Ever wanted to start your own sex blog? I don’t blame you – it’s really fun. Every now and then people email me and ask how to start one, so in lieu of a guest blog this week (I’m behind on guest blog editing, really sorry – if you’ve sent me one bear with me and I’ll get back to you asap!) I thought I’d put my top tips for starting a sex blog in one handy place. So without further ado, here are some frequently asked questions about starting a sex blog, along with my answers and advice.
If you have any more questions, stick ’em in the comments and I’ll try and add to this when new things come up.
UPDATE 2018: The absolute best way to learn about sex blogging is to come and hang out with sex bloggers. We’re a shy bunch, though, so it’s hard. But the one guaranteed way to meet us and suck all the wisdom out of our pervy brains is to come along to Eroticon – a 2-day event held in Camden on March 17th/18th 2018. This was the conference that helped take me from hobbyist sex blogger to full-time peddler of filth. Meanwhile, below are my top tips on starting a sex blog.
How many posts should I start with?
This is totally up to you, but I’d say begin with at least three posts (ideally five or more) when you go live. This is for a couple of reasons, but the primary reason being you don’t want to launch your blog with one post that says ‘hey I might write some stuff here’ – have a few, showing the range of stuff you want to talk about. That way people get a feel for your blog. If your first post is about pegging you’ll gather an immediate following of pegging enthusiasts, who might be disappointed if this is the only time you write about it, so show a range of some kind. You can see the first posts I ever wrote here, which leads me neatly on to point 2…
Don’t expect to be awesome
I’m not awesome, and I have never really thought I am. But what I do know is that I’m a better blogger now than I was when I first started in 2011. Never perfect, often haphazard and incompetent, but I have more of a feel for what people want to hear and what I actually want to say.
How do I do domains, hosting, all the techy stuff?
This is not my forte, to be honest – I tend to just muddle through. You need a few things:
- domain name (this is the address i.e. sexblog.com or what have you). The main thing to consider here is anonymity (if that matters to you). If you want to be anonymous, you need a .com domain, not a .co.uk – that way you can also buy domain protection so people can’t do a WhoIs lookup and then turn up at your house in their pants. If you’re super-careful, you can get someone you trust to register the domain for you to their address. Make sure they’re not a douchebag, though, or the sort of person who’ll switch it to point at cat pictures for a laugh, thus killing your blog traffic.
- hosting (this is the place where your blog will ‘live’ – like on a server or something or in the cloud I don’t know I’m not a fucking genius). I know nothing about this, but it’s relatively easy to set up – you can often buy your domain and hosting from the same place. BEWARE hosting companies who are massive arseholes, and have terms that prohibit adult content. I had one of these and one day they just ditched my entire blog and I had to cry and panic a bit before I could make it exist again, but on a different server.
- a platform. This might be wordpress, like my blog, or something else. I’d advise you focus more on what it does than what it looks like, but I am shit at visual stuff, so what do I know?
For more info on this, you should check out this great step-by-step guide that Molly produced a while back. It’s great, and will guide you through some of the steps to setting up a sex blog.
Here’s a piece of more personal advice: if you’re not very techy then bear this in mind when you set up your site. There are some bloody lovely people who will help you and give you tips etc when you’re setting it up, but remember that if you ask for something really complicated (or have a site set-up that requires more understanding of code than you’re comfortable with) then know that if something breaks you won’t be able to be your own tech support. I have help with my site, and it’s fantastic, but it’s also frustrating sometimes because I just want to change this TINY little thing, and I have to wait for the person who helps me to become available and it turns out he’s not omnipotent, which is a bummer.
How do I promote my sex blog?
This is less a ‘how long’s a piece of string?’ question than a ‘what the hell do I do with all this string and oh my God now I’m tangled in string and I can’t escape’ question. There are a million and one different ways to promote your sex blog, of which here are a tiny few:
- Get on social networks (see below for more on this). And go be funny. And sexy. And whatever else you want to be. But don’t just go ‘oh look here’s a link’ because people will think you’re boring. Also, because social networks are supposed to be FUN, not just places where everyone goes to shout their names into the ether. You wouldn’t go to a networking event and just shout ‘HI I’M BOB SMITH AND I AM LOOKING FOR CONSULTANCY WORK’ would you? No: you’d eat the free croissants and bitch about crappy powerpoint and THEN say you’re looking for work. Way better.
- Promote your posts more than once. There’s fierce debate amongst social media ninjas about how often you should promote any individual post. Once? Twice? Ten times? The answer is: as often as you think you need to without fucking everyone off. I generally post each link on Twitter twice, at different times of the day, and on Facebook once. But that’s not the whole story because I also use Facebook and Twitter to promote older posts. A blog post doesn’t disappear just because it’s a year old, and remember that much of your audience (if you’re building it) won’t have seen your earliest stuff. Feel free to chuck the links out there again months or even years later.
- Guest blog for other people. Pick a bunch of bloggers who write about similar things to you, and offer to write guest blogs for them. Most of them will say ‘hell yes’ and – if they’re big bloggers, some of them will pay you (I will pay you, please pitch me). More importantly, when you write a guest blog, make sure that you’ve got some great content ready when your guest blog goes live, so people arrive at your site and go ‘wow!’ If you get a guest blog published and suddenly hundreds of people descend on your site, you don’t want them to be confronted by a ‘sorry I’m taking a blogging break this week!’ post. If you care a shitload about traffic, pick your guest blogs carefully. You don’t want to spend two hours writing something that only gets you a few visits. How many visits can you expect? Depends on the audience that blogger has, and how popular your post is. Most people who guest blog for me will get 2-300 clickthroughs from their post within the first couple of days, and if their post is popular with search they’ll keep getting clicks indefinitely.
- Get linked from other, bigger publications. This might include pitching them articles (and if you want to find out more about this, come to Eroticon and listen to my as-yet-unwritten talk). If you don’t want to pitch articles, then follow lots of journalists/people who talk about sex, and watch out for when they request quotes. Give them a quote/opinion (and make it interesting/unique) and ask them to link to your blog when they quote you.
