About a year ago, one of my porn sponsors announced that they had partnered with a mainstream company that sells a tangible product. I thought the product sounded absolutely incredible so I signed up and so far, I’ve had more luck selling this product than I ever had since I became an adult webmaster. I sell it through my naughty blog and a few other sites and I find that there’s absolutely no conflict between the content on my pages and this mainstream product that I promote.
| "See what I’m driving at here? You use the porn to draw the traffic. Once they’ve got their foot in the door, the selling is up to you. Sell whatever works in your twisted mind." |
You are an adult webmaster. You may be a filthy porn pusher but your years of experience have molded you into a person who knows how to garner traffic and promote products better than anybody. When it comes to SEO, ad placement, load times and all the needling minutia involved in site creation, you can run rings around those non-adult wankers.
If you own your own domain and pay for your own hosting, there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t promote whoever the hell you want to promote. As long as the content in your site is permissible according to the rules of your chosen non-adult sponsor then the only thing stopping you is the doing.
Selling porn was never an easy road but these days, that road is more treacherous than ever before. Mind you, there are plenty of good, dependable adult sponsors out there and I am by no means advising you to get out of the dirty picture business. It’s just that you’ve got your own ass to cover. When long-lived, reputable porn sponsors are dropping like flies, nobody is going to blame you for looking at cash avenues outside the common route. This isn’t about giving up and going "legit". This is about survival.
One of the main reasons that porn sponsorships are so sweet is that the payouts are far higher than they are for mainstream. It’s quite a step down from thirty-five dollars per paysite signup to five bucks per t-shirt sold. Not to mention there’s all those high-seller perks and bonuses the sponsors in our business are known for.
In the mainstream affiliate world, you’re not going to find much of that stroking. As well, you’re going to have to get used to inadequate webmaster tools, moderately uninformative traffic stats and inattentive affiliate reps. You’ll probably be lucky if your mainstream affiliate program has so much as an email contact, much less a message board.
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Don’t get me wrong. Not all non-adult sponsors programs are clueless. The one I mentioned in the first paragraph has improved their webmaster area greatly from when I first began promoting them. They’ve got very nice promotional tools. Their stats are much better and they even have an actual phone number where I can call them with questions about my account. I’m pretty sure the improvements are the result of partnering with an adult company but I won’t complain. What I’m trying to tell you is this: dealing with mainstream sponsors is an entirely different experience from dealing with porn sponsors. Get used to that fact and you’ll save yourself a lot of stress and heartache.
So, what mainstream sponsors should you promote?
That’s entirely up to you. I can’t begin to name all the mainstream sponsor programs that exist today. What’s important is that you do your homework - conduct some serious research on sponsors that interest you. Do some Googling and see whether or not there’s some site dedicated to bitching about how awful widgetdotcom is. Take a magnifying glass to the TOS page for thingydotnet and make sure you aren’t about to waste your time adding their banners to your smutty website. Look to see if there are any red flags at doodadsonline, like no contact info or shady program details. Search for customer complaints using keywords like "rip-off" and "scam".
As well, you want to try and choose mainstream sponsors that won’t clash with your content entirely. You don’t want to sell home accessories on your gangbang blog.
See what I’m driving at here? You use the porn to draw the traffic. Once they’ve got their foot in the door, the selling is up to you. Sell whatever works in your twisted mind.
I sell mainstream stuff on my naughty blog. You can too. You don’t have to give up your adult sponsors. You just have to keep your options open. Non-adult is simply another option.