Breaking into The Adult Marketing & Web Development Business - Updated 10/05/2009

Recently, I’ve received a lot of questions about delving into the adult marketing via Twitter and Facebook; the questions I am asked most are:

1. Is there good money in it?
2. Is it hard to do?
3. What do you do?
4. How do you develop a clientele?

The simple answers are:

1. There can be, if you do it correctly, it’s just like any business.
2. Yes, it is hard to do. Just like any business
3. I do the same thing you do for mainstream clients.
4. You develop clientele just like you do any business.

These questions are just the icing on the cake, what “inquiring marketing minds” actually pondering and asking is how to penetrate the adult industry and creating a successful business. They want to know if it can it worth the time and effort. Well, guess what? Any smart, determined marketer or developer can create a successful adult business, but they have to have a strategic plan to do so.

Here are my tips for deciding if you should start an adult marketing company:

Tip #1: Don’t approach the adult industry like it’s some secret Illuminati society that must be infiltrated. There are multiple ways to enter it: networking, emailing, trade shows, etc. It’s the same as any industry; it takes time and a targeted, strategic approach. Pick on that is most comfortable for you and go from there. For you online types, my next suggestion in perfect!

Tip #2: Set up an alternate Twitter nd start following adult entertainers, designers and other professionals that look interesting (@AudaciaRay, @VictoriaLane, @DarkGracie, @MasterRobyn, @Mindchaotica, @KimberleeCline and @PBVixen are a must). Start reading blogs, looking at web sites, check links and slowly start to comment. Just like it takes a website about six months to fully integrate into the Google sandbox and be allowed to play, it is the same for any new person in the adult scene. When you find something that tickles your fancy, proceed to Tip #3!

Insider Tip #3: Find something interesting? Go Google the crap out the thing that made you go – “OH!” and start studying it. Need inspiration? Check my side links, I put the stuff I really like there. Find a niche that works for you and start there, then grow.

Chris Brogan wrote an article on “50 Ways To Use Twitter For Business“, But it got me thinking, what are best uses of Twitter for adult business and who should adult business tweeters connect with?

Twitter Basics

• Open a twitter account and use Twitter Search to see what people are saying about your name, your competitor’s names and key words that relate to your industry.
• Make sure you have a photo - no one wants to follow a faceless person, it shows LAZINESS.
• Dialog and interact, don’t just spam the crap out of your followers and with blog postings. Engage in meaningful discussions and funny comments.
• Talk about things in your industry. No, I don’t care what dildo was up Tera’s ass, talk about trends and new media outlets, etc. Also comment on industries that might be complimentary to what you are doing.
• No pushing and shoving. Again, don’t blast your content, photos and videos all the time. You will lose followers.
• Be Human and talk about YOU. People like knowing about people.

What to Tweet About

• Write about what you are currently involved in, reading or find engaging. Again, people like humanity and personality.
• If you own and adult related site, have your talent tweeting. Get them blackberries and iphones, let them tweet about their lives and things going on with them. Leverage your employees to drive traffic to your site. Share the human side of your company. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections.
• Ask questions about direction, marketing or content. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.
• Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.

Tweeting Etiquette

• You don’t have to reply to every @ tweet directed to you (try to reply to some, but don’t feel guilty).
• Use direct messages for 1-to-1 conversations if you feel there’s no value to Twitter at large to hear the conversation. No one cares about your dog and cat.
• Use Tweetdeck and Twhirl to manage Twitter.
• Shorten URLS with TinyURL .
• If someone doesn’t like what you say, they can unfollow you. Let them go, they are replaced by three who love you.
• Commenting on others’ tweets, and retweeting what others have posted is a great way to build community.

