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By chronicling their sex life online, can a local couple beat the recession?

Their business is an unusual one that begins at the usual place: a Tony Robbins seminar in Vegas. It was a couple of years ago. Matt lived here and operated a casino merchandising and marketing business. But thanks to the waning economy, business was not what he expected. He needed ideas and inspiration. He took a motivational seminar, and like many others can now say Tony Robbins changed his life, although not in the way he—or, probably, Robbins—expected.

“I kept looking at this girl in the back,” Matt recalls. Her name was Amaryllis, who says she was traveling the country, working for Robbins. “She probably thought I was creepy,” he says.

There was a good reason for that: At the time, Amaryllis was 17, Matt 28. In his defense Matt offers: “She was in a business seminar, and I thought everyone had to be mature and business-minded.” Whatever your view on that age gap, love bloomed, as did a compatible sex life—and their entrepreneurial instincts.

So it was only natural that they partner in another sort of business, one where last names and day jobs working for casino companies and Latin American nations of origin are left out. The two began to post their sex life on a website available to subscribers for $19.95. The initial cost of their start-up company was about $2,000. They are co-owners. In the couple of months they have been open to the public, they have generated about 20 subscribers and a lot of press and radio interviews. Matt estimates that 1,000 subscribers is the magic number that will allow them to quit all other pursuits and dedicate their full energies to the business of recording their life on Oursexdiary.com

Matt and Amaryllis do not see themselves as pornographers. Of course, they concede that they are making porn, but they think capturing the reality of their relationship makes them unique. To their way of looking at things, they are a normal couple that has found a way to turn what they love most (sex and each other) into a business plan. Like many Las Vegans who came here for opportunities that the local economy was suddenly unable to supply, they improvised.

“Our first entry is us talking mainly about the decision we just made,” Amaryllis says. Matt adds, “In the beginning it was a lot of jitters, a lot of nerves. We’ve become a lot more comfortable with it now.”

All that is left is 980 more subscribers for the local couple to screw their way out of the recession.