Blogging & Writing

12 Days of Girly Juice: 11 Favorite Blog Posts

Kate Sloan

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The ladies of The Blogcademy say you don’t really find your “voice” as a blogger ’til you’ve written about 500 posts. I crossed the threshold of 400 this year, so I’m not quite there… Nonetheless, I’m still pretty proud of most of what I wrote in 2015! Here are 11 highlights of the year from my blog…

In February, I wrote about how to bring more romantic energy into your life. This is a topic I feel passionately about – not nearly enough of us go through our day-to-day lives with hearts in our eyes and sparks in our hearts! This was also a prophetic post, because the later part of 2015 involved lots ‘n’ lots of romantic energy for me. Yay!

I loved interviewing poli sci professor/pro-level squirter Shannon Bell for a magazine article, so I wrote about her for this blog as well. I’d like to do more stuff like this in 2016: interviewing, profiling and highlighting people who do interesting work in the field of sex.

I wrote a fair bit about blogging and writing in 2015, and one of my favorite posts on that topic was about creating good content. I thought a lot this year about what kind of content I want my blog to include (mainly: fewer product reviews and more meaty, helpful, feel-good stuff!) so I was glad to be able to write about that. I also ended up leading a session on generating post ideas at a bloggers’ retreat, because according to Bex, I am the “queen of productivity.” Aww.

One of my favorite things is educating folks about little-known erogenous zones. I’ve known about my external G-spot for quite a while but finally decided to write about it in April. I’ve heard from several readers since then who’ve tried stimulating theirs, often with nifty results. Yay, pleasure!

It felt strange to write about how to date when you have anxiety, considering that I barely manage to keep my anxiety in check in most romantic situations. But mental health is a hugely important topic to me, and I wanted to contribute my limited knowledge and experiences to the field, just incase they might help someone.

Tina Horn is one of my sex-positive idols, so getting to interview her was a definite high point of my year. We talked about journalism ethics, kink exploration, and the time she sold horny goat weed lube to Jay-Z and Beyoncé. Amazing.

The award for “blog post that made me cry the most while I was writing and editing it” goes to 10 Reasons Why Sex-Positive Friendship is Important. I made some profound and lasting friendships with other bloggers and sex-positive weirdos this year, and it felt crucial that I write about them.

I’m not sure that any Twitter creeps actually read my post on how to reply to women on Twitter without disgracing your entire gender, but it was still fun to write. And I know that several of my blogger babes forward this link to disrespectful douchebags on the reg, so I think it’s served its purpose.

A Body Pride workshop made me ponder the 3 questions you can ask someone if you wanna fall in love with them a little. I still think these are great first-date questions.

It was fun to write about penis terror and blowjob anxiety. I like communicating bigger life lessons through sex stories from my actual life. And it’s powerful to take something that feels embarrassing and shameful and reframe it as a triumph – because, fuck yeah, I triumphed!

Just recently, I wrote about fatness, insecurity and desirability, and the reaction to it blew me away. Y’all supported me, cheered me on, empathized, and many of you directly shared my struggles and concerns. Writing and publicizing this post reminded me how important it is to write about what’s authentically bugging you: it’s cathartic, and it’s likely to help others who are going through the same stuff.

 

Fellow blogger pals: what were your favorite things you wrote this year?

Coffee & Cock Rings: Café Writing Tips for Sex Bloggers

Kate Sloan

Cafés are my number-one favorite workspace. I brainstorm blog post ideas while walking from place to place, take photos at home, edit and fine-tune wherever I can, but the bulk of my actual writing takes place in the windows of coffee shops, over caffé americanos and blueberry muffins.

It’s not that I can’t work at home – it’s that I don’t. There are too many distractions, too many avenues for procrastination. I find it difficult to muster up motivation to write when I’m surrounded by entertaining electronic devices, talkative family members, and my inviting bed. Cafés offer me a zen-like retreat from this world of interruptions and temptations. When I go to a coffee shop to write, I know I have to actually write, because that is the express purpose of the outing. So I do.

