I’ve been working in the adult biz for a long time, on social networking and tube style sites that were mixed gender, mixed orientation. I have noticed that the social sites tend to perform better for the gay audience because the straight women are so few that there is nothing for the men to do there, while the gay men are having a ball, lol.
This is probably obvious for you all.
Now that I am considering venturing out on my own I feel like it would be best to jump into the gay market. Should be straight-forward, I know, but as a straight guy I am not sure what to expect. Are there any heteros in this area? Are heteros shunned here?
There are lots of straight people who work in the gay arena, a few on this board. And they’re welcome here.
One of the thing that pisses us off is straight people referring to “gay” as a niche, like we’re a subsection of straight porn, or that straight porn is the only porn and everything else is a niche.
Gay porn is a market unto itself. We have our own quirks and problems.
Gay isn’t necessarily the goldmine it’s made out to be. We’re struggling too. Lots of sites are failing, another link list is for sale on this board (appeared yesterday) and lots of webmasters are moving out of adult.
You’re certainly not alone. I currently write content for a couple of straight webmasters who are doing exactly what you’re doing. They started out in promoting straight porn, but they branched out into gay affiliate sales when they saw that some experimental gay porn did really well for them.
Their problem was that they couldn’t really write for it, so I help them out by posting for them.
As Michael says, it’s still a struggle, but once you’ve built up a few sites and have enough content and traffic you can still make a nice living.
Welcome DonMega. Like Conran and Michael mentioned, there are a few other straight webmasters selling gay porn, but I have also seen many straight webmasters fail. Some expected better results, some could not relate to the stuff they were selling and the audience they were selling to.
Working with tubes / social networks is a numbers game and when you are used to enormous amounts of traffic, numbers might disappoint in this market. Obviously the gay market is a lot smaller than the straight market, but on average conversions are much better on the gay side.
Before putting all your energy in the gay market, I would suggest to try it out on a smaller scale first and see what works.
OldSchool <==== making note to myself as a reminder that this is a public webmasters, sponsor and affiliate board… not a board for me to let my mind run rampid!!! :help: whoa is me… whoa is me
Thank you for the comments guys. I appreciate the warm welcome.
I am by no means looking to replicate the numbers from those other sites I’ve worked on. I don’t want the hassle on that level. I just want to cover my expenses and justify sitting at the computer all day without hitting up a food bank.
Yea, I am in the GTA but it’s easier to just say Toronto - it seems to be a catch-all phrase for southern Ontario, lol.
In my experience, conversions are better for the LGBT markets. What has really started to bother me is the general attitude that the hetero population expresses towards the LGBT community. It wasn’t a surprise but I’m just getting sick of it. I mean, it’s 20-freakin-eleven already! The stone age has proven to be harder to shake-off than one would expect.
Technicalities…sheesh! :fuck:
I’m just an old southern country boy and 70’s hippy that never got passed the 7th grade… never professed that I know how to spell… but you knew what I meant!
The only difference between straight and gay porn is there’s a lot more dicks to look at on this side of the coin… so in that case, you and your straight buddies, friends, co-workers should get a lot more work done now! :whistle:
Other than that, you’re still in the same biz! Just learn the niches and use the tools readily available to you.
Best of luck and welcome to our little corner of the world
I am a straight male but have several gay sites. Works fine for me and also we have our bukkakeboys site that is a niche of what we are doing. Like dzinerbear above said the worst thing you can do is think of “gay” as a niche.
