Here are 23 reasons to leave SugarBank and check out something else – if only for a moment. The best of the sex(y) blogs, by the bloggers who write them:

• A Pregnant Pause (nakedloftparty.com)
• Bend Over Boyfriend (sexinga.blogspot.com)
• Can You Imagine (alwaysarousedgirl.blogspot.com)
• Do my Wife (sexyshoessexy.blogspot.com)2
• Foam and lather (wilfuldamage.blogspot.com)
• Full-On Naked Recovery (talkingdirty.blogspot.com)
• Get Your BadAss Gear at JT’s Stockroom (tirepaddle.com)
• Idiots with Phones (mimredbeard.com)
• In the Dungeon… [Pt. 1] (temptation-unleashed.blogspot.com)
• Just say yes (realadultsex.com)
• KitKast 1.10 (mskitka.com)
• Law to require bathroom for transvestites (sexblo.gs)
• Nice big human clinical thermometer (pornster.blogspot.com)
• Party (anyonesgirl.blogspot.com)
• Podnography #16 – A Video Sex Podcast (sugarbank.com)
• Psycho Santa (chaosnoir.blogspot.com)
• Remote Control (radicalvixen.com)
• Santa’s Naughty List Continued…… (whatsexmaycome.blogspot.com)
• StoryTime: The Layover (secretbrain.blogspot.com)
• The Last I’ll Say about the Saugreen Stripper (shaysexcolumn.blogspot.com)
• The Perfect Gift (theholidaylife.blogspot.com)
• The Shower (nyc-urban-gypsy.blogspot.com)
• The Violence of Love – The Pleasure of Pain (deltaofvenus.blogspot.com)
• The Violence of Words (seska4lovers.com)

(with special thanks to the lovely Sabrina Morgan who checks our links)

Update: Two links fixed (3:02 p.m. PST)

Popularity: 46% [?]

PSP Porn, my babelog (which needs a little love and is getting it thanks to my new team of deadly porn ninjas) has finally been recognized as the completely original work of genius it so obviously is.

In Stuff magazine (current issue, page 61).

Bitches.

That’s right – PSP Porn is in print, taking names and making a noise for all the little babelogs out there who have been ignored by the mainstream media. WOOT!

(Thanks to these sexy people for the scan)

Popularity: 32% [?]

Last weekend, exactly two months after it launched, PSP Porn received its millionth page view. Significant because it was done without any advertising and, contrary to what you might think, it’s not a domain that receives a lot of type-in traffic yet.

It would be easy for me to use this achievement as an opportunity to boast of my marketing ability, design skill and almost awkwardly large penis.

Yep – it’s a biggie.

However it’s probably more useful to you for me to share the tactics behind what I did with the site so that you can enjoy similar success. So…

1. Know your niche. When I launched PSP Porn I knew that I wanted it to be a babelog. Before I did any designing or made any plans I spent months looking at other babelogs learning from what I saw. It meant that at launch, I could be confident I hadn’t made any choices which would confuse users and make the site less likely to catch on. I often see websites which have made ’strange’ decisions as they attempt to fix problems which already have well established solutions. It’s easy to avoid.
2. Steal (almost) everything. PSP Porn has only one original idea (images formatted to fit the PSP ready for download). Every other aspect of the blog can be found in a thousand other places. It’s idiotic to copy a website and expect anyone to care. It’s brilliant to clone the best of what you see and then add a single differentiating feature. (It’s called ‘triangulation’ and is how modern politicians get elected – saying whatever the public wants to hear about most things, and making a ’stand’ on specific issues to create the impression they’re different and principled).
3. Give it all away. Since launching PSP Porn I’ve not made a dime from it. I intend to, but knew that worrying about how to make money at the start would stand in the way of making the blog a great place to visit. It’s far easier to convince an audience to pay for what they’re enjoying, than to find an audience when you have a product to sell. It’s why street performers ask you for money at the end of their act, not before they’ve done anything.
4. Pimp yourself. Use every appropriate opportunity to remind people of your website. If you get it wrong, and mention it when people aren’t interested, you’ll actively turn people off. If you ensure every platform you have can provide a link back to your site, you’ll give people the best chance to discover what you’re doing. That’s why all my blogs link to PSP Porn, except Podnography which isn’t a place I expect to find people interested in a softcore babelog. and therefore doesn’t.
5. Listen. When you launch a website you’ll get feedback immediately. Some of it’s easy to understand, like email, other stuff requires more skill – like log reports. All of it tells you how people are responding to your site and what they want. Every day I track which photosets people are looking at, and which models people are searching for. I use that feedback to make the site increasingly effective as time goes by.

