Hard Sell
Danni Ashe has risen from Seattle's strip clubs to become one of the Net's most downloaded
figures. But it's more than mere pulchritude that fuels Ashe's hard drive.
By Erik Gruenwedel

To look at Danni Ashe is to think numbers, really big numbers. However, they're not the obvious ones (38-23-35, if you're wondering) that make the pretty 32-year-old nude model and former exotic dancer a dot-com standout. As an Internet entrepreneur, Ashe - the founder and proprietor of danni.com, the adult entertainment portal also known as Danni's Hard Drive - displays large financial figures too. Last year, Ashe's Web venture grossed an impressive $5.2 million with a 35 percent profit margin. Five years after its launch, Danni's Hard Drive now has a stable of 300 models located in a spacious 18,000-square-foot office in Los Angeles that's filled with a state-of-the-art TV studio, photography equipment, computer hardware and 42 administrative employees. "To me it's a symbol of how hard I've worked and what I've built on the Internet," says Ashe. Indeed, rather than rest on the laurels of her offline success as an adult entertainer, the Seattle native chose to enter the online arena both in front of and behind the screen. If success was measured in downloads, Ashe would be a major dot-com mogul: Ashe's images have been downloaded more than 850 million times since 1995, a fact that earned her recognition by Guinness World Records as the "Most Downloaded Woman" in the world, far surpassing Internet vixen Cindy Margolis, who formerly held the title. "I've known all along that my numbers were bigger [than Margolis' reported 7 million downloads], but I was too busy running a company to pursue [recognition]." While it's no secret that adult entertainment Web sites generate more than $1 billion in revenue annually according to findings by Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research, what's interesting is who's surfing. About 86 percent of those surfing porn are married men ages 31 to 55 with average annual household incomes approaching $50,000, according to a report by AVNOnline, a Los Angeles-based adult Internet news site. For Ashe, the data translates to 27,000 monthly subscribers (including a 6,000 monthly turnover) who pay $19.95 to peek into her hard drive. "[Sex] is a very easy thing to sell," Ashe understates. "There's a very active consumer base [in adult entertainment], which everybody knows about. The reason I'm succeeding is that I've never had the cushy benefit of somebody else's money. I've never had angel capital. Never had the prospect of an IPO." At DHD, which was seeded by $8,000 Ashe earned stripping at many of Seattle's finest catwalks, a user would be hard pressed to find a banner, button or streaming ad from Madison Avenue. As a result, Ashe has been forced to cut to the chase, figure out what works and go for it. As an early purveyor of adult entertainment online, Ashe realized that building a brand in adult entertainment didn't require graphic images of sexual intercourse. Danni's Hard Drive offers only softcore images, photo parodies, comedies, profiles and streaming videos. It's adult entertainment for men, but with a woman's sensibility", says Ashe, whose cadre of professional actors and models, along with a handful of Internet amateurs, earn between $500 to $1000 a day for photo shoots. "It's much more personality driven and lighthearted. The [models'] personalities shine through. They are portrayed as fun-loving individuals as opposed to some panting women with their legs spread, which in the end is not that interesting." What has proven interesting to consumers is Ashe's marquee name. "My business model is to build a brand," she says. "I make every effort not to piss [customers] off. I want them to feel good about being here. I want them to tell their friends about the site. With most of my competitors, it's a numbers game. It has nothing to do with building a brand." Ashe, who admits age is making it tougher and tougher to feel good about having her naked butt in front of the camera, says her career had been inspired by the late mythologist Joseph Campbell and his belief in following one's "bliss." "That's what I've done with the Internet," says Ashe. "I took something I knew and mixed it with something I was passionate about and it's become a very successful business."