Mainstream, the New Niche
  Written By Titmowse

I got into the whole punk thing pretty late in the game. I became one in 1982, approximately five years into the movement. While I was late in adopting the punk look, I was right on time when I quit. I knew punk was over the moment I saw Elizabeth Taylor wearing spikes in her hair. The second I viewed her, I combed out my tangled tresses, removed the safety pins from my clothing and I never looked back. Today, I still have the heart of a punker, but I look more like a soccer mom.

This is fine with me. I know my soul and I don’t need to adorn my outer shell to prove myself to the world. Deep down, I will always have that do-it-yourself spirit which is the very essence of punk.

That philosophy is what attracted me to the adult Internet. I admire a field where the players invent the game and make the rules. The adult web is such a field. Many of us began our careers in Internet smut without any previous experience. We were truck drivers, engineers, waitresses and factory workers. We were regular Joes and Janes who had one thing in common, a love of computers and a desire to control our destiny. Others will take the credit for having been the architects of the information super highway but it is we, the pornographers who forged the roads, drew the maps and paved the asphalt. Whatever the Internet will become it is we who were it’s beta testers.

The Internet is still evolving. There’s no telling what things will be like five, ten or twenty years from now. If Bill Gates gets his way, we’ll all have to pay a fee to send out an email. If the RIAA gets theirs, file sharing will die out right along with independent music. If Acacia gets their way, anyone who has a video on their website ­or even links to video- will have to pay extortion fees. We have many battles ahead of us and I pray we are up to the challenge.

Sex isn’t going anywhere and neither is porn. As long as humans have desire, money will be spent on smut. I can state unequivocally that porn will continue and people will continue to make a living by selling it on the Internet.

Just the same, there comes a point when one realizes that there’s more to the web than the dirty pictures. As the web matures, so do its users. Surfers today are far less wary of spending money on the net than they were as little as five years ago. This last year the number of people who bought their Christmas gifts online equaled the number who bought the old fashioned way. Five years ago consumers feared e-commerce. Today consumers embrace Internet buying. They still buy porn but they also buy books, clothes, flowers and chocolates. Today anyone can sell anything on the web as long as they have a desirable product and a little marketing know-how.

Who is the group with the most know-how? Internet smut peddlers!
The average adult webmaster knows more about selling on the web than all the legions of Madison Avenue. The adult webmaster knows how to build a saleable page. They know how to get that page in front of the eyes of surfers. They know how make the checkout experience trustworthy and painless. Today’s Internet smut merchant is tomorrow’s e-commerce guru.

If you have come to the point where you know it’s time to expand your horizons, consider the mainstream. Instead of looking for the next big niche, maybe it’s time for you to consider selling products and services of a non-adult nature. If your specialty is ebony porn, then perhaps you’d do well selling hip-hop clothing. If you’re good at promoting adult classifieds then maybe you’d be just as successful with regular classifieds. The non-adult market is wide open. The opportunity is there, just waiting for you to take it.

Don’t think I’m advising you to leave the adult Internet entertainment business. I just want to show you that there’s more to the web than the kinky side. Millions of people are out there with their credit cards ready. They want to buy books. They want to buy gardening supplies. They want to buy a myriad of products and they want to do it online. Who is better than you at selling stuff to the masses over the Internet?

Internet porn will go on. There will always be people willing to pay dollars to view dirty pictures. What may not last is this window of opportunity you have to sell something other than smut. The next big niche is mainstream.

Punk has come and gone and been reborn again. That do-it-yourself spirit lives on in you. You still have a chance to make your own game and your own rules. All you have to do is try.