The Difference between Sex Personals Sites and Porn Sites

An Opportunity Definition from Sexyads.com

 

Sex Personals Sites (SPSs) occupy a borderland between traditional porn sites and conventional dating sites. They are defined by the presence of member-submitted erotic images, which confer upon the SPS many of the attributes of a porn site. These include age verification and other voluntary "adult" labeling, as may be required by law. Also like porn sites, SPSs enjoy generally higher initial conversion rates, versus conventional dating sites. This relates to the fact that SPSs are usually promoted within a porn context, sharing promotional space with porn pay sites on the same pages and sites, which makes for generally more impulsive purchases and generally shorter join-to-pay lag periods.

The relationship between SPS marketing and porn site marketing is well established. Because they also use erotic images to entice visitors, SPSs co-exist well with porn site promotions on the same pages and sites. Many SPS operators have even adopted some of the promotional methods developed and perfected by porn site programs. One example is the thumbnail gallery, which has permitted SPSs to participate in the lively TGP/gallery submission arena. For affiliates who promote primarily porn programs, the availability of similar promotional materials and tools from SPSs has made it very easy to promote SPSs and porn sites together.

Sex Personals Sites and porn have, indeed, been very good for each other. The combination has some implicit limitations, however. And these limitations define an area of opportunity for anyone prepared to do things just a little bit differently.

Since 1997, Sexyads.com has been steadily, and rather quietly, growing its member database. Today, the site has over 2 million active members. The vast majority of those did not come to the site by way of porn.

Though it may go against the grain of popular opinion, at Sexyads.com we believe that sex and porn are different, that the mind-states which dispose a consumer to one or the other are different, and that the best methods for promoting one or the other are different.

Our members know the difference, too. Real members will generally write back when you send them a polite note. Fake members generally will not, unless your credit card is coming up for renewal -- lol. Another difference is images submitted by real members generally don't have watermarks, studio-grade lighting or contain faces you might recognize from the DVD cover sitting on your coffee table.

Most of the SPS players have been actively involved in perpetuating the idea that there is a "blurry" line between a dating service and a content product. There is not. Just ask any of the poor saps who've written messages to Aurora Snow or to any of the dozens of other recognizable porn stars who turn up in so called "member search results" on many SPSs.

Now, this doesn't mean we don't believe member images are to be enjoyed as "content" in their own right. Sexyads.com has more than 10 million member-submitted images, and they pour in so fast every day our human reviewers can scarcely keep up. It does mean, however, that we think it's more exciting when the images you see are of real people, whose exposed bodies are not circulating all over the Web. We think it's more exciting when the images are of people you could actually meet, like your neighbor, the girl working at the local 7-11, your boss, etc.

But, bourne out of a desire to be as involved in and as compatible with porn site promotional methods as possible, most SPSs use banners, galleries and other ad tools that are intended to deceive. They suggest to the prospective customer that professionally-produced and licensed content is actually member-submitted, and that the people appearing in the pictures are actually members of said site.

The cumulative effect over time of these marketing tactics has trained the consuming public to have little expectation that SPSs are good for actually meeting people. This has driven many potential customers of SPSs to sites where "connecting with people" is more central to the site's apparent purpose. Like MySpace.com.

Putting aside for a moment the missed opportunity to market an SPS to people seeking an SPS (and not porn), blurring the line between SPSs and porn sites has also caused SPSs to be lumped-in with porn sites as regards their treatment under the law. Moreover, the blurring of the line has denied the porn industry a more beneficial partnership with SPSs, one in which the SPS serves as intermediary or "bridge" site, sitting between porn and the mainstream traffic sources.

Sexyads.com is in the midst of rolling out a number of innovative promotional tools, that will allow affiliates to pursue some of these missed opportunities. The first of these is SexyadsNews.com, a first-of-its-kind RSS "feed factory" that puts out a steady stream of stories and articles about sex, dating and relationships. Affiliates may use these feeds to make their pages and sites more attractve to both visitors and the search engines. More recently, Sexyads.com has announced a new template (another first-of-its-kind) that combines textual content (via RSS) with a member gallery. We also have been working hard on the designs of our niche sites and of the Sexyads.com flagship, all intended to maximize the Sexy and make it clear that our sites are filled with real people you can actually meet.

We may not be the biggest. But, given what we think are some dropped balls and an opportunity that's just too big to pass up, we're making a bid to be the best.

 

The Sexyads.com Team