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The following is a post made by geejay in response to another post
about rules regarding an AVS system. What is really important from the
marketing angle, and the reason I'm including it here, is the great
points she's made about what a site for women can be.
CyberAVSDave When you first posted a couple of weeks ago I was really excited about your AVS because it had a 4women category. But I was stopped cold by your standard listing rules. Specifically, link restrictions on links pages. Unfortunately, the way I design my sites, I can't meet this requirement. While my page would never have eight banners on it, they will definitely have more than 8 text links. One of the frustrations I've come up against when designing 4women's sites and then marketing them on mainstream sites, is that in 4men porn, the gallery is is the central consideration. However, female surfers, while interested in galleries, are also interested in stories, articles, resources, links and all the other non-gallery items, that mainstream webmasters seem to regard as clutter. Design guidelines which resrict the number of links on a page, while intended to minimize spammy advertising, also restrict the informational, chatty, resource-rich way 4women sites are often designed. Mainstream womens sites are often modeled on magazine design. Like http://ivillage.com/. The page looks like there's lots to do and click. 4women porn sites often try to give the female surfer that same sense of choice and variety. "Oh you don't like that, try this." Think about a department store. The mens clothing is often on the first floor next to the door. Because male shoppers are impatient and will leave if they don't see what they want right away. However, because women are browsers, who want to be tempted by variety, womens clothing can be found on different floors throughout the store. I understand the struggle to keep the quality up in a market that is saturated and where webmasters are often unscrupulous. But while the 4womens market is not different in content (it's sex and we're all human) it is different in how that content is presented, displayed and marketed. Unfortunately 4women webmasters are often forced to design pages not according to what would appeal to female surfers, but according to what will appeal to male webmasters. |
| What Does She Want? An article by KarenJ of Grandma's Scrotum about what women are looking when it comes to adult sites. |
| Digital Women is a wonderful and information-filled website that has many good articles on marketing to women. They do not accept women whose business is of an adult nature, but the resources are still there for us to use. |
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Use of a Mailing List for Site Promotion One way to promote your site is with a mailing list. This can be used to keep your patrons updated on content additions, new features added to your site, or special deals you'd like to offer your list. I've used this with Lady Lynx and have over 200 subscribers. I get feedback each time I send out the newsletter and often some pretty good ideas. It's also a good way to put in an ad or two. I link ad in the newsletter to a page on my site where I autorefresh to the sponsor. I use Yahoo Groups for my mailing lists: Both of these sites offer several features including making the list moderated or an announcement list so only you can post to the list. One thing I do is make sure to tell those who are subscribing that I will never give their email address to another party. You might also think of providing a link to Hot Mail (I have it pop up in a new window) incase they don't have a private web-based address so they don't have to have the newsletter sent to their primary email address. Sandra |