All-male paysite BoyFun turns 21 with a renewed focus on natural chemistry and a winning formula that mixes and matches a careful collection of young bucks drawn from all corners of the globe.
The site’s origins trace back to 1998 in Livonia, Michigan, when it was known as the BF Collection, whose owners had already started Karups Private Collection.
We tailor these stories to the models shooting that day, the location we are in — even the weather in the city.
“The founders felt there was an opportunity in the gay market for a site of similar quality and update schedule,” Project Manager Brent Axford says. “After talking with other web owners, they felt they had the right idea and moved forward with the site. As Karups was focused on amateur and teen girls, they felt they would stick to the same focus for the gay site. After discussions with a couple of the early producers, it was agreed that twinks would be the main focus of the site.”
Despite a rocky launch, BFC performed well. However, “it still needed some work to be the best it could be,” notes Axford. “We approached one of the top affiliates of the site and asked him if he’d like to join the team and help direct the site to be better. He agreed to do so, as long as he could stay behind the scenes. He held that role until 2016.”
Although the term “twink” is moving out of vogue among the current generation of young onscreen studs, Brent notes it served to immediately brand the site two decades ago.
“That is one thing we asked the producers and affiliates we worked with early on — to see if that term was appropriate. It was deemed to be just fine and the common term for what we were producing. We have had little negative feedback from the models, members, producers or affiliates in our 20-plus years using the term.”
Today, BoyFun remains prolific and has moved the bulk of its production to Eastern Europe, although its focus remains on slender, smooth and apple-cheeked young stallions.
The current schedule includes banking up to eight condomless scenes per month. “All production, since the end of 2017, is done in Prague. We use a great producer team in Michael Burling and Kurt Maddox to do our scenes for us,” says Axford. “We work hand-in-hand with them to select the models, the pairings, the themes and the action that is shot.”
They keep their formula simple, which begins with pairing guys who are genuinely attracted to each other. “We try and pair guys that will look good together, but also get their feedback to see if they have any initial attraction to each other. Some of them can fake it, but a lot of them struggle to feel true sexual chemistry, so when the guys have an attraction to each other, it really helps to get the best action on camera.”
Axford also notes another preference among fans and consumers that has made its way into BoyFun casting sessions. “We try very hard to make sure that the height of the models is somewhat close, where possible,” he observes.
BoyFun takes full advantage of social media channels, in addition to the explosion in camming, as they seek out new talent. “For the casting of guys, Michael and his team are constantly scanning the various cam sites looking for any fresh twinks that might be interested in shooting porn,” he says. “We combine those leads, with the submissions they or we get from interested models, or that a couple agents in Prague send over for us.
“And with Twitter, it’s much easier to reach out to other popular models and gauge their interest. Social media has really helped recruitment of models.”
Axford observes that many of their recent models displayed an interest in gaming and, particularly, cosplay. These have been incorporated into many of their onscreen matchups, despite a unique hurdle or two.
“For our stories, we work closely with our producer to come up with the fun ideas and types of cosplay that is possible with our models,” he said. “This is a little bit tricky for us, over a studio like Helix, for example, where all their models speak perfect English. The vast majority of our models speak little or no English, so it becomes a challenge on how we can tell a story, but without the dialogue.
“We tailor these stories to the models shooting that day, the location we are in — even the weather in the city. Sometimes we will take the models to shoot in Budapest or another location, so we can utilize new sights and sounds of a city into these stories. We are experimenting with the use of subtitles in some current scenes to see what the members are willing to accept, as it would allow us to tell much better stories in our scenes.”
Two years ago, with the site’s 20th anniversary on the horizon, BoyFun’s operators knew an evolution was necessary. “From 1998 until the fall of 2017, we were a twink site that updated daily with a photo set and a video, often solo masturbation of various models shot from many producers,” Axford says. “It was a formula that worked very well for us from 1998 until about 2012-13.The market really changed in this time. The demand was for higher-end, better-quality models in hardcore porn.”
He cites Keith Miller’s Helix Studios as an innovator in the genre. “Keith saw this trend early and made the pivot very successfully, as you can see. There was a lot of internal debate inside our company about how we could make a change to this new style, and not fully alienate our current member base, which wanted a different product. It became a bit of a game of jump rope about when to fully make that switch.”
By early 2017, it was time to take a leap of faith and they began by looking more closely at their direct competitors. “We decided we had to make the switch in style and product and began to talk about the final concept of how we could be different than what is out there: Helix is fantastic and uses all-American guys. BelAmi uses a mix of Czech and Slovak twinks and jocks — they’re a beast. And Staxus uses mostly Czech guys. We felt the way we could make noise and compete with these guys was to bring in twinks from all over the world to shoot together, to mix European guys with guys from the rest of the globe. To that end, we brought in Nick Danner from Colombia, and Gabe Isaac and Devin Lewis flew in from California to shoot with our Euro stars, like Jared Shaw and Jake Olsen.”
BoyFun quickly learned they had devised a winning formula. However, “the other thing we really wanted to focus on was ensuring that the sex was natural and real and that the guys had as much chemistry as possible,” Axford says. “Some studios just go through a checklist of things to do, and it can come off as forced and not sensual or truly sexual. That is one thing we work hard to ensure doesn’t happen. It’s not always possible to get it right, but we feel our production team has got it pretty locked down on that front.”
For example, the studio won’t include rimming in a particular scene if neither model enjoys it in their personal lives. “It comes off as forced and unnatural, and takes you out of the scene,” Axford notes. “We also respect the wishes of our models, and will not make them bottom, if they are top-only. Our fans will beg us for some guys like Tommy Hunter, David Sky or Jared Shaw to bottom, but they are each natural tops and dislike to bottom. Why make a model uncomfortable and not enjoy his job and the sex he is having? It clearly comes across on camera when you do that, and nobody wins. These are some of the things we do to try and differentiate ourselves from others in the genre.”
A digital switch also had to occur when BoyFun made the decision to tweak its content formula. “In September 2017, we made the official switch from our old format,” Axford recalls. “We started with weekly featured scenes, shot in Ultra-HD 4K. And then updated daily with the older-style photo sets and videos. We continued this update schedule until August of 2018, when we increased our updates to twice weekly with the featured bareback scenes. In that time, we also improved the quality of our locations, the quality of the models and we improved on the overall natural sex shown between our models. We work hand-in-hand with our production team in Prague, and we constantly listen to the feedback of our fans, to get better each day.”
BoyFun has also put “increased emphasis” on social media channels. “One challenge for us is that a lot of the Czech models don’t do social media. Some studios work closely with their models in the social media space, and that is something we do with the models of ours that have, or want to have, a social media presence. We have models take over our Snapchat and Instagram accounts and do special shows with them. We also have our models send over special 1-2 minute videos of themselves doing normal things, or even sexual things, which we use to reward our Twitter fans. We have slowly started to work on our Facebook and Instagram fanbase. It is a bit more difficult with those two platforms, due to their sexual restrictions, but its something we intend to do more focus on in 2019.”
Axford notes the challenge in “breaking through the noise,” and cites their work with affiliate partners and tube sites to help spread the word. “It’s definitely a difficult task, but we are seeing good progress this year, and very encouraged by our current growth.”
Visit BoyFun online at BoyFun.com.