- Get on people’s blog rolls. I have no idea how to do this, but I can tell you that it makes a huge difference if you’re recommended by popular sites. The biggest site that lists me on their blog roll sends me over 1,000 visits per month, but I have never asked them to put me on there, they’re just nice. If you add people to yours, you can always email saying ‘hey! I added you to my blog roll!’ and that might prompt them to check out your blog. But I’d advise against directly asking for it, because it can seem a bit pushy. I get overly stressed about seeming impolite, though, so I might be overthinking it.
- Comment on other people’s blogs/join in with blogging memes. Again, I’m shit at this but it works well for other people, and it’s a great way to meet new bloggers. If you want to join in with a blogging meme or two, check out Sinful Sunday, eLust, Wicked Wednesday… there are loads more but I can’t remember off the top of my head – it’s been a busy day and it’s nearly gin o’clock.
- Measure EVERYTHING YOU CAN. This means getting Google Analytics on your site (other analytics programmes ARE available but they’re not very good. But Google is evil. But it’s better. But it’s up to you). You can also get stats from Facebook and Twitter about what gets shared most and clicked most and all that bollocks. Don’t just keep rewriting about the most shared topics, but do be aware of how you’re framing/promoting your stuff so you give it the best chance of getting read when it’s out there.
- Give people a way to subscribe. FUN FACT: UK Data protection law means you’re required to include an address at the bottom of any email newsletter you send, so that if you spam people they can turn up at your house and shove flaming bags of dog turd through your letterbox. If you don’t want to publish your address (and you don’t have an alternative ‘business’ address you can use) then you’re best off using a feedburner type thing that auto-pings people when you do a new post. It’s not ideal, in my opinion – having an ACTUAL newsletter that you write yourself, which you can curate, is massively valuable and if I were able to do it I would, in a heartbeat. But the address thing fucks me over. If you’ve a solution to this any advice would be welcome.
- Check out your keywords. Search is the fucking daddy of most of my web traffic. Since January this year, 62% of my traffic has come from search. This isn’t because I look at Google Keyword planner and go ‘oh I should pretend to have something to say about double penetration’, because that would be lame and people would get to my blog and go ‘well this is some bullshit’ and leave immediately. But if you’re writing about double penetration, you can bet your fully-penetrated ass that Google Keyword planner will have something to tell you that’ll help you frame it. For instance, if you wanted to write about porn which is targeted at a female audience, what would you call it? Feminist porn? Porn for women? Female-friendly porn? I’ve looked this up on Google Keyword planner and I can tell you that one’s FAR more searchable than the others. Obviously don’t be a dick with this stuff, though: if people were searching for ‘kitten-stamping is ace’ you wouldn’t use that phrase in your blog posts, so watch out for super-pornified phrases that are often problematic in other ways. You should also check out this great SEO for sex bloggers series by blogger Aceinthehole – handy bitesized tips and useful info on search engine optimisation.
Promotion – whether it’s social media, search, or anything else – is an absolutely fucking MASSIVE beast, and if I gave you all my tips and advice here then you’d never get round to doing all the important things, like writing your own awesome posts. But I’d strongly advise you to go and read (and keep perusing) SEO blogs like Moz and useful webby stuff that has fuck-all to do with fucking: while some things will exclude you because you’ve got adult content (damn you, Google AdWords) most SEO tips are useful for everyone.
And, on a tediously practical note: digital marketing (because that’s basically what you’re doing when you promote a blog) is an actual job that people have. Like, they do it for a living and it takes a fair bit of time to get really awesome at it. You can spend as much or as little time on it as you like, but don’t expect to be a super-ninja and have a million billion hits in your first year, and don’t give up if some of this stuff doesn’t work out for you straight away. If it did, then a hell of a lot of people (me included, probably) would be fired.
How do you stay anonymous?
With a lot of patient, discreet friends, a big dollop of paranoia, and a fair bit of pissing about.
If you want to stay anonymous, the first thing to note is you’ll never truly guarantee it. No matter how hard you try and hide your real identity, mistakes will always happen and there’s always the chance you might get outed. This keeps me awake at night and sometimes – after a particularly terrifying email or something – it makes me sweat with fear. I’m not saying this to put you off – anonymous or not, the world always has room for more sexy writers – I’m just saying it so you know.
- If you want to be anonymous the main thing to remember is never to cross the streams. Setting up a facebook page? Don’t do it from your normal facebook account – set up a separate facebook profile (Jane Doe or something) and then use that to administer your page. Facebook WILL recommend friends to you based on email addresses, so obviously have a sex blogger email too. If you want to also protect the anonymity of people who contact you (because so many people don’t realise that although their email might be genericdude61 [at] gmail, if they use the same for facebook you’ll be able to put a name to the dick pic) then do what I do and register a separate email that you use only for facebook. Also check out the advice at the bottom from Molly, who’s had bad experiences with facebook before.
- Resist any urge to ‘friend’ your real friends on facebook, or follow your real friends on Twitter. Keep everything separate. Twitter for mobile is a pushy twat that will repeatedly ask you if you want to tag your tweets with location, or import friends from your contacts. Beware accidentally clicking the ‘yes’ button. To be super-tight on this, have two phones if you can. I’m not joking.
- To be even closer to watertight on this, check out Belle de Jour’s excellent anonymity tips. I don’t do all of this, but I do have two laptops, two Google accounts (Chrome will try to ‘add’ another profile to your main account, and I have no idea how this works with contacts so to be safe I use Firefox for one life and Chrome for the other).
- Avoid giving people info that they could use to fuck you over. If you’re meeting people and they know your blog name, do they really 100% need to know your real name? Some people will nag you and say ‘but is that your REAL name, though?’ to which my answer is always ‘if you shout it in a crowded pub I’ll turn around – how much realer do you need?’ I’d also, if I were you, be wary of meeting people just for the fun of it. It’s lovely to see people in person, but bear in mind that in doing so you’re handing them an extraordinary level of power: they could take photos of you, they could tell people your real name, any of this stuff. Make sure if you do this it’s someone you really trust.
