Entries Tagged 'Affiliate Programs' ↓

Lochai "working" at Hogtied.com

SAN FRANCISCO (August 22, 2008) – Award-winning fine art bondage photographer Lochai will take over from Matt Williams as director of Kink.com’s Hogtied.com, the company announced today.

“Hogtied was our first site and we still consider it our flagship,” said Kink.com founder and CEO Peter Acworth. “We’re very pleased to bring Lochai on to continue the Hogtied tradition. He’s one of the best-known bondage riggers around and for years he’s been out there in the community, both as a photographer and as an educator. Most importantly, he really gets what’s fun and beautiful and hot about women in bondage – he understands the Kink.com esthetic. I’m very much looking forward to working with him.”

Lochai’s inaugural update on Hogtied.com is a sizzling 56-minute scene with 22-year-old Virginian beauty Isobel Wren. Shot when Lochai was auditioning for his new role, the scene currently headlines the site, In it, Wren is placed in Lochai’s trademark Japanese-influenced rope bondage and subjected to a stunning number of screaming orgasms, including a copious squirt. Throughout, Lochai’s sardonic humor tempers the intense bondage and stimulation.

Said Lochai:

“Everything that’s done in any of the Kink.com sites is real, so it’s not like I’m acting a part. I’m actually being myself. I’m sarcastic, I’m a smart ass, I laugh during scenes and I also console when someone’s upset. I’m going to be doing my real play, my real life, within the walls of the Armory, because that’s what’s expected by the customers — and that’s what’s expected by Kink.com. I’m going to be super comfortable there, because I feel like I’m home.”

An award winning photographer whose work appears in galleries as well as in publications like The British Journal of Photography, Secret, Skin Two, Bizarre, and in his own fine art books, Lochai is equally well known as a bondage educator, teaching classes at conferences around the United States and doing public scenes in nightclubs and at fetish events. A founding director of the Photo Artisans Guild (PAG), in West Palm Beach Florida, he was also the co-founder and co-curator of the Traveling Erotic Art Show, which spent two years touring the United States. He also moderates a group on BDSM social networking site FetLife, CommUNITY Building, that seeks to build BDSM and alternative sexuality leadership skills.

Lochai takes over from longtime Hogtied.com director Matt Williams, who began directing the site in 2003. Williams was recently promoted to Kink.com’s Creative Director, and will be guiding creative development on new sites as well as Kink.com’s existing sites. “I’m looking forward to helping with the overall creative level,” said Williams. “I’m going to work with existing sites and new sites both, developing the look and feel, and sharing fantasies that I have in my head — I have great ideas for each one of our sites.”

Williams will continue to direct unscripted girl-girl erotic wrestling site UltimateSurrender.com, which he calls “my little baby.” “I’m going to hang on to that – I have some great ideas for the future.”

Lochai expressed his excitement about his new role.

“Every person who’s ever sat down in front of me in a classroom, or who has surrounded me out in a club to watch what I’m doing, has wanted this job. They want to get paid to tie up beautiful women and get them off – and that’s my job. It’s a wonderful feeling, and an affirmation that my kink pays off.”

A longtime Florida resident, Lochai will be relocating in September to the San Francisco area. He says he’ll continue his work teaching bondage and SM lifestyle classes, both at the half-dozen conferences he traditionally attends annually, and in the San Francisco area.

For more information about Lochai, visit his site Kirinawa.com or email the Kink.com Public Relations Manager at thomas@kink.com. Webmasters interested in promoting Kink.com content, including Hogtied.com, please visit www.KinkyDollars.com or email the Kink.com affiliate manager at terry@kink.com.

ABOUT HOGTIED.COM: Hogtied was the first site in the Kink.com network, directed by founder Peter Acworth from 1997 until Matt Williams took over in 2003. Updated every Tuesday, Hogtied.com offers members more than 15,000 streaming minutes and more than 84,000 photos in over 400 episodes that feature beautiful women subjected to sexual rope bondage, erotic punishment, and repeated orgasms.

ABOUT KINK.COM: San Francisco erotica studio Kink.com provides authentic fetish entertainment that seeks to demystify alternative sexualities and inspire sexual adventurers. Since the launch of its first site, Hogtied.com, in 1997, Kink.com has developed a network of premium adult sites that now operate from studios in the San Francisco Armory, a decommissioned National Guard facility with sets ranging from stark dungeons to luxurious pieds-à-terre. Kink.com also operates a free documentary site at BehindKink.com and the leading fetish affiliate network, KinkyDollars.com.

