Apologies to anyone who signed up to swap links with me using BLT in the past few months who’s noticed that links haven’t been appearing here since the last redesign. Something seems to have broken the code and I’ve had no joy contacting the brains who’ve built it for answers. I predict this post will prompt an email from someone and lead me to a fix, you to massive prosperity and perhaps all of us to a cheesy medal-giving ceremony like the one at the end of Star Wars. Until then enjoy the majesty of this Ugandan Warthog which, like BLT when it’s working properly, is bacon you shouldn’t mess with.

Popularity: 40% [?]

Yesterday I commented on the futility of trying to beg your way to riches via your blog. I was pooh-poohing. Bastard. Today I’m going to accentuate the positive and run down five business models I believe can work for (sex) blogs and we’ll see in increasing numbers this year.

Charged Archives
What is it?: Placing blog archives in a member’s area where people have to pay for access to old content.

Who’s it good for?: Sex podcasters could do very well with this. The difference between their content and the stuff that’s traditionally used to fuel a pay-site is minimal. By keeping new shows free via RSS, the marketing for the locked archives is built in. It doesn’t hurt regular readers, your content remains free to anyone who grabs it when it’s new.

A softened version of this idea involves putting out a ‘decaf’ version of your content and then keeping the ‘caffeinated’ version for members only. It’s a far weaker implementation and not the version I’d recommend. I can’t see written content having enough appeal to make this work either (with a couple of rare exceptions).

Product Placement
What is it?: Advertisers pay bloggers to include product names, images and references in their posts.

Who’s it good for?: Big mainstream blogs mostly. It’s a very low-return form of advertising, and only works for companies prepared to invest a lot in a brand. The downside is that being discovered doing this will make you appear ’sneaky’ in the eyes of many (don’t worry, they’ll be making less money than you.) This is happening already in a couple of blogs and, reading their comments, it’s clear the readers don’t know it’s happening. Are you sure that blogger you read really likes that record and isn’t just being paid to mention it in their sidebar? Couldn’t you go for a cool, refreshing Coke right now?

Offsite Advertising
What is it?: Making money from selling ads on a website that’s not your blog. Your blog links to a network ‘hub’ that carries ads, you get a slice of the ad-revenue equivalent to the amount of traffic you send. Your blog stays ad-free, you get paid and you can sell ads you wouldn’t want seen on your blog.

Who’s it good for?: Almost everyone. The appeal of having an ‘ad-free’ blog and still making money from advertising is huge. It’s very easy to set up, and because a network of blogs can send more people to an ad than one blog alone, the bigger the network of sites involved, the more profitable the network becomes. Who said Sugasm? What!? Oh… that’s an idea…

Ad-extortion
What is it?: You place ads on your blog, and then offer people the opportunity not to see them if they pay for a ‘clean’ version.

Who’s it good for?: Bloggers with large audiences but who aren’t successfully selling advertising. This model doesn’t use ads to sell, they’re placed as an annoyance and the more annoying they are, the more likely someone will pay to turn them off (assuming your content’s worth sticking around for). Porn consumers are generally prepared to put up with a lot, but I won’t be surprised to see one of the bigger adult-magazine-style blogs take a crack at this. Salon and IMDB have been doing this for years and if your content’s ‘essential’ it can work, particularly If you throw in a couple of enhanced features.

See, no pooh-poohing today, all positively (and yes – I am going to be rolling out a couple of blogs using these approaches myself). Now where’s that Coke?

Popularity: 33% [?]

Application’s for SexNotWork opened at midnight, and you have until 11:59 p.m. EST today to submit your application.

When you apply, be sure to tell us what your site’s about in a couple of sentences. We’re not going to be able to read every entry at every site and it might not be nearly as obvious as you think it is. Make it easy for us to find the core of what you do. Including links to specific posts is even better.

The ideal SexNotWork blog is well written, lives on its own domain, is nicely designed, read by a few people, has a decent archive of material, is not smothered with intrusive advertising and is regularly updated. If you blog misses any of those points, tell us why you’re worth taking note of.

If there’s something remarkable about your site, let us know. There’s a lot we can’t tell by looking. Educate us.

We’re excited about seeing your stuff (yeah – you get to say that a lot in the jizz-bizz). Good luck.

Update: Please do not email me directly. The form is working fine. Emailing me will do nothing to improve your chances so please spare my inbox.

Popularity: 34% [?]

Tomorrow we’ll have a chance to find out if sex-bloggers are willing to put their faith in collaboration when we start accepting applications for SexNotWork (for 24hrs only). For anyone still doubtful about what networking’s capable of, perhaps this data will make a difference.

When I launched SugarBank I did it without any support, but in the last year SugarBank’s readership has been building steadily via word of mouth. Growth’s been very steady – a virtually straight line from launch to today as shown above (note the flat area at the start of the graph – it’s the bit when blogging’s least fun.)

In recent weeks I’ve launched SugarPit, Sugasm and SugarJoy, but this time around the blogs have been networked to SugarBank and each other. A comparison between the first ten days of these new blogs, with the first ten days of SugarBank, is below:

All three of the new blogs have grown at a far faster rate than SugarBank, achieving subscriber numbers in ten days it took SugarBank months to build. The flat period when no-one was reading, which SugarBank had to struggle through, hasn’t affected the new blogs at all.

If, as this data suggests, readers react positively to blogs without a track-record or content base because they have faith in the blogs their networked to, it bodes very well for the blogs within SexNotWork. Cool.

Popularity: 34% [?]

So many people have emailed me with similar questions about SexNotWork, I thought a little public clarification was in order before the application window opens on Monday. Here’s a pre-launch FAQ:

Are you going make me put ads on my blog if I join SexNotWork?
No. It’s your blog.

