeable tech companies.
Between my first content hosting system opening in May 2020 and the second closing in August 2023 tech companies with experienced website & APP coding and programming experts had opened FanFix and BrandArmy. They, in addition to Patreon, had the skills to build bigger, better, faster and more modern systems.
While those content hosting systems are not related to TrueTeenBabes directly I mention them because they had a huge affect for the ongoing history that this page is here to discuss.
Hosting newer teen models, now often called teen creators or teen influencers, has exposed TrueTeenBabes to tens of thousands of "New Fans" that had not been active in the teen model scene before social media and or before those new teen models came along.
Because TrueTeenBabes doesn't currently produce new content and therefore isn't active on Instagram and TikTok, the "New Fans" hadn't stumbled across our photos and videos.
Those "New Fans" (meaning, new to us) have consistently raised the monthly sales average here on the TrueTeenBabes archive compared to the years before we started hosting new teen models.
May 2020 had a bit of overlap (started teen models content hosting mid-month) but comparing TrueTeenBabes sales numbers from that month with May 2021 shows a 24% increase, then after the second content hosting system opened in March 2022, the May sales numbers that year are up another 28%, and that equals out to an overall increase of about 58% comparing May 2022 back to May 2020.
August 2022, based on the cool sales numbers it was obvious we would be around a bit longer and TrueTeenBabes was rebuilt and modernized once again with the latest in shopping cart systems.
Again using May as the baseline, sales for that month in 2023 represent the best month of May we've had since way back in 2013 when the website was actively updating weekly as a subscription website, posting brand new photos and videos weekly, and new models monthly.
Thank you to all the "New Fans" that found this place over the past few years!
While as a company we are not currently hosting the new style of "Teen Models", "Teen Creators" or "Teen Influencers" on a Patreon, FanFix or BrandArmy style site, we do have a new system we are playing with just to learn more and maybe have it available if that market continues to grow.
Covid changed a lot around here. I thought I'd be going back and forth between falling down in the snow at Beaver Creak Ski Resort and watching sunsets with a rum drink in hand at Rincon Beach House, but, here I am, ten years later, back at a desk watching over websites, answering emails and taking phone calls.
I must be fucking crazy!
The new platform for hosting the modern style of "Teen Models", "Teen Creators" or "Teen Influencers" mentioned a couple of paragraphs above is now open. Its called "FANZOONA"!