Twitter Pros & Cons

• Twitter takes up time. - Please! You can engage in twitter as much, or not as much, as you like.
• Twitter takes you away from other productive work. I have made some of my best business deals because of Twitter - making money and growing is productive!
• There are other ways to do this. Yes, but PLURK sucks!
• Twitter doesn’t apply to the adult industry. Twitter’s only a few million people (only). And you know what, they buy sex toys, see videos, are interested in mainstream marketing, etc.
• Twitter doesn’t replace direct email marketing. Ummm - Twitter is real time. If you send out one adult related link to a file or video, it will be downloaded 20,000 times in ONE DAY. Put that out to millions who may have not seen it and ummm - get where I am going? But make sure it’s somewhat tasteful.
• Twitter opens you up to more criticism and griping. If you hear what is wrong, you can avoid making those mistakes! Or you can discover how wrong they are and realize what you are doing is right. If you are using Twitter to only promote prostitution and trying to drive sales to your pay site, you are going to fail. Twitter should be used to ENLIGHTEN, SHARE & ENGAGE. Not just with mainstream audiences, but with other adult personalities. The adult industry can be lonely & isolating place.
• Twitter breaks news faster than other sources, often (especially if the news impacts online denizens).- Damn skippy. It’s a viral as viral can get.
• Twitter brings great minds together, and gives you daily opportunities to learn (if you look for it, and/or if you follow the right folks). My twitter is a mix of adult, mainstream adult and mainstream marketers, mixed in with people I just like. I get all kinds of info and ideas from comparing opinions and trends. Twitter is instant market research.
• Twitter helps with business development, if your prospects are online (mine are). I have monetized Twitter for my writing and marketing services. I’ve also used it to connect with other adult business ventures. It’s been successful. But again, it’s for the right reasons, not simply to make a quick buck or as a tool in black hat SEO techniques.

Sites I Have Found On Twitter I Love

1. http://www.beautifulrebecca.com/
2. http://www.melissagira.com
3. http://wakingvixen.com
4. http://dolorem.com
5. http://omgomgomfg.com

Getting back into writing and getting caught up on what I’ve missed/not read, I jumped over to Melissa Gira’s website. She been busy writing and producing the wonderful things she so amazingly good at discussing. I was actually surprised to find an article of hers on The Frisky. I really like the Frisky, the content is interesting and I love the design and functionality. I’ve viewed it as conservative when it comes to sex - you know, the vanilla/mainstream side. And for the most point it is. But they have the wonderful Gira blogging. For give me Melissa for being so Web 1.0 on this.

It’s funny, I ended my blog posts in October talking about a post that Gira wrote, and I start with one.

Melissa: You made me smile at this, as I read, I had flashes of the ex-boyfriends I’ve had (damn the trail is long) who stalk my twitter and my Facebook for updates - to the point you ban them off Facebook.

Lesson: Twitterstalking and using social media to follow your ex-girlfriends, ex-boyfriends, clients, ex-pornstar you were involved with is not healthy. It’s time to move on. Here is a great article on HOW.

The Frisky: When Blogs Cry - How To Break Up Online

Cancel, unsubscribe, unfollow. Sort out how you want to react to the breakup only after you’ve canceled the relationship, unsubscribed from her Tumblr, or blocked him from Twitter. To undo a relationship that made it online in any form—whether you’ve got photos together all over MySpace or earned your own tag on Gawker—requires investing as much shared exposure as you put in. Make a cold calculation: in my case, that meant reframing a year-and-a-half long affair, across half a dozen online networks, and doing it in just a few days.  This condenses everything: how much it hurts, how fast you have to react.  You had weeks or months to attach to one another’s blogs, profiles, and endearingly staged snapshots.  Now you have to delete or address it all, all at once.

We live in public. Those of us who document even a small part of our lives online hit that moment when we realize our audience isn’t just our friends: they’re more like fans. Any girl whose kept a LiveJournal or posted photos of her shoes to it has felt this. In talking about your breakup, you’re addressing those “friends,” not your ex—and if your ex has an online footprint equal to or greater than yours?  Take charge of your own reputation by telling your story—even if that’s to say you’re going to keep it discreet.