Will you own my content if I join SexNotWork?
No. It’s your blog.

Can I leave SexNotWork anytime I want to?
Yes. It’s your blog.

What does SexNotWork mean?
It’s phonetically identical to the Esperanto word for ‘without any clue’.

Will you find me advertisers if I want to run ads on my blog?
We’ll try. When the network’s established we will be able to offer advertisers a chance to get exposure across the network. If you want to make money from advertising, let us know and we can include you when the time comes.

How much traffic will I get from the network?
We prefer to think of ‘traffic’ as readers (I also like to think of Jessica Alba as ‘that chick I used to bang’), but the precise amount will depend on who’s in the network at the time of launch.

Can anyone apply to join?
Yes (except Osama Bin Laden – down with terrorism). We’re looking for the most interesting, best written blogs with a sexual theme we can find. Not making the first round won’t mean you can’t apply again in future (aside from you Osama – fuck you, fuck you twice).

Are you trying to try and sell SexNotWork and get rich? Are you going to sell my blog?
No, we’re in this for the long-haul. Being part of SexNotWork doesn’t involve giving up right to your blog, and we can’t sell anything we don’t own (even if we wanted to.) We’d all love to be rich and some of us are actively working on making SexNotWork a path to that. What’s good for SexNotWork is going to be good for the bloggers involved with it.

How will the sites in SexNotWork be selected?
Using fragments of plans found in a desserted CIA bunker in a desolate part of Romania, we have built a massive positronic brain called Oberon…

Actually we haven’t.

Selection will be done by the founders of the network (Me, Scrivs et al) and be as scientific as a bunch of people talking things through can be. We’re looking for a good mix of sites and we’ll start small and grow as fast as great sites apply.

How can I join?
Visit SexNotWork.com and enter your email address. We start taking applications on Monday 20th and stop on Tuesday 21st.

Popularity: 33% [?]

Download the SexNotWork Press Release (56KB .pdf)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

World’s First Sex-Blog Network, SexNotWork, Announces 24hr Membership Application Window Starting February 20th

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB), February 16 2006 — Today Sam Sugar announced that on Monday 20th February 2006, SexNotWork – the world’s first sex-blog network – will begin accepting membership applications from blogs, podcasts, and other RSS enabled sites with a sexual theme for a period of 24hrs. SexNotWork is a collaboration between Sugar, whose background is in mainstream magazine publishing and the adult industry – which he blogs at SugarBank, and Paul Scrivens, whose Whitespace blog propelled him onto the ‘A-list’, and is founder of the world’s largest blog network 9rules.

“SexNotWork is going to bring back all the fun, sophistication and quality to on-screen sex that Paris Hilton has drained out of it,” said Sugar. “We’re looking for bloggers who understand that networks are the best way to organically build links and traffic. Limiting the application window is a move that’s worked well in the past and will reward people who are as excited about SexNotWork as we are.”

SexNotWork will offer bloggers exposure and community, and enable advertisers to reach hundreds-of-thousands of readers, over many blogs, from a single point.

“Sex sells,” said Scrivens. “SexNotWork is going to connect smart, educated, sexy people with smart, educated, sexy blogs. We know that people interested in cars, politics and gossip, also like to read about sex. SexNotWork is the first network to make sexuality its central theme, and the first to assume sex curious people are as likely to read the New Yorker as the New York Post.”

SexNotWork will be in place by the end of February; Sugar and Scrivens are confident it will take its place among the top tier of blog networks.

“SexNotWork is capable of attracting more daily readers than any other blog network,” said Sugar. “Sexuality is an eternal part of human nature – why else are so many people in cave-paintings naked? Sex is our most fundamental drive, and unless it suddenly goes out of fashion, SexNotWork is guaranteed a sizeable audience. We want to change perceptions, promoting blogs which demonstrate that sexy needn’t mean stupid, erotic needn’t mean explicit and graphic needn’t mean gross.”

About SexNotWork: SexNotWork (http://sexnotwork.com) is the world’s first sex-blog network and is due to launch in late February 2006.

About Sam Sugar: Sam Sugar has worked in publishing, advertising, film, television and the adult industry. He’s a co-founder of SexNotWork and blogs at SugarBank (http://sugarbank.com).

About Paul Scrivens: Paul Scrivens is an A-List blogger and founder of the world’s largest blog network, 9rules (http://9rules.com). He’s a co-founder of SexNotWork and blogs at Whitespace (http://9rules.com/whitespace/).

Contact: Sam Sugar via sam.sugar@gmail.com

###

Popularity: 34% [?]

Despite the best efforts of some very talented people, SugarHive is officially no-more. Hammered with spam, and lacking new content – I see no way to take it forward using a MediaWiki backbone. The software, which works well for Wikipedia, offers no easy way to give people authority, has primitive spam protection, and isn’t sexy enough to entice new users.

An open repository of free sex information is still a great idea and one that I don’t want to let die. Many people have told me they’d love to use it. The problem seems to be no-one wants to write it. Is the answer better software? Or is a free resource on that scale simply too ambitious or naive? Would a community sex-info blog, which anyone could post to, work better than a wiki? What do you think?

Popularity: 34% [?]

SexNotWork, the sex-blog network we’ve been working on for the last few months, will be taking applications for membership late next week.

The name’s a pun, but it’s not a bad one, and having the word sex in it won’t hurt a bit. It’s not ‘Sugar’ branded because even my ego has edges, and my feeling is that all this currently popular pseudo-corporate ‘corp’, ‘Media’ and ‘inc’ stuff’s going to sound as cheesy as ‘Cyber’ in a decade’s time. For the same reason there’s no mention of the ‘B’ word. SexNotWork is open to any RSS equipped site (or podcast). If you really want to be part of something called ‘CyberSexBlogsInc’ I’m sorry.

