How do I promote my gay hook-up site

Webmaster Discussion
#1

I’m gay and a developer, so I plan to create a gay hook-up site, for sex only. The only purpose will be to find someone for sex, no dating. I’ve been using other sites/apps for years so I noticed their flaws and things that can be improved. I listened to people and read what people were saying or wanting. I really thing I can improve things.

I don’t want to talk about features and how it works, I want to talk about how to promote it without money (I can invest some money but not at a large scale) or big influence.

I had a few different ideas on how to promote it:

  • Twitter: I have a Twitter account with 2.5k followers and growing, so it seems like a good way to go, people follow me, they know it’s my personal account. Seems legit

  • Promoting on existing hookup sites - send messages to people and linking to my site. Seems doable, but I feel like people resent that, that won’t make them join. It will look like spam, people don’t like random links in their DM

  • Promoting on subreddits - Like posting on comments or creating topics. Again I think that people don’t like random links and promotions here

I really have no other ideas, can you help me out?

#2

I’ve considered this before and the difficulty with a hook-up app is that it won’t be popular with users until it’s popular with users (ie: there needs to be a high enough density of users in the same area before it will be useful to them). It’s a chicken and egg situation.

There are already many (arguably) better apps than Grindr for example but it’s difficult to compete with them as Grindr is the most well-known, has the most users (in the cities I’ve been to) and therefore it’s the most likely place to get laid.

I think, to do this well, you should follow the Facebook model and launch in specific areas or niches at a time (FB started off just in specific university campuses before slowly expanding). It will to be a lot easier to target advertising to a niche of users, either people in a particular city or with a particular kink, and build density from there. Once you have traction in one area, expand out to others.

This will be the long game. You’ll need a good product and several years to build up traction IMO.

Twitter might be the way to go if you can engage with a community that would use the app. I would definitely use this but not as the only solution. You could promote it personally but also have an account for the app itself, linking from your own account (I know I respond better to engaging posts from the developer of X than I do seeing promos from X itself).
Engaging with, or getting support from, some high-profile people on Twitter or Instagram might work well here (porn stars or influencers in your niche for example).

I wouldn’t bother spamming the existing networks. It’s not very scalable unless you automate and the response rate will be tiny. Plus, is spam the first impression you want to give to potential users of your app? I wouldn’t.
You could try placing ads on those same networks, if you’re very targeted with your ad placement it might not be very expensive.

Reddit would be a good way to go for an American audience. I’m not sure it’s as popular in the UK. It might help with SEO / backlinks but one has to be careful not to look like spam.

Other forums exist, depending on your target audience, you could probably find places to gain some traction.

Once you gain some users, you could try getting some editorial in gay publications.

#3

Can’t agree with you more. What made you quit? All of those reasons you mentioned?

#4

It was just one of a few things I looked at but I went in another direction. Better to concentrate on one thing and do it well IMO.

#5

Try and find a way to roll out one city at a time. Otherwise ends up being spread too thin, and when people join and see not very many people around them, they leave and never come back. A lot of sites out there started as community places that were extremely local before they took off.

Find a niche that’s not only just-sex. It can be related to just-sex, but if you want to attract a solid member base you need a reason for them to come together that the other products are not offering. Every platform out there has something for the just-sex crowd, but if you have something that will attract a specific audience, this is where your traction is.

1 Like
#6

I think I have something yes. I was thinking about roll out one city at a time, but the problem is that I don’t know how to start