Even January Seraph puts on her Martha Stewart look for this week’s Good Things List.

Yes, The Good Things List has an official temporary home on its Wordpress site, but I wanted to copy it here as well.  Take a look at the original.

A Good Blog To Read

Emerging On The Other Side is the blog written by an overeducated skank (former slut) who is proud of it.

A Good Toy

The Black Label Liberator Wedge/Ramp Combo is the best! It seems like a just a pretty little strategically cut out piece of foam with a cover, but it’s sooooo much more! It’s great for people (like me) who have back problems and can’t tolerate a traditional hands and knees position for longer than three minutes. I never ever feel pain (except for the good kind!) when we get out our Liberator set.

A Good Great Photographer

Lochai is not only a good photographer, but he is a great artist! He is the photographer responsible for the image at the top of this post! I recently did an interview with Lochai on Catalina Loves. This bit is From his bio on his website Kirinawa.com:

Lochai is an award winning photographer who’s work appears on gallery walls as well in fine art publications & coffee table books. He “shoots for the walls & not the computer screen”. Presently he has his work on display at the Leather Archive & Museum in Chicago, for sale in brick & mortar galleries from Key West Florida to Cyber fine art galleries based out of London as well on many private collectors walls. His images, rope art & interviews have been published in The British Journal of Photography, Secret, Skin Two, Bizarre, Prometheus, Cherry, A Magazine, Fetish Anthology, Extreme Anthology, New Times and in his own fine art books. His work can also be found on numerous websites from around the world. He is one of the founding directors of PAG, the Photo Artisans Guild, in West Palm Beach Florida. He as also the co-founder & co-curator of the Traveling Erotic Art Show which spent 2 years touring the US.

He feels that the best stories to tell come from the heart and everyone has something hidden that is bursting to come out. “I feel I can touch something inside the heart & head of each person who views my work. For me, I see the real person when I create my images. The real person comes out thru their alter ego.” Starting in Mid June he will be teaching along side David Lawrence & Bobby Knight 3 day intensive workshops on the art of fine art fetish photography. For more information go to http://prophototours.com/

Being an educator & student of bdsm and fetish, Lochai knows how to bring out the look of hidden desires in his models & shows “real” emotions to his audience. He is considered an advanced rope artist who tours the country teaching rope bondage to kinksters from all walks of life & both rigs his own models for his photography as well as for some of the top photographers in the world. “The Art of The Art” is how he looks at his bondage images & he loves to share his knowledge.

On the Bondage side… Lochai has been a student of Japanese inspired rope bondage since a very early age. He has been educating the rope bondage minded in South Florida for the past 8 years as well as across the country for the past 12. He is one of the founding members of the Traveling Rope Troupe comprised of riggers and bottoms who perform theater style aspects of their bondage art as a lead into a series of hands on classes. He can be found on occasion binding beauties and creating living art at local fetish events as well as major exhibitions. “I use the body as a canvas & rope as the medium in creating my art”

A Good Band

I’m partial to this band because it’s my very good friend’s band. Your Dirty Habit is club/dance music and it never leaves my playlist. On their site at Myspace.com/YourDirtyHabit, you can grab the Live Summer 2007 Live Mix - DO IT! I love it!

A Good Pay Site

Backdoor Bondage is the site that belongs to Sgt. Major. His scenes are some of the hottest I’ve seen, ever. Maybe it’s because I’m such a fan of Claire Adams and I’ve seen two scenes with her it them - one where she was being punched in the ass and another where she’s completely suspended upside down being erotically choked. Either way, yum yum.

A Good Webmaster Resource

Kinky Dollars is Kink.com’s affiliate program. We have had great success monetizing our blogs with Kink.com. Click on the little link and you can sign up for your own account.

A Good Non-Sex Science Tattoo Blog

My friend, Zetar, passed this blog along to me and I just have to share it with everyone else. I normally don’t like tattoos, but these tattoos are right up my alley. Nerds meet Ink - Ink meet Nerds. It’s Carl Zimmer’s Science Tattoo Emporium. Frequently when graduate students finish their doctorate (or even Masters) they get a commemorative tattoo. No, not an “I love Betty” tattoo, but cooler. Take a lookee.

