Porn email newsletter?

[tj2050]

Looking for some advice and input into my idea.

The concept:

A daily email newsletter
-contains ~3 interesting GQ/Popular Mechanics/Weird news headlines
-contains 5-6 static NSFW images + a gif. Each one links out to a gallery somewhere.

I know email is very old school. But that's the idea - not too many others in this market right now, and once the list is large enough it means pushing my message to a lot of eyes every day.

I've already got it up and running and it has grown to 400 double-opt-in subscribers in about 2 months. Complying with can-spam laws and getting in-boxed has been easy. The open rates are acceptable at 20-30%.

For the moment totally focused on growth, but I'd thought this would grow a lot faster and I'm disappointed with the result.

I've done some ad buying on TrafficJunky (abysmal results on every creative/landing page I could dream up) and posting on Twitter, which has been the main source.

Are there any other sources to find potential subscribers? Are viewers totally opposed to seeing porn in their inbox, or giving their email address to an adult site?

[AmeliaG]

Are you pulling in useful revenue from the 400?

[plsureking]

Originally Posted by tj2050

I know email is very old school. But that's the idea - not too many others in this market right now

the market of daily emails? what makes you think 'not too many' people are doing it?

yes email still works. you shouldn't put adult content in an email. its a fast way to spam and blacklists.

if you don't have free pages or sites, its hard to build a newsletter. i've seen some male-targeted newsletters advertised on fb. you have to keep it non-nude tho. learn to apply digital pasties. teasing sells best anyway.



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[DVTimes]

Originally Posted by tj2050

Looking for some advice and input into my idea.

The concept:

A daily email newsletter
-contains ~3 interesting GQ/Popular Mechanics/Weird news headlines
-contains 5-6 static NSFW images + a gif. Each one links out to a gallery somewhere.

I know email is very old school. But that's the idea - not too many others in this market right now, and once the list is large enough it means pushing my message to a lot of eyes every day.

I've already got it up and running and it has grown to 400 double-opt-in subscribers in about 2 months. Complying with can-spam laws and getting in-boxed has been easy. The open rates are acceptable at 20-30%.

For the moment totally focused on growth, but I'd thought this would grow a lot faster and I'm disappointed with the result.

I've done some ad buying on TrafficJunky (abysmal results on every creative/landing page I could dream up) and posting on Twitter, which has been the main source.

Are there any other sources to find potential subscribers? Are viewers totally opposed to seeing porn in their inbox, or giving their email address to an adult site?

People have tried doing this for years, it tends not to work.

The thing is many will not read them and probably get irritated. Lets face it, they do not want to be at work or next to a family member and a porn email pops up.

Also it is the design. I get a lot from sites giving updates as an affiliate, and most of the emails look bad.

by all means try doing email thing, and see how it goes. but i suspect after a few months you will think sod it.

You may be better just doing a blog and setting it up to send updates to those who want them.

Personally I think doing twitter posts would be easer and more effective and less hassle.

[TheLegacy]

Originally Posted by tj2050

Looking for some advice and input into my idea.

The concept:

A daily email newsletter
-contains ~3 interesting GQ/Popular Mechanics/Weird news headlines
-contains 5-6 static NSFW images + a gif. Each one links out to a gallery somewhere.

I know email is very old school. But that's the idea - not too many others in this market right now, and once the list is large enough it means pushing my message to a lot of eyes every day.

I've already got it up and running and it has grown to 400 double-opt-in subscribers in about 2 months. Complying with can-spam laws and getting in-boxed has been easy. The open rates are acceptable at 20-30%.

For the moment totally focused on growth, but I'd thought this would grow a lot faster and I'm disappointed with the result.

I've done some ad buying on TrafficJunky (abysmal results on every creative/landing page I could dream up) and posting on Twitter, which has been the main source.

Are there any other sources to find potential subscribers? Are viewers totally opposed to seeing porn in their inbox, or giving their email address to an adult site?

Daily is a bit to much even for spammers btw.
You also speak of how many have opted in but of all those is your unsubscribe numbers?

There is also a big chance you're not going to the inbox but spam so maybe they aren't paying attention.

