Do you get as offended as I do?

**GayGeek** · 03-05-2009, 12:16 PM

I am sick and tired of gay websites being forced to take the "back of the bus" when it comes to a number of straight companies that deal with both straight and gay content.

For example. I'm grabbing some images from PussyCash right now to promote their "6 Buck Gay" site. They have a line of 6 Buck Sites, only one of which is gay.

On the page where you select the website, the list reads:

6 Buck Hardcore
6 Buck Models
6 Buck Anal
6 Buck Teems
6 Buck Orgy
6 Buck Asians
6 Buck Ebony
6 Buck Cum
6 Buck Lesbians
6 Buck BBW
6 Buck Fetish
6 Buck Tranny
6 Buck Amateur
6 Buck Milf

And of course, at the end of the list, is this:

6 Buck Gay

My irritation is this: dual straight-gay companies usually stick gay stuff at the end because while they are willing to build a gay website, they do not consider the subject matter worthwhile enough to treat it as even remotely an equal to their straight content. Much like how the AVN awards years ago featured the gay awards at the end of the night as all the straight people were getting up and leaving, many affiliate companies treat their gay websites as second-class.

This offends me. I can deal with companies like Platinum Bucks, where you enter their affiliate program and get a lot of tits in your face, but when you click on their little rainbow flag icon instantly the interface switches to male-specific. Gay folks are outnumbered by straight ones, and the same goes for porn sites. I can deal with having to seek out gay-specific interfaces.

But for companies who don't offer enough gay sites to make such a system worthwhile, I get mighty irritated to see their gay content constantly lumped under "gay" and stuck in the location of least importance.

Does anyone else find this as irritating as I do? I'll still promote the site, but I'm not happy as I do so.

--Aaron

**DEVELISH** · 03-05-2009, 12:37 PM

gay is a niche - not more

just a niche... like fat grannies and such ... a niche... not worth anything

lets keep it that way for the str8 companies, will we boys

**DrChango** · 03-05-2009, 12:47 PM

We still have a two-to-one ratio between straight and gay sites in our main program, and when you scroll through the list on the webmaster interface, it's separated with straight and then gay sites (all our internal stuff is in alphabetical order). I don't know if that is just an arbitrary thing or if it was a case of not wanting to offend straight webmasters that might be homophobic (sounds a bit ridiculous, but not an impossibility).

I can say that gay content over the last two months has taken the front seat here. There is more effort put into fixing problems with the gay sites (two of which I was notified about here, thanks again for that), doing promotional work, sponsoring events (example: Phoenix forum Pink Visual is not a sponsor, but Male Spectrum is). Our company was rather late in the game when it came to quality gay content and support, but that had more to do with people here just not understanding the gay market and not being sure how to approach it rather than a case of bias (oddly enough there were actually more gay men in the company at that time then there are now...though our lesbian ratio seems to remain constant...)

Just my $.02

**Lee** · 03-05-2009, 12:49 PM

I speak to a lot of predominantly 'straight' orientated companies about their gay offerings and to be honest i think a lot of them are caught in a vicious circle.

For years they have declined to embrace the gay market place in terms of attracting affiliates with gay traffic, other than their existing straight marketers that also throw some traffic at their gay sites.

When i ask these companies why they dont actively promote their gay products to the larger gay webmaster community, 99.99% of the time the responses i get is that their gay sites just are not working to them and that when they have advertised their gay sites in the past in magazines like CyberSocket, the results they saw were just not measurable from this advertising.

In essence, they give up their gay marketing efforts because they dont see trackable results or they dont want to sustain their marketing levels because the sites are not breaking even for them in comparison to what they are spending on advertising, the problem is, not only the places they are advertising (I mean c'mon, its CyberSocket) but also because they have been burnt once, they dont want to take a percieved risk and try again, so their campaigns get forgotten quickly and subsequently other affiliate programs come along and win the traffic back from these straight programs.

Overall, i really do beleive that a lot of these straight companies would love to embrace gay site marketers but because they have been steered in the wrong direction in the past with their ad budgets and were unable to see measurable results, they have pretty much given up on it and to be fair, i cant really blame them.

That being said, the past few months i have also been speaking with several primarily straight focused companies who are actively working on their gay site site offerings, who are also looking to attract our business and from what i have seen so far, these sponsor programs actually do have some pretty good sites on offer that should sell really well.

Again though, if they dont get the response they want to from their marketing campaigns from gay webmasters, they are probably going to drop back in to the shadows with their gay site offerings, which in turn means we're going to see threads like this pop up again.

Unless we, as a community actually start to embrace the offerings of these companies when they do go out and take that percieved risk of advertising to our community, we're never going to see any change when it comes to the type of sites being offered and how they are offered by predominantly straight affiliate programs.

Regards,

Lee

**TopBucks Lilit** · 03-05-2009, 01:16 PM

To me it's one of the 2:

1. A company has quality gay sites with exclusive content
2. A company has shitty gay sites that are used to monetize that "potential" gay traffic they receive from their mostly straight webmasters.

