I'm the head of software engineering for a decent sized porn company so I know a little about this. I personaly wouldn't worry about your VC concern but then again I don't see myself ever doing a project where I need VC money. That's just the reality of me disliking the large VC firm approach. I doubt angel fund types would give a rat's ass about whether or not you did porn related work in the past. That being said, if you're doing anything that is easily traceable or even moderately traceable then I would say don't do it. Why? Here's why:
The only way you can make decent money quick in the porn business is if one, you know how to get and drive traffic to the right sites and two, you can optimize which sites to send your traffic to based on their conversion ratio and payout amounts. There's no way to make money quick as a porn producer...just as an affiliate or some other traffic referrer and even then you are going to wait a minimum of a month to two months before you see that money because porn companies are going to make sure you're aren't scamming them with signups where you are buying memberships with stolen numbers. And as a true distributor? Well, that's going to take a while because you have to shoot the porn, edit the porn, get the bank to approve the type of porn you're doing, setup an affiliate network, get the traffic to come to your site and actually sell it. And that's after paying out a bunch of money to models and other folks. Therefore, I'm concluding you are going to be an affiliate. Good luck. Even sites like YouPorn don't make that much money from affiliate sales and they drive a crapload of traffic...although admittedly their traffic is sucky because they like free porn. It takes a while to get going as an affiliate. I have a friend that drives traffic to dating sites and he makes decent money at it but it's a time sink to be honest. Also, vanilla porn is way down from what I hear...there's so many companies making it and there's so much free stuff out there that it's just not the money maker it used to be.
I'd ask your friend how long it took him before he was making REAL money. I mean, unless you guys are just amazing and finding good quality traffic (that's the rub) it's really hard to make money quickly in the porn affiliate world.
Why don't you just have him "hire" you to make rent money and start up a bunch of new sites or projects for him so it's under his name and you never have to worry about it. He can keep them going later and reap the profits. You can even do it under the table if necessary so there's no messy legal trail for someone to find. Seems a lot easier to me.
The only way you can make decent money quick in the porn business is if one, you know how to get and drive traffic to the right sites and two, you can optimize which sites to send your traffic to based on their conversion ratio and payout amounts. There's no way to make money quick as a porn producer...just as an affiliate or some other traffic referrer and even then you are going to wait a minimum of a month to two months before you see that money because porn companies are going to make sure you're aren't scamming them with signups where you are buying memberships with stolen numbers. And as a true distributor? Well, that's going to take a while because you have to shoot the porn, edit the porn, get the bank to approve the type of porn you're doing, setup an affiliate network, get the traffic to come to your site and actually sell it. And that's after paying out a bunch of money to models and other folks. Therefore, I'm concluding you are going to be an affiliate. Good luck. Even sites like YouPorn don't make that much money from affiliate sales and they drive a crapload of traffic...although admittedly their traffic is sucky because they like free porn. It takes a while to get going as an affiliate. I have a friend that drives traffic to dating sites and he makes decent money at it but it's a time sink to be honest. Also, vanilla porn is way down from what I hear...there's so many companies making it and there's so much free stuff out there that it's just not the money maker it used to be.
I'd ask your friend how long it took him before he was making REAL money. I mean, unless you guys are just amazing and finding good quality traffic (that's the rub) it's really hard to make money quickly in the porn affiliate world.
Why don't you just have him "hire" you to make rent money and start up a bunch of new sites or projects for him so it's under his name and you never have to worry about it. He can keep them going later and reap the profits. You can even do it under the table if necessary so there's no messy legal trail for someone to find. Seems a lot easier to me.