- As an aside, if you’ve got a really ill-thought-out blog name like ‘Girl on the net’, be aware that hardly ANYONE will be happy just calling you ‘girl’ – if you want to have interactions with journalists, sex toy companies, and most other people, they’ll be more comfortable if they can call you something that sounds like an actual name. Pick one, pick seven, pick twelve – as long as they can say ‘Hi [Thing that sounds like real name]’ they’re less likely to probe further. I have a few different pseudonyms that I use, one of which I’m now so comfortable with I prefer it to my actual name, and I rarely ever go by my actual name any more, unless I’m with close family/mates.
How much traffic should I be getting?
Piece of string territory again, but to give you a rough guide, here’s some sample traffic data from my first year (bear in mind I’d about 600 Twitter followers so I wasn’t starting from total scratch). Measured in unique users per month, via Google Analytics.
- Month 1 (Sept-Oct 2011): 3,142
- Month 3: 3,429
- Month 6: 4,111
- Month 9: 9,662
- Month 12: 11,028
I have absolutely no idea if this is typical, but if you’re another sex blogger and you’re willing to share your blog traffic data, I would fucking LOVE to be able to put together some more info on this, so other bloggers can get an idea of what to expect and also because I love stats and graphs and all that jazz. Please please please get in touch if you’re happy to share your data.
Other ace sex blog resources
Despite the waffly rant above, my most important advice is to never take my word as gospel. Your best bet is to get info from as many places as possible, and here are some great places to start:
- Eroticon, as mentioned above, is a brilliant way to get advice and guidance direct from other sex writers. I’m biased, because I help to run it. But it’s held in Camden on 4th/5th March 2017, and it’s the event that helped me launch my career as a full-time sex writer. If you buy a ticket I’ll give you a free high five when you get there.
- Epiphora and JoEllen Notte are running an online course in how to be a sex blogger. Again, not paid to promote it or anything, just thought I’d add it in because it’s run by two incredible bloggers and they’re bound to have some great advice. Use GOTN10 for $10 off the course fee.
- Cara (carasutra.co.uk) is also a superstar, and she’s written a whole course on how to get into copywriting in the adult industry.
- You should also check out MollysDailyKiss, just in general to be honest because Molly is fantastic at championing other sex bloggers and welcoming them to our community. She also wrote about initial blog set up, as I mentioned above, and she has a cautionary tale about remaining anonymous on facebook, which is really useful when you’re thinking about how you want to set up your own stuff.
There are more – there are always more. But every time I want to recommend people I end up shying away from it for fear I’ll miss people off the list and they’ll be angry. So I’m just going to stick this up here and say that if you’ve got some great advice and you’d like me to add you, let me know and I will.
Want to start a sex blog? Write something now
I promise I’ll sod off soon, because it’s 5 o’clock on a Friday and I’m not in the pub yet, and if I don’t get there by 6 then it will really screw with the natural order of things. But before I go here’s a final piece of advice:
Write something now. Well, soon at least – while this is fresh in your mind and you’re interested and keen. It’s more than possible that some of the stuff above has put you off and the whole thing sounds like too much work, so write something quickly. Even if you haven’t got the blog yet, you can start creating posts, drafting ideas, and putting down all the thoughts that scratch around in your head screaming WRITE ME I PROMISE I’M GOOD JUST GIVE ME A CHANCE.
I can give you sex blog tips, but no amount of advice from a twat like me will compete with those ideas, thoughts, and words that are genuinely unique and worth reading. And nothing in terms of set up is more important than the actual words you write.
Go. Write words. Have fun. And good luck.
50 Comments
As someone who has dipped their toes into the world of blogging* but was nowhere near as successful at it as you have been GOTN I really like this piece. It’s incredibly daunting when you start out blogging wondering whether people even read what you say. The amount of time you can waste worrying about web statistics & researching search terms just so you can get an entry that few places higher on Google is terrifying (What’s even more terrifying is when you actualIy do get the top hit on a Google search by complete accident and watch your page collapse under a sudden influx of traffic!).
I genuinely wish I had seen a piece about starting blogs that had this much information in and was also this easy to understand. Well done and thank you.
*Admittedly I was blogging about comics but the advice is pretty much the same just swap out the words “Double Penetration” for “Batman” and the “Eroticon” for “Comicon” and you’re there.
Hey, thank you Jon! I know that feeling of wondering whether anyone’s actually reading what you say. Stats help for that, but I think often the kind of ‘beginning blog’ syndrome includes staring at empty comments sections and wondering why no one’s replying – this got me a bit sad in the beginning, if I’d post something that I thought would start a debate and it tanked!
Glad you think the piece is useful – I’m hoping to keep updating it when people ask new questions, etc, so I’ll add in more bits as time goes on.
Brilliant and helpful post!! I will dig out my stats for comparison – I didn’t start with any Twitter followers so could be helpful, as my numbers were way lover than that.
I also have seen a change in traffic from searches as my blog matures. I now get lots of traffic daily to my “first time at a swingers club” post, but that traffic doesn’t translate into WordPress followers or commenters. So depending on how you think of success, that could be positive or negative.
Hi Ann – thank you! Would be great to see your stats and include them in the post if you’re happy for me to! I think your point about search traffic is really good – I see similar things with the posts that are super-popular from search. They rarely get comments and if they do then they’re often the kind of throwaway ones like ‘lol I’d like to do this to you phone me’ or something. I’ll see if I can add this advice into the post above, with a link to you, thank you so much for your input!
Thanks that’s great! I will email them to you. And I also found that sometimes, even though I write some pretty naughty posts, it doesn’t really benefit me to tag my stuff with things like “slut mom” or “MILF” because, while I get increased traffic to my site it’s not the kind of attention I want. I removed all those tags once I realized that. I do see some female bloggers with blog names like “slutty chick” and their commenters are generally what you list above. I even saw one woman chastised by a commenter for writing something that didn’t have explicit sex.
Sigh.
And I thought of a couple other tips, based on Molly’s advice about Facebook. Avoid Google+ unless you only have gmail for your blog. I stupidly sent a boyfriend (who didn’t know about my blog) a YouTube link, and then realized it was sent from my Ann St. Vincent Google+ account. I hadn’t even realised they were connected. It’s the downside of the seamless integration that Google does.