I didn't see any company that targets both gay and straight and has really good gay sites treating them as something accessory. They made investment and need to get profit from their investment and they have to push the sites the right way or they will lose.

As for the companies with cookie cutter gay sites- there is always a reason for that. I'm seeing the following reasons:

1. Quality and exclusive gay content is more expensive than straight - thus launching a quality gay site costs may much more than launching a straight one.
2. Gay traffic is usually more expensive than straight.
3. Gay webmaster segment is smaller than straight. When you launch a site you have to be able to compete with programs targeting gay only. It's a high risk.
4. If you have limited budget, you can't offer good PPS, while most of the gay guys with traffic tend to work on PPS only.
5. If you have 2 segments and one of them is more profitable for you than the other at the moment, you'll be developing the segment which is more profitable and less risky for you.

Gay market is a titbit for every company, but it has a lot of barriers. And companies have to think twice before making a decision about penetration.

It's always up to you what to promote

**DrChango** · 03-05-2009, 01:20 PM

Originally Posted by TopBucks Lilit

To me it's one of the 2:

1. A company has quality gay sites with exclusive content
2. A company has shitty gay sites that are used to monetize that "potential" gay traffic they receive from their mostly straight webmasters.

I didn't see any company that targets both gay and straight and has really good gay sites treating them as something accessory. They made investment and need to get profit from their investment and they have to push the sites the right way or they will lose.

As for the companies with cookie cutter gay sites- there is always a reason for that. I'm seeing the following reasons:

1. Quality and exclusive gay content is more expensive than straight - thus launching a quality gay site costs may much more than launching a straight one.
2. Gay traffic is usually more expensive than straight.
3. Gay webmaster segment is smaller than straight. When you launch a site you have to be able to compete with programs targeting gay only. It's a high risk.
4. If you have limited budget, you can't offer good PPS, while most of the gay guys with traffic tend to work on PPS only.
5. If you have 2 segments and one of them is more profitable for you than the other at the moment, you'll be developing the segment which is more profitable and less risky for you.

Gay market is a titbit for every company, but it has a lot of barriers. And companies have to think twice before making a decision about penetration.

It's always up to you what to promote

Sorry, Nadya, but the 'decision about penetration' part was funny. The rest was very well said, but using that phrase was just hilarious=)

**TopBucks Lilit** · 03-05-2009, 01:26 PM

Originally Posted by DrChango

Sorry, Nadya, but the 'decision about penetration' part was funny. The rest was very well said, but using that phrase was just hilarious=)

I hope you understood what kind of penetration I meant....LOL:bunny:
Anyways, I'm glad I made you laugh

**DrChango** · 03-05-2009, 02:06 PM

In the context of your post it was most appropriate, and the double entendre (sp?) there brightened my morning!

**GayGeek** · 03-05-2009, 03:03 PM

Now that I have recovered from my morning bit of pique that caused me to start this thread, I want to ask about something that was said.

Originally Posted by TopBucks Lilit

1. Quality and exclusive gay content is more expensive than straight - thus launching a quality gay site costs may much more than launching a straight one.

2. Gay traffic is usually more expensive than straight.

I was intrigued by these two statements. Do the rest of you agree this is true? And if so, why?

I wouldn't think gay content would cost more. I can see gay traffic costing more because it's a more targeted audience than straight folks. But I still wouldn't think it would be that different.

Thoughts?

--Aaron

PS, I agree with you Lee. A straight company puts out a token gay site with little support. It does crappy and the company loses its advertising budget, so they conclude that gay sites aren't worth it. Still annoys me that they stick it at the end of the list though.

**Lee** · 03-05-2009, 03:14 PM

Gay content USED to be a lot more expensive than straight content, these days not so much, especially exclusive shoots.

In fact i was actually told by Lykos a few weeks back that it would cost me MORE to have some solo and duo straight shoots created than it would solo and duo gay sets.

As for gay traffic costing more, yes and no, it depends on where that traffic is coming from, ultimately you can get great gay traffic for free and the same cost as straight traffic if you do some shopping around.

Unfortunately the places i have seen that charge more for gay traffic, are predomenantly straight traffic brokers

Regards,

Lee

**DrChango** · 03-05-2009, 04:13 PM

As I understand it, guys in gay scenes get paid as much as girls in straight scenes...which tends to be between five and ten times what the guy in a straight scene makes.

I'm sure there are tons of exceptions to that, but that seems to be the experience our production divisions have had, at least according to the breakroom 'scuttlebutt'.

Holy fuck, I just used naval terminology in an adult webmasters forum! I'm the super monkey! :cheekymonkey:

**Bill** · 03-05-2009, 05:02 PM

Topbucks handles the gay/straight divide better than most companies.

I'm often not that excited by your tour designs tho. They're okay, but okay is only okay.