We’re borrowing a trick from 9rules.com, and applications for the first phase of membership (I’m not going to call the earliest members ‘Founding Fuckers’ but I’d like to), will last just 24hrs. Then we’ll see what we’ve got and contact the blogger’s we’re interested in. Yeah we’re the popular kids…

SexNotWork.com is currently home to an email sign-up form. If you have a sex-blog and want to be part of the new network, give us your email there and next-week we’ll send you a note when the application window opens.

Popularity: 40% [?]

Anyone as confused as I was regarding the kerfuffle over the recent ‘Network Wars‘ should read this sad, funny and nicely investigative piece of blogger journalism. Tons of stuff I didn’t know – and tasty comments too. (Link)

Popularity: 31% [?]

When I said Gawker Media is a porn company which does some other stuff on the side, I was hoping that the runaway success of Fleshbot would encourage other media owners to acknowledge healthy-sexuality as a viable concept. Unfortunately I don’t think that’s happened, and as the first round of big blog networks kneel and prepare to fellate Yahoo! and Google ready themselves to be sold, Gawker’s discretely taken Fleshbot off its masthead (shown right). All that traffic, all that interest, all that great writing – they’d rather not talk about it.

Popularity: 31% [?]

Please get links to me by midnight PST on Friday 27th. Please take care to ensure that you submit a link to a post (not just your blog) and that you don’t change the link for your post in any way after submission.

As the Sugasm grows, managing the links is becoming more difficult and any help you can provide with clear information is appreciated. In the past I’ve ‘found’ items which were mis-submitted, from here on in I’m not going to be able to do that so please make sure your info’s right (and most of you are consistently great at this).

Don’t forget to record an audio or video clip for Sugasm AV….

Popularity: 51% [?]

Apparently I’m at war. It must be like the war in Iraq because, even though I’m reading about it, it doesn’t actually feel as if anything’s changed.

As far as I’m aware my first attack (I think I’m America in this and they’re Iraq) was posting this blog network invite. I seem to have hurt someone’s feelings (I think I’ve virtually bombed his Mosque) and am being chewed out in public (which is a bit like him going on Aljazeera and showing footage of me driving tanks into houses).

My next crime was publishing his Google email address (taking female prisoners?) and this has apparently resulted in a deluge of spam and hate-mail. I’m not sure who’s sending the spam, I publish my email address all over this blog and Gmail catches 100% of my spam 99.9% of the time – which is why I use it. I don’t know who sends hate-mail (it’s so Southern Baptist/PETA) but I doubt anyone reading this blog cares enough to take the time to do something so ineffective. Besides, how can you write hate-mail about a job offer?

My final crime (the Abu Ghraib of this network war – I’m Private English) was to remove the email addresses too slowly in response to requests from the author. I’ll admit it took a few emails, but that was because:

1. I didn’t realize the guy emailing me wanted me to remove every email on the page, so I started with one. He then emailed me from more than one address and I got really confused about who was asking for what.
2. I didn’t think that any harm could come to a network head by having their email address on display. I still don’t.
3. I wanted to signify the email (which I received from multiple sources in a couple of hours) was genuine.

Despite all that I did exactly what I was asked to (for a stranger) because I’m nice clearly a total bastard.

So I’ve now learnt I am an aggressor, with violently expansionist policies, who must be stopped from raping the bloggosphere. You know what’s fucking scary? I didn’t even know I was doing it.

Anyway – I’ve decided to declare peace in this war (which I didn’t know I was in), sign a treaty and rebuild everything to really high standards. No-bid contracts will not be awarded, and I aim to be out of the occupied territory in about a week. Israel is secure, Palestine is free, and in Ireland, U2 are over at Ian Paisley’s house just kicking it. That was easier than I thought overall.

Happy Sunday Cowboy – war is over.

PS. If anyone else wants to involve me in a ‘war’ then please let me know in advance so I can buy bullets and wake up my ninjas.
PPS. I won’t to go to ‘war’ over blog networks because having more good ones is good for everyone, and because it’s freakishly, terribly, lame.

Popularity: 40% [?]

The best of the blogs by the bloggers who blog them (this week starting with the letter ‘S’):

• Sex Type Thing (chaosnoir.blogspot.com)
• Six Girls Skinny-dipping on Abby Winters (iloveabbeywinters.com)
• Coach T…..Chapter Two (whatsexmaycome.blogspot.com)
• Sometimes You Just Miss Having A Penis (berkeleybiboy.blogspot.com)
• Strapping One On? (alwaysarousedgirl.blogspot.com)
• Tangled up (lumpesse.com)
• The Listening Brief (gentlygently.blogspot.com)
• True Secret: A Night With A Star (secretbrain.blogspot.com)
• Vixen, In All Her Sultry, Devilish, Glory (tirepaddle.com)
• Brett and Hiromi interview themselves (sexblo.gs)
• Hot teen lesbian sex on Sapphic Erotica (simply-sapphicerotica.com)
• Condom Conversation… (shayssexcolumn)
• Cherished (ambientstorm.blogspot.com)
• Dante’s Guide to Cybersex–Part II: Descriptive Writing (damneddante.blogspot.com)
• Darkness (nyc-urban-gypsy.blogspot.com)
• Exactly where I want you… (emergingontheotherside.blogspot.com)
• Expectations (swelteringcelt.com)
• Father Knows Best (theholidaylife.blogspot.com)
• Fucking Wifey To Make Me Jealous (radicalvixen.com)
• How do you jack-off? (whatsyourpleasure.blogspot.com)
• Join the Sugasm?
• More of Sugasm #18 here…

(All Sugasm participants should post the above links.)

