Big thanks, Patrick, for taking the time to do this (tiny 😉) interview with us! Can’t wait to catch up in Seville! 🎉✨
Can you tell us a bit about the early days of The Hun’s Yellow Pages? What inspired you to start one of the first adult sites in the Netherlands?
It had nothing to do with the Netherlands. I was on my way studying technical computer science, a lot was about hardware design, computer architecture, etc. Back then, we’re talking 1990 here, knowing how a computer actually worked made it a lot easier to program then. I was in programming groups with study mates of mine, doing these 32K demo competitions where people were competing to make incredible visuals and music with a program that was 32Kbytes or less. Those were the days of assembly and such. The competitions were the early versions of the LAN parties.
Then this thing Internet came about. Nobody in my study was taking it too seriously. So I went and checked it out on my own. Just to figure out how it worked I bought this little program at a computer dump market square. We went to those regularly to buy hardware and just browse geek stuff and hang out. This program I bought was something you could create some sort of blog with. In those early days I was chatting with people from all over the world. I remember being on some BBS systems. People would post naughty pics on there regularly. When I needed to fill out information on that program I bought I used those links. Then backwards engineers what the program would spit out. That’s how I thought myself HTML. Playing around with colours and stuff.
In my programming group my nickname was The Hun. Nobody went with their real names. Since it was a directory of free porn I changed the color to yellow, and put the title in as “The Hun’s Yellow Pages“. This was 1995. After that I figured out how to put it online. It went viral the old fashioned way from there. I was shut off the internet a couple of months later for burning way too much bandwidth with my free ISP internet page. One of the guys I was studying with had a hosting company. They offered to put me on their extra bandwidth so we could try to sell advertising on it. That never happened, but we found someone that wanted to host us in exchange for advertising. Then my first Internext happened in Vegas, we started to get more and more advertisers and we eventually were able to pay for our own hosting.
The adult industry has evolved significantly since you launched. What do you think have been the most important shifts in the industry over the years?
We changed in the past years listing more galleries that we built ourselves. Most listings on thehun.net are now built and hosted by us. We work directly with the pay sites to promote them from our site. And now that we’re hosting everything ourselves we are becoming way more interesting for google to list us. In the past we were just a portal to free porn on the internet. Now we’re actually a good resource with great previews for what you can find on the pay sites we work with. In the near future I’m hoping to move away from banner advertising altogether and just promote the sites we actually work with to drive sales to them.
How did you approach the challenge of running an adult site during a time when online adult content was still relatively new and uncharted?
We went viral the old fashioned way. People would talk to their friends and mention this site “The Hun’s” and that’s how we got our audience. Google wasn’t there yet. In fact, when google did start to become the source for most traffic on the web we kind of missed the boat since we were “just a portal”. We didn’t have any content on our own site. Google doesn’t want to list the portal, they want to list the content. We’re catching up to this. One of those things you learn over the years, right? It was easier in the past for sure. Less competition is the biggest reason.
And also, we mainly did it for the fun. So we were a lot less aggressive towards our audience. We still are. No misleading links, no popup or popunder consoles or anything like that. The most time consuming for us was always to monitor the links listed on thehun.net to make sure our visitors weren’t mislead or bombarded with consoles and stuff. Some affiliates are greedy. And greed usually changes an industry.
What unique challenges did you face in the Netherlands when setting up The Hun’s Yellow Pages, and how did you overcome them?
Nothing really… maybe it was easier then for people in some other countries. I live in a very liberal country. I know in Germany you have to follow some very strict rules if you want to run a website. Not in the Netherlands. As long as you don’t do anything illegal, you’re good. Getting a bank account is no problem here.
Business and Strategy
What role has innovation played in the ongoing success of The Hun’s Yellow Pages, and how do you stay ahead in such a competitive industry?
A couple of years ago I teamed up with my son Martin. He wanted to be a programmer too from an early age, same as me, and this programming knowledge helps us a lot. The whole site still runs on a single machine. Behind the scenes there’s a lot of nifty programming caching stuff, building indexes, preparing suggestions, etc. etc. The site’s look might not have changed a lot, the backend of it is now a lot more complicated than in the past. And our knowledge on how to make stuff fast and effective certainly helps keeping our costs down. We are now a team of 5 people, and most of that team is programming.