Focus, and cause no collateral damage. The heart’s built-in amnesia – time healing all wounds – is not going to guide your sense of judgment in an online breakup. What will give you resilience later is to tell only your own side now, even if that self-imposed silence aches. The one thing I’d take back from my breakup-blogging is a reference to the sex life of someone close to my ex. But addressing the woman who named me in her own screeds against my ex, after those became the subject of comment for our mutual friends? That not only felt fair, but necessary.  In the case of involving those outside the breakup: only expose what you absolutely need to, and only about those equally desperate for the attention.

A pre-emptive makeup? The strange thing is, it really wasn’t hard to read what strangers—who had no interest in my relationship when it was going well—had to say when I was torching it in their RSS reader. It was easy, and easy to obsess on having the crowd vet “what it all meant.” By the time my ex and I reconciled – and screwed, and cried – the worst things we could’ve said to one another had already been said, in front of an audience. Their reblogged attention was gratifying just long enough for us to figure out how little we needed them to make sense of our relationship ourselves.

In mid-September, the beautiful Melissa Gira, wrote a piece about me in Valley Wag. It was called “Porn Marketer teaches you how to use Twitter”. I laughed at myself. Porn marketer I didn’t know I could get that title.  Thanks Melissa, I love it.

Since then, Melissa’s column was cut and I wanted to vocalize my dismay, it is really a shame. I only read Valley Wag because of Melissa. It drew me in to exploring the rest of the website. My link to her column will remain in my “Fix List”.

Many publications cut their sex columnists - supposedly because of the economic state and needing to tighten budgets, cut the fat.

My initial reaction was “Big Mistake”.

Sex is just as comforting, distracting and fulfilling as the macroni and cheese, good books or  reading the latest “stay positive” article. Mainstream Sex, ALT sex and even Kink Sex are just as relevant as anything else that could be published.

You had brilliant minds working hard to add value to their media outlets (Audacia Ray, Regina Lynn, Tristan Taoromino).

My Questions: Do they feel it was an easy line item to help their bottom line or did they did it to change public perception of brand in the midst of the economic crisis and political changes?

I would interested to see if there are positive effects after excluding the sexual voices that provided knowledge and education to their mainstream audiences; I think Valley Wag, Village Voice and Wired will find many drawbacks to hasty decisions.

I was working on my Tumblr a few weeks and came across this post from Melissa Gira. I chuckled a bit, I have been thinking about public perception <of me> as a writer/blogger/character and I read this:

This is not a compliment.

On that same thread: I’m tangling hard with this notion of public persona. That for whatever reason, writing about sex gives some people the idea that you are available sexually to them (this is not new, this is something I’ve noticed a long time ago). But this being commonly understood as a consumable girl is hitting a breaking point for me. Does it mean I can’t flirt-for-real in public spaces without being perceived as buying into a role, without agreeing with that being pegged as The Sex Girl?

I was never that girl. I never played against my own intelligence to make men comfortable around me. I come on strong by being open, not teasing. I don’t look for strength in men’s eyes that way. As temporarily delightful as cocktail conversation may be — until our cabs come — I get my real and lasting courage from my own vulnerability. I can only trust my sense of worth to be safe with those unafraid to love me, not someone who finds me amusing five minutes at a time.

This is the year of being smart about being seen.

Thank you Melissa. You said what I was looking for.

I don’t know why men (yes, it is men only - never women) think because we write about sex, marketing sex, sex & society et al., that we are available. I was astonished to find how many mainstream, social media/SEO men would contact me via Twitter or Facebook to see if we could have “drinks”. I was excited at first, “Wow - mainstream people take note of my work and wanting to meet!”

Uh, I realized that “coffee” was not their intention, it was can I get a free piece of ass and someone to support me. This progressed into another interesting phenomena: When I would attend webinar  as “Callie” that I would receive emails from employees of the companies that hosted the webinar. Again, I thought it was about the company itself, but it wasn’t. The only thing it was about was their employee’s side adult businesses, or should I say - wanna be businesses. It prompted the series I wrote on being an ethical marketer. I’ve learned some valuable lessons.

