Karl Edwards of Bedfellow said it right out: "You can't just open up a gay site and expect it to pay." And that seemed to be the cumulative subtext of the ia2000 seminar on making gay Web sites pay, as Edwards and three other panelists addressed the question from both varied and some common perspectives.
For Morgan Sommer of Cybersocket, it also takes an understanding of the gay and lesbian Web marketplace, which he and his fellow panelists all say is not as simplistic as many - even those not in the gay world but who sympathize with it - believe.
"It's a very cliquish market," he says, adding that oversexuality in advertising is all but a guaranteed turn-off. "(They're) irritated with the notion that all they want is a place to jack off," he says of the gay Web audience. "They want to affirm their identity; they want to be uplifted."
And they don't want to be perceived strictly as behaving based on their sexual identity alone, he says. With low self-esteem remaining a common trait in the gay marketplace, Sommer says, it is not a good idea for companies to "act as though the gay marketplace is just a sideline" - as many, he says, still do.
All four panelists - Sommer, Edwards, Lisa Turner of Badpuppy, and Mark Hundahl of Gay Personal Porn - also took pains to emphasize that the gay Web world is something more than just another niche market.
"We have to provide something to enhance gay people," Hundahl says. He offered up his own Cruising section as an example, which he says not only offers gays a place and chance to meet but also offers information like job opportunities "and other lifestyle issues that are important" - not just sexual issues.
"If you can't provide good customer support and service," Turner says, "you're not going to keep that customer." She says the critical factor is for gay site operators and Webmasters to keep a tight ear on what gay customers are thinking and saying, and taking their suggestions more seriously than seems to be the case now.
The seminar audience was about an even mix of gay and non-gay people; Edwards, in fact, had asked the audience straightforwardly who was and was not gay, and who among the non-gay segment were trying to operate gay Web sites. He says that just about the only way to make a gay Web site run the right way is to make certain a gay individual is running the site.
"You've got to be there," he says. "You've got to be a gay person to understand what a gay person wants. So if you're straight and trying to start a gay site," he says, "get a good gay person to run it for you."
He also says image motifs which work for the heterosexual adult Web, especially aggressively sexual images, won't always work in the gay Web world. For one thing, he says, there needs to be greater variety in imagery - a point other panelists agreed upon as well.
Edwards also says gay customers want not just identity affirmation but practical help such as job advice and practical lifestyle advice. "But," he adds, "if that customer is coming to my site just to jack off and then leave, I want to make sure he comes back to my site the next time he has that need, too."