Many adult sites today rely heavily on search engines and social media for traffic. How has The Hun’s Yellow Pages adapted to changes in digital marketing?
What do you think are the keys to running a successful adult business, especially in a B2B context?
Patience. And I could write a lot more, most of which would be to describe patience. Of course you can try to jump on the google bandwagon and harvest new visitors from there every day, but that seems like a lot more work, plus you’re depending on what google’s doing tomorrow. So you have to act quick. That was never a game that sounded very appealing to me. We try to step back from our site every now and then and try to see it from the visitor point of view. It’s hard to build something that of course has to make money, but also should be interesting enough for people to come back to.
Have you seen significant differences in your audience’s behaviour or preferences over time? How do you gather insights to understand and respond to these changes?
Not really. Of course new technology like VR wasn’t there before. AI is now a new thing. On thehun.net we still see that the same content that’s always was the most interesting for people still is. We also do notice is that what gets voted the highest is not what makes the most sales.
Industry and Future Trends
What are the biggest challenges the adult industry faces today, especially with increasing regulation and competition?
This age verification thing is a bit of a worry tbh. I think it’s the job of a government to educate people. Educate kids, educate parents. Don’t simply block things and expect it to not be a problem anymore. That has been proven not to work so many times in the past. We’re a free site. So we make pennies on every visitor. We have a lot of visitors, so we’re not complaining, but if we’d have to implement some sort of verification it has to be very cheap in order to work for us.
With the rise of new content formats, such as interactive and VR content, how do you see the future of adult websites and directories evolving?
I don’t thing VR will ever become very big, but that’s my opinion. I’ve been wrong before, lol. In the past the adult industry always has been pushing new technologies. It was the adult industry that found a way to monetise movies on the web. YouTube would never have existed without that tech. The main stream (as we called it, which only recently really became the main stream) is now so big that they can pay for the own developments.
Back to your question: for us as a directory it’s easy: if something new is invented we’re pushing it. Since we’re promoting/posting what other people are trying to sell we’re always up to par with what’s out there. It is of course our job to know what the industry is selling, so we’re keeping a close eye on the magazines, visit the shows, etc.
Do you believe there’s still space for newcomers in the adult business, or has it become too saturated?
There’s always room for new people. Some old ones disappear, there’s plenty of fish in the sea. It’s harder than it was in the past. I know of people that build a gallery for a paysite, posted it on thehun.net and made 2500 that day in signups. And we listed 100 galleries a day. It’s not that easy anymore. I saw some tools posted that are supposed to help you build your adult website empire, but basically you’re posting the same stuff everybody else is. I don’t think that’s going to cut it either. Be original, be patient, and there’s still room in this industry
How do you view the future of privacy and security for adult sites, especially given the increased scrutiny from regulators and tech platforms?
Privacy will be a problem if people are required to upload their passport to adult sites. It’s been proven in the past that databases leak, security fails and people you trust don’t always remain to be people you trust.
Content, Partnerships, and Community
How important are partnerships in the adult industry? Are there any particular collaborations or partnerships that have been key to your business?
Well, for every website you’ll need a host. My current host is buying me dinner if I mention them: mojohost. I have a good relationship with them. Since we try to make our software as effective as possible we do need some tech installed on our machines. We were the first ever install of Redis for ’em for instance. They have knowledgable people there, and also some that might know a bit about a server, but as soon as it becomes a little more complicated know not to struggle on with it, but to pass it on to someone that does know. Shit happens. Of course. But shit is dealt with promptly, and that’s what I need in a host. Ok, that was my pitch for a now awesome dinner. Lol!
I like some of the openness in this industry. There are some groups – some kind of hidden, others more in the open – where people actually exchange experiences with each other. I feel a lot of openness and willingness to help when I’m talking to people at the trade shows. I learned a lot at them, and I’m sure I taught others a lot as well.
In there programming world I see kind of the same thing. There’s a big community of programmers that are more than willing to help you when you’re stuck, but it is kind of expected you help people back when you can.
In a time when adult content creators are more independent, how has your relationship with content providers and advertisers changed?