I’m not alone in this habit. Writers and coffeehouses have been culturally linked since the days of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, and even earlier. Most of my writer friends, especially those who freelance from home, turn to cafés as a workspace at least some of the time, citing the distraction-free zone and ample caffeine access as the attractions that keep them coming back.

A study out of the University of Chicago put forth one possible explanation for cafés’ effect on productivity: the noise. Apparently there is a just-right level of ambient noise which encourages creativity without impeding focus. Inspired by this phenomenon, some smart folks started Coffitivity, a web app that helps you re-create that bustling café environment in your own home. It’s lovely – but, as I’ve said, my preference for coffee-shop writing has less to do with the noise and more with the environment itself.

As you can imagine, public places aren’t ideal for writing dildo reviews and sex stories. You never know when someone might peer over your shoulder and be scandalized by what they see. (I once wrote an entire article about Cumbersmut while some 12-year-old boys argued about girls at the next table over. Yikes.) I certainly don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable, so I work as discreetly as I can. Here are some tips for other sex bloggers in the same boat…

• Choose your seat wisely. I usually sit at the window because a) the view is nice and b) there’s enough distance between the row of window seats and the other seating areas that probably no one will have a good view of what I’m working on. You can also sit with your back to the window or wall, if your café has some chairs oriented that way. No one’ll have a clear angle on your computer screen unless they’re specifically trying to look at it.

• Do the super-X-rated work at home. Maybe you watch that porn DVD in your bedroom, take detailed notes, and then cart your laptop to a café to write the actual review. Maybe you write your dildo review at the coffee shop but leave the photo editing for later, so the other patrons won’t get an eyeful of silicone cock.

• Turn your screen brightness down. I do this if I need to momentarily have something explicit on my screen – like if I’ve forgotten how many ridges there are on the vibrator I’m reviewing and I need to glance at a reference image to count ’em. It’s very hard to see the contents of a dim laptop screen unless you’re face-to-face with it, so it’s less risky this way.

• Have a list of everything you need to get done, and stick to it. When I’m away from the ongoing to-do list I keep on my desk, I often lose focus and drift off-task. I’m way more productive at cafés if I have a few specific things I need to get done – write post X, email person Y, research article Z, etc. I make a list for the day in my phone’s Notes app or just write on a post-it note that I stick to my laptop. Failing to plan is planning to fail!

• Have a fake answer prepared in case of nosy questions. True, if a barista or café lurker asks you what you’re working on, you could just tell them, “A sex blog.” There’s no shame in that. But I find that this answer always invites further questions that I don’t want to answer. If I’m there to work, I want to work, not explain to some inquisitive stranger why a woman would want to write about sex on the internet. So if anyone asks me what I’m working on, I usually just say, “A school assignment.” If they probe further, I’ll tell them it’s something complex-sounding, like a paper on existentialism or 19th-century literature. That usually shuts the convo down pretty quick, so I can get back to writing about vibrators and ass-fucking.

• Keep a “vanilla window” open. You know, like you used to do when you were 14 and your parents could walk in on you watching porn at any moment. Keep a tab open to Google or a news website or whatever, so that if your aunt, your boss, or a six-year-old child happens to stroll into the café, you can just switch to that tab until you’re safe again.

• Bring headphones. I do this even when the work I’m doing will probably not involve audio, because you never know. Sometimes you’ll be researching a post and the information you need is only available in video format. Sometimes your porn review notes are messy and you need to refresh your memory about what exactly that porn star yelled during her orgasm. Sometimes someone tweets you a link to a song they think you need to hear, and you decide you do indeed need to hear it.

• Be really nice to the café employees. They let you hang out for hours working on your blog, and they also keep you caffeinated, those sweethearts. Treat them well!

Do you ever blog from cafés? What are your best tips?

