Gay Ethnic Linking Categories

[tombarr]

What's up with tgp's, mgp's, directories, link lists, lumping anything other than white guy sites into a catch-all "ethnic" category?

Surfers don't search for "ethnic"... they look for what they are seeking....... Latin guys, Black guys, Asian guys, Indian guys, white guys, and variations of the above... but i would venture to say that most anyone into any of the "other than white" guys, would rarely describe their tastes as being "into ethnic guys".

So why don't these websites break it out more to make it more obvious to the surfer what's available? To make traffic more productive for sites listing in their directories in these categories?

From my experience, each of these "ethnicities" have large market potential in the gay communtiy, with Black being the biggest, followed by Latino, Then Asian, and so on...

Not only are webmasters of these listing sites missing further marketing opportunities, but SEO opportunities for each "ethnic" niche, as well as increased surfer interactivity on their site, and more productive traffic for the sites listed in their listings.

I can't tell you how frustrating it is to be marketing a niche of Asian men to find that it always seems to get shunted to the "ethnic" room with black, latino and other "of color" races making it so difficult to actually find any sites in my particular niche after wading through pages and pages of unsorted 'ethnic' site listings.

I think it's time that gay men took the time to get to know their community and realize that black men, Latin men, Asian men, are not all the same, and certainly don't deserve the disservice of being lumped into one catch all category.

Take the time to break out your "ethnic" categories, your traffic, your surfers and your submitting webmasters will thank you.

[Lee]

Tom,

I agree whole-heartedly, by lumping latin, black, asian, white and interracial sites in to just 1 category webmasters seriously cut down the amount of traffic and sales they could be generating.

Regards,

Lee

[abostonboy]

http://www.gayethniclinks.com

Tom,

That's tae's site.

[Goldie]

I agree too! We discovered this when we redid our categories last year. You need to be specific because that is how people search. We ended up adding some categories, and are looking to add even more once we get the content to support it...

[Dzinerbear]

I suspect a part of it is ignorance: "all Asians are the same" sort of thing, so everyone gets lumped into a singular category.

But I also suspect that it has something to do with the lack of content. If I were to create a category on my link list for "Indian Guys" I doubt I'd have much in it. If I create a category called "Asian Guys" then it would at least have some content list in it.

It's like of like bears, if you break them down into muscle bears, daddy bears, polar bears, chubby bears, bear cubs, you could end up with five sparsely populated categories, but if you just create "Bears" at least you get the surfer going in the right direction.

Michael

[abostonboy]

dzi,

For many it started as lack of content and then evolved into laziness.

i have run a linklist since I can't remember when. it was never meant to make money, just something i wanted to do i guess. Meet webamsters, and use it more as a tool for checking out new sites to market, look at their recips and find new link lists, and see how they deisgned there sites.

When I first started I had an ethnic category, and at the tiime Ounique maybe had 20 latin sets, 5 asian, and maybe 20 black.

So that category was small. Even finding 5 sponsors for the page was tough. At the time there was pretty much only asianguys, ars had a black site, and a few others. I think streetlife just launched an affiliate program. Not much else in all honestly.

I never broke that category down as the market grew. laziness. Lack of priority as the ll was more my personal homepage than anything else.

The same was true of the video category. Originally it was meant to list amateur producers who sold videos. And that was the submissions I got. Now that page get's 80% movie gallereis (which i reject) and 20% movie sites (which are ok).

It's all about evolution in the industry and how webmasters react to the change.

And Tom an issue some established link list may have when expanding their category is - the page as a general ethnic page, maybe still getting heavy search engine traffcic. i know when I created my link list and put recips up to my site on all feeder sites I submitted, I linked directly to that category page rather than my home page. Some of my internal pages get much more SE traffic than others etc. So if an ethnics page is getting x amount of SE a day, and i can make a sale to a sponsor, is it really worth my time to create five sub categories and then move the sites around? Maybe, maybe not.

In general, the ethnic field is IMHO reaching a sturation point. this is especially true of asian. There is limited content, it is expensive, the Biggest asian sites (based on members joining per day) use the same content (so it affects webmaster conversions), and those companies that have asian sites with exclusive content either pay via a % program and don't conver a whole lot better than the PPS boys because of site design issues. The Black market is bigger, but conversions from site to site are all over the place, so there is a learning curve to find the site that works for you. The latino market however is still almost a license to print money. Even on revshare programs. For some reason they just got it right. And the content is diverse, pleantiful, and reasonable now. unlike four years ago.

[dannyz]

Yeah, 'ethnic' is really a word that does not have any meaning to me, like anyone who is not white is an 'ethnic' .... :wacko:

[abostonboy]

So danny is ethnicguys.com a bad domain name? registered that domain when I started latinoguys.com, which I have long sold.

i mean if I wanted to creat an asian, black, and latino site. How would I do it. And I know for a fact that many that liek one likes others. My bf loves to get fucked by black guys. And latinos. And I am sure there are many that would love to watch.

But i dont want it to be all interracial either.

