Yes, I will be the first to admit .. "We have some pretty lousy typo's on our website and in some of our magazine Issues." It became even more clearer when we placed an ad in Craig List looking for writer's ... "And, those professional writers pointed out every error he had." I like that, you've got to be honest with not only the public, but, with the group you are working with (being a new start-up isn't an excue).
We received a revised clean copy of our website page , "How we got started ... our history (
http://www.egirlsnews.com/eGirls1/historyWCPM.html ) from a fantastic writer (who didn't have to take the time and do it, but, that's a professional), " Will K. Shilling (
http://geocities.com/wshilling101 ) visit Will's webpage and see some of his work and of course you will also be able to see several upcoming articles and interviews in eGirls News Magazine. I would like to say, "Will, again Thanks!"
If you got the time, please read what we should have done. Ron/Editor
HOW WE GOT STARTED ...
The story begins in 2002. There were three of us who had an idea, to start an online magazine (or, ‘zine, if you will) to showcase the beautiful women found on the Internet and living on the west coast of the United States. The three of us had photography backgrounds and knew how easy it would be to ask some girls to pose for us and then post the photos online. Not nudes, but, provocative pin-up poses.
At that time our photographic director, Jess James, was doing quite a lot of portfolio and glamour work in and around San Diego; and I was into promoting fashion shows and setting up personal appearances for Internet models. Doing a magazine, however, whether it's online or in print, is a very difficult job and it takes a team. We also found out that all of the pretty girls we were seeing, were either younger than we thought, didn't usually want to be on the Internet; but just as often, they quite frankly lack the visual quality demanded by professional, commercial photographic markets.
We were shooting and paying more--and getting less than what we wanted. We turned, shortly, to buying stock photos. But, as we grew and more traffic brought increased viewers and readership, we also got more email from our audience informing us on how they had seen what we were “calling new faces and new talent" on other web sites–and in a whole lot more revealing layouts than our pin-up style poses. We stopped buying stock photos and got lucky when we met “Mr. Photo Guy” himself, Rico Roberts. We originally were planning on doing a feature story about his great talent and the multitude of girls he’s shot, but instead asked if he would be interested in becoming the photographic director for West Coast PinUp Magazine. About this time, JessJames was getting so busy with his other work the situation worked out to everyone’s advantage.
Why have we stopped such a great project as WCTU mag? It simply became too much for a few people to handle properly--and so it's time for us to expand. We found ourselves–as we see on so many other web sites--showcasing the same girls over and over and over. Because the pool of models we were using are coming from a small niche pool of talented and beautiful women, it’s inherently limited. We wanted other types of people to get involved. Even though we have a combined membership online of between 10,000 and just less than 19,000, we were still having trouble collecting important marketing data on our members, or to get many of them to post information, inform us on upcoming events or provide photos to our photo album file. (And then came the spam: we spent more time deleting spam and virus links than necessary.)
Our members are great consumers, that much was obvious. But, they didn't join us to become freelance writers or photographers. Hence, we decided to start fresh. With both our online and newsstand editions of eGirlsNews.com, we’ve begun to do just that, start anew.
Our goal is to open up more markets than currently available, both in the states and abroad, while guaranteeing to keep our current, valuable members as a founding database. Our expanded content will include compelling, regular articles and feature stories about the internet girls (our “eGirls”) found on the web–-plus, inside each (newsstand) issue will be our standard columns, editorial reviews and features; examples of which are "eGirls Auction News (eGirls with an auction where to locate them and what are some of the items being auctions)", "Not Worth the Money (Before you spend your money at the many eGirls websites, wouldn't you like to know if joining is worth pay for it?)," "Free Personal Classifieds Ads (Everyone likes the word Free and if you have a personal ad you want to place, we have the space for you on a first come, first served basis)," the largest listing of its kind in the "eGirls Websites & Yahoo Groups (with the adding each days of a thousand of new web sites and Yahoo Groups, turn to us to find what new and current)", "CD-rom/ DVD reviews (a valuable service with the huge number of hotties offering electronic layouts and features online)", "One Last Look (after reading each issue we want our readers to be left with one last image from the featured models). But that’s just a sampling, much more will be in each issue, as well, as our publications grow with our expanded content.
We hope you will join us, and enjoy the new ride we are just beginning: eGirls News Magazine.
