Sex Blogging Secrets, Part 1: Starting a Blog

Kate Sloan

A couple weeks ago, this email landed in my inbox:

Hi GJ. I’m writing because I was wondering if you have any tips for someone who is thinking of starting a sex blog. I’m not sure if I want to do it, but do you have any advice for starting a blog, keeping it going, getting readers, making money from your blog (if you do), etc.?

Needless to say, I have a lot of thoughts on this topic! So I’m going to split up my answer into a multi-part series. Today’s part focuses on starting a blog and all the choices and challenges that come along with that.

Choosing a name

I suggest you brainstorm at least a couple dozen different blog names that do a good job of capturing the kind of mood and subject matter you hope your blog will convey. Then, pick your favorites and roll them around in your mind for a while. Write them down, say them out loud a lot, ask your friends what they think, etc. If any name starts to feel wrong or uncomfortable in any way, axe it from the list!

I say this because – secret confession time – I really don’t like the name of my blog. I chose it because I thought it had the sexy-meets-dorky vibe I knew my blog would end up having, but the more that I’ve lived with this blog name, the less I like it. Saying it out loud makes me cringe (which makes in-person networking difficult, obviously!) and I often feel like I have to justify or explain what it means.

Choose a blog name that you’re in love with, that you’re proud to say, that reminds you of your vision for your blog, and that you could shout across a crowded room without someone mishearing or misunderstanding it.

Domains, hosting, and other web names

An addendum to the above point: the name you choose for your blog should, ideally, be available as a .com domain name as well as a username on every social media site you plan to use.

You’ll notice that I have a .net domain name, and my Twitter username has an underscore in it. Learn from my mistakes! Check this stuff before you decide on a name.

I’m not a wiz kid when it comes to stuff like domain registration and web hosting, so I will refer you to Epiphora’s sex blogging guide because she goes into those things in detail.

Can you really be a sex blogger?

A reality check: you should only start a sex blog if:

• You LOVE writing

• You’re VERY passionate about sex

• You can come up with at least 20-30 different blog post ideas off the top of your head right now

• You can handle criticism and rudeness (especially if you’re a woman)

• You can talk/write/think about sex without blushing or cringing, AND

• You understand that blogging is not a get-rich-quick scheme

Please don’t start a sex blog solely for money, fame, free products, or sexual attention. You may well get those things eventually, but they are not good motivators for maintaining a blog in the long-term, and you will flame out before the going gets good if you’re expecting those faraway incentives to show up immediately.

Do this because you want to do it and love the thought of doing it. That’s really the only motivation that will keep you blogging for the long haul. (I say this as someone who is obsessed with sex and absolutely adores writing. Trust me, these things are important!)

What’s your blog’s deal?

What is your blog going to be about? And don’t just say “sex,” because, duh. Get more specific. Are you going to review sex toys? Criticize sexual media? Write erotica? Detail your sexual adventures? Will your goal be to help your readers, or to entertain them, or both, or something else entirely? Will your lens be feminist, sex-positive, both, neither, or something else? How do you want readers to feel when they read your blog? Will your voice be saucy, sexy, straightforward, silly, or serious?

Sharpening your vision is very important, especially since blogging is an oversaturated game and you need to set yourself apart to have any hope of success. It might help to come up with some kind of tagline or subtitle for your blog, even if you never use it anywhere. (Mine is “Reviews and how-to’s for feminist sex nerds.”) The better and clearer your internal guide for the work you plan to do, the stronger and more unique your work will be.

Here are some examples of bloggers who I think have really strong, well-developed, unique niches within the realm of sex blogging:

• Epiphora writes snarky, brutally honest sex toy reviews, and occasional feminist rants.

• Reenie approaches her reviews and writing from a perspective of relative innocence and sheltered-ness, which I think her readers find either adorable or relatable, depending on their own personal experiences.

• Lilly is hard to please and writes tough but fair reviews. She also writes easy-to-understand, no-bullshit guides to technical or scientific aspects of sex toys and sex blogging, like toxic toy chemicals and how to file copyright complaints.

• Aerie’s blog combines sex toy writing with board game writing, because they are passionate about both of those things. Aerie is a great example of someone who puts their own spin on sex blogging by capitalizing on their authentic interests.

Your “about” page

This should be one of the first things you write when you make your blog. It’s important, not only so your readers can find out more about you, but also so you get a better sense of the persona or personality you’re going to project with your blog.

Please include, at a minimum, all of the following things on your About page:

• Your name (or the pseudonym you’ll go by on your blog)

• Your pronouns/gender identity (yes, even if you’re cis and normative-looking)

• Where and how you can be reached (email address, social media handles, maybe a contact form)

• Why, how, and when you started your blog

• Your blog’s mission/what sets you apart (you can state this as simply or complexly as you like, but it should be there somewhere)

• Any other info you think your readers should know about you in order to understand where you’re coming from (possibly: age, location, sexual orientation, relationship status, etc.)

