FETISH FORUM
Good, because in this world of megalithic vanilla porn sites, you’ll find less competition if you can find a niche of your own. Sure, you can go head to head with a giant like Cybererotica to try and capture a portion of the vanilla paysite business, but you’d need extremely deep pockets.FETISH FORUM
Good, because in this world of megalithic vanilla porn sites, you’ll find less competition if you can find a niche of your own. Sure, you can go head to head with a giant like Cybererotica to try and capture a portion of the vanilla paysite business, but you’d need extremely deep pockets. And, if you’ve got that much money, why are you starting an online porn business? Instead, look at the fetish market. You don’t need as much start-up capital, and if you can carve out your own niche, you’ll have fun and make money.
At The House of Latex (HoL) and Bondage I explore every aspect of latex. That’s because five years ago when I started the site, I realized that I loved the look of a woman in latex — every line, every curve. I started out small with fashion latex. There wasn’t a lot of content available for my particular fetish at that time, so I branched out into bondage and BDSM since a lot of the latex adherents explore that area of sexuality as well. That lead me to Femdom, then to corsetry and other more extreme latex related fetishes, and on and on. Now, HoL is the largest latex archive anywhere on the Net, covering nearly every aspect of latex and sexuality, because I explore my fetish. I do what I love, and love what I do. You need to do the same thing. Figure out what your fetish is, then explore it thoroughly through CDs from content providers. Yes… buy your content. Copyright violation is an ugly thing. You will get caught, and the courtroom time isn’t worth it — neither are the fines.
Start at Web-Legal. This site is huge, with a good search engine, preview pictures and reliable reviews of the content. The prices are good, and you’ll be able to buy a lot of the bulk content you’ll need to get your site off the ground. Dave and Korene, who run the company, will also take the time to talk with you about your prospective purchases.
Make your next stop at CD-ROM Distributors adultlegal.com. Again, this is a huge archive that will let you build your site at reasonable prices. If you’re going to keep members coming back for more, you’ve got to give them more.
The next stop is at Tassel Publications. These are reliable people that deal in their own content as well as distributing content for other photographers. Spider and Lady Sharlot will steer you in the right direction as you try to build your site. After you’ve bulked up your fetish site with some reasonably priced content, head on to higher priced content to give your site that personal touch.
Laura, at scarlett.net has beautiful content covering a wide range of fetishes. I’ve spent a lot of time and money with Laura over the years, and she’s always given me good advice in my content purchases. Matrix, too, has excellent content at decent prices at matrixcontent.com. The models are lovely, the photo shoots creative, and your cash is well spent.
For content with an edge and bite to it, check out Edge Interactive Publishing at goedge.com. Prices here are definitely higher, but the content isn’t like anything you’ve seen anywhere else on the Web.
As you explore your fetish through these content providers, keep an eye on the licenses you receive. That’s how I track down new sources for my favorite fetish. Distributors often sell content from many photographers and agencies. By looking at your licenses, you may find that one of your best purchases came from an agency that has its own Web site and content that it hasn’t placed with the distributor.
Follow your fetish wherever it goes, but be wary in buying from sources that have no track record in the adult industry. Several years ago I bought content from a European publisher who had only been in the business for a few months. I was desperate for new latex content and took a chance. It turned out the publisher was a scam artist who didn’t own the rights to the photos. I had to remove the images from my site, and I was out $300(US). Scams happen all over the world. My policy now is that if they won’t give me a phone number and a street address, I won’t buy, period.
Once you’ve built your fetish site, you need to find your place on the Web. There are as many ways to do this as there are ways to piss away your hard-earned cash. Start with some free advertising before spending money on advertising. The rule of thumb used to be 100 free sites funneling traffic to every paysite you own. At a recent adult conference a top fetish webmaster said that rule has changed. It is now a thousand to one. Whew! That’s $10,000(US) in domain name registrations alone. That’s a lot of money, and something you should build up to, rather than trying to pull it together all at once.
Start instead with five free sites funneling into your paysite. Visit the non-binary newsgroup of your favorite fetish (alt.femdom is mine), and take part in conversations. Be sure to sign your postings — not spam! — with the URLs to your free sites. You’ll start building decent traffic. Trade banners with other Web folks who share the same, or similar, fetishes. For example, if your fetish site focuses on nylons, look at trading banners with sites that promote foot worship. It’s a nice tie-in, and you still haven’t spent any money on advertising.
I haven’t had a lot of luck with TGP advertising. It eats up a lot of bandwidth for very few signups. I also run several of my own top lists. Again, not a lot of signups through this kind of traffic. Where I strike gold is targeted traffic. I’ve purchased keywords through Sex.com and Overture. This kind of targeted traffic converts well if you’ve designed your site correctly.
What hasn’t converted well for me is impression-based traffic that isn’t extremely well targeted. I’ve tested Google, a couple of large chat sites, and a greeting card site. In each case, I had thousands of impressions with few signups. One exception to this is an impression ad at dickie virgin’s* Domination Guide at dickievirgin.com. This massive guide points to Femdoms and Femdom worship around the world. dickie does an excellent job of maintaining the list, and traffic that flows through his site is targeted. That’s the kind of impression-based advertising that I’d buy again and again.
Running a fetish Web site should be fun as well as rewarding. Don’t get into this business to make money. Get into it because you’re exploring your own sexuality. By feeding your own fetish, you’ll have a better feeling of what it is your members are looking for. That’s the motto at The House of Latex and Bondage — Feed Your Fetish.
*Editor’s Note: In the Fetish, Bondage, Domination and Sado-Masochism world, proper names that begin in lowercase denote a submissive person in a dominant-submissive relationship.
Mistress Diana Trees and slave dave own and operate latexfetish.com — the largest Latex Fetish site in the world.
