Gay forums/events?

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Originally Posted by Lee

There is a reason so many in the gay marketplace dont have a lot of respect for those working in the straight niche, its because of threads just like this one, ones where we give people the advice they ask for, and they throw it back in our faces like we dont know what we're talking about.

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Well, perhaps you should examine the manner in which you give advice, Lee. Tone is everything.

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We arent the ones suffering for new surfer joins to our sites, we arent the ones constantly looking to expand in the straight niche, we arent the ones running around calling everyone breeders or other derogatory terms that fit, in fact, we're the ones building loyalty with our consumers, we're the ones that are offering help and advice to those seeking it, we're the ones these straight companies are trying to market to, by not listening to the advice we give them (based on our vast experience in this marketplace) i'm sure even you will agree, THATS STUPID.

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Well, putting the tired "gay victim" routine aside for a moment, I see your point, but not ALL the straight webmasters are like that, and the ones who actively reach out to the gay webmasters shouldn't be judged and attacked because of the faults and failings of others.

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Originally Posted by XXXWriterDude

the ones who actively reach out to the gay webmasters shouldn't be judged and attacked because of the faults and failings of others.

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Ken,

Fabian hasnt been judged based on the actions of others, he was judged based on his actions, basically turning around to everyone that offered him advice and telling them 'you are wrong'.

Regards,

Lee

lee,

If you read my previous answer you can read what I say:
I counter an argument based on what I know and wait for someone to hit the reply button.

Michael offered a good reply and have to agree he is correct in what he writes. ('new' gay site example).

Mainstream straight guys have to compete harder for their traffic and thus have to be more agressive. Those tactics result in pops etc.
Below the layer of straight programs promoting themself on gfy and other boards you will find a large layer of niche players that run programs as clean as described here. Main reason is that they don't have to use the tricks since they don't compete for the mass traffic.
A good example is: alsscans.com, very clean. Talk to 25 straight guys and 15 will know the site. For the longest time they didn't even offer recurring memberships.
If I was the owner of alsscans.com I probably would try to make a deal with pridebucks (or other gay operator) to launch absscans.com and work the traffic and share the knowledge.
This is what I call 'cross over'.

Michael:
I don't run day-to-day operations klixxx but based on your remarks here I guess I should ;-)
I will pm you on this issue. I don't know who made the deal with you etc.

Patti and Michael made some good points earlier in this thread that actually are a big part of why we select what shows to attend and what we do when there.

Quite frankly, the utility of these "larger" shows diminishes for us more and more every year.

How it usually plays out is I go to a show, meet a lot of these straight program staffers/managers/owners, and they hit me up for traffic trades, exit console trades, banner trades, such and such and such.

Well... we don't do any of that. We don't do the inter-paysite traffic trading. We don't have consoles. We don't have other sites' banners on ours.

And it always reminds me of just how different our model is to that of so many others when I have - and try to find a way out of - these conversations. When I tell people we don't do any of the above, they look at me with stunned faces and can't imagine just how it is we manage to scrape by hehe.

As Patti and Michael have mentioned before, we're about appealing to the consumer and generating traffic and interest that way. Not generating traffic and interest by working out deals with a ton of other webmasters to send us their traffic.

Truthfully, at the gay-oriented shows there are just far more people who have businesses and outlooks similar to ours and with whom we could actually get a lot done with. They can actually offer us qualified traffic, as opposed to just random link trades and the like. They're more often in line with the consumer-appeal, retention model. As opposed to just the console trade, any-and-all-traffic-from-wherever model.