• Some personality! Let your sense of humor, writing voice, and real interests shine through.

Check out my About page and those of the bloggers I listed above for some examples.

Stay tuned; the next post in this series will be about what to do once you’ve actually started your blog – generating ideas and writing posts. Get excited!!

Love Yourself on Valentine’s Day

Kate Sloan

V-Day is almost upon us. But please, don’t get upset. This does not have to be a depressing holiday, or a saccharine Hallmark shill. I want you to do your best to re-frame this time of year in your mind.

Valentine’s Day is supposed to be all about love. And just because romantic love is the most glorified form of love doesn’t mean it’s the only one, or the most important one.

Whether or not you’re in a relationship today, here are some things you can do to re-affirm your dedication to self-love.

• Choose/buy/find a talisman to remind you of your commitment to self-love. It should be something personally meaningful to you, which can be as obvious and self-explanatory as a heart necklace or as obscure as an octopus brooch. If looking at it makes you smile and reminds you of the importance of loving yourself, you’re doin’ it right! (Some quick picks from me to you: stack these queer babe bracelets on your arms, stick these clitoris stickers all over everything, pin these feminist buttons to your backpack or put this rose quartz heart over your own heart. Too pretty!)

• Take yourself on a solo date. Bring your book, journal, laptop, knitting, etc. to your favorite café, bar or restaurant, and sit for a while. Enjoying your own company is an important life skill, and solo time can also be a great way to recharge in advance of a romantic date with someone else, if that’s on your docket for the day.

• Masturbate. Decadently. Loudly. In all your favorite ways, using all your favorite toys ‘n’ tools.

• Take the best bath (or shower) ever. Lush does fabulous bath bombs and shower jellies. Light a scented candle. Pour yourself some wine or tea or juice. Put on some soft jazz or salsa or whatever music makes you feel gorgeous. Exfoliate, wash, pamper, luxuriate, rejuvenate.

• Look up local cultural events and go see one (or a few). Gallery shows, arthouse movie screenings, live concerts, book readings, theatrical performances – anything that makes your heart sing and your brain buzz. (And hey, if you’re in Toronto, come on down to the Ten Thousand Villages shop at 362 Danforth around 2PM on V-Day… Someone who looks an awful lot like me might be performing some love songs. Wink wink.)

• Make a list of things you love about yourself and/or things other people have told you they love about you. Collecting your best compliments in one location, whether they’re from others or from yourself, is a great way to make yourself feel good – and you can refer back to it any time you need a self-love boost.

• Do something you’re really good at. This is such a fabulous way to remind yourself of your inherent value as a human being. Make music, write, paint, dance, whatever. Get into the “zone,” the flow, of doing something well. (And even if you do it badly, if you’re still having fun, you’re doing it right.)

• Check out local party shops, drugstores, etc. and buy some heart-shaped stuff. This is the time to do it (or maybe the day after Valentine’s Day when everything’s on sale). Having heart-shaped decor all over your house is a way to remind yourself on a daily basis that love is important, especially self-love. I have a red holographic paper heart taped up on my bedroom wall year-round and it makes me smile every time I see it.

• Be good to your body. This requires listening to your body and figuring out what it’s asking for, what it needs, which is always worth doing. Maybe you require chocolates today, or maybe your body’s crying out for leafy greens instead. Maybe you need to lie in bed and chill the fuck out, or maybe you’d feel better if you did an hour of intense yoga or went for a jog. Maybe you need more water, more dancing, less caffeine, less self-criticism, or a really good stretch. Listen, check in, and give your cute bod what it wants.

• Delete all critics and energy vampires from your digital life. Do a major clean-out of your Twitter stream, Facebook friends list, email subscriptions, browser bookmarks, etc. so that everything in your digital life actually serves you and uplifts you. Ahhh, the relief! What a beautiful favor to do for yourself!

What do you like to do for yourself on Valentine’s Day?

Shannon Bell: Poli Sci Professor + Squirter Extraordinaire

Kate Sloan

I recently researched and wrote a big news feature on female ejaculation for a journalism school assignment. (Man, I love my life.)

I got to interview a lot of terrific babes for the piece. Superhero sex blogger and squirting champion Epiphora. Porno administrator and mega-hottie Jesse Rae West. A sexual health researcher who chose to remain anonymous and gave me the best quote about the squirting-is-pee study (“It’s bonkers! Bonkers! Seven people is, like, nothing!… That’s just ridiculous. Like, what the fuck. Like, that is not statistically significant in any universe. So it doesn’t prove anything”).

