So What Will Next Years Fads Be In The Gay Market?

[RickUK]

I honestly think the reality thing at its best will be hard to beat -- ever. I remember the first time I saw The Bait Bus. It was just extraordinary and quite unlike anything in gay porn before. Was it real or faked, it was hard to be sure even as a webmaster, though common sense said it was faked.

It was so well executed in the early days, with humour too and everyone was talking about it. It was ground breaking. I had friends round watching it. Plus they matched it with a good affilate program -- where the webmaster could direct traffic back to his site, turn pop ups on or off, choose the tours etc. It converted like crazy.

No one has equalled it, though the latest Top Bucks stuff looks pretty good. But it will never match the original for novelty value.

When reality came along, it was kind of like when TV moved out of studios and began shooting more on location (I don't know if that happened as much in the USA as it did in Britain in the early 1990s?.

I don't think reality is finished by any means. The problem is that it has got lazy to the point where some can barely be bothered to keep up the pretence that it is 'real' and no one believes something that is exactly the same every week.

As Xstr8guy mentioned, there is some badly researched stuff that doesn't hit the spot. The fake 'real marines' videos that look nothing like, the bored twinks etc etc. But there are always possibilities in every niche if things are done well.

As for niches and ideas, well I have a few of my own but I am keeping them to myself for now :-)

I think the stereotypical 600 x 400 glossy member site 'look' with the 3d text will be dead in the water by the end of 2004. For me it just says 'lack of imagination' and I'm sure it turns off an increasing number of surfers too. Many sites have been going for more of a 'web page' look for quite some time. Again, I think OxCash helped lead that change in design.

Video will become more important in every area as more people get DSL and bandwidth costs continue to go down.

However its true to say that there is a real shortage of good gay sponsors that sell. I have one that still does 1:150 on a good month. But many don't sell at all. I find that my visitors aren't keen on the offerings from the bigger companies, whereas small single-site sponsors with good content often convert superbly. Maybe because my visitors have seen the big stuff before elsewhere...