How to Sex Blog with Sam Sugar

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The world’s first sex-blog network, which I’m building in conjunction with the team behind 9rules.com, will launch next month. It’s being built with readers – not advertisers – in mind, because everyone involved understands that a happy reader is more likely to buy something we recommend than an unhappy reader who’s wondering why the webpage they’re looking at seems to be made entirely of ads.

To help boost the network, and as an end in itself, I’m launching a number of new blogs over the next twelve months that I need writers for. The SugarBlogs (see what I did there?) are all aimed at existing niches in the marketplace, which can be profitably filled with a well-written blog.

Profit is not a dirty word (fuck is a dirty word, cunt – positively filthy). Unlike SugarBank, which was built to start conversations and make contacts, these new blogs have been designed to create content for readers. As these blogs will all be concerned with aspects of the commercial sex industry, the path from their content to advertisers is direct. It’s not only clever (which is fair to say because it’s not my idea), but it’s well proven in the adult space.

E.g. At Internext I spoke with an old friend who started a website based on exactly these principles eighteen months ago and is now making over $6M a year in advertising. It’s a free-site, which doesn’t take subscriptions, and doesn’t offer any access to photos or video – and it’s already making about ten times more per year than Boing Boing.

Isn’t porn wonderful?

In order to get these blogs off the ground I need writers, and before the network launches, I intend to start publishing the first three. Read through the following and if you’re (still) interested in being part of this project, writing for a networked sex-blog, let me know.

What are these three blogs going to be about?
The blogs I’m staffing now will cover three areas – adult websites, adult films and magazines. They’ll all be review-based.

How many people will work on each blog?
I’m looking for teams of four. That’s three writers and an editor (who has additional responsibility in return for additional pay).

Why so many people?
Payment will be based on a percentage of profit. That means no-one gets paid until we’re making money, and wise people would be cautioned to assume at least a 90 day investment of their time before expecting to see any significant return.

I won’t wait to re-coup my investment before sharing the wealth, but will pay myself back over time (I’d rather have happy paid writers, than pay myself back fast).

Using team means that no one has to kill themself in order for the blogs to thrive. It also means that readers get to experience a range of styles and working in teams is just more fun.

How much will I have to write?
Each writer will be expected to make at least two posts a week. Editors will be able to work with their team to exceed that, and I’d hope the real numbers were higher in almost every case. The faster blogs grow, the more readers they attract.

Each post will run 100-400 words, but there will be 1-2 hours work involved in researching and formatting each review.

How much do I get paid?
Blog editors will get paid more than blog writers in return for handling more responsibility and doing more work. Given a team of four, each writer will see 4% of net profit and each editor 8%.

4%!
That should be at least $200 a post when the blogs are making money.

This deal reflects the potential of these blogs based on their model. If the model were different, the deal would be different and might sound more attractive, but it would also change these blogs into the ‘just-scraping-by’ blogs, which the world has enough of and everyone else is building. Sharing large percentages of revenue doesn’t mean anything if no money’s being made. The question isn’t how big each slice of the pie is; it’s how big is the pie?

It’s far easier to understand if you look at the numbers. Let’s see how much you’d get paid for making 20 posts a month in some of the traditional blog networks:

Paid $10-$20 per-post
If I were to pay $10 a post to new writers, making 20 posts a month – you’d collect $200.

That’s $200 more than I’m offering today and it’s consistent but, if in a years time the blog you’re working on is making $100,000, you’re still getting paid $200 a month. If, by way of thanks, I then raise your per-post rate to $20 are you happy? (If you answered yes to this question look up ‘rhetorical’ in the dictionary and stop reading now.)

If the blog’s not worth $100,000 in a year, but is running profitably enough to keep you employed, is 20-40hrs a month of your time only worth $200? That’s not even minimum wage.

A larger percentage of a traditional ad-funded blog
Fact: 99% of blogs running Google, Yahoo! or other contextual ads make less than $500 a month.

