BRISBANE, Australia - Purple Dollars, the affiliate program for female-focused site ForTheGirls, has announced the release of five free-hosted sites for affiliates. Now FTG affiliates will have access to more couples-/female-focused content, the company stated in a press release.
The female-focused niche always has been a popular market, but the industry finally is beginning to appreciate it, said Purple Dollars webmaster Karen Jones. ForTheGirls has found itself steadily gaining an audience for its couples-friendly content, she said, adding that women comprise an overall growing number on Web-based adult entertainment consumers. "Actually, I should say that more and more women are coming online, too," Jones told AVNOnline.com. "However, there still aren't very many specific 'for women' sites out there. There are more films, but the majority of adult sites are still for men."
Adult content specifically geared toward women should follow three rules, Jones said. "It has to acknowledge that the audience is female and aim to cater to them; it depicts a woman's point of view and a female experience of sex; [and] it gives primacy to female pleasure and recognizes that the female orgasm is the ultimate goal," she said. "To be 'female friendly' — and I guess I'm talking about content that tries to cater to both sexes — you would need to acknowledge your audience and ensure that female pleasure gets an equal share of attention."
ForTheGirls offers content ranging from videos to user-submitted erotica and pictures — all with an eye toward the female consumer. The site, which currently is in the judging stages of an erotica competition, includes on e-zine, as well as advice and humor columns. The site's success shows the need for more sites that cater to women, Jones said. "The thing is, there is no formula for creating 'what women want,' she told AVNOnline.com. "Seven years ago, when I started, we thought we had it worked out: romance, kissing, and naked men. Since then, I've heard plenty of criticism that this sort of stuff is 'stereotypical.'
"There are those who say that if you can't define what all women want, then you can't say that 'porn for women' is a legitimate concept," she continued. "But I reject that. Fact remains that 99 percent of porn is made for a male audience, and it depicts the sort of thing men want to see. There are still people who dismiss out of hand the idea that women would like porn. ForTheGirls is an attempt to appeal to straight, vanilla women. It's essentially a reflection of our tastes. Yes, we try to offer a broad variety of stuff, but we've still molded it into the kind of thing we ourselves would want to buy."
Purple Dollars also has been pushing thumbnail-gallery owners and link lists to create more women-centered categories to reach out to the growing demographic, she posited. "Women will pay for porn if it appeals to them," she said. "In the seven years I've been promoting women's porn, I've seen at least 10 attempted 'for women' pay sites go under. Most of those didn't understand their members. A lot of programs figured that if they put up a few pictures of naked men and then just stuffed the members area with bog-standard feeds, that women would flock in. It didn't work. We aim to keep our surfers entertained well after the vibrator has been put away."