So now I can say - No, you will not fuck me and no, I am not gonna teach you to be an adult marketer for free. You will PAY ME - for marketing consulting, not for sex that is.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks rethinking our business model and direction based Melissa’s comment about being smart about being seen. So you will see me again, just in different directions and areas. Looking forward to engaging conversations again.

Callie

New Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/AdultMarketing

Adult Marketing Takes To the Airwaves of BlogTalk Radio

Well, it’s been a bit of time since I have written kiddies; but we all know how that goes. Over the next few weeks, you are going to see the Adult Marketing blog get meatier and the marketing ideas flow. I encourage you to try the ideas and come back and dialogue with me about the tactics and strategies. To kick off the new focus, I will be dialoging with Gracie Passette on Interactive Adult Marketing Strategy on XXBN radio. I am all excited, Gracie (aka The Marketing Whore) and I have spent many hours on the phone the past few weeks discussing adult marketing strategy and why certain things like affiliate programs, pay sites, et al. no longer work as they used, what are some of the new solutions/alternatives for adult marketing and how social media is/isn’t relevant to adult content today. The show is gonna be good and chalked full of advice. So listen in! Don’t worry, there will 12 minutes dedicated to Sarah Palin too.

About XXBN

XXBN is a collection of progressive, subversive, sex positive, indie talk shows produced by sex workers, past and present.

Discussing topics relating to politics, culture, & society; sex work; sexuality; human, civil, & labor rights; feminist & gender issues; and media issues.

Along with interviews with sex workers & experts in scholarly pursuit of issues regarding human sexuality and the societies humans live in, XXBN provides interviews and interactions with authors, activists, artists, & entertainers in music, film/TV.

So in reading Ophelia Chong’s Blog today, I found an interesting post she made. She writes:

Google Search of “social marketing guru” brings up over 419,000 hits.

Some of the best:

“Steve I___ from Canada is a major social marketing guru and very good friends with Neil Patrick Harris…”

“Internet Marketing Guru Turned Social Entrepreneur. Joel C. on mission to help many become Internet-literate and eventually help …”

From Wikipedia: A guru (Sanskrit: ????, Bengali: ????) is a person who is regarded as having great knowledge, wisdom and authority in a certain area, and uses it to guide others. The word comes from Sanskrit Gu, darkness, and Ru, light (prakash); literally a preceptor who shows others knowledge (light) and destroys ignorance (darkness).

Can you be a Guru if you are using it for monetary reasons?

Well @Ophelia, I don’t think you can use the term “Guru” for monetary purposes based on the Wiki definition, but I would like to take it a step further and say:

I have never liked the term guru, I view it as a buzz word that people are throw around to quickly establish themselves as an expert in whatever the hot field is at moment - i.eg. social media and Web 2.0. The problem with using the term “GURU” is that it pigeonholes a person’s career and a potiential client’s perception of them. By saying, “I am a social media expert!” - leaves one to ask “Well, can you do anything else?”

There’s a perception the term conveys - saying “guru” makes it appear as though the person using it doesn’t have a diverse skill set or the capacity to leverage other marketing techniques in their campaigns.

A marketing expert knows that the online component of marketing makes up the largest component any plan these days, but print, advertising and traditional forms hold - heavy - weight. They are crucial parts in developing a holistic, cohesive marketing strategy that drives the success of any product or service.

Side Note/ Joke: Using the term Social Media Guru sometimes implies - “I really don’t know what I am doing”, “I am a master of the universe because I have to compensate for my mental inadequacies - caused by my *physical* inadequacies” or “I just want to look cool.”

Be Ethical, Be Legitimate. Anyone can work in adult marketing; there are many “designers, developers and marketers”. But I use those terms loosely because many “adult marketing companies” aren’t ethical. They under deliver, over charge and build websites on platforms that their client can’t understand, thereby making them slaves to the webmaster. When did the term adult become synonymous with the term idiot? Just because a client’s business is adult related, it doesn’t give their marketing team the right charge astronomical prices for third-rate service. Sooner or later, a client will speak up, vocalize their discontent and you will lose all your business.