As if all those folks weren’t awesome enough, I also got to talk to Shannon Bell. And, holy fuck, was I nervous.

If you’ve never heard of Shannon Bell, let me enlighten you.

• She’s a political science professor at York University here in Toronto, where her students have variously called her “the first professor to ever use the F word in an intelligent way,” “the most enlightened person I’ve ever had the pleasure of receiving instruction from,” an “interesting dresser [who] likes anarchists,” “obscene and gross,” and “wildly intelligent, HILARIOUS, gregarious, and extremely helpful” on her RateMyProfessors page.

• Western Standard magazine profiled her as one of “Canada’s nuttiest professors” in an article, in which she’s quoted as saying that she likes to dress provocatively for her students’ benefit, starting off the semester dressing femme and then moving into a “solid leather” aesthetic around October when “things are getting intense in terms of their assignments.” (I also had a feminist sociology professor last term who mentioned that sometimes Shannon wears a skirt without panties to class, but I was not able to confirm this…)

• She’s a performance artist and a lot of her performances have focused on female ejaculation as a political statement. She talks about one such performance in her book, Fast Feminism, one entire section of which is entitled “The Female Phallus” (her badass name for the G-spot/urethral sponge/female prostate). In the performance, she squirts all over a mirror that’s angled to give the audience a good look at her genitals and what she’s doing to herself. She also recalls a time when she did a live squirting demo on a radio show, narrating the whole process herself as she did it. (That takes skill and focus, dude.)

• She teaches female ejaculation workshops from time to time in Toronto, complete with live demos, of course. A friend of mine went to one of these workshops and described it to me as “very wet.”

• Shannon also appears in one of the earliest on-screen examples of squirting, a 2002 Isis Media DVD called How to Female Ejaculate. In the movie, she and three other women (Carol Queen, Deborah Sundahl, and Baja) talk about squirting’s role in their sex lives, how they learned to do it, what it means to them personally and politically, etc., and then they get out sex toys and towels and jerk off together on camera. Shannon squirts three separate times, using a pink dildo and her fingers. At one point, she says, “I wouldn’t want to live without [being able to ejaculate]. I find it incredibly empowering. It really changed me, both physically and intellectually. It gave me an incredible sense of power and control over my body – as well as a hell of a lot of fun.”

• Her book Fast Feminism is an absolutely incredible resource for anyone who’s interested in female ejaculation, female sexual power, and/or feminism. It’s a rollicking good read. And the cover isn’t explicit so you can read about urethral sponges and mirror-squirting on the subway and no one will look at you funny.

• In the book, Shannon details how she once gathered a sample of her own ejaculate, took it to her doctor, and convinced him to run chemical analysis on it. Her results confirmed previous findings about the differences between ejaculate and pee: that they are indeed different, and have mostly different components and a different pH from one another.

• She started squirting when she was EIGHT YEARS OLD. That blew my mind. EIGHT!

• When I asked her if any woman can learn to ejaculate, she said, without skipping a beat, “Sure. Any man can learn to ejaculate. There’s really no difference.”

Seriously… What an unbelievably awesome person. I’m still starstruck.

My Top 5 Favorite Vibrators of All Time

Kate Sloan

The title of this post is pretty self-explanatory, so let’s hop right to it, shall we?

1. The Eroscillator (review) is my favorite sex toy in the universe. End of story. I’ve easily used it hundreds of times since I got it 3-ish years ago, and it’s still going strong. The oscillations feel noticeably different from regular vibrations; they seem to go deeper into my internal clitoris and don’t cause me numbness like vibrations can. The Eroscillator is also long and thin so it fits nicely between two bodies for use during PIV sex; the Eroscillator + penis combo is one of my favorite ways to get off ever ever ever. I particularly recommend picking up the fingertip attachment because I find the harder attachments too intense sometimes.

2. The We-Vibe Tango (review) is my favorite rechargeable vibe, bar none. It’s soooo strong and rumbly, and the focused shape is perfect for my clit. I don’t love that you have to cycle through the modes one-by-one, but I’ve gotten used to it now so it doesn’t feel like a big deal to me anymore. It’s also waterproof and water doesn’t really dampen its magnificent rumbling. The only thing I don’t love about my Tango is the way it charges, but that’s been updated since I got mine, and I hear the newer ones are a lot better in that regard.

3. The Hitachi Magic Wand gives me very mixed feelings, but now that I know how to use it in a way that works for me, I at least don’t hate it anymore. It can get me off on those days when my bits seem irreparably numb or finicky, and it also works through multiple layers, so if I’m too lazy to take off my pants, that’s not a problem for the Hitachi. It’s a classic for a reason, and that reason is that it’s strong as fuck.