• How to Get a Killer Lapdance (sugarbank.com)
• Hot teen lesbian sex on Sapphic Erotica (simply-sapphicerotica.com)
• I might like you bettah if we shaved togethah (realadultsex.com)
• KITKAST #1.12 – AVN 1/2, Howard Stern and Porn Battle Kits (kitkast.com)
• Masturbation (sexinga.blogspot.com)
• Mindfucking and Oral Service (talkingdirty.blogspot.com)
• Men: What Are Your Best Blowjob Tips? (sexeteria.blogspot.com)
• More angie6969 (eroticandy.blogspot.com)
• My best fuck (damnjezebel.com)
• Phone (anyonesgirl.blogspot.com)
• My Fun Night at Work (MOCK POST) (tinastrangeworld.blogspot.com)
• Realizing Mortality (bikersballsandteacherstits.blogspot.com)

Download Sugasm #18 as HTML

Lovingly policed by Sabrina Morgan

Popularity: 46% [?]

Sometime’s you catch the zeitgeist (that’s German for guy-with-zits), sometime’s you deliberately rip off an idea, and sometimes an idea’s so great everyone has it simultaneously. As a charitable individual (you should see this chick I slept with back in ’98), I’ll go on record as saying that I find a link between my repeated public statements regarding launching a sex-blog network, my announcement that I’ll be working with the team behind 9rules.com, and this announcement regarding a ‘competing’ network by a guy who’s just acrimoniously left the 9rules fold, completely impossible to fathom.

In case you haven’t got an email from them yet – here it is.

…

Sent: Friday, January 20, 2006 2:58 AM

Subject:sexblogsinc.com is hiring

You’ve been invited!

So in the Late Spring of 2005 we will be launching SexBlogsInc., yes a massive sex blog network like none other With people who have been in the adult eterntainment industry, design industry and mass marketing industries. I’m sure this will be a huge success because of the energy and dynamics of the people involved. 

Terms

We pay our bloggers 100% of the first $250 in monthly ad revenue from their blog(s) – then 50% of any additional ad revenue. We have a bonus structure for additional ad revenue that comes into your blog. You get full editorial control over your blog, with only a few guidelines. And you get to own all the content.

Ok this is where you say: I’d like to blog for you!

Great. Send us a note at liberalcowboy@….com with your ideas for a niche topic within the sex industry. We are offering $100 Hiring Bonuses for people hired by February 15th, who post atlest 5 posts a week for 60 days.

The spelling mistakes in the above excerpt are all theirs (and the rest are all mine).

There’s nothing which confirms a great idea as certainly as being emulated so, whoever they’re emulating should be flattered their idea’s a good one.

The offer they’re making sounds pretty good – albeit very traditional. If you’re seriously considering joining their team – here are the questions I’d be asking:

1. 100% of $250 isn’t a lot of money, so what are they expecting to make overall?
2. If they want blog ideas, does that mean they don’t have ideas of their own? If you submit an idea for a blog but don’t get hired, will they launch an identical blog with another writer?
3. What experience of the adult industry do they have or are they hoping to learn as they go? Who do they know?

Despite not being able to offer a cash incentive, I am pleased to say the response from bloggers wanting to work with me has been flatteringly porky. I think they understand that they’re name and reputation is as much at stake as my own, and only want to be involved in something they believe in. If I was less interested in building smart teams who’ll work for the same goal, and more interested in getting blogs up, so I could say ‘look – it’s a sex blog network’ I might try cash, but I figure $100 wouldn’t be nearly enough.

Bloggers wanting to add their blogs to our new network, the wait is almost over. I’ll soon provide details of how and where to apply (and for those who think it’s solely up to my own discretion – it’s not). We’re going to build community, traffic and revenue, and I’m excited.

As for Sexblogsinc.com – don’t worry about me joining them, I haven’t been invited (to read all my networking rants wisdom, smack the ‘networking‘ tag).

Popularity: 46% [?]

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.

Popularity: 49% [?]

I’d like you to meet the Sugasm AV Orangutan. Primate’s are just the coolest.

Sugasm AV, like the Sugasm, will be an experiment in community marketing. The idea is to produce a single podcast, which contains segments produced by people all over the web. I’ll combine them into a single package, which will then be promoted across all of the participating blogs. This will run on my bandwidth and servers. As a group effort, it should be considerably easier to get into than doing a show on your own.

You don’t have to be a podcaster to participate. If you want to read something you’ve written go ahead. Video is what most people are into so that’s particularly welcome. Given the law, nothing hardcore will be accepted so keep submissions Playboy style or softer.

In order to give you the time to produce a segment I’m setting the deadline for this as midnight PST on the 27th. of January.

If you’re interested in participating, here’s how. Please take careful note as I won’t have time to individually respond to people who get it wrong.

• All files should be emailed to podnography@gmail.com
• All files must be under 10MB in size (if it bounces back, it’s too big)
• Yeah, that’s right – I make the rules.
• Audio files should be submitted in WAV, AIFF or MP3 format (MP3’s recorded at 192kbps or higher).
• Video should be submitted in MPEG (any variant) or QuickTime formats (sorry – no WMV, it won’t run through my edit system). Keep the quality high – otherwise it’ll look awful when recompressed (and that goes for audio too). Use the whole 10MB and you should be able to send me something pretty good looking.
• The no crappy video rule does not apply to anything shot with a mobile-phone. Mobile phone porn is hot.
• Keep it short. 60 seconds or less is ideal. I’m not going to edit anything, and submissions over 90 seconds will be rejected (think it though, 20, 90-second segments is a 30 minute show). 
• WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW!?
• Include a picture. Make sure it’s at least 1000px across its smallest dimension.
• If you email any huge files to my other email address I’ll put a bed inside your mothers vagina and fuck your sister on it.

