dollars and $ense

A sex-blogger friend ‘o mine needs to get some advertising revenue coming in from her blog; I of course know very little about getting ads set up on a blog, particularly when it’s a blog of the adult variety. Anyone out there know much about this? I have no idea where to get started, between […]

A sex-blogger friend ‘o mine needs to get some advertising revenue coming in from her blog; I of course know very little about getting ads set up on a blog, particularly when it’s a blog of the adult variety.

Anyone out there know much about this? I have no idea where to get started, between the mainstream ad sources (Adsense, the built-in ad system on typepad, etc) and adult ad providers.

I need words of wisdom on where to start with it. Actually getting the ads working is cake, but I dunno where to start with rounding up advertising for a blog with adult content.

7 thoughts on “dollars and $ense”

  1. Am I a sexblogger?

    I always thought of myself of as a blogger with sex, not a blogger of it.

    Thanks for the help, Daddy-ö. You’re the bee’s knees.

    kissykiss,
    chelsea girl

  2. Actually you’re the sexiest blogger is what you are. But ‘sex blogger’ is easier to type than “brilliant writer with adult content”.

    I am, you know, a lazy, lazy man.

  3. Have her go talk to SleekBlackMercedes at Hustler Diaries. The link is still up on my site. He’s a sex blogger and told me that he pulls in over a $1000 a month.

  4. How are more people not responding to this? Seems like you should have all the sexy-know-how readers.

    I’d imagine that one of the easiest ways to incorporate ads would be to approach an online adult store, link them to your past work and tell them about the site you want to be doing (or link to that site if it’s up) so that they know you’re serious. Propose an affiliate program, if they don’t already have one in place. It’s just a matter of striking up dialogue.

    Another option, if it is an obviously pornographic-oriented site, you could join a network of other adult sites. I have no idea how to do that, but i figure there should be some obvious links about. Ask your favourite site how they did theirs.

    There’s also http://www.adbrite.com, which is another service I have never used but seems like an AdSense alternative for adult sites.

  5. The main thing is traffic. In the aggregate, the Moronosphere generates enough traffic to make between $75-150 per month with annoying “Free iPod” style ads, and maybe as much as $30-40 a month additionally with good old Google ads. (Google ads perform better if stuck “right in the middle of things”, which I suspect you guys would not want to do.)

    And yes, AdBrite has its AVN ads for adult sites, but I didn’t have the best of luck with those, and finally abandoned my paltry nine-dollar balance, so I won’t mention them. (Your results may vary, and so on.)

    I checked Chelseagirl’s Alexa rank, it seems pretty damned high, higher than the ‘sphere or mine, but Alexa is as unscientific as all get out, so no way for me to try and generate some “hard” numbers based on that.

    I noticed Circe commented, it appears mainly in jest, but we’ll use her as an example anyway. She generated, in the last 31 days, 7,477 visitors, and 10,917 pageviews. The problem with blogs is that generally, the average pageviews-per-visitor is low; in Circe’s case, it’s 1.46 pages per visitor.

    As such, and assuming 100% of her visitors were actual humans and not robots (a BIG stretch,), with an affiliate program like ValueClick she could make:

    (And, assuming she whored all the way out; 728×90 banner, 160×600 side banner, AND pop-unders)

    10,917 / 1000 * ~ $2.90 = $31.65. (And, again, that’s preposterously best-casing the numbers. I’d expect ~$20 or less.)

    Overall, the ads I run with ValueClick pay for the server and my cell phone (and sometimes not quite both of those) with, on a good month, a bit left over. And that’s with 60,000+ visitors a month making those 5.74 pageviews.

    The main problem with Google ads is that the rate they pay at is highly variable, and tied into what their advertisers are willing to pay. There is no mechanism for specifying a “minimum” cost-per-click amount. Thus, you can make $0.20 on Adsense one day, and $10 the next. It’s very hit and miss. I run these ads, but only expect to be paid every other month. (They won’t cut you a check unless your balance exceeds $100.)

    Given that the post mentioned adult stuff, we’re getting out of the “usual” programs. There’s always the adult friend finder, which I’ve found to be a bit of a scam, and kind of a faddish scam at that. A better option might be to partner up with specific, well-vetted, and niche-oriented fetish sites, but she should expect a less than 1-in-1000 adoption rate with any CPA (cost per action) option.

    I say niche-oriented because with the hyper-saturation of adult material on the net, the really narrow fetish stuff is where the growth is.

    On the other hand, I don’t have boobies with which to entice people to make that buying decision. Perhaps that’d alter the equation some, I don’t know. 🙂

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