We never dealt directly with advertisers much. In the past it was Cybercat that dealt with all our advertising. Mark & Parney Galione, great people, and I wish them the best retirement! After that we kept a good relationship with some of the advertisers that have been with us for ages and the rest goes to the networks. Now that we’re moving more to being affiliates we working closely with the people we’re doing business with. We don’t want thehun.net to look all the same. If you click a link on the site you should feel like you’re on the site that gave us the content. So we’re recreating the look and feel.
How do you ensure quality and ethical standards in a space that can be challenging to regulate?
Manual work. We have had the same person responsible for what gets listed and what doesn’t (Michel). We don’t allow user upload, the stuff that’s automated is still manually reviewed. If in doubt: skip. Just browsing porn should be fun. You shouldn’t come across stuff you don’t want to see.
We once got a phone call from a police officer. We had pictures of a girl online and she never gave anybody permission to post those pictures. This was in the days where we would still only list submitted galleries, so the content wasn’t on our server. Legally I could have told him that, but I can imagine it’s awful to have imagery on the web that don’t want public. I know who all submitters are, so I contact them. It was one of our advertisers who promptly sent me a video of the same girl, holding her ID and saying how she is getting paid for the shoot and how the company is allowed to used the shot content any way they like. So I sent that back to the police. Eventually the girl admitted it was not posted illegally, but she had regrets. So the company in question let her buy her own content and removed it from their servers. We like to stay legal and take an extra step if we can.
What advice would you give to adult content creators or businesses looking to succeed in the industry?
I don’t deal with many individual creators. I found a lot of those don’t realise how giving away some content can drive sales to the rest of your content. They prefer to stay independent. That’s fine, lucky for us there are more creators out there. I do feel some are grouping together to expose the affiliate business though. My email address is on our site: they can always contact us.
Personal Insights and Reflections
Looking back on your journey, what has been the most rewarding part of running The Hun’s Yellow Pages?
The traveling, the friends and the actual work. I love programming. I knew I wanted to be a programmer since I was 12. And since a couple of years these rewards got even better: I’m now doing all this with my son, Martin. Of course, we’re still dad and son, so we don’t agree on everything all of the time, lol. But all in all we have the same goal, and we’re creating awesome stuff together.
thehun.net is not a 9-5 job. Basically you’re stand by 24 hours a day. But it gives a lot of freedom at the same time. So I was able to grow my business into completely different industries as well. I love building something new. The past couple of days I’ve been busy in my audio recording studio trying to figure out this new analog console we bought. Something completely different, but equally fun.
Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you think every business owner in the adult industry should know?
Treat your visitor as your visitor, not as a cow you need to milk dry.
What has been the most surprising aspect of working in the adult industry?
There are a lot of people in this industry I consider friends. There are a lot less I don’t. It’s a great industry with a lot of great people. There are of course always others with very different business tactics, usually way more aggressive than mine, but the people behind it are still great people I love to have a drink with.
What’s next for you and The Hun’s Yellow Pages? Are there any new projects or goals you’re excited about?
Well, there’s no ‘next’ thing I think. The site start in 1995, 30 years ago this year. By the looks of it we’ll keep going for a while. I still like the work, though Martin is now doing the majority of the work so I have time to run other projects that have nothing to do with thehun.net.
Personal Interests and Hobbies
I make music. I’ve been a bass player for 35 years now. I play in 3 bands, one with classic rock. An Iron Maiden tribute and a band that plays metal versions of Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys, lol. All a lot of fun, all with great people. Playing a gig feels fantastic, the beer before you go on stage, rehearsals, the laughs, it’s great.
I’m never in my own studio with my own bands. The studio is a professional recording studio for bands that make their money with their albums. I do spend a lot of time there though, recording, mixing.
A couple of years ago I bought a brewery, I got together with a business associate, Frank, he’s running the brewery now. We’re doing great, the place looks awesome! Our industry (the adult industry) did enable me to go all over the world and see what great bars have to offer. We feel we put of lot of those ideas in one place, combined with Frank’s expertise in the bar business we create the place to be in our town!
Running a business can be intense. What do you do to relax and unwind?
