Ah, the Amateur debate once again. This has been going on for over 10 years! Remember, this is just a term we coined on the 'net back in 1994!
My response is quite simplistic in nature. An "Amateur" is a Woman/Man/Couple who are not involved in any other aspect of adult, and don't use their websites to promote other said aspects. Therefore, a dancer, escort, porn star, etc, shouldn't be considered Amateur. The term really is geared toward the housewife/mother/girlfriend type of website. Most of the early Amateurs were also Swingers who used their sites to meet others (such as we did).
You really can't bring money into the debate, since everyone who does this, does it for money in some way. And just because one Amateur is much more successful than another, doesn't cause her to lose that status.
We started on the 'net when there were very few people on it, and you really couldn't make a cent. It was all for fun. We were using Mosaic as a browser, Pegasus for e-mail, and you still needed to install Winsock to get your 14.4K modem to dial up to your provider! Your only HTML program was Notepad! But, when the chance to make money came along, we jumped right in! The concept of the website stayed the same, we were just charging for it now.
We all have our own ideas as to what "Amateur" means in regards to a website, and this question will never be resolved. And I won't even get into "Corporate Amateur"!