So there you have it. How to make something out of nothing with only determination, sweat and a few gigabytes of scans of hot women you’re friendly with. It’s the American dream…

Popularity: 21% [?]

Pretty much all I do is refresh this page.

(Dateline: 30 minutes ago.)

I’m still trying to work out why PSP Porn has been banned from Google and, after many emails, this is where I am:

• They have acknowledged receiving my email.
• They have said they’ll look into things, but won’t tell me what they’re looking into or the results of their investigation.
• They’ve suggested I check to see if I’m listed in 6-8 weeks.

That advice leads nowhere. It’s bollocks.

What’s more sinister, and  a little sad, is the corporate mindset which  produced it.

• If they’ve banned my site because of their error why won’t explain they admit the mistake, apologize and let me know they’ve fixed it?
• If they’ve banned my site because of a mistake I’ve made, why won’t they give me a chance to fix things?

(NB: I don’t see how they expect me to feel happy about them handling my money through ‘Google Wallet’ if this is what passes for customer support. Maybe service was better at Google before customer service reps came to work in Ferrari’s?)

Moral? Even the best products and companies are vulnerable to the impression their customer service systems leave. Be careful how you respond to email and think about who’s answering your phone.

(Dateline: Right now)

I cannot believe it…

I checked to see I was banned when I started writing this post and I was. I was about to post and went to add a link to this query site:www.pspporn.com, so you could see the problem for yourself.

Now I’m listed. While I wrote this post Google listed me (you can see the result of that search illustrating this post.)

Oh sweet irony…

(They’re obviously fucking with me. I am adding another layer of aluminum foil to the inside of this apartment and will start filtering my urine – they can trace you through your pee you know.)

The points I made are still valid. Why no email telling me what happened? What have I learned about working with Google from all this? If the delay in listing the site was due to something I did, how can I avoid doing it again?

If you’re in a similar fix – good luck. I’m sorry I have nothing more useful to tell you. Google, like the Department of Homeland security, doesn’t want us to know why or how they make their decisions. Kinda creepy.

Popularity: 29% [?]

I wish I had one of these…

Sen. Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat from Arkansas, (a Democrat from Arkansas is someone who disagrees with Republicans only when it won’t upset too many Republicans) has proposed a 25% tax on Internet pornography. She wants the bill to raise her profile and ensure her re-election money to ‘…protect children from Internet-related crimes.’

Okay, I’ll try and explain this in terms even politicians can understand:

Pornography is to child pornography, as skeet shooting is to armed robbery

Additionally, when did businesses start paying to protect citizens from their products? Where’s the 25% tax on cars, which are proven to kill thousands of people a year – often because of the way they’re designed as much as how they’re driven? Where’s the 25% tax on guns, another product which hurts thousands?

Where’s the proof that pornography is capable of producing an ‘Internet related crime’ anyway? Why is looking at a pair of breasts on your computer more harmful than looking at them on your TV?

This proposal is fuckwittery of the highest order. If we want to protect children, let’s build a .kids domain and then restrict the companies who have access to it.

Moving on, as I wait for Google to respond to my email (and I’m betting they never will) I’ve learned that PSP Porn is probably in something called the ’sandbox’.

I’m realizing how lucky I have been to this point, never having had to worry about getting sites listed with search engines (and having a fourteen inch penis of course, that’s lucky too.)

The Google sandbox, which some claim doesn’t exist (others claim it has a red plastic spade in it), is purgatory for websites. It seems that in March 2004 Google a filter added (or didn’t depending on whom you ask) which puts new websites on ‘probation’. It’s designed to prevent Google from being a victim of its own success. It’s most easily explained using an example.

Suppose the Pope dies (could happen) and I, Sam Sugar, am chosen as his replacement. Simon Spammer (did you see what I did with the name there?), whose brother works in the Vatican, builds a million webpages with ‘Sam Sugar is the new Pope’ on them above a list of links to buy replacement inkjet printer cartridges. He posts his pages before the news gets very far, and Google, who can find and index pages very quickly indeed, find Simons pages and add them to their directory.

Then news that I’m Pope breaks and everyone who look for news on the story finds Simon Spammer’s pages at the top of their results.

The ’sandbox’ prevents this by restricting the full-inclusion of new pages with popular keywords for a period of 30-90 days. Google will look at the pages, but wait to see if they stay relevant over time. That way they hope to prevent spammers from exploiting any ability to produce pages quickly.

My guess is that PSP Porn is too hot a subject, and that Google have put my site on hold because it’s keyword rich and popular. We shall see…

People say that being popular quickly is a common reason for being put into the sandbox. Google’s wary if you appear to come out of nowhere (and PSP Porn gets more traffic than this blog – which has way more links in – and is even newer).

