How to Make Money Blogging Sex

The ‘mainstream’ world is getting fairly excited by the prospect of this sex-blog network I’m working on with the 9rules crew (and yes, it does have a name but what’s the point of sending you to a URL with nothing on it yet?)

9rules CEO launching Sex Blog network

Paul Scrivens launching Sex Blog Network

- 9rules + Sugarbank = seksweblognetwerk – 

Sta arrivando il sex blog network

A lot of discussion about the concept, and wisdom, of networks in general has sprung from this. Andy Hagan’s at Performancing had this to say about second-tier networks (i.e. anything that’s not currently running profitably and wasn’t part of the first blog-network wave) and why they won’t work (from at blognetworkwatch.com):

1. Many new blog networks do not have the necessary funds to pull off a medium-scale project. You need a stash of cash to pay writers through the first six months (before major ad revenues come in and balance out this cost), and it doesn’t hurt to have money to throw at good development, design and hosting, too. (Yes, I’m aware that some networks have tried paying writers on a rev-share basis, but this seems to fail time and time again.)

2. Most new blog networks have an identity crisis - they can’t tell you what they are (besides a ‘blog network’), or what differentiates them. They are, in a word, generic.

3. They aren’t putting out content which is useful to the reader. Most of them just re-post regurgitated news without adding much value or commentary.

I’ve spent more time than most thinking about how to make money with sex blogs, and examining how the sex market differs from the mainstream. I wouldn’t be interested in networking sex blogs if I didn’t see profit in it, but the difference between me and your average rastapedic capitalist is I think the easiest things to profit from are the best made, not the best sold. McDonald’s make crappy food and market it well. I’d rather make great things and then tell people why they’re worth buying. More long-term profit, less hellish self-loathing (you’re talking to a guy who once wrote ad copy - everyone in advertising hates themselves. Those that don’t should).

It’s clear to me that building the most profitable sex-blog network means building the one most useful to readers. So how’s that done and how can I address Andy’s points?

Here’s what I know:

1. The low hanging fruit is gone. If I was launching a network in 2002 I’d be thinking about link blogs designed around popular subjects. I’d be putting together an Engadget, a Boing Boing clone, or something like Fark. Just like everyone else – including many ‘new’ networks. Now that’s been done usurping the current heavyweights would require more expense than I can afford. Believe me, it can be done (as some of those blogs will discover) but the people equipped to do it aren’t working guerilla style (and I’m at least 50% silverback).
2. Content is king. This is worth saying because none of the big blog networks have chosen to focus on it. Their genius (and their greatest weakness) is linking to other content while adding a little editorial spin, effectively making the blog a rolling single-topic search. It’s the cheapest way to operate (I wish I’d been working on this early enough to occupy some of the prime link-estate these blogs do) but totally reliant on being first, fastest and foremost. New blogs stand the best chance of competing in a crowded market by producing content themselves, not just linking to it.
3. Cost-per-click (CPC) ads are inefficient. For perfectly understandable reasons, most blogs in most networks make most of their money from CPC ads, collecting their money ten cents at a time. The top-tier blogs do better, selling ads at a flat rate, but even then it’s a straight publishing model, and that means $24,000 a year is successful, $240,000 a year makes you a serious player and $1M dollars a year in ad revenue puts you among the elite. Of course, in the jizz bizz $24,000 a year is failiure, $240,000 is what a model earns running a decent fan-site and $1M dollars a year is what Midwestern couples filming blow-jobs take home every three months. 

Sex blogs don’t have to fall prey to the weaknesses Andy, or I described.

• “Many new blog networks do not have the necessary funds to pull off a medium-scale project…” This all depends on how you describe necessary funds. The money needed to launch a blog is relatively small (tens, hundreds or thousands of dollars depending on your style.) The biggest cost is writers wages and the obvious answer, making writers partners and paying them on a rev-share basis, doesn’t work well (as Andy pointed out) when your revenues are low. For rev-share to work writer income needs to quickly scale beyond the $10-$50 a post traditional networks can offer and for that to be true advertisers have to be paying significant sums, from the start. More practically, in order for a blog to grow fast, and attract readers and advertisers, it needs a lot of posts. If one writer, who’s waiting for a rev-share, is charged with that work it’s likely they’ll lose heart before the blog takes-off. Splitting the work across a number of writers makes the workload reasonable, and a real income can be generate for all involved without anyone having to write twelve posts a day.
• “Most new blog networks have an identity crisis - they can’t tell you what they are (besides a ‘blog network’), or what differentiates them.” How about a sex-blog network, dedicated to delivering the best sexually themed content to blog readers? A market that’s specific, large and totally underserved. Next.
• “They aren’t putting out content which is useful to the reader.” The solution here is to generate content, not link to it. By producing content (as this blog does) you become the subject linked to and guarantee readers that they’ll find stuff in your blog (network) they can’t find elsewhere. Getting to links faster than the existing link-blogs? Good luck.

So content producing blogs, with a clear identity should be hugely useful to readers as long as they can be funded properly. Luckily, in the world of sex, an infrastructure exists for paying webmasters for traffic, which is more lucrative than that in any other area (despite Amazon’s dubious patents – pornographers invented the affiliate program, not booksellers). Instead of paying for clicks, or selling ads at a flat rate, adult sites pay for conversions (new members). As new subscribers have a significant lifetime value, the rewards for finding them are large.

Good adult websites can consistently turn one in every two-hundred visitors into a customer when fed quality traffic. So for 200 clicks, where a cost-per-click ad on a ‘mainstream’ blog might earn $2-$20 (if typically paying one to twenty cents a click), an adult website can earn $20-$100 via a Cost-Per-Action (CPA) affiliate program. If an average adult website pays $40 for a new member (which is a fair estimate) that’s twice the earning protential of a ‘mainstream’ blog off the bat.

Additionally, ‘mainstream’ ads are usually for products which must be, mailed through the post, or experienced in a compromised form online. Adult ads offer immediate access to uncompromised content (an episode of ‘Lost’ from the iTunes store is compromised because it doesn’t look as good as one on DVD. A photo from a porn site doesn’t usually exist in another form, which makes the online version seem second-best, and is therefore uncompromised). Instant gratification and uncompromised content make ads for adult material significantly more effective than those in the ‘mainstream’. Additionally sex-content plays to a basic human need which is often capable of overturning reasoned consideration - Porn buyers want to buy NOW.

Which is why I think there’s a glowing future in being part of (or blogging for) a sex-blog network and am working so hard on building one. When it happens the revenue generated by the mainstream networks will seem minor by comparison, and the real winners will be the people who like to read about, watch and listen to, sex.