I can’t wait to see who comes up with what. Abuse my inbox you nasty bitches.

Popularity: 51% [?]

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.

Popularity: 53% [?]

I remember when ‘blogger’ was just slang meaning African-American lumberjack. Now anyone with an opinion and an opposable thumb has a website, and the traditional phrase used to describe people who indulge in public monologues, ‘loudmouth prick’, has been replaced almost entirely superceeded.

That said, as a loudmouth prick, I’ve got to admit this blogging thing’s fun.

As part of building this network, I’m launching a number of new blogs. More than I can write and even if I could, my sense of humor would eventually bore me. To that end I need a few good, smart, ambitious people to help man some new projects. If you’re interested in sexy print, movies, websites or babes I might have something for you.

All writers working on SugarBlogs are paid a percentage of earnings (not a flat post per fee as is traditional) and the blogs in question are designed to be valuable resources to readers (making them valuable properties to advertisers).

If you’re interested in working with me, email a couple of writing samples (shorter is better) and please include a cover letter, which explains a bit about who you are. No attachments and no applications from people who think teamwork means compromise. It doesn’t – teamwork means having people to discuss compromises mandated from above with. Women, minorities and freaks (who can hit deadlines) welcome.

Popularity: 59% [?]

“Free your mind and you ass will follow.” George Clinton

That I’m building a Sex Blog network isn’t news to most of you. What will be is that I’m not doing it alone, and that my partner in this venture is Paul Scrivens and Co, the team behind 9rules.

The decision to team up was simple.

1. Collaboration is smarter than competition (ask OPEC or the Mafia)
2. Paul and his team have experience networking (I don’t)
3. I know the adult market (which Paul et al don’t)

Together we intend to apply a potent mixture of insider knowledge, new ideas and practical experience to build a network that serves bloggers as well as blog-readers.

In the next couple of weeks expect to hear a lot more about the network (including its name) and announcements regarding the blogs that will form its core. If you want to nominate a blog for inclusion, even if it’s your own, you know where to find me.

Popularity: 61% [?]

The best of the blogs by the bloggers who blog them. This week starting with the letter ‘T’.

• Things That Make Me Go MMMmmm… (temptation-unleashed.blogspot.com – removed)
• The Personal Touch… (shaysexcolumn.blogspot.com)
• Unrecovered memories (realadultsex.com)
• What do you taste like? (lumpesse.com)
• An Ass Licking (sexinga.blogspot.com)
• Airport (alwaysarousedgirl.blogspot.com)
• Caveat Anal (mzemily.vixenblogs.com)
• Condom statue angers Catholics (sexblo.gs)
• Dumped by a Client (radicalvixen.com)
• Forgiveness (nyc-urban-gypsy.blogspot.com)
• Fun to be Bound, Bound to be Fun – ‘Seduction’ (chaosnoir.blogspot.com)
• I’m proud… (pornster.blogspot.com)
• In need (mnsss.blogspot.com)
• In the Beginning (deliacd.com)
• London Calling (theholidaylife.blogspot.com)
• Moonlight and Fucking (tastytrixie.com)
• Not Picky About Porn (damnjezebel.com)
• Podnography #17 – Coed strippers, Wikipedia and Katie’s big O (podnography.com)
• Reach Out and Touch Someone (anyonesgirl.blogspot.com)
• Should I? (whatsexmaycome.blogspot.com)
• Smooth as a… (cherryboudoir.com)
• StoryTime: coming to work (secretbrain.blogspot.com)

Lovingly policed by Sabrina Morgan

Thursday 29th – link removed for non-compliance

Popularity: 40% [?]

Sunday. Getting up late, a gaufre at the local Belgian café and sexblogging in public. Damn it’s good to be a gangsta.

In the coming week I have a number of things I want to do and, as usual, a few things I must. My first priority is SugarBank 2.5.

The site you’re looking at might be the shortest lived redesign in history. The major elements will stay the same but, after a week of trying to devise ways to get Internet Explorer to do what it should, I’ve decided to take the opportunity to make a series of subtle tweaks which will make the blog closer to how I’d like it to be. Until then, if you’re trying to read the site through IE I’m sorry that things don’t look right. They should – trust me they should. Soon they will and, until then, thank Xemu for RSS.

I’ve also been thinking about networking. As I move my blogs to their new home, and to a new publishing system simultaneously, I’m putting together a hub which will allow people to see what else exists in the Sugarverse without having to list each site by name. It dawned on me that this will be the root of an internal network of sexually related blogs and so, I’m interested in finding out who might be interested in joining me (no surprise to regular readers of course…)

I’d be interested in networking blogs which fit the following formula:

• Are sexually focused or regularly cover sexual issues
• Established 90 days or more
• Read by more than their author, mom and dad

And the biggie…

• Established on their own URL (i.e. not myblog.blogspot.com)

The reason for wanting to work with blogs established on their own URL is simple (though probably controversial – comment away). Unless your blog has its own URL you’re totally at the mercy of the company who provides your hosting. If and when they go bankrupt, change their model or decide that they want to purge their system of sexblogs, you’re going to be lost. It’s highly likely that the name of your blog won’t be available to buy, and that means you’ll be faced with establishing a new identity, in a new place, from the ground up. In a network blogs that go through that will stop contributing to the network and become a drain on all the other network members until they’re re-established. It could get ugly.

More practically, the systems offered by free blogging systems (who are most likely to prevent you from hosting at mydomain.com) simply aren’t flexible enough to accommodate the features that the network I imagine will come to include. Finally I think it’s a mark of ambition and dedication to establish a domain. I understand why you might start blogging at a subdomain, but don’t see it as compatible with someone who seriously thinks their blog will be around in five years time.

I know some of you will disagree – please let me know how and why. I’m a grown-up, I might even change my mind. Try not to use the word fucktard – it hurts.

