Red

Porn Awards Red Carpet, Las Vegas, Nevada

Starlets

Porn Stars, Las Vegas, Nevada

Repent, Sinners

Porn Awards, Las Vegas, Nevada
I renamed my Forbes blog.

Now it's SIN INC.

There I will be working the vice beat.

Booze, broads, bozos.

It's the most interesting thing I've done in at least decade.

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Irish

Irish, Las Vegas, Nevada

How much can you make?

Stripper, Las Vegas, Nevada

"3) How much can a contributor make? As I’ve written, a writer who attracts 1 million unique visitors a month for 12 consecutive months, with a solid base of repeat visitors, can earn a six-figure annual income. That’s not easy to accomplish. In 2012, only the second year of our model, two contributors topped $100,000. We had a few at $75,000 and $50,000, and 25 hit the $35,000 mark. There is a long tail at $10,000. Using their individual data dashboard, a contributor can track how they’re doing in real time. For comparison, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the average full-time reporter or correspondent’s salary at $45,270. Remember, being a contributor (many have worked for major national and regional news brands) is a freelance job, with considerable freedom to publish content for others." -- "Inside Forbes: Amid the Finger Pointing, Journalists Need to Explore New Payment Models"

Stoya

Stoya, Las Vegas, Nevada

Toys

Sex Toys, Las Vegas, Nevada

Fan

Porn Star and Fan, Las Vegas, Nevada

Toys

Toys, Las Vegas, Nevada

Sausage

Doll, Las Vegas, Nevada

In a 2011 Forbes article entitled “Women Write Differently Than Men (Duh),” Susannah Breslin writes that she was simultaneously more compassionate and more ruthless when she wrote about the pornography business, because she could identify with women in a way that men could not. “The fantasy and the sex didn’t interest me,” she recalls. “I was looking for the ordinary in the extraordinary, the mundane in the hardcore, the human beings in the sausage factory.”-- The Walrus

Porn star

Porn Star, Las Vegas, Nevada

The most important thing you can do is write awesome stuff, no matter where it is published. Seriously, when people tell me they want to write profiles for the New Yorker, I’m like, "THEN GO DO IT. Have you heard of Blogger.tumblr.com?" I mean, there is absolutely nothing stopping any of us from spending three months with a subject and writing the definitive 10k word piece proving why they are important and fascinating. Except Homeland, bourbon, and laziness. So, shit, write a profile about a lazy alcoholic who watches too much TV. BOOM. Problem solved. (See: Susannah Breslin’s They Shoot Porn Stars, http://theyshootstars.com/). -- Alexis Madrigal, The Believer

iPhone

iPhone

Do that thing

Pink Pants, Las Vegas, Nevada
Want to know how to be a better journalist? Let me explain. It involves a gigolo.

At this point, I don’t really have any big hangups as a journalist. For example, at one point, I was at the convention, and I was looking for this gigolo. I’d seen him on a panel. He sat at the front of the room with another guy, and the theme of the panel was, “A bunch of people have crossed over from adult to mainstream, but what about people who have crossed over from mainstream to adult?” These guys were supposed to be examples of that. The gigolo is the star of a Showtime show called “Gigolos,” and the other guy was a rock star who ended up on “Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew” and then made a celebrity sex tape because “that’s what you do.”

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Stripper

Stripper, Las Vegas, Nevada

Porn star dreams

I've got my final post on my porn trip to Vegas on my Forbes blog.

I’m sitting in the nosebleed seats at the porn awards.

To my right, an older man — maybe 60, or 70 — is reading the evening’s program with a small yellow flashlight.

To my left, a young Asian woman is studying her program as if cramming for a final.

“WE CAN’T HEAR YOU!” a man behind us screams.

On the stage, a woman whose breasts risk overflowing the neckline of her sparkling dress is at the microphone, but there is a technical difficulty, and we can’t hear what she’s saying.

It doesn’t really matter. This is porn.

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Gigolo

Gigolo, Las Vegas, Nevada

Porn stars speak

“I’m real. I bring myself. I don’t pretend to be something I’m not.”

I've got another post up on my Forbes blog featuring more from the epicenter of porn in Vegas. I photographed people who work in adult and asked them about business. Above, Bonnie Rotten.

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Blue porn star

Blue Porn Star, Las Vegas, Nevada

This is porn

My first post on the adult convention and awards in Vegas is online at Forbes:

“Porn’s totally gone down the toilet,” Lane reports. So, he’s moonlighting in real estate. “I’m doing my part to save the economy by getting short sales off the market and making fine, quality porno,” he enthuses. “I want to be the Warren Buffett of porno.”

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Vegas, baby

I'm in Vegas, covering the Adult Entertainment Expo and the AVN Awards.

You can follow my coverage on my Forbes blog here.

Feel free to share the link with your friends.