The other thing about comments I found is that the best way to build up consistent and quality engagement is, as you say, to engage on others blogs. The best thing is when you can truly join the community of bloggers. But it takes a lot of effort. One thing I did was thanked new followers on their “about me” pages. I thought it was polite and helped make an immediate connection with people.
This is awesome advice and oh God I wish I could do more of it. (I have not forgotten that guest post I pitched you ages ago!)
My traffic has hovered around 2000 hits a month, even though at the beginning I was writing posts every other day and now I occasionally have to skip weeks and weeks at a time. However, my blog is kind of kink minus sex, so I hope other sex bloggers get more traffic.
Hi Yingtai – thank you so much for sharing your stats! I think it’s really useful to get an idea of what different people can expect, and I for one think your blog is excellent. I particularly love the way you examine the motivations and headspaces behind a lot of kink, and examine the detail of it. Are you happy for me to share these stats more widely? I’m hoping to put together some graphs (because I love a good graph) that I can share with other bloggers =)
And I’m ready for guest blog whenever you are – take your time because my door’s always open!
Quite some time ago I’d had the inkling to start a sex blog, so I did. It was a very short lived endeavor, however because I found that I really struggled with the comments I was receiving. I wasn’t receiving many, but the ones that I was getting were often off topic and personally directed. It felt like I was constantly being propositioned by strangers rather than engaged in intelligent discussion about sex. In the end, I abandoned the project because I felt so icky every time I got a comment. I’m sure what I experienced wasn’t uncommon, but I couldn’t find any resources at the time about how to wrangle the comments on a sex blog without going insane. One of the things I’ve noticed as I’ve been following along here is that there are often such high quality comments. I’m curious as to your experience with this. Is there a secret to encouraging this? Or is it just something that organically happens after building up a following? Are there comments that you get that just make you feel kinda squicky?
Hi nikkiana – that’s a good question, and I have had a fair number of comments like that. Oddly enough they tend to come through on my ‘contact’ and ‘about’ pages, so I leave them there for posterity – this one’s my favourite: http://www.girlonthenet.com/contact/#comment-220
So yeah, I have had some, but I’ve also been incredibly lucky in that so many of the comments I get are thoughtful and interesting. I think part of it is about where you’re linked from – I tend to get more weird comments if one of my super-filthy blogs gets put on reddit, then people arrive and – having not seen the context of the rest of the blogs – say things like ‘I’ll fuck you! Just let me know where and when!’ A lot of the time I ignore these, but if there’s a post that’s getting a lot of similar ones I’ll reply and point out that I’m not just going to meet up with a stranger who’s contacted me via a blog comment. I also have a fairly set email that I send people who email me requests to meet – along the lines of ‘I get so many of these emails, if I said yes to them all I’d never have time to do anything else.’ I can see why it’s frustrating though and I don’t blame you at all for being put off.
Comment-wise, I’ll add something to the piece above about comment policy, but here’s generally what I do:
– When thinking about whether to reply to a comment, the main think I’d consider is this: is my response going to be useful to the individual? So if they’ve said something helpful and I want to thank them, the answer is ‘yes’. If their comment’s outright shitty, it’s probably a ‘no’. Second question: is my comment going to be useful to other people? So if someone’s spouting some sexist BS, and another person stumbles across it, do I want that to be their take-away message? Usually no, which is why I do tend to engage if people are saying things I disagree with, because I think it’s important to show the other side of the debate.
– I have a policy of not deleting messages wherever possible (although I’ve had to in the past where there have been issues with libel or whatever), but here’s the thing: I have no problem with deleting blog comments in principle, and if you’re getting lots of comments which make you feel like you don’t want to blog any more, and if they’re adding nothing helpful or interesting to the discussion, then I’d say delete if you want to. You’re not the government, and you don’t have a responsibility let people say whatever they like. I’d advise against deleting things just because you disagree with them, but if you’re getting a deluge of really useless comments along the lines of ‘lol I want a go on your tits’ then there are plenty of other places on the internet where these comments sit, and stay forever, so I don’t think you have a responsibility to keep ’em going.
Final point (sorry I’m waffling again), it can be incredibly helpful to find a crowd of, say, three or four thoughtful people, who’ll leave useful and interesting comments on your blog posts. The first comment on any post makes a big difference, and my heart sinks when I write something really political and the first comment is a jokey pun or throwaway remark. Other commenters generally take the lead from the first one or two comments in a series. So: I’d say feel free to delete the dodgy comments, especially if they’re the first one or two in the post, and if you know people (or other sex bloggers) that you can nudge and say ‘hey I’ve posted this and I wondered if you’d like to chip in your thoughts?’ that can help build more of a useful debate.
Ooh, also: it can help to have a stated comments policy – along the lines of ‘if you just post horny spam, I’ll delete you’ – and have that linked prominently somewhere above the comments box. I haven’t had to do this, but I have been on plenty of sites where people have that, and I think it can prove useful.
Interesting. We actually shut down comments, but do give an email address.
I really do need to write more on this subject especially as I did a session at Eroticon called Tip 10 tips for Sex blogging so somewhere in my computer I have it already laid out. Yes I am just that easily distracted that I have never written that up.
For me personally when I started I had nothing, no Twitter, no FB and absolutely no plan whatsoever. I started with one intro post and went from there. After a couple of months I started joining in with Wanton Wednesday (no longer running) and that really bought me new readers and got involved with the sex blogging community. The rest, as they say, is history.
I think the key to writing a good blog, regardless of its genre is quality content. You can do everything you have said in this post but if your content sucks, is poorly written and or spammy then none of the rest will matter so your focus should always be your content first, the rest, is the icing on the cake.
Oh and finally with regards to FB it is not just the email address that they use to link. Having a seperate email address for each FB account will not stop them linking your accounts. I have seperate email address for mine but they constantly link the two and that is because I will look at both accounts from the same IP address. FB are basically massive stalkers who have no respect for internet privacy. If it is essential you protect your identity then FB is the most likely place where you will be outed and so you have 2 options only.
1. only have one account on FB, either your blogger name or your real life. You CAN NOT have both unless you go to huge techincal length to block all FB’s tracking software.