I of course have to keep a close eye in the bar, so I’m there once a week or so. I love going out to eat, travel, go to bands playing and even the trade shows I’m looking forward to. I likel to be around people. Being a programmer contradicts with that. If I’m programming I don’t want to be bothered. So I’m making up for that when I’m not behind a computer. On the other hand: here I am on a free Tuesday night typing out the answers to Roland’s questions for the past two hours. lol.
I love food. And not quantity but quality. Asian is my favourite right now. Which is very broad, I know. Chinese food is great, Sichuan (although very spicy) and Kanton are my favourite. Thai is great, Japanese is out of this world. I love going there.
If the weather is good I ride my bicycle to the office. It’s a 7 kilometer ride there. I have an home office, but if you’re working in a team it’s better to sit together. On the way home I usually run by the store and get fresh stuff for dinner. I do most of the cooking at home and although in the Netherlands you’re not supposed to brag, I am a pretty good cook.
The other night at home with my wife and daughter I made a nice dinner, had a couple of glasses of wine, took a guitar and we were singing camp-fire-classics all night. Those are precious nights.
Once a month I go to a cooking club nearby with 12 entrepreneurs. All people working in very different fields from each other, but all with similar issues in their line of work. We prepare and eat a 5 source dinner there, talk about work, family and things friends talk about. We’ve been doing that for 17 years now. A great bunch of blokes.
I also love to travel to unwind. We went to Curacao to visit an old industry friend Ramon. One thing led to another and we now own santamarthaadventures which he operates. Business and leisure are never really separated when doing business is what you like doing I guess.
Do you have any favorite books, podcasts, or movies that inspire you or that you simply enjoy in your downtime?
There’s a Dutch podcast about law that I regularly listen to. It puts your mind at other things and it helps time fly. I’m not much of a reader. I play games on my phone when I want to unwind. Or the playstation. I have one of those race sim seats.
What kind of music do you enjoy? Do you have any favorite artists or genres?
I’m a metal head. I love rock and metal music. But with the right atmosphere and the right mood a Sam Cook song can set tears in my eyes too. I love going to concerts. Latest one was Kreator, Testament and Anthrax. Kreator sucked. Testament was great. And Anthrax… well… I’ve been a great fan of them since I heard them.
Are you passionate about any sports or fitness activities?
When the world soccer cup was on a couple of years back we would get together with a small group and watch the Netherlands play. We’d cook the food of the land they were playing against. Good excuse to get together. After the soccer ended the same group started to get together for the Formula 1. I still follow that closely!
Travel and Favorite Locations
What are some of your favorite travel destinations, whether in the Netherlands or around the world?
That’s easy: Japan. Followed very closely by almost the rest of the world though. But Japan is feels like a different planet. I went to Thailand with Martin last December, that was a great trip too. We never left Bangkok, but if you know your way around that city it can be a lot of fun. A couple of years ago we visited Vietnam after the trade show in Thailand. Very friendly welcoming people there.
Is there a particular place or city that you find especially inspiring or enjoyable?
Yeah, Japan. First time I went there was with my son Martin when he was 12 years old. First thing we bought when we got home was those Japanese toilets. I miss those a lot when we’re traveling.
Do you have any favorite local spots in the Netherlands that you’d recommend to someone visiting for the first time?
I love Amsterdam. Next to the red light district – a great place to go bar hopping – there’s china town with a lof of very authentic places. I recommend Sichuan there. And if you can get in: Bird Snackbar. Not the restaurant! Go to the snackbar. It’s like eating in Thailand. And then of course our brewery where I live!
Food, Drink, and Leisure
Are there any particular foods or cuisines you love? Do you have a favorite restaurant?
I think I already answered this one. I just realised that what I like about a country is their cuisine apparently, lol.
Portugal, Greece, italy… all great food! Amsterdam is a good city to go for different cuisines. The Dutch eat at home mostly. So there are no Dutch restaurants. Well, a couple in Amsterdam, but that’s purely for the tourists. They do serve proper Dutch food, don’t get me wrong, but no dutch person will eat there. The restaurants in the Netherlands are from all over the world. If it’s not specified it’s usually French. In Amsterdam there are a lot of restaurants that have people from there cooking in their kitchen. And with Amsterdam having a lot of restaurants and thus a lot of competition everybody is doing their best to stand out. That usually makes for a great experience.