Let’s assume these blogs beat the odds and make $500 a month with contextual ads, and that 50% of that money’s split between the four writers (leaving the rest for bills, other-staff, infrastructure and me). 25% of $250 makes your 20 posts a month worth about $60, or $3 a post.

Ouch.

Let’s be insanely optimistic and say these blogs rise to the very top and, like the very biggest contextual ad-funded blogs I know of, make about $10,000 a month in revenue

With the same math, you’d collect $1,250 a month. It’ll pay for a decent car, an okay house or a few big nights out each month.

Unfortunately it’s just not realistic – Google and Yahoo! aren’t good at delivering sex-related ads and, even if they were, paid at ten cents to a dollar a click, you’d need to make way more than twenty posts a month to build the blog to that point. More pages means higher expenses which makes me less likely to offer 50% of anything. Besides, can you really see yourself working hard for $50 a month, six months after launch? (NB: if you don’t know how hard the contextual advertising market is, read a few of the comment threads at Problogger. Ironically, Darren’s blog is one of the few that makes real money in the way he teaches.)

4% from Sam Sugar
At the start with you’ll make nothing at all.

That’s not too bad though, because you won’t have to produce a huge volume of posts, in order to create click-generating pages, to feed inefficient contextual ads. You can get your blogging done at the weekend and know you’re building for the future.

Let’s assume that these blogs grow like other sites I’ve built but, because I’m an imbecile and there’s a gaping hole in my plan I can’t currently see, in twelve months the blogs are only making 20% of the money other similarly structured websites do.

Assuming you keep posting 20 times a month, that’s $1.2M a year, or $200 per post, per writer.

Of course, if you post more, those numbers can increase (if we do as well as some existing sites using these principles, those numbers might be five times too small and, you could be getting $20K a month this time next year – wannabe editors can just double everything).

Of course, things might be slow, and there will certainly be unforeseen changes of tack, however as someone paid based on performance you can always be sure you’re being paid fairly. I’m also too smart to think that if the numbers don’t work for you, you’ll stick around. If I need to change the remuneration program to better satisfy writers down the line I will. I’ve been a poor writer too.

So you can guarantee this’ll be a hit then?
Nope – not in any way, absolutely not.

What I can say is that the network will bring more readers to networked blogs than they could ever find on their own. I can explain that this model is based on having decent numbers of readers, and I can tell you I’ve been personally involved in making a number of people very rich by applying exactly these ideas (in slightly different formats because you never make much by copying what’s out there).

I still don’t understand the model exactly.
If I described precisely how to implement it I’d put myself out of business so please forgive me, but key details are missing for smart reasons. Attempting to use the information in this post to implement a similar scheme as is stands could end in – shakes magic 8-ball – fiery death.

How do I become an editor?
Email me and let me know why you think you’d be good at the job. Based on what I hear I’ll assemble the teams. Editors need to be dedicated, hungry, have good writing skills and be on fast connections. You’ll either know, or learn to love, Wordpress (you have to make the sign of the cross when you say it too.)

What do editors do?
Editors will be charged with corralling their writers and maintaining their blogs. No posts will be published without the editor’s authorization, and they will determine the work assigned to each writer. As well as writing for the blog, editors will be charged with finding content for the blog (not hard – I’ll help a great deal with this), and managing the advertising (this doesn’t mean selling ads or dealing with money, just managing the ads as they appear on blog pages). They’ll also get to work with me.

What about my expenses?
There are none. Aside from electricity and your web connection, all other costs will be borne by me.

Thanks to the many people who’ve already expressed an interest in being involved in blogging with me. For those still excited about what lies ahead, email me regarding which blog(s) you’d be interested in working on, an estimate of how many posts you think you can contribute per week (allowing for 2hrs to watch a movie if that’s what you’re blogging, otherwise an hour per post should be fine) and tell me where you are in the world geographically (this is important).

Welcome to the team.

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