2. Do NOT use FB at all.
Mollyxxx
Ps… My traffic went I start, was NOTHING like yours. I remember being very excited when I got 100 views on one day and I think that was a good couple of months after I started. Clearly now those numbers are VERY different but just wanted to show that you can start with traffic that is 10 – 20 views a day and eventually turn turn that number into something with a couple more zeros.
Thanks Molly – you’re right about content of course! It’s important to write decent stuff, and I should probably also add something about regular posting in there too. I noticed a big difference in terms of comments and clicks when I stopped just chucking up blogs whenever and tried to do things more regularly. Of course I also got way more stressed about it because I have a tendency towards stress, but that’s by the by. Thank you for sharing your earlydays traffic info too! Really helpful for other bloggers.
On the FB thing, I’m not so sure about IP addresses being a basis for friend recommendations – I’ve looked into it a fair bit because I’m well paranoid about that kind of thing, and because I also administer a fair few other pages and profiles for other people I work with. I’ve never noticed any recommendation of friends etc that crosses over, and I’ve never had the problem where my GOTN profile is linked to my real-life profile, hence why I think it’s more likely to be the email/friends/mutual friends link that’s the dangerous bit. I might be wrong though – I know that FB does log IPs, https://www.facebook.com/help/405183566203254/ but I feel like if they were making that connection with IP address, there’d be plenty of people who get friend recs based on things like housemates, other people who work in the same office, etc too, wouldn’t they? Like I say, it’s never made the link for me, and I’m happy enough with the way it’s worked that I’m not nervous about having two separate accounts, as well as administering accounts for other sex stuff like toy companies and porn sites, but I wouldn’t want to tell people all’s safe, because facebook is always pretty murky in terms of what it does with data, and anything can change at any time.
[Edited to add – maybe also page likes? I don’t like the same pages on my real life facebook as my sexy facebook, because I have a feeling that could also influence recommendations?]
I was over the moon when I got my first 100 in a day. We opened a bottle of champagne. LOL.
The Huffington post picked up one of my stories and we got 10,590 that day. Thought we’d cracked it, but, of course, it was back to 100 or so within a couple of days!
That was such a long article I’ll have to read it again to be sure I’ve got it all.
Stats: Our blog started on WordPress AngelaGoodnight.com/Sexblog in December 2013 and grows steadily. Last month we reached about 9,000 stories read. We also have another site True-Storytime.com which is now getting a furtther 1,800 per month. I only have 100+ facebook friends and about 60 twitter followers so obviously doing something wrong somewhere.
We do get quite a few visitors from comments I’ve written on your site being clicked on and I notice a number going the other way to your site from the WordPress blog. We could talk about mutual links if you wish sometime and you are welcome to write a guest item on my site or use one of mine on yours. We are great believers in mutual cooperation.
Checked out the Molly problem with facebook and we make a point of only ever blogging from a special Windows user account on my machine. Real life is conducted from both of our machines and always from a different user account and browser when using my machine. We can only send and receive emails from Outlook 2007 accounts in each of the user accounts so no chance of any mistakes.
Our reasons for anonymity are threefold. My mother is over 90 and would be horrified. Peter has children, grandchildren and now a great-grandchild. The third and probably most important reason for anonymity is that our stories are all true and if we were identified then our dozens of sexual partners would also be identifiable by themselves and others and THAT would be very embarrassing and could even have legal repercussions.
So, we are very careful indeed and that is why we were so interested in your and Molly’s articles.
Best regards,
Angie
Great post.
I would also suggest that writers practice their craft before ever starting a blog. A good idea is to set aside an hour or two a night and write a 1,000 article. Then go through and edit it.
Why? Because you need to have content that’s actually interesting and engaging.
I recently used the advice I just mentioned above and started an erotica site that’s already averaging almost 200 visitors a day. And it’s only been around for a whooping two weeks.
Anyway, great post and I’m loving this blog.
Keep up the great work!
Blaze
Hey, thanks Blaze! And thank you for joining in – really useful to see your stats as an early-days blogger! I’m going to be a total killjoy and disagree with you a bit on the practice point though – of course you definitely want to write things that are interesting and engaging, but I think if I’d felt the need to practice writing before I started a blog, I’d have ended up double-thinking myself and getting stressed and overediting and I may never have started in the first place. Of course it’s important, but I think far more important is recognising that you won’t be brilliant from day one (or even brilliant on… whatever day I’m on. Day a million). One of the reasons I love blogging, and one of the benefits of blogging as a writer (as opposed to the scary things like writing books which stay the same forever) is that you can practise as you go, learn from other people, and get a feel via feedback (in comments or stats or what have you) about what’s working and what isn’t. I’ve posted some things here that I’m really pleased with, and that I go ‘OK, I’m super happy with that’ and that sink with hardly any shares, then other things that I’d probably not have published if I were being super-picky, and they end up doing quite well. So yeah, sorry to sound like a contrary nobhead, but I think I’d advise people not to worry too much about being amazing before they start: none of us is ever perfect, so if we all tried to be we’d never end up publishing anything =)
hello i am starting my own anon sex blog ad was wondering you i can email you some pen names and get your opinion on what ones you think are better.
Hey – sure thing! Drop me an email hellogirlonthenet at gmail dot com
Thank you for this. It’s informative and helpful. My blog recently went live. Half the time I feel like I have no idea what I am doing. I’m struggling with a few things.
1. I have a clinical background so I incorporate science and education and advice into my posts. I don’t just want to talk about me and my amazing sex in all my posts (I haven’t started talking about that yet actually), and as cliche as it sounds I just want to help people. The critique I’ve gotten from 2 of my friends is that it’s too academic/clinical and lacks my personality. I don’t really agree, so I guess I need to figure out how to balance my writing styles. One friend told me she was disappointed because she thought my site was going to be like Cosmo which wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. It’s always been easy for me to talk about sex and relationships but since their feedback I’m finding difficulty choosing topics and writing.