If you're a business webmaster board who sends it out weekend or less then emails are useful - if you're merely attempting to get people to show up at your site by playing the shell game of look at this article and then insert your name and links everywhere then it's spam

How much effort has been done on the seo for the pages?
Is there any other traffic company you've used?

There are many ways to increase your traffic and subscriptions - maybe contact me on skype and we can talk.

[fuzebox]

Newsletters are growing in popularity, email still works if you can inbox. Owning your customer data and your delivery channel is nice in our gatekept social media world.

I personally wouldn't embed nudity within the email body. I like the strategy of a general male lifestyle newsletter with some nsfw links, but if you have images in the body I would crop them, blur them, or find a NN preview.

Buying traffic to this newsletter will be pretty difficult given how much you'll end up paying per subscriber, but if twitter is working for you I'd scale that.

[tj2050]

Thanks for all the feedback so far! Email newsletters definitely fell out of popularity over the past decade, but the resurgence is what got me thinking about it. Some say it still has the best ROI.

I think the challenge for email marketing is how technical it can be. We run our own SMTP gateway, have our own warmed IP addresses, and I studied the laws to see if it's acceptable to include nude images in the body of an email (it is, given the proper opt-in and subject line).

I can tell we're inboxing mostly because of the open rate (20-30% which is average for all newsletters), but I also manage the list aggressively and cut off subscribers who don't open an email for a couple weeks.

Originally Posted by plsureking

the market of daily emails? what makes you think 'not too many' people are doing it?
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Before starting, I did a couple hours of research and could only find a handful of active "porn in your email" focused newsletters. I know there's an overwhelming amount of email marketing going on, just couldn't find much with adult content in them.

Originally Posted by TheLegacy

Daily is a bit to much even for spammers btw.
You also speak of how many have opted in but of all those is your unsubscribe numbers?
...
if you're merely attempting to get people to show up at your site by playing the shell game of look at this article and then insert your name and links everywhere then it's spam
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I don't have any content sites of my own at the moment. Perhaps eventually it could be monetized by partnering with an existing website, OF creators, or even inserting affiliate links.

When thinking about frequency (daily/weekly, etc), I tried to consider the habits of a typical porn viewer. Once a day for a quick look seems like a common profile, so I wanted to emulate that. If the newsletter is in their inbox when they wake up, it might be the starting point for the day's session.

There have been about ~500 total subscribers since I first started to market the letter, and right now the list size is about 400. So 100 unsubs. I'm not yet tracking why people unsubscribe - it might just be that they don't like the same porn I do or just wanted a look. I also have no idea what a normal churn rate should be yet.


Of course, these numbers are still much too low to start thinking about making any money. But I'm really curious about the economics: total cost to obtain a subscriber and average lifetime value of a subscriber. I feel that if I could start to get a grasp on that, I could decide when it makes sense to pour some cash into growth.

[Rochard]

Email marketing is king. And everyone is doing it. If you aren't you are missing out.

The bigger the list you have the more profitable it is.

[abshard]

Originally Posted by Rochard

The bigger the list you have the more profitable it is.

Great insight.

[plsureking]

Originally Posted by tj2050

I think the challenge for email marketing is how technical it can be. We run our own SMTP gateway, have our own warmed IP addresses, and I studied the laws to see if it's acceptable to include nude images in the body of an email (it is, given the proper opt-in and subject line).

most of us here know all of this. how are you going to beat these guys who mail all week long and have dozens of smtp servers?

Originally Posted by tj2050

Before starting, I did a couple hours of research and could only find a handful of active "porn in your email" focused newsletters. I know there's an overwhelming amount of email marketing going on, just couldn't find much with adult content in them.
...
When thinking about frequency (daily/weekly, etc), I tried to consider the habits of a typical porn viewer. Once a day for a quick look seems like a common profile, so I wanted to emulate that. If the newsletter is in their inbox when they wake up, it might be the starting point for the day's session.

if its daily its gotta be bitesized like a social post. you can't be pulling them into a half hour of click funnel or rabbit holes. they'll stop opening your emails.