There is a restaurant very close to our home (I can walk there), which is very good, but I tend not to go there too often. We had Christmas dinner there, which was awesome, but I’m more of a restaurant hopper. I don’t want to eat the same thing over and over. So this place close to home I’d love to visit 4 times a year, once every season.
For some reason the wines from Stellenbosch (a place in South Afrika) is so creakingly delicious. I love their red. Rijk’s Pinotage or Kanonnenkop are my favorite. I love the tannins in red wine that seems to be missing from the American reds. I don’t really like those for that reason. A nice south European (Spain, Portugal, Italy) or South American (Chili) white is great too. You can see I’m not picky!
What’s your go-to comfort food or favorite drink after a long day?
Whenever I cook rise I always cook too much so I can make egg fried rice the next day. A family tradition is spaghetti meatballs. I love that when we’re staying home with the family. A nice bottle of wine, fireplace, guitar… happy days!
My ‘favourite’ chances a lot. For a while I loved a glass of whisky. The smokier the better. I still do, but right I tend to go for the less smoky whiskies. Sometimes I prefer a gin and tonic. In Japan I always drink highball (Suntori (preferably) whisky with soda). On a hot summer day there’s nothing better than an ice cold beer when you get home. Or just some ice cold lemonade.
Do you enjoy cooking? If so, what’s your signature dish?
I love cooking (see before). I don’t know if I have a signature dish, I cook whatever I want to eat. Last Christmas I cooked for my inlas, 24 people, 8 course, that was nice. Martin was my sous-chef.
If you’d ask this question to my family they’ll say: Spaghetti meatballs
Fun and Unique Personal Insights
If you could invite any three people (living or historical figures) to dinner, who would you choose and why?
My grandparents I think… I miss them sometimes. But that’s probably not the answer you were looking for. Chriet Titulaer for sure. He’s an old Dutch television maker who died in 2017. He was making a lot of programs about the tech industry and most of his predictions we now actually use. Very interesting fellow. My favourite comedian should also be there: Herman Finkers. Again, a Dutch fellow. Don’t look him up if you’re not Dutch. A lot of his jokes are a play on words and it just cannot be translated to another language most of the time. And the third… I don’t know… Ed Stafford maybe. He just seems like a nice fellow to have a beer with.
But any dinner would be most likely with friends, neighbours, industry friends (which overlap the real friends on occasion), colleagues. Everybody with an interesting story, a good sense of humor and an appetite.
Do you have any hidden talents or unique skills that not many people know about?
Not really. I’m not known as an introvert, so I guess I told everybody everything already. People are surprised if I start playing piano. I can play stuff in a minute that would amaze you and then I’ll walk off embarrassed. Truth of the matter is that I can only play that one minute, lol.
If you weren’t in the adult industry, is there another career path or passion you’d like to pursue?
When I started as a programmer I had a couple of projects going. I stuck with thehun.net since that was making a little bit of money in the beginning and I had a lot of fun with it. The other projects I was doing could have easily been a success as well. I guess I’ll never know. In the early days of the Hun I started working on other businesses with other people as well. Some of those businesses became a great succes, others failed miserably. That’s the way it goes in business. I guess if adult never took off I would be in tech or music or food or travel or most likely a combination of those.
The great thing working the businesses I do now and more importantly: with the people I’m running them with, enables me to do all those things in the first place. I have a lot of people around me that I’m thankful for. Every day is packed with different challenges, different opportunities and different rewards. I’m very grateful for the variety I have in my work.
What’s something on your bucket list that you’d love to accomplish someday?
My bucket list is short. I like to put stuff in there when I know I can make it happen. I’d love for the study to take off. We have a recording studio close to Amsterdam with a lot of vintage equipment. We always ran everything of a digital table, basically a big mouse that let you record everything on a computer. Now we bought a state of the art analog console, fitting far better with the other equipment we have in the studio. This month we’re connecting everything (which is a lot of work), I’d love to see that work out. I guess that’s as bucket-listy as it’ll get. It’s the project I’m working on at the moment, keeps me busy.
