While I was attending Cybernet Expo, presented by the great folks here at YNOT, a common complaint I heard repeatedly was how the paying audience for adult sites has been dropping, dropping, dropping to a dangerously low level.Yes, we all know that the economy has been seriously depressed and shows very few signs of bouncing back anytime soon, but as I heard tale after tale of how sales have dropped and viewers have vanished, I realized there was a clear solution to keeping viewers, and gaining new ones – a solution that might mean the difference between profits and losses.

And what, I hear you ask, is that solution? What is the secret I have discovered that may keep your adult enterprise in the black rather than the red? What is the key to making your site stand out from the hundreds, if not thousands, of competitors?

Stay tuned, folks. Stay tuned.

But first, an observation: let’s face it, men are your audience. Okay, that might not – at first – appear to be a profound observation, but bear with me. The thing with men, you see, is that we all have a pretty simple sexual response; one that’s gotten even simpler during these trying economic times. Why pay for adult content when a second’s search of the Web can get you whatever you need to get your (ahem) satisfaction? Why pay for the cow when the milk – in the form of huge numbers of sample sites – is not only free but largely satisfying? Even guys with very specific tastes can find whatever they want free of charge, after only a few minutes of search engine sleuthing.

Some site operators have tried to address this problem by working harder and harder to round up fresh talent, thinking that a new girl, a new kink, a new fetish, a new angle, will somehow get guys to stop looking at the free stuff and instead cough up the cash. This might work in the short term but talent is fickle, new fetishes are fine until your audience find a better source, and clever angles are only clever till their novelty wears off.

There is something, though, that can keep an audience coming back week after week, day after day, year after year: something better than a new star, a fresh kink, or any new stunt. And this method has been proven successful for many, many years.

And what, you ask, is this mysterious technique? This cryptic solution to your adult site difficulties? This possibly magical remedy to keeping your audience enraptured?

Stay tuned, ladies and gentlemen .. stay tuned.

But second, a bit of history. Not too long ago many businesses had a very similar problem to yours: how to keep their audiences coming back. In fact their problem was possibly even greater as they didn’t have the allure of erotica to hook their readers and listeners. So how did these folks do it? How did they manage to keep their customers – indirectly perhaps, but customers nonetheless – returning day after day to them?

Enough teasing: the answer is actually very simple, even devious. And if you’ve read this far you’ve fallen for it as well.

Those businesses I just mentioned were radio stations and magazine publishers. Facing difficult times they realized a great technique to keep their listeners and readers coming back was to set up the beginning of a story ….

“In a dark and secret place, far below the city streets, lays the Avenger of Men, the Masked Figure of Mystery, who comes to those in need of help, who punishes the wicked, and who sees justice done to those who harm the innocent.”

… and then end it with a teaser, a cliffhanger ….

“The building falls, thunderous detonations bringing tons of brick and steel down in an avalanche of destruction upon the unconscious body of our hero, with no escape possible!”

Of course you want to tune in next week – who wouldn’t? It’s a technique that’s been used long before The Shadow, Doc Savage, and the Lone Ranger (to name a few heroic examples), and it is likely to work again.

What I’m talking about is story. Look at most – if not every – adult site out there: each and every one is static. Sure, some of them might have blogs or journals where the talent talks about their lives, the shoots that just went up, the shows to come. Some might even share a bit of their personalities, likes and dislikes, but there’s nothing there that could pull a viewer in for longer than the time it takes the “celebrity” to talk (or whatever other communication “method” is used). What do they look forward to? A new shoot? That’s nice but it is really worth paying a high monthly fee for? A new talent? That’s good but after a few shoots the viewers have seen pretty much all they need.

But if you take a site – of any fetish or sexual interest – and structure it like a story, with a settling, with characters, with tension, with drama, with … well, story … then people will want to come back to see what happens in the next installment.

And this is the time to do it. Just look around you: we have tools those radio shows and pulp magazines could only dream of: twitter feeds, blog posts, video clips, text, and so much more. Some enterprising people have experimented with these things, creating non-erotic ‘augmented reality’ games where participants are drawn into the adventure with many of these techniques, but things are still wide open, especially for the adult business world. Just think of the possibilities: explicit soap operas, kinky vampire tales, sexy fantasy epics, fetish horror serials, outrageous science fiction worlds. All you need is some talent and someone with a bit of vision to plot it all out.

But beyond the toys and the genres, the core idea is still the same: draw your readers/viewers/customers in with something even more universal than sex, even more constant than arousal: our human fascination with ‘what happens next?’

Stay tuned, everyone … stay tuned ….

M. Christian

www.mchristian.com
www.meinekleinefabrik.blogspot.com
www.frequentlyfelt.blogspot.com