Despite the fact that I am a lesbian and a girl/girl porn producer, I still get emails/Facebook messages/tumblr missives/various and sundry communiques almost every day from dudes who want to be male porn stars. Most of these people live in countries that are not the United States, and cities that are not Los Angeles.

At times, I feel compelled to share some straight talk (from the gayest woman  in porn) with these guys…so I decided to make this post to contain my thoughts on the subject so I could just link to it the next (twenty) times I’ve got to dash some guy’s porno dreams.

Here’s the thing about porn. It’s a fucking business. Sure, it’s sex too, but it’s a business first. If you live outside the states and your country does not have a porn industry of its own (countries that do include France, the UK, and Hungary), your chances of making it in porn decline exponentially. If you are in India or Africa, you are about as likely to become male talent as to become the president of the United States.

In order to shoot for a US porn company, because of 2257 regulations, you must have US ID. Think about this for a second. In order for a company to shoot you, they’d need to get you to the United States and get you said ID. This for a job that, at the newbie/lower end pays a couple hundred bucks. Nobody, ever, is going to do this for untested, untried, broken-English-speaking male talent when there’s a jillion dudes who want this job. That’s great that you can “fuck girl for 2 hour no cummm” or whatever the fuck you feel compelled to write to me about…it’s a fantasy and it will never happen.

Even if you’re in Los Angeles, this is not an easy career path to embark on. Here’s some ways that dudes get into porn:

1. Start on the gay side. Gay companies are more inclined to give a newbie a chance.

2. Come up through the bukkake lines. This is less true these days, since this kind of porn isn’t shot so much anymore, but start doing $50 gigs as a forgettable load-dumper and move your way up through smaller group shoots, getting ass-fucked by a dominatrix with a strap-on, fucking GILFs and whatever else you need to do to finally get the notice you feel you deserve.

3. Have a hot girlfriend who wants to shoot porn, especially if she will only shoot boy/girl with you. You will hold her career back, she will eventually dump you and your “one penis policy” hangups and go on to greater things…but you’ll get that elusive chance to get your foot in the door. Having very close friends in porn is a sort of 2B. If your best bud from college is a gangbang director…maybe he’ll throw you a bone on video.

4. Fucking pay for it yourself. Invest in equipment, pay talent, and market your own shit. There’s a lot of guys who do this, and make money…but you’ll have to be good at the job, have enough money to get started, and jump through all the hoops it takes to get porn distributed in a marketable way in the age of free porn on the Internet.

So stop sending me your dick pics. I can’t help you. This has been a public service announcement.

This post originally appeared at Lily’s blog, and is reposted with her permission.

Check out our amazing friend Lily Cade at her NSFW site