A Good Corsetry Site

By now everybody knows that I love corsets. love Love LOVE them! My dream is to have a corset custom made by Isabella Corsetry. Here is some information from her about page:

Isabella Corsetry makes corsets for women, men, and even children (no waist reduction of course), as well as custom bridal gowns, vintage inspired dresses, costumes, and undergarments.

Each corset made by Isabella Costumiere is individually patterned to each customers own measurements . Since no two bodies are exactly the same this means you will get a corset that fits YOUR body. I use a rather long list of measurements and double check each pattern to insure the perfect fit. For long distance customers I can construct a muslin mock up of your corset and mail it to you to try on in the comfort of your own home to make certain your corset is just right. These are inlcuded with every overbust corset.

Well, there you have it - a few new Good Things for you to check out. I’m getting such a backlist that I’m considering doing The Good Things List twice a week instead of just on Saturdays. What do you think?

(Courtesy of PostSecret visit them every Sunday!)

Know thy reader!  The 3rd Blogging Commandment.

Earlier I wrote about starting a sex blog, monetizing a sex blog, and maintaining a sex blog.  Today I want to talk a little bit about analyzing your traffic.  Traffic just means how many visitors come to your site.

There are several statistic programs available to bloggers.  My favorites are the WordPress stats that are a plug-in or Google Analytics.  The WP Stats are 2nd grade level easy.  The Google Analytics program is a little more difficult because you need to go into the Header.php file and add the code for it.  Either way, it’s important to take a look at who’s coming to your site, where they’re coming from, what pages they’re visiting, how long they stay, and where they click out to,

One important reason for tracking your stats is for you can keep track of your top referrers.  These are people you want to make friends with - they are sending you traffic!  It’s generally a good idea to be nice to those people - they aren’t sending you traffic by coincidence - they’ve linked you up.  Link back!  You can even add a “top referrers” list to your page - reciprocating some traffic.

Another reason why you should pay close attention to your stats is to keep an eye on your top posts.  What is it about them that draws people to them?  Is it a catchy title?  Is it a particular topic that you could write more on?  Double check your top posts to make sure that the links are all active and maybe even re-link things to direct traffic to another post or another page.

Paying attention to where your visitors are clicking out to is important, as well.  If you are blogging cleverly, then you know that directing traffic is just as important as getting traffic.  If your clicks are all going out to Wikipedia.org, you’re probably not being smart about your outclicks.  I try to set my links strategically to either one of my other blogs, a revShare site, a friend’s blog, or a related post or category within my blog.  The picture above, for example, is linked to the category, “Blogs”.   And please, for the love of God, when you create a link out, give it a target=”_blank”  attribute so that it opens in a new window - otherwise you’ve just lost your reader as they click on to the next page.

Taking note of your outclicks is also helpful if your blog is monetized.  You can easily keep track of how many people you are sending to each site, giving you an idea of which affiliate programs are the best for your blog.  For example, I can see in my statistics in Catalina Says that my most popular affiliate programs are The Collar Factory and VibeReview.com.  That tells me that people like those sites and I should continue to promote those companies.  If, for example, my stats showed just one click out/day to JoeJoe’sPornoBlog then I would probably drop JoeJoe’sPornoBlog from my links page or put his banner at the bottom of my banners page.

Finally, my last argument for being as OCD about stats as I am:  Search Strings!  In my stats I can see exactly what string people searched for when they found my blog.  In today’s stats for example, someone found my blog by typing “slut wife loves to suck cock” into a search engine.   Someone clicked to me because of that.  On Catalina Loves, for example, the term “freckles“  is almost always at the top of my search terms list.  At least 25 people per day find my blog through searching for Freckles in Google (or Yahoo or whatever).  Knowing that, I try to include more freckles into my posts.

Basically anybody can start and run a blog, but it does take some strategic planning and some know-how to blog successfully,  I hope this helps get you on the right path.  Leave a comment here if you have questions.  I check them daily.

So far, you’ve learned how to set up your blog and how to monetize it, but how to get people to see it is a whole different issue. Clever linking and registering your blog in the right places are key. It’s easy to create a link in Wordpress, so making the link shouldn’t be a problem. There are writers that will say you shouldn’t create links like “Click Here To Read,” but as a reader, I disagree. Sometimes a simple “click here” is all you need. In general, however, try to make the actual link just a part of the text.

