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One very happy gay man in America said it all on a recent night--"This site is like an ice cream shop! I’ve tried many different flavors of men and can’t get enough! It’s sex 24/7"--in his personal endorsement for Outpersonals.com. The confession is charged with high-voltage sexual emotion. The surge of guilty pleasure in that admission presses all the right buttons in a cruiser: excitement, expectation, and anticipation: "It’s sex 24/7."
Chalk up another happy customer--that, and the effectiveness of the viral marketing that site directors are employing, as well as the tactical campaigns and more special features--to keep eyeballs, profiles and dollars streaming into paid hook-up sites. All this is drawing traffic to their sites in spite of competition from a raft of ad-supported free sites that have been gnawing at their heels. The key, they all agree, lies in customer service. That, and integrity.
Hooking up on the ’Net is only continuing to grow in popularity, much to the chagrin of bar owners and club promoters, who have been loudly complaining to the media about the encroachment on their turf. The devoted users--and those not overly frustrated by the many flakes, fakes and nutcases who populate many of the sites on any given night--believe this is the way to find sex. Certainly, the reality after the virtual can be just as painful as in the old days of bars and bathhouses. Hooking up is not always pleasant. We still have to deal with losers, flakers, picture-collectors, guys who sent you other people’s pictures to get yours, crystal tweakers, not to mention the inevitable trip across town only to hear "Sorry, this isn’t going to work out."
What draws so many of us to hook-up sites is the promise of sex 24/7. No last calls, no bar tabs, no loud music. But probably nothing more than a casual encounter, either.
"People turn to sex sites because it’s easier than ever before to indulge and find friends with benefits, often without guilt or repercussion. Despite reports, you probably won’t become addicted to hook-up sites. But if you’re looking for love, you’re out of luck," says a proud member of Gaydar.com.
The best sex sites give us an instant, indefinable sense of belonging to a community, no matter how superficial or virtual. When we hook up, we don’t think of ourselves as a part of a niche market. It is more like being a member of our own private club. When we go online it is a fiercely personal act, and we can instantly tell whether someone is our type or not by the site they prefer.
"It is absolutely a coordinated package," says Steven Underhill, a San Francisco-based author and photographer. "People should understand that the medium is so visual, and they are wasting a lot of time online not showing themselves in the best of light," adds Underhill.
Gay.com, then AOL, ruled the dating (and sex) sites in the ’90s. They served up fresh meat 24/7 and dominated the hook-up options with detailed profiles of men of all ages, shapes and sizes. For a glorious moment in the ’90s, an awed world looked to the sex superpowers. New sex sites (even some dating sites) followed in their footsteps.
Newer influential sites included Manhunt.com, Adam4adam.com, HornyMatches.com, Gaydar.com, Men4now.com, Outpersonals, and M4m-usa.com. Men use them to troll for erotic chat or email, discreet relationships, serious relationships, one-on-one sex, group sex, bondage and discipline, cross-dressing, other fetishes, exhibition/voyeurism, sadism/masochism, and any other kinds of "alternative" activities.
The world’s newest premier escort and masseur directory site, MenOnTime.com, is premiering now. It offers masseurs and escorts free access to post ads on the site. Paid sites, however, continue to offer special deals to attract more members and to add pressure to their competition, the free sites. Competition is keen for advertising dollars. The ultimate winner in this war of attrition is the consumer.
The losers for now appear to be the older players like Gay.com, AOL, and Craigslist. Men now expect real-time (RT) online rather than leaving messages and waiting for e-mail responses. Manhunt began the real battle when it hired a cruise director, Michael Alvear--sex columnist, much loved co-host of HBO’s The Sex Inspector and tutor of the best-selling gay sex advice book, Men Are Pigs But We Love Bacon--to enhance its "flavors" of men. "Michael Alvear is here to help you hawk on Manhunt’s hotties!" screams its front page.
"We always give our members what they are always looking for--give them a very simple, easy-to-use site loaded with thousands of guys who are searching for hot sex, friendship, relationships, community, and much more," says Michael MacDonald, Manhunt’s promotions manager. "The site is also tailored to each member’s location and you can search for members all around the world. If we can make our members’ experience as easy and accommodating as possible, we know that they’ll stick around and tell their friends about us. Of course we also do standard marketing such as print and web advertising, event sponsorships, etc, so there’s a good mix."
Manhunt is focusing now on international expansion. The site’s owners have already hired specialists in various languages and cultures from around the world. It is also looking to maintain and strengthen its domestic member sign-ups, so there will always be fresh faces for our members to see. From time to time, Manhunt runs specials for discounted or limited-time free-access memberships and as an incentive to visit the site. Lately, Manhunt discovered that social networking sites such as MySpace.com are a great way to attract guys who may not have known about the site.
Manhunt’s full access membership offers access to cool features like an expanded buddy list and its advance search options. Members can exchange unlimited e-mails with 900,000 members and look at over 3 million pictures in full size. Unlike Adam4Adam (two public and one private pictures), Manhunt members are allowed to post more pictures. Non-paying members (or "guests," as they are called) can access up to three pages a day plus a couple of e-mail exchanges before they are asked to purchase or refill their pass.
Adam4Adam, on the other hand, is free to all. Adam4Adam is targeting the black and Hispanic market, although not exclusively. Out of over 800 personal sites (heterosexual and otherwise) in the U.S., an article in the Middletown, N.Y., Times Herald-Record cites Adam4Adam. In December 2006, Hitwise ranked it among the top 10 such hook-up sites. Two years ago, the San Jose Mercury News ranked it as the second most popular online gay personals site in the country.