Sex Blogging Secrets, Part 4: Monetization

Kate Sloan

It still makes my head spin that you can earn money from blogging. I mean, it makes perfect sense – it’s work, and under capitalism, we exchange work for money! – but it’s still so exciting to me that I constructed this little corner of the internet myself, according to my own rules and interests and quirks and experiences, and people will now pay me to write the kind of stuff I like writing anyway. Oh, joy!

If you haven’t already, check out the previous parts of this series: so far we’ve learned how to start a blog, create good content, and build a readership. Today we’re talking about MONEY!

Stuff to keep in mind

First off: you deserve to be paid for your work, provided that your work is good and provides value to someone. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.

That said, that doesn’t mean you’re going to earn money instantly from your brand-new blog, even if you’re the best writer in the world. Blogging is an oversaturated game and tons of people are trying to make a buck from it; you will have an advantage over the majority of those people if you stick it out and maintain your blog past that initial honeymoon phase when it feels easy, but it will still probably take a while for you to make any significant money from your blog. If that disheartens you, quit now and go do something else – because you’ll just get frustrated and end up quitting anyway!

Affiliate marketing

Probably the first monetization avenue you should look into when you start your blog is affiliate marketing. You can start doing it right away, from your very first post, if you want. It doesn’t rely on having a large readership or a ton of SEO cachet.

Affiliate marketing is where you sign up for an affiliate account at a company (say, Lelo or SheVibe) and then you use special links that are unique to you, so that if someone buys a product through your links, you’ll earn a small percentage of that sale (usually somewhere between 10% and 30%).

Almost all the money my blog brought in during its first year was via affiliate links. I used them not only on my blog but also on message boards, subreddits, etc. where I was offering sex toy recommendations. (Check the community rules before doing this; some communities have strict anti-affiliate regulations in place and consider these links to be spammy.)

Are affiliates all liars?

When I explain how I make money to my non-blogger friends, they’ll often ask some variation of, “But what if you don’t like a toy you’re reviewing? Don’t you have an incentive to review it positively if you earn commissions for each sale?”

It depends on your ethics, of course. But for me, my integrity and my readers’ trust is more important to me than making quick cash. If I don’t like a toy, I say that. And then I recommend a similar one I like better. That way I still might earn commissions, and my review also ends up being more helpful to my readers anyway because it gives them purchasing options.

If you’re doing any kind of affiliate marketing or sponsored content on your blog, you should also have a disclosure notice on your site somewhere. It’s only fair to your readers, and it’s also what you’re technically required to do by the Federal Trade Commission.

Advertising

I don’t actively pursue advertisers, and I never really have. When my blog started to get somewhat popular, advertisers began emailing me. You’re welcome to take a more active approach than I did, by sending out emails to companies you think might want to advertise on your blog, but you should be aware that you need to have fairly decent traffic for ads to be a worthwhile investment for any company.

Start keeping a stat counter on your blog ASAP so you’ll have traffic numbers to show potential advertisers.

Also decide what kinds of ads you want to offer. Sidebar ads are easy because most blog layouts have a sidebar and those ads don’t usually distract from your blog content too much. If you’re offering text ads, how long will you allow the text to be, and where will those ads be placed in the sidebar? If you’re offering banner ads, what size(s) of banners will be acceptable to you, where will you put them, and will different sizes and placements have different costs? Work this all out in advance and write up a quick little template containing all this information so you don’t waste time typing it out every time an advertiser emails you.

As your blog grows, you’ll need a way to remember who bought what type of advertising, how long each ad needs to run, etc. I know bloggers who use Google Calendar, Excel spreadsheets, and various other methods. Personally I just write the removal dates in my calendar app and I hold onto all my email exchanges with advertisers incase I need to check/verify anything later on.

On the topic of what to charge: I still find this confusing, and I quite often consult with fellow bloggers (privately) about what they charge, to help me decide. I recommend you do this as well, taking care to ask people whose blogs are of a similar size to yours or have been in the past. But overall, I think you should charge a bit more than the minimum you’d feel comfortable charging, whatever that may be. If an advertiser is willing to pay, they’re generally willing to pay fairly.