2. I’m attempting to do this anonymously because I live in a small island in the Caribbean where everyone knows everyone or knows someone who knows you. People who know me really well probably won’t be surprised but people here can be very judgmental and close minded and sex is such a taboo subject. I have only told a few really close friends just to get feed back on site design and stuff. I created separate emails, and social media profiles for my blog but reading your anonymity section made see I’ve made some mistakes which I will address ASAP.
3. Since I’m doing this anonymously I have to build from the ground up. I have no traffic. lol. I am trying to promote it via my new social media profiles but not sure if I’m doing it right. How often should I post, what should I post? I do follow a lot of sex bloggers but who has time to be tweeting all day? lol I need to start engaging with the sex blogging community. I’ve been visiting certain sites for years but I hardly ever comment. Time to change that.
Blogging is a lot of work and it’s very confusing but I’m just learning as i go. I remind myself I’ve only just begun and I will keep at it. I narrowed down a schedule and I will keep coming up with stuff to research and write about. I’ve always been passionate about sex and I want my website to show that. I’m just not sure if it is right now.
Hey, thanks for dropping by, and welcome to sex blogging! =) I totally see what you mean about tone, and I think with any blog it can be tricky in the beginning to find your ‘voice.’ I love what you’re trying to do and it’s great to have more scientific/academic writing on sex, as there are so many myths out there to bust =)
To answer your questions on social media, you’re right that no one has time to be tweeting all day! Twitter is my ‘main’ social network for the blog mainly because I enjoy it, and I follow a tonne of interesting people. So to me Twitter rarely feels like a chore. So I’d say the first thing is make sure that the networks you’re using to promote are ones that you can enjoy using, and which don’t feel too stressy to be involved with. The other thing I’d recommend is using something like Hootsuite to schedule a few tweets/posts about your blog posts. Most people won’t see them the first time you tweet them out, so you can schedule messages to go out at times of day when you think people will be online – that way you don’t have to remember/be sitting on Twitter all day just waiting for the wright time.
You might also want to check out some of the blogging memes I mentioned above in the post – they’re great ways to get your writing seen by a bunch of people, and a good way to introduce yourself to the blogging community. It’s also very handy for ideas generation, particularly if you’re looking to build a bunch of content at the start of your blog.
Best of luck with it! x
Thanks for the guidance, Girl. I’ve just gotten started and doing some memes I’ve admired in the past… I like Sinful Sunday a lot. I’m doing a story on the risky sex post you did, is it okay to link your story? Elliott
That was a great post. I will surely use the tips.
I think you are right on the point that we at least need three or four blog when we start a new blog because its also shows google that the site has a good enough content from the starting.
ty
Hey, thanks for dropping by, and welcome to sex blogging! =) I totally see what you mean about tone, and I think with any blog it can be tricky in the beginning to find your ‘voice.’ I love what you’re trying to do and it’s great to have more scientific/academic writing on sex, as there are so many myths out there to bust =)
Thank you for this! I’ve had my blog for a year and a half (and a related podcast for a year) and am trying to build an audience for both. This post has a great deal of useful information that I’m looking forward to implementing.
I’m also including it in this week’s article round up.
Im a beginner Blogger and I would love to share my blogs which are sexual. I want my blogs to be read by those hard working moms that have kids. Moms only time to them selves is when there in bed and yes MOMS do have a kinky side who also love to have sex.
Concerning blogger traffic data, on the Lactation Wiki (http://lactation.wiki) we started a few months ago. Here’s our traffic this so far (leaving off campaigns):
May 2017 – 2070
June 2017 – 4399 – told reddit about it
July 2017 – 7192 – we tried an experiment on advertising on porn sites and buying adult web traffic, very little engagement
August 2017 – 2435
Pardon my grammar/please fix it. Coffee…
Thank-you. This is great advice I wish I had read something like this before I started my blog. I made the mistake of starting with wordpress dot com and am about to try and navigate the steps to move over to a self hosted site which overwhelms me a bit. I will have to read up more about setting up a website myself`.
Im a beginner Blogger and I would love to share my blogs which are sexual. I want my blogs to be read by those hard working moms that have kids. Moms only time to them selves is when there in bed and yes MOMS do have a kinky side who also love to have sex.
Nice tips. Can an amateur succeed at blogging these days though? Google has raised the barrier to entry quite considerably now. If you don’t have a few good backlinks then you simply will not rank. Whole topics are also closed off for us.
As for making big money from blogging, it’s no longer 2011 so I doubt that this is possible for a complete newbie.
Hmmm… so the really short answer to your question ‘can an amateur succeed at blogging these days?’ is a wholehearted ‘yes.’ Google’s changes make it much more difficult to make a quick buck through spammy sites, or just chucking up tonnes of content and hoping some of it sticks, or through using SEO tactics that aren’t particularly beneficial to the user, but in fact if you create good content, I think it’s more than possible to build traffic and make a successful site. I’m going to try and tackle your question a little later in a longer blog post, because I think it’s quite a common misconception that if you haven’t started a blog already, you’ll never be able to make something successful, but there are people who are doing just that – and doing it incredibly well. My first thought was of https://thebiggayreview.com/, who started a few years ago, and has not only built good traffic but also good money from his blog – I spoke to him about money a while ago and he makes more than I do (or at least he did at the time we chatted!) I think because his content is so highly targeted to people buying sex toys, and genuinely helpful for them, that he can make a lot of cash via affiliate links, ads, etc. So yeah: not in any way impossible. But it is harder than it used to be. I think in some ways that’s good, because Google now penalises people for doing some of the spammier things that used to help them ‘get rich quick’. In some ways it’s bad though, because these higher barriers are more difficult for newer bloggers to overcome, and to a certain extent some barriers benefit those who are rich/privileged/in-the-know enough to work with: SSL, for instance, isn’t something many newbie bloggers would be able to figure out on their own.
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘big money’ though, so it’d be really interesting to understand what you mean by that as well – what would count as ‘big money’ to you? As I say I’d love to expand on this a bit in a blog post, so if you can give me a guide as to your perspective on what might count as success, I can tackle the money issue in a bit more detail.
So, I like the recommended analytic stuff, but with content, do you think it should be a free for all? Or is it better to focus on one aspect? I like fitness and sex together, so it’d be something like this [link to website which GOTN has removed] What do you think about merging those two?