[dannyz]

BB,

Well one of the most popular gay blogs is called 'Men of Color' and IMHO that sounds a whole lot better then 'ethnic.' The term 'ethnic' just does not sound sexy to me. It sounds like what my parents would call Ethiopan food LOL, I really don't think anyone other then Americans use that term to describe different races so to me 'ethnic' is really 'ethnocentric' which is not so good when you are trying to market to a global Internet market.

Cheers,
D.

[dannyz]

btw.....you had Latinoguys.com and sold it??? LOL hope you got a pretty penny for it!!!

[basschick]

i used to run a large and successful tgp. the more categories you have, the more your submitters fuck up and the more fixing you'll have to do. and that's on top of the hours already involved in running a big tgp or link list.

the surfers know to go to ethnic - we made many sales on our ethnic category - and we did have text descriptions, so it's not like they didn't know they were going to a latin gallery.

also some days we'd have like 2 asian submissions and 2 latin submissions - not enough for their own categories.

[abostonboy]

btw.....you had Latinoguys.com and sold it??? LOL hope you got a pretty penny for it!!!

i sold it as a developed site with exclusive latin models filme in nyc and hartfor conn.

i look at it now and cry. Its so bad.

[abostonboy]

btw.....you had Latinoguys.com and sold it??? LOL hope you got a pretty penny for it!!!

Enough to buy a house.

[abostonboy]

i used to run a large and successful tgp. the more categories you have, the more your submitters fuck up and the more fixing you'll have to do. and that's on top of the hours already involved in running a big tgp or link list.

the surfers know to go to ethnic - we made many sales on our ethnic category - and we did have text descriptions, so it's not like they didn't know they were going to a latin gallery.

also some days we'd have like 2 asian submissions and 2 latin submissions - not enough for their own categories.

And lets not forget when webmasters submit and use prorams there are twink catagories, gay etc, but no asian, black, latino for the most part. So it confuses submiiters that use prorams.

[tombarr]

I agree with DannyZ, I guess I should we are working in the same area...
The term "ethnic" guys is so non descriptive it's almost a nameless category.
Men of Color would certainly be more appropriate, yet still not good enough.

I am sorry but there have been guys marketing asian, black and latino sites for as long as I can remember in the 8 years we have had our asianguys site. I know that content has been available for more than 7 years through ounique and maxpixels (I Myself shot our content and licensed ith through Ounique for a few years, and DannyZ and his previous partners, licensed his through Maxpixels) and many sites took advantage of that and were marketing asian sites, and making their own asian sites with it. I know that bostonboy, in particular has a particular affinity with Asian and Latino guys and was marketing the hell out of them for a long time and he was cranking out AVS sites, TGP sites, all along. Sindbadbookmarks has always found PLENTY of "ethnic" content sites to list, and I could go on, but the point is not an issue of there not being any content.. The point is that people who run these sites don't take the time to break out the niches, and are(have been) missing a valuable marketing arena, SEO opportunities, and experiencing possible surfer frustration.

I also don't buy the "surfers know to look in the ethnic categories" argument. They have been FORCED to look in the ethnic categories because that's where webmasters have been dumping men of color websites for years. It does not make it smart from a marketing angle, it does not alleviate possible surfer frustration at not seeing a place for "asian" or "latin" or "black" etc., sites, nor does it present the webmaster of the site with any marketing opportunities to promote these "men of color" sites by specific niche.

As to the argument that having had an "ethnic" category and it seems to get lots of traffic anyway, you could argue that it's the same concept as a clothing store having a sale.

If a store had a sale and had a bulk of mens clothes to put out on display, (shirts, pants, jackets, socks, underwear) but did not know how to really break out the products by specific type of merchandise, or did not care to take the time to do so, thus lumping them all together on a big sale table, customers would be confused having them all on the same table. Not to mention that if it were a crowded store, it might be a bit frustrating for many customers who cannot get through the clammoring crowd to get to the items they want to seek, don't want to bother wading through the pile of unsorted clothing, or simply get frustrated looking for what they are seeking that they give up and leave the store. True, the sales table has lots of "traffic" and true, sales are being made, but what amount of sales are being missed that might be realized if the items were put on separate sale tables by type of clothing?

I do agree that the web is an evolving monster... and that more content has become available in the last few years in "men of color" niches, so I think that webmasters need to "evolve" their websites. I think surfers will thank them, I think SE's will give them more diverse listings, I think increased marketing opportunities will present themselves, and i think those webmasters who own sites in specific "men of color" niches would certainly appreciate it.

I further wonder why webmasters of link sites that do have "ethnic" categories many times don't even bother to find sponsors for those areas..simply throwing in some generic site promoting "non ethnic" men. There are a bounty of sponsors in 'ethnic" categories, and what it says to me is that the webmasters of these lists don't care to know how to break down the "ethnic" category properly, simply have no interest in finding out, or as some have said here, are simply too lazy to do so.

I wonder how much more PPS or Recurring sales are being missed by webmasters not putting correct sponsors in the appropriate linking categories?