Sponsored content

Some bloggers write posts on their blogs or on social media that are “sponsored,” meaning someone has paid them to write those posts, usually so that the blogger will include links to the company in the post.

You don’t have to do sponsored content. Some bloggers feel it would compromise their blog’s integrity to do this kind of work, and that’s fine. Personally, I occasionally do sponsored posts, with the caveats that:

• I write them myself (I never publish content provided to me by a company)

• I write them in the typical style and voice of my blog (no promotional bullshit)

• I write what I honestly think (I won’t give a positive review to a product I hated or haven’t even tried)

• I only write sponsored content for companies whose ethics I’m okay with (nothing homophobic, transphobic, racist, etc., and no body-unsafe toys)

• I always disclose if a post is sponsored, as per FCC guidelines (some companies try to argue with me about this, which has led to many a deal being canceled, but it’s a rule I don’t budge on)

However you choose to do sponsored content (if you do), I recommend being totally open with your readers about your process and your real feelings on the subject. You’ll lose their trust very quickly if you do sponsored posts that feel like sales pitches for companies you don’t even actually support. Choose these projects carefully and be entirely forthcoming with both your advertisers and your readers about your sponsorship ethics!

What are your thoughts on blog monetization? Are there methods you love? Methods that make your skin crawl? How do you decide what to charge? Do you think “blogger” has become a viable and profitable career path?

Sex Blogging Secrets, Part 3: Building a Readership

Kate Sloan

The third part in this series is on a pretty important topic: amassing some readers for your blog, now that you’ve got it all set up and you’ve started putting content on it. It would be a shame if no one was around to read your brilliance, so let’s get started on building your merry band of fans!

Content is king

If you’ve ever spent time with people who work in media, blogging, publishing, and so on, you’ve probably heard the phrase “Content is king” – because it’s true. If your writing sucks, is boring, is littered with errors, or just doesn’t contain anything worthwhile or unique, you won’t do nearly as well as you potentially could, even if your blog is hella fancy-looking and your social media game is strong.

The best kind of content for gaining readers is anything shareable. What kinds of blog posts make you want to show them to your friends, link to them on your Facebook or Twitter, and tell people about them in conversation? That’s the kind of blog post you should be writing if you want to build your audience.

I find that how-to posts do very well, because people are apt to share them and a lot of stray Googlers stumble onto them. Product reviews are also good because they get a lot of search engine traffic. Lists (top 10, top 5, ways to do something, new things to try, questions to ask, etc.) also do well because they’re easy and fast reads. (Not everything you write has to be dumbed-down and brief, obviously, but it can be a good initial draw sometimes.)

Giveaways

One of the big ways I built my audience initially was by running giveaways. They attract a lot of attention because a) everyone wants to win free stuff and b) you can use a service like Rafflecopter to make sharing/re-posting mandatory for contest entrants, so that your post (and therefore your blog as a whole) will get shared around a lot.

You can ask a sex toy company or retailer if they’d like to provide you with a product for a giveaway. I’ve often found that companies can be very generous in this way if they think it’s going to boost their web presence (a lube company hooked me up with a big box of products for my first giveaway!). If you can’t find anyone to offer a product, you could always buy/provide one yourself – the publicity may be worth it to you. (If it’s not, no worries; just build up your readership in other ways, and you can revisit giveaways later, when your bigger audience will make companies more likely to offer you products.)

Whatever you offer in a giveaway, make sure it’s a product that’s actually relevant to your blog. A sex blogger could do a giveaway of Modcloth skirts or an iPad mini or whatever, but she’ll tend to gain and retain more followers if she gives away some kind of sex-related product, because the contest will attract people who like the kind of content she’s producing.

Social media

Everyone’s on social media these days, so it should come as no surprise that online networking is a big way for you to build your readership. I know that I am a hell of a lot more likely to check out someone’s blog if they’re regularly sending me thoughtful or funny replies to my tweets, or if they have interesting things to say in my comments section.