If your interested in affiliating yourself with other blogs, like mine, please let me know. I have a lot of ideas about what a network can, and should, be. Rather than impose those ideas, and risk turning off bloggers I’d be proud to be associated with, let’s see who’s interested and then talk about what we’d all be happy to do.

Popularity: 50% [?]

The best of the blogs by the bloggers who blog them:

• A Free Book For Every Blogger (sugarbank.com)
• An Exhibition in the Living Room (corinthiancouple.blogspot.com)
• A Woman’s Voice (radicalvixen.com)
• Boots (swelteringcelt.com)
• Cane Kisses (deltaofvenus.blogspot.com)
• Compatibility (perfectmarriage.co.uk)
• Dominique Dane (pspporn.com)
• Halloween 15 Years Ago (alwaysarousedgirl.blogspot.com)
• Hentai vs. Standard Porn (shayssexcolumn.blogspot.com)
• I Fucked Che Guevara (theholidaylife.blogspot.com)
• Is It Trafficking Now In My Bed? (sacredwhore.org)
• KITKAST #1.4 – Tommy Torque, Suicide Girls and Guba.com (mskitka.com)
• Naked Ambition (seska4lovers.com)
• Podnography #14 – Seska, Fleshlights and the Sperm Cube (podnography.com)
• Porn for the Blind (talkingdirty.blogspot.com)

(NB: Bloggers, please note a small change in the bloggasm rules. Unfortunately some people haven’t been posting the bloggasm links to their blogs in a timely manner. Leeching traffic from other blogs goes against the whole mutual collaboration idea. Therefore, from here forward, I’ll check to see when each blog is posting. Any blog who hasn’t reposted the bloggasm links by Monday will be removed from the bloggasm and the other bloggers who have posted informed of who’s leeching. Mistakes can be explained, but repeated mistakes will be considered intentional exploitation and killer robots will be assigned and targeted.)

Popularity: 48% [?]

The best of the blogs by the bloggers who blog them:

• A Common Anatomy (wilfuldamage.blogspot.com)
• Bedroom Radio #5 – British Invasion (lumpesse.com)
• Child Free Night (perfectmarriage.co.uk)
• Hitting the iNail on the iHead (mskitka.com)
• Inizzi (easilyaroused.co.uk)
• Japanese teens selling their saliva (sexblo.gs)
• Podnography #13 – Ms. Kitka, Audiocrush and Max Hardcore (podnography.com)
• Questions Questions (radicalvixen.com)
• Rumors of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated (sugarbank.com)
• Sex. Work. (talkingdirty.blogspot.com)
• Sit On My Face And Tell Me You Love Me… (corinthiancouple.blogspot.com)
• So Glad to be a Girl (alwaysarousedgirl.blogspot.com)
• Speaking in Tongues (theholidaylife.blogspot.com)
• $pread Open (seska4lovers.com)
• What are you waiting for? (livejournal.com/users/nicebluejournal)

Find out how to join the bloggasm here.

Popularity: 39% [?]

Luba.

The best of our blogs, by the bloggers who write them:

• Bedroom Radio – Episode #4 (bedroomradio.blogspot.com)
• Book-Nerd (alwaysarousedgirl.blogspot.com)
• Clinging to my Dignity (radicalvixen.com)
• I want! I want! I want! (seska4lovers.com)
• Luba in the Bubble Chair (pspporn.com)
• Podnography #12 – Tony Comstock, DDGirls and Sharon Stone (podnography.com)
• Position of the Month (corinthiancouple.blogspot.com)
• Siesta (perfectmarriage.co.uk)
• Slipping Into Something More Comfortable: the anatomy of my sexual growth via underwear ownership trends (lumpesse.com)
• The Transformation Part 1 (domesticdeviance.blogspot.com)
• Thou Shalt be Evicted (mskitka.com)
• Video Has Been Assimilated (sugarbank.com)
• What did Porn ever do wrong? (mimredbeard.com)

Join the bloggasm here

Popularity: 20% [?]

Nella.

The best sex blog posts, by the bloggers who wrote them:

• Adult Babies (radicalvixen.com)
• Dominating E (lumpesse.com)
• Eat, Drink and Remain Horny (corinthiancouple.blogspot.com)
• How to Make a Professional (Amateur) Porn Film (sugarbank.com)
• I Get Hot Looking at Snatch (seska4lovers.com)
• May I? (domesticdeviance.blogspot.com)
• Minutes of Board Meeting (perfectmarriage.co.uk)
• Mirta Showering (pspporn.com)
• Podnography #11 – Dave Naz, Fetish Flame and Janet Jackson (podnography.com)
• Shut Up Bitch (talkingdirty.blogspot.com)
• The Blame Game (mskitka.com)

Join the bloggasm

(If you’re part of the bloggasm please repost these links to you blog. Present them however you feel comfortable, you don’t have to include any of my (pretty fabulous) writing)

Popularity: 20% [?]

It’s been a big week. Since I mentioned networking last Sunday AOL has bought Weblogs Inc and Verisign has bought Weblogs.com. If you ever doubted that Fortune 500 CEO’s read SugarBank…

Since then I’ve spoken to business people who I didn’t know were reading this blog (hang loose G.W. – see you in Crawford), and refinded my ideas about networking. As it’s Sunday – which is members only day at SugarBank – let me share the principles I’d build a network around (borrowed from Ninja movies mostly). 

Making money’s okay
(A Ninja kills for pay)
Blogs that make money (the vast majority of those anyone cares about) need not be any less ‘authentic’ or ‘friendly’ than ‘hobby-blogs’. When it comes to sex, some people assume earning an income can’t sit comfortably with honesty and a ‘homemade’ aesthetic. That’s not only false, but the web ‘amateur’ niche is built around people making an income from their activities.

