from www.forbes.com – The first thing you see when you get out of the cab and stand in front of the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas is the message over the bank of glass and brass front doors: “WHEN THIS HOUSE IS ROCKING DON’T BOTHER KNOCKING COME ON IN.”

This week, the casino is rocking because it is filled with those who make their living selling sex to the rest of the world. Porn purveyors and their consumers have convened for the fifteenth annual AVN Adult Entertainment Expo, an erotic blitz culminating on Saturday night with the AVN Awards, now in its thirtieth year and which is popularly known as the Academy Awards of porno.

Inside, the slot machines are spinning, the tattoo shop is buzzing, and porn’s presence is impossible to avoid. Young women with dimensions not found in nature teeter along in impossibly high heels and barely-there dresses, tended to by buffed, bronzed and spike-haired male minders who have secured their female charges at the elbow. Photographers hunt the halls with over-sized cameras, snapping photos of the eye-popping spectacle. A long line of mostly men buying $80 tickets await the opportunity to get close enough to porn stars to find out what they smell like. The fourth wall has collapsed under the weight of all this pressed flesh.

There can be no mistaking it: Porn has changed. Blame the Great Recession, point to the Internet’s global dissemination of pirated adult content, consider the destigmatization of porn in the 21st century — here, the tectonic shift is palpable. On the teeming main floor, once-powerful adult production companies making big budget feature movies starring contract performers have surrendered their market share to young, hungry startup founders looking to make a virtual killing.

Standing in front of a banner reminding everyone that Jesus loves porn stars, the self-proclaimed “porn pastor” of XXXchurch.com, Craig Gross, whose uncle is billionaire financier Bill Gross, surveys the changing of the guard.

“A lot of the new money doesn’t look like the old money,” Gross observes. “It’s about mobile, it’s about advertising, it’s about the Internet. These guys aren’t in suits. These guys aren’t even thirty.” In fact, the new pornographer isn’t a pornographer at all. “It’s all about the money. It’s not about sex. It’s not about love.” His expression darkens. “You’ve gotta be shocking. You’ve gotta push the envelope. Because we’ve seen everything.”

Pushing your way through the crowd of fans — or “civilians,” as porn insiders refer to them — you understand the demand viscerally. The line of consumers waiting for a moment with Kayden Kross, nominated for Female Performer of the Year, is real. Everything is for sale: photos of porn stars signing autographs next to monitors playing their X-rated videos, XXX billing services and sex chats, an anatomically-correct silicone sex doll in a fishnet bodysuit sprawled on a recliner sprinkled with fake red rose petals, stripper poles for your bedroom and interactive movies that defy pirating, designer condoms and Ron de Jeremy rum.

“I’m still a pornographer, but in the long haul, I’d like to be selling real estate,” James Lane, aka Jim Powers [pictured], confesses. A producer and director in AVN’s Hall of Fame, he started out in the nineties as a stockbroker. Recently, he was named in a lawsuit brought by Universal Studios against Smash Pictures for directing of an adult spoof of E. L. James’ erotic bestseller, Fifty Shades of Grey: “Fifty Shades of Grey: A XXX Adaption.”

“Porn’s totally gone down the toilet,” Lane reports. So, he’s moonlighting in real estate. “I’m doing my part to save the economy by getting short sales off the market and making fine, quality porno,” he enthuses. “I want to be the Warren Buffett of porno.”

“How’s that working out for you?” I ask.

Lane laughs. “I guess I never really had to have a real job,” he reflects. His coworkers in real estate are aware of his other career. “I’ll have them on the set this week,” he adds.

Clearly, there’s no difference for Lane between selling porn and selling property. After all, he’s got a unique feel for the San Fernando Valley.

“I’m marketing myself as Mr. Chatsworth,” he shares. “Think about it. Who knows the Valley better than me? I’ve shot in all these houses. I know the market.”

His dream is to have bus stop bench ads depicting him standing over the Valley, his arms around it.

The trick to making money in porn in 2013 is to sell what cannot be stolen. At this year’s show, the far more subdued Luxury Lounge offers high-end products for the discerning sex toy consumer.

Laid co-founder and managing director Karianne Rønning is holding a dildo made of volcanic rock, the same material, she points out, used in the World Trade Center 9/11 Memorial. The hot pink and electric blue minimalistic products by this Oslo, Norway-based company wouldn’t look out of place in a design museum, the branding discreet and sophisticated, a nod to their distribution aims. “You could have our products in a bookstore,” Rønning notes.

“Is this the Rolls-Royce of vibrators?” I inquire, handling a pink ring for men.

Rønning frowns, pondering. “Maybe more like an Aston Martin,” she decides, finally. “It’s more fun.”

In 2009, Laid co-founder and industrial designer Line Anderson set out to answer one question: “How can shape overcome taboos?” Now, their bootstrapped company is banking on the idea that the erotic wares in the Fifty Shades of Grey series has turned housewives into sex toy connoisseurs. So far, the woman of Laid say, the response has been tremendous.

Heather Starlet is posing for photographs, and a crowd has gathered. She and her best friend, fellow porn star Madison Ivy, are pretending to be Mario Bros. characters. Heather is dressed as a sexy Luigi, but she is a dead ringer for Hollywood actress Heather Graham and names Julia Roberts when asked whose career she would like to emulate.

At 23, this blonde, bubbly girl from Dayton, Ohio, whose credits include “Iron Man XXX: An Extreme Comixxx Parody” and “Lesbian House Hunters 2,” has been in the business for four years. This year, she has been nominated for several awards, including Best All-Girl Group Sex Scene.

“I just really like the excitement,” she pronounces, perched on the edge of a white sofa, of her porn career. “The Midwest is more sexually repressed.”

In the new porn world order, the successful adult star has a diversified portfolio. This starlet has shot some 300 scenes and earns additional revenue from nude modeling, live shows online, and feature dancing at gentleman’s clubs across the country.

Still, she confides, “I would love to go mainstream.” Although to do that, she knows, “You have to have something extra besides being a porn star.”

In the meantime, the porn business is bouncing back, she thinks. Rates are going up from where they were a year ago. Back then, she says, “Everyone was struggling.” Now, “We’re starting to find a way out of it.” These days, her fee for a boy-girl scene is $1,500.