When I first got my blog, I followed a ton of other sex bloggers and various other folks in the sex industry, and I spent a lot of time responding to them, joking around with them, asking them questions, and so on. It got me noticed by some of the big players in that space, and some of them started retweeting me and even linking to my posts. This widened my audience considerably.

However, there’s a caveat, which is: don’t be a spammy asshole. If you’re going to interact with people, do it from a place of genuine interest. If your entire intention is to get yourself noticed and advertise your blog, that will come across in the things you write, and trust me, it feels gross to be accosted by someone like that online. (If you don’t find other sex bloggers interesting enough that you can interact with them like a normal, pleasant human, you might not be a good fit for sex blogging.)

Treat your readers well

This is one of my fundamental philosophies in everything I do online, and I think it has served me very well. People will feel better about reading your blog, and having you in their online social spheres, if you treat them well. Simple, but so easily forgotten.

I don’t mean that you have to suck up to everyone in your Twitter mentions, and I don’t mean that you have to be sweet to the assholes who send you abusive or rude messages. Here’s what I do mean: if someone leaves you a thoughtful comment, leave them an equally thoughtful reply. When you get an email from a reader, a sex toy company, a potential advertiser, or anyone else, respond with warm respect and common decency. If readers ever help you come up with ideas (which mine do, often, because I like using Twitter to find sources or resources), thank them – publicly.

Just generally: be a good person, and give credit where credit is due. You owe a lot to your readers; don’t forget that!

Other tips

For the first year or so of my blog’s existence, the majority of my readers (and thus the majority of my income!) came from my interactions on Reddit. While being very careful not to spam or annoy people, I would occasionally leave a link to one of my blog posts in relevant discussion threads. For example, if someone on /r/sex wanted a sex toy recommendation, I might link them to my toybox page, or to a specific toy review. Or if someone on /r/askwomen wanted tips on dealing with a vaginal infection, I might link them to my post on that. You get the picture. (If you do this, please check the rules of the particular subreddit first – some of them have rules against “self-promotion,” affiliate links, etc.)

It’s useful if you can offer something on your blog that no one else is offering, or that no one else is offering in quite the way you do. If you’re thinking of writing a blog post on a particular subject and you know other bloggers have covered it, ask yourself: what will make my post shareable over other people’s take on the same topic? It might be a different perspective, a different method, whatever – just some kind of unique take. Always keep that in mind.

Good post titles are imperative. If you’re bored by the title of a post, you’re unlikely to click through and read the rest. So make your titles damn good.

A fun way to expand your reach is to write about topics that cover your niche area (sex) as well as another niche area. Some of my most popular posts do this: I interested makeup fans with my blowjob-friendly lipsticks post, for example, and I crossed into the self-love/self-help space with my post on receiving desire when you feel undesirable.

Be a good citizen of the internet. That means sharing other people’s stuff, writing about other people, linking to them, supporting them, interacting with them. Blog readership is not a pie whose pieces you have to guard jealously for yourself; supporting your community of bloggers is good internet karma, increases the likelihood that they will help you in return, and just feels good to do.

Bloggers: how did you build your audience?

Sex Blogging Secrets, Part 2: Creating Good Content

Kate Sloan

I’m back with more sex blogging tips for y’all!

Overall guiding principles

When it comes to blog advice, I worship at the altar of the Blogcademy. There are two tips they emphasize that I’d like to share with you today, to set the tone for the rest of the content-creation stuff in this post.

The first is that you should think of your blog like it’s a magazine for a certain kind of reader. Cosmopolitan, for instance, isn’t just fashion or just beauty or just sex advice – it’s all of those things and more, because the Ideal Cosmo Reader is interested in a broad range of things, just like we all are. You’ll run out of ideas fast if you limit your blog to only one topic (like sex toys) or only one type of post (like erotica stories), so instead, try to pinpoint the sort of reader you’re writing for, and write all the various different things they would be interested in. (My Ideal Reader is a feminist sex geek with a sense of humor. Kind of like me!)