Hegre has a daily nude photo that I've been receiving since I worked there 20 years ago. no long text, just a model profile and photo.

its nudity in an email, which I'm against, but it shows that its possible. the main issue with nudity in emails is people open email at work. if you want subscribers spending their work time viewing your content, you have to make it SFW.

Originally Posted by tj2050

I don't have any content sites of my own at the moment. Perhaps eventually it could be monetized by partnering with an existing website, OF creators, or even inserting affiliate links.

figure out a revenue plan or don't start. someone here will just copy your content and send it to their mega list with their high conversion affil links.

everybody wants to be in the porn business, but everybody in this business will tell you, its a lot more work than fun.

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[fuzebox]

Originally Posted by plsureking

most of us here know all of this. how are you going to beat these guys who mail all week long and have dozens of smtp servers?

Weird take, he doesn't have to beat anyone.

[bllivingston]

Originally Posted by tj2050

I think the challenge for email marketing is how technical it can be. We run our own SMTP gateway, have our own warmed IP addresses, and I studied the laws to see if it's acceptable to include nude images in the body of an email (it is, given the proper opt-in and subject line).

Coming from a background of building and maintaining email delivery systems (three decades of experience), you are absolutely correct about the technical challenges of sending email. The time and knowledge required to maintain your own email servers will be immense and almost never worth it for small businesses. As your list grows, you will either need to invest in dedicated personnel and systems or move to a professional email delivery platform.

Without professional help you will need to understand and build out a system that can automatically handle feedback loops, replies, bounced email, complaints, and unsubscribes. You will need to differentiate between transient, permanent and block type responses from receiving networks, so you can determine if your IPs or domains are being blocked. You will need be familiar with block sources and what steps to take when that happens. And, I haven't even scratched the surface; delivery reputation, technical header setup, rDNS, DMARC, SPF, DKIM, RBL checks.

I mention this not to overwhelm, but to inform, as you will likely need to switch from your own platform to another in the future. And, your IP (and possible domain) reputation will not follow you. For example, if you have establish a great delivery reputation, you would need to start from scratch when you move.

Hope that helps,
Brent Livingston
EzineDirector.com

[tj2050]

Originally Posted by plsureking

Hegre has a daily nude photo that I've been receiving since I worked there 20 years ago. no long text, just a model profile and photo.

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Interesting, I didn't know about the Hegre email! My newsletter concept is kinda similar - bite sized with just a few images. It's quick to put together and easy to consume. Like scrolling IG for a minute. We designed it to look really aesthetically pleasing.

I'm hopeful that something that takes less than a minute to consume could be integrated into the daily routine of many subscribers.

I agree with you that anything more intense would make subscribers never want to open it.

Originally Posted by fuzebox

Weird take, he doesn't have to beat anyone.
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Haha, thank you. Yeah, I don't really see any other newsletter or pornsite as "competition". Rather if there were a lot of newsletters, it would suggest there is demand and it's profitable. So the apparent lack of newsletters is more concerning as opposed to the existence of big dogs who already have a million subscribers. The technical difficulties just serve to make it a bit harder for everyone and their uncle to jump in the game.

Originally Posted by bllivingston

Coming from a background of building and maintaining email delivery systems (three decades of experience), you are absolutely correct about the technical challenges of sending email.
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This is my background as well, not quite 3 decades like you but close. We already had a PMTA infrastructure linked to a number of dedicated IPs that is being used for other newsletters, fortunately. The cost for a system like this is way too high for just a tiny newsletter idea, so totally onboard with you that it wouldn't likely make sense unless you already have it.


I think the stage I'm at now is proof of concept. Can I get it to grow fast enough/cheaply enough to be worth it?

Monetization later should be achievable because there are so many avenues to do so. I think we can worry about it until after the list size is 10k+


Keep the feedback coming! I love it, especially reasons why the idea might be hard to achieve. No sense spending time and money on dead end projects.

[plsureking]

Originally Posted by fuzebox

Weird take, he doesn't have to beat anyone.

yea i was referencing piracy. some peeps here would sign up just to rip the newsletter and resend. if its any good lol

there's limited time tho. i can only read so much a day. we're all competing for eyeballs.


great to hear from Brent Livingston! post #3!

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