Making money’s not the point
(A Ninja kills for honor)
If building a network is about making people pay for what once was free it won’t fly. If revenue is used to make blogs better, by letting writers focus on writing. giving them a larger audience to write for and raising their profile in the fields they write about – it’ll work. Advertising serves the blogs, not vice-versa. Making money should not be done in a way that upsets, frustrates or excludes readers.

Teams always beat individuals
(A gang of Ninja’s can kill any number of non-Ninjas)
If you’re writing original material, making even two quality posts a day is a Herculean effort.  The blog networks have addressed this problem by employing teams of writers, who can collectively produce up to 40 posts a day. These teams produce the big blogs needed to anchor and feed every successful network.

In my view, the next logical step beyond an editorial team, is a community blog to its readers – which retains editorial bloggers for the quality and focus they provide. This hybrid model, a cross between community blogs (like Metafiler) and edited blogs (like Boing Boing), is currently (kinda/almost) in use at Fark.

Covering the world of sex this way is particularly natural, making it easy for people to anonymously share things they find appealing, and providing a space for bloggers to tell the world-beyond-their-blog what they’re saying. It also enables people who don’t want to run a blog, to publish their thoughts and be read – the very essence of online community.

All blogs are equal, some are more equal than others
(Batman is a Ninja who kills Ninjas, but Ninjas cannot kill Batman)
Traditional networks are ‘flat’, either aggregating blogs owned by a single entitiy, or linking blogs run by individuals – seldom both.  I see an advantage to combining the two approaches, allowing tight integration for bloggers who want the support and readers that can bring, while leaving the door open to more established blogs who want to be part of a community, but are strong enough to thrive without full access to network support. In the world of sex-sites, where the distance between readerships blog-to-blog can be galaxian (I made that word up and it’s a goody), this flexibility could make networking across the gaps possible.

No sell-out
(If you offer a guy a bribe, and he’s a Ninja, he’ll come back later in his Ninja clothes and teach you respect Kung-Fu style)
Many businesses only exist to attract a wealthy buyer in the mid-term. As the world realizes we’re now in the second internet bubble, the number of companies trying to stretch a thin idea in the hope of a quick return is rising daily. Blog networks are a huge part of the problem, but a sex-blog network won’t be.

A buyout is extremely unlikely (there are too few public companies comfortable enough to buy into sex), which means any sex-blog network has to be built with a future in mind, from a base which doesn’t require a big advertising budget or venture capital, and can only be considered a success if it works for its members and readers (unlike mainstream companies which are a ’success’ when they’re sold to a competitor). Sex-blog networking has to be done right.

So there you have it. Sex-blog networking the Sugar way. Continue to email me if you’re excited and thanks to all those who have – it’s been fun. Making this work requires plenty of sex-blog ninjas (SugarNinjas in ivory silk ninja costumes – so foxy.)

Popularity: 20% [?]

Going Daily – text
(talkingdirty.blogspot.com)

Helpful Tips for National Porn Sunday – text
(mskitka.com)

Podnography #10 – Tera Patrick, Violet Blue and Foot Fetishes – podcast
(podnography.com)

Shock the Piggy! – text
(domesticdeviance.blogspot.com)

The Death of Suicide Girls – text
(sugarbank.com)

The jury is out on thongs – text
(lumpesse.com)

We’re Pleased To Say… – photo, text
(cointhiancouple.blogspot.com)

Join the bloggasm

Popularity: 20% [?]

It’s that time again. Be sure to let me know what you think Bloggasm #3 should be linking to by Friday night. As always, in return for reposting the links, you get to see your links on the other sites in the bloggasm – it’s like a big mutual trackback done without any technology.

Why join the bloggasm? Search engines find you, readers flock to you – somewhere a child smells a flower and writes ‘Love’ into damp sand with their finger.

(If you were in last weeks bloggasm and haven’t reposted the links, don’t come crying to me when your pets die.)

Popularity: 30% [?]

When I started talking about networking earlier this week, I wasn’t really saying ‘let’s start a network’ but it’s beginning to seem like a real possibility.

Paul Scrivens – founder of the 9rules network, and I have been talking. He’s into the idea and runs an adult blog of his own. He also knows a lot about networks and we’re discussing applying some of his expertise in the networking area. This is big. If the people reading this blog were mainly graphic designers, you’d all be doing a ‘Scrivs dance’ right now and high-fiving each other, Borat style. The man (Scrivs, not Borat) is a blogging heavyweight and his interest makes this a whole lot easier to get right.

So it looks as if we can start a network, aimed at sex bloggers, with quality to rival B5 Media, Gawker and Weblogs, Inc. The question is, do you want one?

I know from the email I’ve been receiving, that a couple of days ago I managed to give the impression that I want people to change their blogs, cede control and conform to dictatorial rule. About the only thing people haven’t accused the network concept of encouraging is vivisection (although there might be a hot sex angle for that… I’ll get back to you). Some of the emails I’ve received are so worryingly wrong regarding my stance (which is my fault for writing a post that wasn’t clear) that I took the post I thought you’d be reading today out back and shot it in the face.

In its place is this, which starts at the beginning by asking, what kind of formal collaboration between sex blogs can exist? As I see it there are three paths:

1. No collaboration. That means placing links to other sites only because they benefit you, never thinking about symbiotic feedback, or benefits of association other than traffic exchange. I’m not aware of any blogs (which I read) who follow this mantra but a few traditional porn-sites (e.g. many TGP’s and topsites) do.
2. Informal collaboration. Almost 100% of bloggers work in this way (and have to as there’s no alternative system in place). That means placing links entirely based on your own desires, sometimes trying to build relationships, sometimes as recognition of worthwhile content and sometimes as favor to a friend. It’s not all about building traffic, and is a creative decision as well as a business one. How well it works depends on how much attention each blogger gives their links. It’s very good at expressing bloggers opinions, and not very good at helping readers find what they want.
3. Formal collaboration. The network idea, an extension of informal collaboration whereby a group of websites agree to support each other as a community. I.e. Bloggers agree that, a friend of the network is a friend of mine. Every blog links to the network hub and the network hub links to every blog. Network members get the support of the entire community via one link. Readers get an easy path to quality content.

