PHOENIX - Traveling out of the closet and into the Phoenix Forum seminar, "Gay is Not a Niche" was an exciting and informative adventure, thanks to the honest and open input from its many panel leaders and moderator Mary Gillis of Flashcash.
The panel was scheduled to discuss "everything you wanted to know about ‘gay' but afraid to ask," and successful practices for non-gay businesses to cross over or venture into the lucrative gay market segment.
The discussion kicked off with Pridebucks' Harlan Yaffe, who spoke about his recent piece in Klixxx Magazine called "Misconception," his Gaydar column that covered specific misconceptions within the gay market.
"Tranny sites belong in straight programs," Yaffe said. "gay men have already decided no boobies. Not now. Not ever. We have already made the choice. It is who you are marketing to, which is one of the biggest misconceptions. For tranny, you are marketing to the straight guy who is testing his boundaries. That's why they belong in straight programs."
An enthusiastic applause followed Yaffe's comment. Panelist Tim Valenti with NakedSword spoke about crossing over from gay to straight and collaborations between gay and straight companies with his experience between NakedSword and AEBN. He also covered some of the trials and tribulations.
"It took a whole year for me to put that deal together because when you do something like this, it is a big leap of faith. I could do it, walk away and feel good about it. However, if I want to continue my vision successfully with time, we agreed ahead of time by painting a scenario of how it would be. We look for the places where we could leverage each other with each of our own strengths.
"What they have for us is a great distribution system and a lot of traffic. What we had was brands, a loyal audience and we have been successfully able to develop our own strategy for ourselves and for the gay part of the business. We are capable to build our own product. We have our own programming and production team. We do good marketing, however, we are not good at affiliate. In the beginning, it was partly my fault because I wanted to build a brand and build consumers, I didn't want anyone to do it for me. With time, I learned how important affiliates are. One of the things that AEBN has done successfully is it has built a monster affiliate machine."
Valenti said that he learned the importance of running affiliate programs and building the appropriate tools for affiliates. To build products that would reach larger audiences, like he has done with The Sword, a more softer side to gay porn which he calls "the gay version of The Onion."
Another very important topic discussed was traffic. Panelist Rainey Stricklin with Traffic Dude, a huge traffic broker, explained that there is a big difference between straight and gay traffic.
"There is a huge difference in what people are looking for," she said. "Well, obviously. I spoke recently with someone who owns a gay company and is launching a straight brand."
She said that firstly, glamour models work well within the straight market, not gay. To gays, porn is not a taboo subject. Gays do not need to step lightly into porn or hardcore, while straights usually do.
They also stated that their (gay) market is an entire rich community that focuses on acquiring and maintaining quality traffic and retaining their members. While straight seems to be more about getting more and more cheaper traffic, no matter where it comes from.
One successful maneuver in attaining traffic is to communicate with your members, Valenti explained. They log in every conversation with their members. He learns the reasons for their break-ups and how to fix them. Yaffe added that with gays, you need to bring them what they want with their specific niches.
Gillis said that while focusing on FlashCash's members and what they want, she will be launching a new site on Friday called FuckJapan.com. All fresh new content, all shot in Japan, with not an English word in sight.
The panelists agreed that this is why tube sites are successful because of their comments sections. The company learns what their consumers want and at some times, get overloaded with information they didn't even ask for.
"I call it the Rooster Theory," Yaffe said. "When straight tries to be gay, they think that any cock, or gay, will do. This is not true at all. You have to find out what they want and bring it to them."
The topic of keeping traffic and members seemed to dominate the seminar discussion. Yaffe said that one trick to the trade to luring members is to "show enough to get it up, but not enough to get them off." In other words, show some hardcore close-ups, but only a minute of it, so that they guy finds and views exactly what they want, but not long enough to get them off. They will come back. And once they do, you have them. Next, keep updating your content to each specific niche and they will keep coming back.
By doing these tricks, gay's loyalty rate, conversion rate, and the re-bill and loyalty rate are at an all time high.
