I remember distinctly a request for help that I once received from a desperate and befuddled adult webmaster. He had been told that there was good money in gay porn sites, and while not gay himself, he was not the type to turn away from a quick buck.I remember distinctly a request for help that I once received from a desperate and befuddled adult webmaster. He had been told that there was good money in gay porn sites, and while not gay himself, he was not the type to turn away from a quick buck. He had whipped up his finest adult site to that date – this time targeting the gay niche as opposed to the various straight niches he had targeted in the past.
When I say “finest” in the preceding sentence, by that I mean that he had spent a considerable amount of time with this new site’s design and layout, pushing his intermediate Photoshop skills to their limits. The design itself wasn’t bad. It wasn’t anything that would make his more professional competition take concern, but for a small webmaster still learning how to make a quality web site, he did an admirable job with the layout. It was easy to navigate, not too cluttered, provided ample content, and offered plenty of eye candy with a consistent and appropriate color scheme throughout. Yet, the site wasn’t making much money – despite a steady flow of ripe traffic supplied by a brand new listing in the Yahoo! directory – and so he turned to me for help, wondering what could be the cause of his meager profits and dismal conversion ratios.
Poor conversion ratios can be the result of any number of things, ranging from confusing site design, to poor quality traffic. For example, just how were those Yahoo! surfers finding my friend’s listing? If they were finding it by accident while searching for “Merry and Gay Cosmetics,” then they’re probably not going to be interested in buying access to a gay porn site. Dig? Yet in this case, the problem with the site wasn’t anything so complex as traffic quality or visitor demographics – indeed, the problem instead rested in the site creator’s lack of appreciation for the niche that he had targeted. Plainly put, the author of the site neither enjoyed nor understood gay porn, and that fact was so painfully evident in his work, that it was a wonder to me that he had landed any sales at all.
How was this evident? Primarily through the pictures chosen for the site tour, and the verbiage used in support. Here’s a little hint for all webmasters aspiring to build gay porn sites – don’t refer to gay men as “the gays.” They don’t like it, and your sales pitch will be more suitable for a circus sideshow than a legitimate erotic web site.
Failures such as my friend’s web site are common in adult cyberspace. His flaw – not being a fan of his own product – is a common error. For various reasons, many of the men and women who choose to work in the pornography business are not themselves fans of erotica. As a result, their work is uninspiring, uninteresting, unimaginative, and occasionally even offensive.
Since even a modest increase in your conversion ratio can mean a measurable increase in your profits over the course of a year, you can’t afford not to be a fan of Internet erotica. And yes, Internet erotica is a uniquely different breed of erotica than its film and print counterparts; understanding of this difference is just one of the many skills you must develop with time, analysis, persistence and passion. If you have a passion for erotica and can find a target audience with a similar passion, you can make money with your porn site.
I try to spend at least three hours per week doing nothing more than surfing for porn in newsgroups, TGPs and picture posts. I save pictures that interest me, which amount to perhaps one in every fifty pictures that I encounter, and over the past few years I have built an enormous digital archive of erotic images and video clips consisting only of carefully selected erotica. While these images obviously can’t be used on web sites of my own – since I have not licensed the rights to distribute them – they instead serve as a source of information and inspiration. The collection is my muse. When I need an idea for a new site, I have merely to browse through it, find a running theme and build a new site based on that theme. Because I spend so much time collecting porn and analyzing its appeal to me, I’ve learned all kinds of tricks that entice surfers to become customers, and separate the porn on my web sites from that of the ample competition.
So while it has recently grown quite unfashionable in America for a piece of writing to include the offering or a moral, I nonetheless feel compelled to offer one – an odd sort of moral, really, considering the common perception of the morality of pornography. Yet as our perception of pornography is not that of the mainstream, and as it is our goal to sell pornography to our audience, and as our ability to sell pornography has a direct relation to our appreciation for that which we are selling (as seen by my friend’s “gay” porn site), I can reach no other conclusion than the need to suggest the following: if you don’t enjoy erotica, find another line of work.
Honestly, how many times have I heard an adult webmaster brag loudly and confidently that he sees so much porn on a daily basis, that he no longer finds it interesting. I think this admission is supposed to impress – odd as it may seem, even the occasional adult webmaster is known to seek the approval of his or her peers through the ridicule of pornography. It’s a form of professional grandstanding, and I find it tired, cliché and dull. A webmaster admitting he doesn’t enjoy pornography is like a chef admitting he has no taste buds; why is this supposed to impress me?
Fortunately for the majority of adult webmasters, the business of adult entertainment is still an appealing one, both for the financial and the recreational reasons. These are the webmasters whom I feel have a serious opportunity not only to make a legitimate and fulfilling business out of the pornography trade, but also to help shape the creative direction of the industry. So when you’re building your next web site, concentrate on what turns you on, and not on what you think will get other people hot. Build your site as if you were building it merely to convince yourself to sign up. I have some rather humbling news for you – you’re probably not as unique as you’d like to think. So if you can build a site that you yourself would pay to join, it will find a paying audience on the global marketplace of the Internet. But how are you going to accomplish that if you’re not a fan of pornography?
Connor is the Editor-in-Chief for The Adult Webmaster and can be reached at connor@theadultwebmaster.com.