Networking doesn’t mean common design, shared hosting/technology, or any loss of copyright or editorial control. The key is community, not communism. When Lenin said,

“It is not enough that I succeed, others must fail.”

He was demonstrating a complete misunderstanding of the network idea (Lenin – you’re out!)

I see networking, of the kind described above, as having a number of positive benefits, ‘hothousing’ its members, and giving readers a seal of quality they can use to access the very best sex-blog content. Side benefits for network members can include help with hosting, technical and design support and tools to monetize blogs that aren’t currently providing a return. It’s a way of building a community for bloggers and a community for readers simultaneously.

I don’t see the idea as perfect for everyone, (aside from Angelina Jolie – is anything perfect for everyone?) but my hippy ‘love everyone’ leanings make the idea of collaboration, community, and mutual support fundamentally appealing. (Of course there’s stuff I’d like to do with Angelina and an unloaded Desert Eagle with a condom over the barrel which aren’t hippyish at all). The question is, who else finds the idea exciting (the network, not Angelina and the gun), and what else would you want from a sex-blog network built for you as a reader, or potential member?

Popularity: 30% [?]

Why isn’t the world of sex blogs isn’t growing like the mainstream blogging space?

(Wise readers will know that I’m posting this on a Sunday because today only those who are truly wedded to the broadband crack-pipe desperately continue to fix

Popularity: 30% [?]

The best of the sex blogs as selected by the bloggers who write them:

Celebrate National Porn Sunday With Porn – Text
(mskitka.com)

Diddle My Skittle – Text
(madelineinthemirror.blogspot.com)

Janova In Bed – Photo
(pspporn.com)

Meet the Nubians – Text
(onelifetaketwo.blogspot.com)

Orgasm Control Training – Text
(talkingdirty.blogspot.com)

Playboy Digital – Reviewed – Text
(sugarbank.com)

Podnography #9 – SoccerGirl, Sex with Emily and Japanese Brothels – Podcast
(podnography.com)

Traci Lords – Text
(sugarhive.org)

Wham Bam Thank You Lord C – Text
(corinthiancouple.blogspot.com)

You give me fever – Text
(thefuckhouse.blogspot.com)

Join the bloggsam here!

Popularity: 30% [?]

A gathering of bloggers.

This is the first post, of what I hope will be many, highlighting the most interesting, most controversial and smartest posts from the sexblogosphere – as nominated by the bloggers who wrote them.

Not chosen by a committee, or pre-judged, these posts reflect each bloggers ‘pick’ of their own best work in the previous week. It’s an easy way to try a new blog, written by someone who shares your interests.

Simultaneously bloggasming:

• A Silly Idea (sugarbank.com)
• There is no better time to be a library student and obsessed with sex. . . (lumpesse.com)
• Porn ads in Adsense (mymoneyblog.net)
• Random Fetish Attack (talkingdirty.blogspot.com)
• Vibeke (pspporn.com)
• Podnography #8 – Adonna Vichet, Martha’s Girls and Anal Sex (podnography.com)

(Bloggers, participate by emailing your best recent post to sam.sugar@gmail.com. The bloggasm is posted to SugarBank on Saturday, included bloggers commit to posting the bloggasm links within seven days.)

Read blogs and want to contribute to the bloggasm? Email me your recommendations as above.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Let’s like totally write a blog together!

SugarBank is maturing like a fine cheese (which probably goes some way to explaining the smell.) After less than two months there are lots of regular readers (okay – about ten) and I’m getting a lot of smart email from you gorgeous people (okay – one smart email which turned out to be an offer to ‘Buy! Ci@l1$’).

I know some of you run blogs of your own and I’d like to know who you are, what you’re up to, and possibly trade links (if you have other offers to make, I’m open to swinging, most fetishes and role-play).

I’m about to re-vamp (Re-vamp: to replace the vampires in) my links page, and bring them to a more prominent part of the site. Now’s a good time for me to put your blog on it. Obviously blogs which reference sex, porn or otherwise make me hard (i.e. stuff about trains and people dressed up as cartoon animals) are especially welcome.

General suggestions on things to check out are also cool. I want to reach out to you (especially those of you wear little and know where the good parties are). Write to me here.

Popularity: 21% [?]

I cruise MySpace in one of these.

It’s the weekend and hardly anyone’s reading blogs. Given that I might as well let my hair down and take advantage of being able to deny anything I post today.

Yesterday someone copied my “How to Date a Porn Star in Eleven Easy Steps” to a MySpace group (see yesterdays comments for details). To see it I had to join MySpace and I’m now a member without any friends (apart from some Tom guy who’s almost certainly waiting until I’ve had a few to many before he makes a move on me). If you want to be my friend on MySpace look me up and we’ll do whatever MySpacers do. Damn, I haven’t asked anyone to be my friend since fifth grade.

(Brandon’s just called me a chump for failing to list my MySpace URL so here it is http://www.myspace.com/sugarbank. Thanks Brandon)

Finally, I was looking at my weblogs this morning, and went to check out what people are typing into search engines in order to find SugarBank. Someone wrote “what damages does big dicks to vaginas?”. That’s really more an illiterate boast than a query isn’t it?

Popularity: 31% [?]