The second tip I’ve learned from the Blogcademy ladies is that your blog will be most successful if most of your content is helpful and valuable to your readers. That’s not to say there’s no place for writing about yourself and your own personal adventures, but it’s mostly going to be people who already know you and care about you that will read that stuff. Everyone else has no idea who you are and only wants to read your blog if it’ll help them in some way. That might sound sort of cynical, but actually, writing helpful content can be really fun! And it gets shared a lot more, so you’ll attract more eyeballs. Win-win!

Coming up with post ideas

Hopefully, if you want to start a sex blog, it’s because there are lots of sex-related things you want to write about. But even if that’s the case, we all still deal with writer’s block sometimes. So it’s important to have strategies for generating post ideas.

Here are some of mine:

• Read the news (online or in print) to see what’s going on in the world of sex, and respond to what you see.

• Talk to your friends (mostly the sex-positive ones, but sometimes even the less sexually open ones will give you ideas) about what bothers them about sex, what they wonder about it, weird experiences they’ve had, etc. See if anything sparks an idea.

• Write about your own past experiences.

• Write how-to guides.

• Write reviews of products you own (or can get retailers/companies to send you – see Epiphora’s guide for info on how to do that).

• Write wishlists of products you’d like to own, sexual experiences you’d like to have, fantasies you’d like to explore, etc.

• Write about your fantasies or turn-ons, or other people’s.

• Write about things you’ve learned about sex.

Whatever strategies you use, you’ll need to have a way to make notes of post ideas before they slip away (which, trust me, they will – our human brains are more sieve-like than we care to realize). I always have a notebook in my bag while I’m out, as well as the notes app on my phone. I also keep a notebook and pen by my bed, incase of sudden middle-of-the-night flashes of brilliance.

Keep an ongoing list of ideas you think are actually good, and have it near your workspace so you can refer to it if you ever feel stuck.

Regular features

Having features is a great way to make sure you don’t run out of ideas. They can also be something your readers come to excitedly expect from you, and they can become one of the signatures of your blog.

I find that features are fantastic for idea generation because they spark my imagination and I don’t have to work too hard to come up with ideas for them; I’m always brimming with sex writing tips, strange new-to-me fantasies, and sexual language pet peeves.

One of the beautiful things about blogging is that you are the boss of your blog and you make the rules, so you can try out new features without necessarily committing to them forever. Brainstorm a few ideas for features and give them a go for a while. If they help you, yay! If not, you don’t have to do them.

Planning ahead

Like most things in life, blogging is a lot less stressful when you’re overprepared and ahead of the game. I’m not always on top of everything, but it certainly helps to keep an editorial calendar and to queue up posts in advance.

An editorial calendar is just a calendar of what you’re going to publish and when. I started keeping one this year after 2+ years of just blogging whenever I felt like it – which works fine for some people but always made me feel sort of frazzled!

I keep my editorial calendars on index cards, one per month. I aim to post twice a week, so my cards are laid out in three columns so I can indicate which two posts I plan on doing for each week. It’s nice to have the dates at my fingertips because then I can plan date-appropriate content – for example, a Valentine’s Day-themed post when that day is coming up.

You’re not obliged to follow your plan to the letter, and I usually don’t – there are always lots of crossed-out posts on my editorial calendars, because I get other ideas that I’m more excited about and that I want to work on sooner. I just move the discarded post ideas back to my ongoing ideas list, and I can write them at a later date.

Queuing up posts in advance is another way to stay on top of your blog work. I find my enthusiasm for blogging often comes in bursts of a few hours, so when that happens, I try to write at least one or two posts and schedule them to be published later in the week. That way, I never have to force myself to blog when I don’t feel like it – because that never results in good content! (Fun fact: I wrote this blog post last Friday, because the day it’s being published, I’m going to be on vacation in Montreal. Pre-planning has allowed me to enjoy my vacation stress-free! Hooray!)

Next week I’m going to talk to you about one of my favorite subjects: building a readership! Tweet at me if you’ve got specific questions on that topic and I’ll do my best to address ‘em.