In case that’s true – feel free to link to TGP.com – it should launch in the next week or so and it will feature a referrers list. Not only will you help me stay out of the sandbox, you’ll also receive lots of lovely traffic when the site launches. If you do link in, and send me an email, I’ll tell you all about it. It’s going to be a tool for bloggers and a destination for horny wankers everywhere.

Finally, SugarBank is two months old today! Amazingly, if you convert that two months into highly accelerated Internet years, that makes this blog almost three months old – trippy huh? Where’s my cake? C’mon – let’s get baking people.

Popularity: 22% [?]

                         No listings for you!

Google are a company I respect. If they didn’t exist, my life would be considerably more difficult.

That aside, getting an email out of them which hasn’t been written by a customer-relations expert and sent by a computer is proving difficult. They have that whiff of ‘tech guy’ about them. You know the, ‘if you don’t think this is clear it’s because you’re stupid, not because I haven’t explained things clearly’ crap geeks love. It makes me feel like putting on some Phil Collins and breaking out my nail-gun.

I’m in a Kafkaesque feedback loop regarding finding out why PSP Porn is excluded from their listings:

Google - “Website not appearing in our listings? Read the tips on this page.”

Sam – I read the tip, they’re obvious, it’s not the answer I need.

Google – “Need more help? Contact us!”

Sam – I fire off a business-like missive ‘Dear Sir/Madam at Google, What the fuck is going on…’

Google – Send me an email which contains a copy of the text from the help page whose failing led me to email them in the first place.

Sam – Kick dog. Finish cereal, whiskey. Write blog post.

I have responded to Google’s email and will keep you informed as I investigate this further. If I can find out why I’m blacklisted, or get the decision reversed, I’ll pass on what I discover.

On a less FUBAR note (FUBAR is an old Army phrase that means ‘Fill-Up a Bear’s Ass with Rhubarb’. In WWII it was the least popular, most dangerous, task a Private was ever asked to perform), I was quoted in Wired yesterday. Does this mean I’m legitimate?

(NB: If reading this blog ever lands you in trouble, you can now excuse yourself by saying you were doing background reading on that article. )

Popularity: 21% [?]

Google’s backup, backup ’server’.

I’ve been insanely busy this week.

It reminds me of the time I was chosen as a last minute fill-in for a heavyweight boxing championship fight. Despite being a rank outsider, little known outside Philly where I was living at the time, I trained hard and went into the ring ready to give it everything I had. My opponent turned out to be the better boxer, but I had heart and won by a knockout in the last round. The moment when my wife ran into the ring to congratulate me was the greatest of my life.

You might have heard about it.

What’s been keeping me busy, and happy, is my first podcast. After bitching about the lack of decent sex-themed podcasts I’ve decided to put one together myself. As I’m determined to make it worth listening to, I’ve spent a lot of this week thinking about how to structure it, how to record it, and how to prevent it from being an amateurish waste of time.

I have quite a lot of experience recording audio (I held the boom on the Pam and Tommy Lee video shoot) and am working on a ‘better podcasting’ post. I’ve listened to a lot of them and to say the average quality is bad would be accurate. (I still wish there were more sexy podcasts about so be sure to let me know about any you find.)

What’s been keeping me busy, puzzled, and frustrated has been Google. My babelog, PSPporn, is completely absent from their listings (as of the time of writing). As an expert on the whole adult web thing it bothers me that I don’t know why (yet).

Technically Google might not have got round to finding the blog, it’s less than 60 days old, but they’ve found all of these references as well as links into the site from other major blogs (including the mighty Fleshbot). Unless their bots broken they’ve seen plenty of links in. Even this blog should make a difference, it’s new but well indexed and has a decent pagerank.

More curiously, results for the key phrase ‘PSP Porn’, find PSPporn at #1 at MSN and #4 at Yahoo!

Asking Google if they have even a single page from the site indexed shows nothing at all. As far as they’re concerned it doesn’t exist.

I’ve got to conclude the PSP Porn’s on some sort of blacklist. It’s a first in my experience, and I’m as interested as why it happened as I am in how to fix it. I thought the Google ‘blacklist’ was mostly urban myth.

I don’t believe in ‘Search Engine Optimization’ beyond making pages clear and well formed. The big three do a great job of finding relevant pages, and I have no desire to draw in surfers who aren’t interested in what my pages offer. That viewpoint means there’s plenty I don’t know about Google which I’m now having to learn. It’s dull but I’ll share it with you when I’ve worked things out. If there are any experts reading this feel free to school me.

Ironically, I was working on a post explaining why the best Search Engine Optimization is none at all when my Google problem became obvious.

(If you’ve read this far and have any requests for future podcast content let me know – you’re hardcore and I want to hear what you have to say)

Popularity: 22% [?]