Long-running gay community and hookup site GayUniverse.com recently was ranked by Alexa among the top 10 most visited gay Web sites.
The site, more than a decade old, recently has seen a spike in traffic, which reflects a 10-percent surge in gay Web traffic. The surge has been attributed to gay pride celebrations during the summer months.
GayUniverse marketing director Tony Hauser says the site’s rise in traffic also can be attributed to its ongoing makeover, a facelift that has been in the works since the site was purchased in 2004 by GarRock Ventures LLC.
“I think, primarily, what contributed to the site’s growing numbers is the growth of the message boards,” Hauser tells AVNOnline.com. “The site has been around for a long time, and those message boards continue to accumulate and continue to build traffic. It’s like something that just keeps going in and of itself.”
Hauser also points to the reworked personal ads and amateur picture galleries as reasons for the site’s growth in traffic.
“It has a new look and feel,” Hauser says of the site. “It’s a lot more user-friendly. I think it’s a lot more engaging for people; a lot more interactive.”
GayUniverse was started in 1995. “It basically started out as a couple [of] guys who got together and started this out in their basement,” Hauser says. “They started with a message board, and it slowly evolved city by city, and then it encompassed the entire U.S. and started leaking out to different parts of the world. [But from the start], it has always been a place for people to post messages and connect with one another and hook up.”
That the site was for sale initially surprised its new owners. “[The previous owners] posted a message on their own site saying they were for sale, which was surprising,” Hauser recalls. “You’re trained that the best deals are the ones that don’t get publicized.”
After acquiring the site, the new team began a slow and methodical overhaul that continues today. “We’re mapping out a complete redesign that will continue to take place over the next year,” Hauser says. “It’s going to be a phased-in re-launch.”
The site has been drawing some of the gay adult industry’s top-rated advertisers, including Men4SexNow.com, ActiveDuty.com, Hornyboy.com, and CruisingforSex.com. Hauser says that those looking to increase their own brand awareness would be prudent to join the ranks.
“If you’re an advertiser, advertising with GayUniverse works well for two reasons,” he states. “If you’re somebody who’s been around for a while but wants to keep building brand awareness and communicate that you’re still around, I think you’d really look to us to deliver that exposure for you. Or if you’re a smaller site that’s trying to get more traffic and build your site, you would definitely want to seek GayUniverse out for that, because you can override our traffic with banners on our site, which leads to great impressions and click-throughs and great conversions.”
While Hauser says he is looking forward to completing the site’s redesign, he says that, for now, the GarRock Ventures team is focusing on the here and now.
“What we want to continue to do is appeal to advertisers, build our traffic, and service our core capalities – the message board, the personal ads, and the amateur galleries – so that our traffic goes up and we get more advertisers.”
Hauser says he also is focused on reminding potential advertisers what a valuable community resource GayUniverse can be.
“Our motto right now is ‘Don’t forget us,’” he says with a laugh. “I think that a lot of people might not have known about us or had forgotten about us, but we haven’t gone anywhere. Our numbers are still there, and the traffic is still there. We’re very interested in reaching out to and touching the community and letting people know that we are still here – and in a big way.
“We’re here in a really healthy, viable way,” Hauser continues, “and we’re really looking to build ourselves in the gay community and helping others build themselves and their products and businesses as well.”