Hello, I can’t quite tell from your comment if you’re trying to add a spam link so I’ve removed the link, but to answer your question, yes! I think combining topics is a great idea – it allows you to speak to broader audiences (i.e. people who are interested in fitness may come for that content then find other things they like to read in your sex section, and vice versa). If you have a click around this site you’ll see that I don’t just write about sex – I also write about dating, relationships, love, feminism, politics, gender etc etc etc. Broadening your scope is a great way to speak to a wider audience, and there’s often lots of crossover that means your readers will never get bored.
Hi there! I love the anonymity of your site. It all makes perfect sense to me. My sex life is so private my friends don’t even know my sex stories. But god my stories are good! I’ve been wanting to start a blog for some years now but have put it off bc of how daunting the set up process is and gaining traffic to your site in an endless sea of sites. Not to mention, what am I going to write about? Travel blogs are as out done as cooking sites. “Pick something your an expert at,” the intro to blogging blogs tell me….well I’m an expert at being an anonymous slut. Oh and I’m really great at writing my sexual experiences…..or so I think. I’m toying with the idea of starting an anonymous erotica site and I came across your page. It’s clean, and engaging. It promotes other sites not just other links to your sites. There aren’t a billion random ads floating around. I’ve downloaded an ebook from HerPaperRoute and it’s useful and yet so vague. It gives methods for making money from your blog but no details on how to actually set up the things she talks about. I’m still left with a billion questions.
Do you earn money from your erotica site? How?
Do you run other websites as well? (Please don’t tell me which ones, I respect your privacy) if so, is Bluehost a good hosting place with the ability to have multiple sites?
How do you earn money and still stay anonymous? Don’t your bank accounts need your real name?
How do you go to the erotica blogging conventions you talk about and stay anonymous? Do you ware a mask? Is that a silly question?
I probably have a billion more questions that I don’t even know yet. I’m just in the brainstorming phase and working on getting some content written. I’m going to school for graphic and web design. So I know the technical side of things I’ll learn. It’s just the business and anonymity side of things I’m trying to piece together. Thanks in advance for responding. I know you got a lot going on.
Hey undercover blogger to be =) I am delighted to hear that you’re keen to start a sex blog – it’s always brilliant to hear of new people who want to dive in to this world, and for me it’s been an incredible journey so I wish you the best of luck on it! I’ve pasted all your questions below so I can answer each one individually, but also do go check out the links in the piece above if you haven’t already as there is plenty of great info in those as well! And shout me if you have any more Qs!
Do you earn money from your erotica site? How?
Yep, it’s a combination of things: rarely will anyone have a blog where there’s just one stream of income, instead it’s a question of building up a range of different places that can help pay for your time spent. So… I make money from
– the ads you see on the side of the site
– some affiliate income, i.e. if people buy toys I’ve recommended occasionally I get a cut of the money (some people use this as their primary income stream – if you review sex toys it’s likely to be a larger chunk of income than it is for me, but I’m not massively keen on just reviewing toys so I leave that to the pros!)
– consultancy/writing/social media work for sex industry companies – basically some companies pay me by the hour to write for their blogs/sites or help run social media, or give them advice on how they should do this stuff
– books – I get royalty payments for the books I’ve written
– Patreon – I use Patreon to fund my audio porn work, so contributions on Patreon buy my time to turn blog posts into audio
– freelance writing – I write for magazines/newspapers/other sites and they pay me for my contributions
Do you run other websites as well? (Please don’t tell me which ones, I respect your privacy)
I don’t run any others at the moment, but as I say I do write for some other people’s sites!
if so, is Bluehost a good hosting place with the ability to have multiple sites?
Nope! Definitely don’t use Bluehost – they killed my site once back in the day because they don’t like adult content. I think my domain is still managed by them but all else is hosted elsewhere. For good info on who to use to host, click the links to Molly’s site in the article above, as there’s much more advice there on technical stuff.
How do you earn money and still stay anonymous? Don’t your bank accounts need your real name?
This is a more complicated question, but it’s basically a combination: some of my clients know my real name, others only know my company name. If you set up a company then you can bill people through your company name, rather than your real name. I’d advise for anyone who’s thinking of doing this to get an accountant, though, to make sure they can advise on proper set up.
How do you go to the erotica blogging conventions you talk about and stay anonymous? Do you ware a mask? Is that a silly question?
It’s not a silly question! I only tend to go to Eroticon https://eroticon.co – they have a really comprehensive anonymity policy, whereby attendees choose a coloured lanyard to wear their conference pass on, and if you pick a red lanyard it means ‘no photos’ – attendees are briefed thoroughly on the importance of never taking photographs of someone in a red lanyard, and that has worked well for me so far.
Thank you for another wonderful.
I have decided to follow your advice and opened a Twitter account. I am new to this medium so any tips/link you have to promote my sex blog there are more than welcome.
Thank you,
Theon
This was really insightful! Thanks for sharing!
niceeeeeeeeeee
Niceee
Hi there,
Absolutely loved this piece! Thanks for sharing all the inside details in such a clever and funny way!
I was wondering what ad provider you use for the banner on your site? I like it because it’s not raunchy and doesn’t make make feel uncomfortable. As my audience is mainly women I would really appreciate finding a good erotic/adult ad provider.
Thanks so much :)
Hey, so I totally feel your pain – there are so many adult ad providers which display aggressively offputting ads, but I’m afraid I can’t help you with a provider. My ads are all custom, so I liaise with companies individually and do all the ad sales etc myself, and the ads are shown via custom code which my tech guy wrote for the site itself. I have pondered in the past whether I should work with other sex bloggers so they can display my ads on their site and get a cut of money based on pageviews, so if that’s something you might be interested in drop me an email and I’ll see how the technical side of things might work.
NIce
sorry but I sent this to the mail without knowing you had this post. although my question is whether to make a blog or something else more appropriate.
First of all congratulations on the blog! Every post I read is super interesting. I hope everything follows you just as well!
What I wanted to ask you was about a project that I want to do but I don’t really know the best way.