Did you know? An individual adult entertainer usually makes $200,000 to $350,000 per year. A heavily marketed, niche adult website with creative, unique content can make up to $1 million per year. The average investment in marketing & publicity is about 15-20% of the gross income.

Being ethical and being legitimate is the first step in being successful.

Be More Than A Designer: Be A Developer, A Marketing Strategist, An Advisor and A Visionary. Anyone designing adult websites should be able to build just about anything. PHP, CSS, HTML, Java – I don’t care, you better know it and be able to do it well. I am not a designer, I am a marketing strategist; but my design team – Ope/Zig (the best) – can do anything a client needs them to do. They make it a point to test and demo all the adult related content management systems out there. By doing so, they know the best platform for any client site. If a client comes to us and loves what they have, we can work with it, but we work to improve it. If they don’t like it, they identify what isn’t working and develop several alternatives for them. If we have to, we will build what they want from scratch.

I strive to be more than designer, I strive to be a visionary. I not only create a site, I develop a strategy and a vision for the client. Now some clients aren’t ready for it, whether it’s a financial limitation or a mental step they aren’t to make yet, I make sure concept is there from day one. I visualize their BRAND and what it could be, even if they themselves don’t see it yet.

You have to ask yourself, “What is this company or individual’s five-year plan?” Next, work backwards from there. You are still building their brand, even if it’s an individual person and a name. You have to consider what would hurt that brand, what would dilute it and what would make it stronger. Throw in the average shelf life of adult name/product popularity and it’s some work!

If you have an idea that could be “The Next Step” and blow/transform their image into another lucrative income stream, you must present it to them, even if it’s risky. If you don’t present it, you are a bad marketer and don’t deserve their business. You need to be a visionary and an adviser because things in the adult market become tired quickly. It’s your duty to continually maximize their ROI; that’s what you are being paid for.

Have Standards and Integrity. This is where humanity comes in and I gotta get gritty. Our clients are people; treat them like people.

1. If you can’t get over nudity and provocative content, then this line work isn’t for you.
2. If you think you can use your status as an adult webmaster/marketer to try and meet adult professionals for your “personal” gain, then this line of work isn’t for you.
3. If you can’t imagine doing an online video series focused on selling couture sex toys and leveraging social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook to promote it and drive online sales – then EXIT STAGE LEFT.

What I Am Saying: Treat your adult clients like your corporate clients. Put all you know into practice and give them tangible results based on clear, ethical marketing practices. Make sure they have the proper tools to manage their content can do all the things they want to themselves. It allows you fill in the services that they fall short on and make you a more effective resource.

Play Nice With Others. There are great adult marketers out there. Play nice and make friends, you never know when you are going to need them. I keep in contact with the people I know have ethical standards and we trade and refer work whenever we need to. In fact, make sure you follow @PBVixen and @MasterRobyn on Twitter, these people have mad skills and I would work with them and for them anytime.

The Spread Magazine blog always has the best posts.

To me, the term “high class” can’t and shouldn’t be defined by rates on a woman’s website. High-class is defined by personality, the perception of  one’s self and a women’s view of her SELF WORTH.

- Callie

Here is the blog post:

I’m officially over “high class escort” hysteria.

I get it, we all get it: these women charge a lot per hour, therefore they must be the best looking, and the best lay, and their sexy, glamorous lifestyle makes them seem more on par with celebrities than it does other sex workers. Except for the fact that those assumptions often aren’t even true. And, sadly, “high class” callgirls are the only sex workers allowed a voice in the media, the only group to whom they will regularly give a platform. Not only is this particular brand of sex worker visibility criminally exclusive, but it’s perpetuating a series of ugly stereotypes, even when the callgirls in question are being contracted to allegedly dispel myths about their work, as is the case with this Salon “Ask A Callgirl” feature. Asking questions like “what about Belle can you relate to” doesn’t actually address any of the problems inherent in the media’s understanding of a “high class escort.”

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