Adult Social Network... Yea or Nay?

Webmaster Discussion
#1

Hi, this is my first posts here so I maybe it’s approriate to say something about my background.

I’ve been around adult websites on and off for almost 12 years, basically since I was 18 (well, I guess I’ve always been a horny bastard), but it was never my full-time job (probably could have been if I would stick around), but thanks to working on adult websites I learned lots of new things, from running (and ruining) websites on a shared hosting to managing own server on AWS.

I mostly focused on Tube-style websites as I was able to automate 99% of the work, but I also had a few blogs and I have one website with short amateur videos up since 2018.

Anyway, I was thinking that maybe I could create an adult social network (probably most useful to people with JFF and OF) where people could promote their work, upload short videos, gifs, photos, join groups, follow each other, send direct messages, like and repost post to/on their wall, etc.

Technically, I could absolutely do it, but should I do it? I’m kind of worried about legal things, getting enough traffic, contacting JFF and OF creators would be a pain in the ass as they are not exactly easily contactable, etc.

I also imagine that monetising this type of website wouldn’t be exactly easy. Maybe some sort of paid promotions within the network, or something like that.

Any thoughts?

#2

Well… interesting question. I think the main issue is traffic. How and why would these models use your network? If there isn’t much traffic they won’t want to put in the work it takes to post or even signup when they can use something like instagram and twitter. It’s a catch 22, you need models to make it successful but they will want to know there’s traffic before they use it. And if they do signup and there’s no traffic they will very quickly stop.

How to make money off it I wouldn’t worry as much about, once you have traffic there’s always options to monitize it. Traffic is everything.

Legalities can be tricky too but no more than running a amateur video site I would think.

#3

Yeah, that’s the problem… without traffic you don’t have a content, without content you don’t have traffic and it’s not exactly easy to get the traffic (especiallty gay traffic worth the money).

The idea was (is) that I’m not aware of many social networks where you could post NSFW content. I don’t use Facebook or Instagram, but I’m sure you cannot post NSFW content there. Twitter is not exactly NSFW friendly, Twitter is just tolerating the NSFW content and they can ban you anytime for posting it.

The problem with OF and JFF is that you don’t really know what you are signing up for and you usually have to seek “preview” content elsewhere to see if it’s really worth the money.

#4

You’re absolutly right though, there probably isnt that many NSFW networks. I bet there are not because of the traffic issue, you have to compete with the really big boys.

#5

Its a great idea, and one I think COULD work, but I think the risk is that the bigger players your aiming to send all your traffic to could turn out to be your biggest downfall, all it would take is for Onlyfans/JustForFans to have a free public area where “teaser” content could be pushed and it would sort of kill you in the water, as they have like mentioned above both the traffic and the models already.

On another note (we actually tested this social media idea at french twinks as a side project a few years ago)… a big issue is monetisation, models are not particularly comfortable increasing their costs at all, banner advertising has its limits in the mobile world, promoted posts/facebook style advertising is good but your going to loose the majority of traffic to onlyfans links and not earn any commissions there… VAST advertising is generally ok on tubes but for a short 9 second video a model posts, I cannot see it being profitable, and the last angle is dating, which infact is the area we started to explore and honestly didn’t have the time to pursue, charging people to message one another privately could be a revenue stream, but comes with the downside of of people just dropping a messenger name tag or putting a link to linktree/other socials in their bios/posts to talk to people off site.

And lastly our BIGGEST downfall “the app”… we had about 150 of our 2000 members we got signed up in the first month ask us “where is the app”… and the answer to that question and about 600 hours of brainstorming led to… we can have an app in the app stores if we are SFW… but that makes us just another social network… If we have the key selling point of NSFW then we couldn’t have the app… We eventually decided against an app.

And that is really where we got stuck, the big socials have apps as only a small % is NSFW and they have about a million filters built in so you have to do work to find the NSFW, (reddit and twitter being the 2 that come to mind)… When you have something totally NSFW you hit 2 barriers 1) the app stores wont list you and 2) a lot of people do not want a NSFW app on their phone…

When someone like mindgeek cannot get pornhub into an app store and their SDK is severely underused on Android, it brings into question from the traffic side of things, why do all the effort here to get this app, and stalls the growth which is needed, when they can just jump on twitter/reddit and get access to just about all they could want without too much hassle.

For us, (we designed it as a way to funnel traffic to our paysite) after 3-4 months working on it almost full time the retention rate for returning members there was just not growing, and it become no longer worth our time, another 2 years of “organic stillness” and it had completely died a death.

I’m not saying its impossible, and I am sure someone somewhere (maybe you) could make something amazing that really works, but for me I would see the risks higher than the potential rewards at this point, Especially with all the age verification ect laws flying about in recent times.

#6

Hey @Daniel_Ryder, thanks for your feedback and everything. You made some solid points about the app issue, personally, I don’t really understand the obsession to have an app for everything, but it is how it is. I worked on some SFW projects and people asking about the app was quite common eventhough the web version was very mobile friendly.

I’m still playing with this idea in my head and testing some “working” theories on one private server, but I’m not really sure if I’m not just wasting my time with this.

Maybe I could use my existing websites for an early onboarding and see if people are intrested in something like this before wasting hundreds of hours on that…

Another idea I had was adding tokenomics (giving users creadits for likes, comments, shares, posting content etc.) and use tokens for tips, unlocking premium content, etc.

Probably way too much work for just one person.

#7

App is very important though, majority of visitors now are on mobile.

#8

Yeah, but as Daniel said, you are not allowed to have a NSFW app officially in Google or Apple store (kind of weird they are tolerating Twitter/Reddit porn and Tumblr had to go though) and if you offer just APK for direct downloads (PornHub is doing it), it will be always dodgy and lots of people just won’t install it.