I am a boy from Spain so sorry for using a lot of “google traslate”
My wish is to upload erotic photos of me from time to time and punctually (if someone else signed up, of course) with other people, either with nudity or with more or less explicit sex. my goal is that I don’t want to make money out of it. Only express myself sexually and artistically, and have feedback with people, especially if they do the same. In addition, I would like to intersperse experiences, narratives or opinions to make it more varied and academic.
I spoke with Amarna Miller, an erotic director from Spain, but she told me that one idea was to create a donation profile to “finance” projects that she had in mind. I want to show interest but in an idle way and with a sense of community and keeping in touch with more people.
I find out about amateur porn pages but apparently many are a scam to leave you without money or without goals and communication in the community is usually paid (scam), such as jacquieetmichel .net and I have no references to others such as Zoig, Newbienudes or even pornhub and the like. I also know other pages like more private fetlife but I have no idea if they have the same problems as the others.
I’ve also been reading personal blogs that people can create for that purpose. Although I would not mind paying a little for something that works, even though it is free for others, blogs in that sense would not know how to manage them for my particular use.
Finally, I also read that the best way to have everything at ease is by doing something paid or semi-paid in some aspects.
How do I tell you, I’m lost. I know what I want to do but I don’t know how to do it safely for me, open and communicative with others, and maintaining control and ownership of my project (I know that what is posted on the internet stays forever, I understand that. Some photos people would keep and share but I do not want to be traded with that).
I would like you to advise me if it would be better to manage it from a blog or similar like you, a profile in a more or less private community of amateur material or a project with partners or something that is paid to access part or all.
I know it is a lot of text and you will have busy time but I would greatly appreciate any opinion or guide you give me.
A greeting and I wait for your answer!
Hey, so your best bet here (I am biased!) is a blog. You need to find a hosting provider who is comfortable with adult content, but if you’re not looking to make money from it then it’s much easier than if you’re going to try and turn it into a job. Check out the links above about setting up a blog and just set one up and start sharing what you want (as long as it’s legal). In terms of exchanging pics with other people, you absolutely need to make sure that any pics you publish of other people are legal and consensual, and I have no idea how to guarantee that unless you know them personally and get them to sign model releases. But there are lots of other blogs where people do this, and by linking to others and joining in with the community you can help boost others (who will boost your work in turn!).
Check out blogging memes like Sinful Sunday: https://sinfulsunday.mollysdailykiss.com/ or Lingerie is for Everyone – https://violetfawkes.com/lingerie/ They’re fabulous places where cool bloggers share their sexy images!
Thank you very much for your answer. I am evaluating what to do and where. I hope to have a good experience if I carry it out and maybe in some event we will even coincide hahahaha
Thanks again!
I would love to provide guest pieces. How can I do that I will send examples of written and audio if you would like?
Hi. I’m hoping you can point me in the right direction.
I came to your site because I searched “audio porn” and got very much what I was looking for. Your stories are amazin and very visual. I particularly like that you put a lot of effort into the build up as I think that’s much more interesting than anatomical ins and outs.
It was only yesterday, after listening to your stories for some time, that it occurred to me that I might do something like this.
I’ve been writing porn on Smashwords since about 2011, leaving it for years then returning to have another go. I write for a living, mostly in industry but I’ll say no more. I also have a fiction career that I’m trying to relaunch but the effort is staggering. After looking at your site yesterday it occurred to me that I might be able to monetize the work I’ve already produced. Heaven knows I need to monetize something as we’re running out of savings. I’d sell my arse but I don’t think anyone would buy it.
Is there any way I could set something up other than a blog? I don’t have the bandwidth to write something every month what with my fiction and caring for my partner. (Too much information I know.)
I don’t have a website yet (and I don’t think I could afford the added domain fees right now) but you can find me on Smashwords as J.T.Kotch (where there’s a profile). I’m also on most of the e-book retailers apart from Amazon. I’m currently working on the next in my Erotic Doctors and Nurses series but it’s slow going because I keep turning myself on and I should really be working on my non erotic fiction. :|
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
OK so, I’m not 100% sure what you’re asking here I’m afraid – are you asking for a way to monetise your work that isn’t blogging or selling ebooks? There are ways, of course: Patreon is one, and I use that a lot to fund some of my work on here. You could release books chapter by chapter to fans? I know others who use platforms like Substack and Medium (not sure how you monetise Medium, but I know of people who use it), though I would caution against both of these. Also Patreon tbh – platforms like this have a habit of de-ranking, shadowbanning and eventually full-on banning adult content. I suspect Patreon will go the same way.
The key thing to remember with any platform though is that it isn’t just a question of hopping onto it and expecting people to find you – you need to build your audience and market to them specifically. So I guess if I’m not giving a good enough answer to your question, the one you should be asking is: where are my people? Where are the people already reading stuff like yours, and how do you find them then show them where to go?
As I say above, the best best way to promote/host/monetise your work (in my opinion) is to have it on a blog *first and foremost* – even though Patreon is starting to become more hostile to adult creators, even if it bans me all my work will still exist here on the site and I monetise that with ads. I don’t make enough from those alone to survive of course, hence Patreon too. Alternatively, licensing your work to existing creators – I license erotic writing for the audio project (see here: https://www.girlonthenet.com/blog/erotic-writers-audio-porn/) and that’s a way to make a bit of cash. I don’t pay a huge amount though because my own earnings don’t cover a lot.
So yeah. Sorry to be less helpful than I’d normally hope to be! I’m not sure what you’re after – it seems you want a way to monetise but you don’t want to host your work anywhere? I don’t have a solution for that I’m afraid. Domains etc are very cheap (I think domain renewal for mine is less than $40 per year including privacy protection. Ultimately though if you don’t have the time to put into this work, I can’t offer you a quick fix get-rich-quick solution I’m afraid. As I say – it’s not just about hosting the content but marketing it too, when it comes to making money. As a rough guide, I can tell you that I work long hours and I’ve been building my audience here since 2011, full-time since 2014, on Patreon since 2016 and I make less than the living wage (I think this year I might hit minimum wage – that’s been my goal for a long time). I love my work but making money in the adult industry is hard, doing it ethically is even harder, and if there were quick and easy wins I reckon I’d have found them by now!