4. The Lelo Mona 2 is just exactly what a penetrative vibe should be. The handle is long enough to provide adequate leverage. The controls are easy to use, even in the heat of the moment. The vibrations are strong and rumbly enough to stimulate my vaginal walls without numbing them. The curve accesses my G-spot with minimal effort and feels good whether I thrust the toy or keep it still. It’s waterproof for bathtime shenanigans. And the toy can be repurposed for clitoral use, no problem. Lelo recently tried to update the Mona but you can’t improve upon perfection, man.

5. I only just received the Lelo Siri 2 and my review is forthcoming, but suffice it to say: this new offering from Lelo is simple and effective. Or perhaps effective because it’s simple. (Seriously, Lelo, stop trying to make everything so fancy all the time. Just keep making easy-to-use sex toys with excellent motors like this one and you’ll stay on top.)

What are your favorite vibrators of all time?

5 Ways to Bring More Romantic Energy Into Your Life

Kate Sloan

Is it February already? Seriously?

Okay, I promise I won’t complain too much. Single people whining about Valentine’s Day = so boring and played-out. I refuse to fall into that trope!

However, yeah, if you’re single – and even if you’re not – Valentine time can be hard. But I’m here to help! Here are some ways to bring more romantic energy into your life in a jiff, even if you feel “forever alone” or unloveable. (Trust me, babe, you’re not.)

1. Change your phone background to a picture of someone who makes your heart flutter. Yes, we’re starting with a super easy one.

I don’t recommend doing this with a picture of a person you see regularly (e.g. your psychology professor, your best friend who you’re secretly in love with, or your older brother’s cute bandmate), simply because there is a small chance of them seeing it and thinking you’re a weirdo.

But if there’s a celebrity, fictional character, etc. who makes you feel a little blushy, giggly and swoony, load up your phone with their face. You’ll get a hit of juicy joy every time you spot your lock screen.

2. Tell someone cute that they’re cute. This one is harder, but I promise it’s worth it!

I think our high-tech world has made us shyer, more insulated from one another. I’m not gonna rant at you about the desensitizing effect of technology because, honestly, I’ve made some of my best and deepest social connections via the internet – but I do think a tech-centered lifestyle has the potential of making you meeker than you’d otherwise be. Fight that comfy impulse!

“You’re cute” is a really great starter compliment for shy folks (like me) because, although it’s bold, it’s not overly committal. It’s not “I have a crush on you” or “I want to date you” or anything that will make you too vulnerable for comfort; it’s just “You’re cute.” Which can be construed as romantic, or not. Go tell those words to a cutie; you’ll feel brave and powerful, and they’ll feel adorable and desirable. Win-win!

3. Consume media that features people you’re attracted to. You probably already do this. I know I do.

Type your actor crush’s name into YouTube or Netflix’s search box and binge-watch as needed. Read another book by that clever genius who lights up your heart and mind. Flick through the Instagram or Tumblr of that internet pseudo-celebrity whose tweets you find so hilarious.

Continually and deliberately fill your life with reasons to feel smitten. ‘Cause that shit feels good.

4. Switch up your soundtrack.

Music + the human brain = true magic. Or the potential for it, anyway. That’s what I think.

Go on Spotify, 8Tracks, Last.FM, or another music-discovery tool of your choice, and do a search for playlists that fit the juicy/sexy/crushy mood you’re trying to generate. Whether you end up listening to cute love songs or intense sexy songs, you’ll feel more in line with yummy romantic energy than you did before you started.

5. Visualize romance, whatever the hell that means to you.

I think visualization is a criminally underrated capability of the human mind. You can literally picture – and, in a way, experience – anything you want. Some spiritual worldviews say that visualizing a particular event can help attract that kind of event into your life – but even if you don’t buy that, it still feels damn good!

My mind wanders a lot so I often find it easier to write down a particular fantasy/daydream and then read it over. The act of committing it to paper helps focus my vision and get me deeper into the feeling I’m trying to create. But if freeform imaginin’ works for you, you can do that too. And wonderfully, you can do it pretty much any time you feel like it. Including while you’re commuting. Or sitting in a boring class. Or lying in bed trying to fall asleep.

If you’re not sure where to start, give these prompts a ponder… If (your crush/love) was with you right now, what would you want them to say to you? How would they look at you? What would that feel like? What’s the absolute best compliment they could give you? If they sent you a love letter, what would you want it to say? If they gave you the perfect kiss, what would that be like? How would they initiate sex with you (or you with them)? What kinds of sounds would they make? Where would they put their hands on your body, and what would that feel like? What kind of cuddler would they be? After sex, what would they whisper or moan or mumble into your ear?

Oh, good gracious. I am already feeling a heck of a lot better about the single life. Excuse me; I’ll be in my bunk.

What do you do to make your life feel sexier and more romantic on a regular basis?