Balance is important when linking. You should have some internal links, some external links, and some revShare links (if you’ve monetized your blog). Don’t overlink by linking the word every time it appears. If you link the same word or phrase twice, it should lead to a different link for each one. Nobody wants to click the same link over and over again. As a general rule, link it the first time you reference it and then don’t link it again.

Internal Links: You want to make sure that you create internal links within your blog to keep people reading. When you reference another post, link it. If you mention something that you have a category for, link to the category. If you want people to know about you, in particular, link to your about page. The point is, look for links within your own blog.

External Links: It’s nice to link to your Myspace profile, people will want to make friends with you there. You can also link to other blog posts on other blogs or just to the main page of your favorite site. Usually people keep track of their incoming links and so it’s a good way to get other blogs to notice you and add you to their blogroll.

Blogroll Links: Start your blogroll with links to your favorite blogs. It’s that simple. Who do you like to read? If you want other people to read your blog, then read theirs. Leave meaningful comments. Not only will this increase your chances of having a link back to you in their blogroll, but their readers will read your comments and feel compelled to learn more about you. Leave comments on their blogs every day. They will take notice of you and if they like your blog, they will add you to their blogroll. You can just blatantly write an email and ask for a link exchange, but if your work is good, you don’t need to do that. Some bloggers are just outright offended if you email asking for a link exchange.

Blog Registries: Look at some of the top blog registries like Technorati, Del.icio.us, but stay away from Digg - not only will they ban you for adult content, but they will ban your IP. Also register with specific adult blog registries - Adult Blogster, Eye of Venus, Adult Blog Hub, and Cunning Linguist are four good ones to start with.

And last, but not least, join a bloggers network like Sugasm. Sugasm is a compendium of the week’s best blog posts. Each member of Sugasm submits their favorite post of the week, a complete list is emailed to everybody to vote on, and the results come out on Monday or Tuesday. Thousands of people look forward to Sugasm each week, knowing that they can count on reading the best erotica or seeing the best HNT posts.

So you read my blog yesterday about starting your own sex blog, you have found a template and a host, now it’s time to make some money to support your new blogging habit.

RevShare and Affiliate are two words you should know. You need to find sites that provide a revenue sharing program or an affiliate program and then sign up. Make sure they are sites you really support and back, because your name is going to be associated with them. There are millions of sites, so don’t sign up randomly just because you can. Pick and choose.

Each affiliate program is different and so you will want to read their terms very carefully. Some will give you a better share if you agree to exits, which means your viewers will get pop-ups. Think long and hard about whether or not this is worth it to you. I personally avoid them like the plague. Other options you might come across are payout related - will you go for clicks or sign-ups? Ultimately, you’ll just have to carefully look at the program and decide if it looks right to you. You can always bookmark it, compare it with other programs, and go back to it if it looks good. Research it well — there are stories of bloggers not getting paid by shady companies.

Joining affiliate programs has a hidden benefit for sex bloggers. Affiliate programs provide content for you. A good portion of the top quality photographs that I use on our blogs are a result of affiliate program content. I make a link back to them and I’m allowed to use their pictures (or movie clips). This is really neat if you want to find pictures that are difficult to find, like braces and food fetish mixed together (which, incidentally you can find on Breathplay.info).

So I’m going to get you started with a few recommendations. The companies below are the top three companies that Marky D. Sade and I work with:

Kinky Dollars: Their content is updated (almost) daily and it’s really diverse. They own Device Bondage, Fucking Machines, Hogtied, Kink.com, Men In Pain, Sex and Submission, The Training of O, WaterBondage.com, and Wired Pussy.

RhinoPays: It’s a funny sounding company, but they really do pay. They also have awesome affiliate content and a ton of fetish sites. Here are a few of my favorites, but they have more: Beauty and Braces, Everyday Slaves, Kinky Zee, Preggolicious, Rope Rookie, and Toxxxy.

Bondage Bank: Some of my favorite Mz. Berlin scenes are at Chanta’s Bitches. They also have Fucked and Bound, and Captive Male.

Once you sign up with programs, you have to link, link, link. Making money is a numbers game. You need x number of people to see that site before 1 will actually “convert”. Clever linking is a topic for another day, though.