(SAN FRANCISCO, CA) -- It is not easy breaking in as an Internet pornographer.

For starters, you need to overcome the stigma attached to the pornography business, which can make it hard to seduce investors. Then try competing in an already jampacked field where setting up shop requires little more than a computer, a few dirty pictures and a taste for titillation.

But pity not the "porn-trepreneurs." In San Francisco, ground zero for the new media revolution and breeding ground for Internet millionaires, an industry group has been set up to help would-be Hugh Hefners and Larry Flynts of the Internet age get on their feet.

Bay Area Adult Sites holds monthly meetings where panel discussions explore topics ranging from "How to Write Erotica for Online Adult Sites" to "Copyright Intellectual Property Issues." It also provides a forum for those in the business to network and search for ways to share customers and technology -- partnerships that industry insiders say are vital to survival in the harshly competitive environment.

"The more people get together and garner support, the more they have a chance to succeed," group co-founder Caity McPherson, 31, told Reuters in an interview. "This is one of the most wired places on the planet but a lot of people in the adult industry are flailing around. Bay Area Adult Sites can give these flailing Web sites a resource to fall back on."

No Scantily Clad Women

The group has attracted as many as 200 people to meetings at the Transmission Theater, a hip nightclub in San Francisco's burgeoning "South of Market" area that is also the meeting site for the more mainstream Association of Internet Professionals.

Do not expect to see scantily clad women milling around or tables overflowing with raunchy photos at its meetings. The sessions are aimed at sowing seeds of business relationships and are a place where shoptalk borders on the wonkish as Web masters exchange ways to perfect their technology.

"We felt like there was a need for people getting together in a monthly networking group," McPherson said. "Slowly but surely the group has grown."

Models meet photographers, venture capitalists search for the next big thing, Web masters learn how to place their sites higher on search engines and business owners discover which accountants do not mind pornography.

"There is really enthusiastic mingling," McPherson said. "At Bay Area Adult Sites people are engaged almost immediately and the atmosphere is very businesslike."

At one recent meeting, participants were treated to a panel discussion featuring one of the heavy hitters of the e-porn business, former nude model and stripper Danni Ashe, 32, who has parlayed her site "Danni's Hard Drive" into a mini-empire.

Ashe's Web site, covered with her own nude pictures, is credited with helping to establish the standard business model for Internet pornography -- luring customers with a few free pictures and then making them pay to see more.

She answered questions at the meeting and dispensed advice to would-be porn moguls on topics ranging from outsourcing employees to the benefits of Internet pop-up
advertisements.

"It is now much harder to be seen," she told Reuters in an interview, discussing the benefits of new groups like Bay Area Adult Sites. "I think it's important for small Web masters to band together."

McPherson, tall, blonde and also a former stripper, runs a far smaller site called Juicy Mango, which gets about 2,000 hits a day. But she said the opportunity to mingle with fellow porn purveyors in the flesh, so to speak, helps facilitate business among group members. It even led to one million-dollar deal involving adult fetish videos with names like "Messy Girls" where nude women frolic while lathered in food.

"These people had been going over stuff, missing phone calls and exchanging voicemail," McPherson said. "It was that one-on-one ... 'Let's sit down and shake hands and look each other in the eye' that confirmed the deal."

Billion-Dollar-A-Year Industry

The stakes are certainly high. Mark Hardie, an expert on the adult entertainment industry, says Americans spend some $1 billion each year on online pornography. But with an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 adult Web sites already floating around cyberspace and more being added by the day, an industry group like Bay Area Adult Sites can be a crucial tool for fledgling firms to share their experiences and strategies for survival.

"The industry has always been one where cooperation is the first effort," said Hardie, a former analyst with Forrester Research who left to form Entertainment Technology Corp. "You want to have an approach where, whatever you want to find, we'll find it for you," he said.

"It is better to send a visitor somewhere else where they leave satisfied and with what they were looking for. A lot of people involved in Bay Area Adult Sites just want to run a business, just like a pizza shop."

Greg Penhaligon, 33, could be selling pizza, but the clean-cut computer programmer is trying to sell sex.

"It's like the biggest thing on the Internet, but it's not talked about," said Penhaligon, who left his job at a telecom company in October 1998 to form Carnal Planet, basically an X-rated version of Web portal companies like Yahoo!.

"My mom thinks its great," he added. "She thinks someone should take advantage of it."

Carnal Planet started off with $150,000 in venture capital from the president of a "well-known" telecom firm he would rather not name. Now looking for second round funders, Penhaligon said Bay Area Adult sites offered him a way to learn crucial marketing tips from other Web masters, such as how to direct Internet traffic to Carnal Planet.

The group has also provided tips on ways operators can keep sites upscale, ranging from dealing quickly with customer complaints to keeping explicit nudity off the site's front page in order not to overplay their hand.

"My reason for being involved is the business side," said Penhaligon, who became the associate director of Bay Area Adult Sites. "I see it as a chamber of commerce."