The site was launched at the end of 2003 and is operated by A4A Network Inc. Although the site has members of all ethnic groups, the percentage of non-white men represented in member profiles is far higher than the percentage of non-whites in the U.S. population. Unlike Manhunt, Adam4Adam is entirely free. Instead, Adam4Adam derives its revenues exclusively from advertising, mostly adult pay-per-view videos.
One potential competitor on the horizon for Adam4Adam might be Megamates.com. It had zero pop-ups and zero ads on a recent viewing. But the site is growing in popularity among guys on the "DL" (down low), because the site is totally private. This could make the next generation of online hook-up sites-at least among married men.
Manhunt has been adding to its site, however. It now offers a "plan-a-trip feature" to locate potential friends or dates for travelers. It also allows for posting party invitations. The site provides a "Health Resource" page as well as a page devoted to "Online Safety Tips." The site encourages health organizations to create "Health Counselor" accounts. All these measures encourage safe sex-something other sites sometimes give more lip service to than aggressively offer information to members.
"There are certainly stigmas that arise from running a ’sex-positive’ site and we always ask them to do it safely", MacDonald explains. He says that Manhunt is now working directly with over 150 health organizations worldwide with profiles that members can e-mail directly and ask questions to find out information in the strictest confidentially. Manhunt also works with researchers by providing free banner space to advertise studies and testing groups to help find new treatments for various STDs. In some locations, Manhunt has even collaborated with health departments and allowed them to perform confidential partner notifications services. All of these services are completely free for members.
"One thing that we are very clear about is our stance in drugs. We do not allow any mention of illegal substances on Manhunt, even phrases such as ’PNP’ [’party and play,’ code for crystal meth use] are strictly forbidden," MacDonald says. "All profiles are approved by out customer support team and any references of this nature are flagged and removed."
But are Adam4Adam and other such sites merely places to hook up for sex? The Washington Blade explored the evolution of online dating. It reported that such sites "provide just as easy an opportunity for men to find a coffee date as a gangbang."
What about the membership fees at Manhunt? "We have had the same pricing structure for the last five years," MacDonald says. "No one at Manhunt is certain for now when the fees will be increase or by how much, but it will be very reasonable." Today Manhunt offers $10 for a 30-day access pass or $25 for a 90-day pass. Subscribers who bought the passes recently are getting a one-year subscription to a national gay magazine as well.
While the competition between Manhunt and Adam4Adam is heating up, other free sites like Bigmuscle.com also market themselves by going after a particular demographic niche--in this case, guys with big muscles only. The site’s creators, Bill Sanderson and Andy Wysocki, want to concentrate on the big-muscle market and please it all the way. Their attitude comes across clearly. "We have an affiliated site, http://www.normalguy.com,/ just for ’normal’ guys," says Wysocki on BigMuscle’s About page.
Originally started as a hobby in San Francisco in 1999, BigMuscle is a place on the Internet exclusively for guys with big muscles to post photos of their physiques and to meet similarly built men. Over the years, BigMuscle has evolved into much more and it is now a global community of tens of thousands of fit men who use the web site as a key element of their social life. "We may have grown over the years but we remain true to our mission," Wysocki says. "We are committed to providing a free online community for adult males who enjoy fitness. We are not a big corporation charging high membership fees as other websites do."
Instead, they operate using the same business model as, say, National Public Radio or PBS. Simply stated, they work to fund their web site through advertisements and donations. "If you enjoy the web site, and you’d like to support it, please donate any amount that won’t put a strain on your budget," pleads Wysocki. "We are so proud of BigMuscle and the fine community of people who make it what it is. As two gay men, our hobby became a small business for us, and we are pleased that our business is one that serves our community."
Many sites are combining the paid and free model.
Visitors can join Outpersonals.com for free. The site had a whopping 8,000 members online recently, although it is a partly international site. For a fee, members get to the top of the site search, unlimited contacts, advance searches, faster profile reviews and more responses.
On a recent night, Hornymatches logged 36,427 profiles from Georgia, 18,114 in Alabama, and 2,830 in Wyoming. It has had more success than its creators in Belgium said they anticipated. It has registered over 50,000 members. The site is pure hook-up. "Finally, I’m able to have sex without the baggage that comes with a normal relationship," one gay member enthused in their own promotional spots. "I’ve never thought this would be possible. I’m actually picking out partners to have sex with and its working!"
Just as immensely popular is Passion.com (with 762,794 listings in New York and 23,461,547 total members). This free site also houses people who want to have sex, watch thousands of naughty video profiles, play in its exclusive chat rooms and IM (instant messager) 24/7. Members can also express their passion in Bondage.com (Passion’s new sister). Created for those with fetishes (members are aware of the site’s well earned reputation within the BDSM community) members can even make money by driving traffic to the site via its new incentive program.
Meanwhile, on Craigslist.org and Gay.com on a recent night, gay, bi and "curious" continue to look for sex. Craig Newmark, the founder and head of Craigslist, successfully used a commonsense, down-to-earth approach to make the site more personal and authentic, while advocating social responsibility through the promotion of small, non-profit organizations.
M4M-usa.com, arguably the oldest online meat market still in existence today, has about 700,000 profiles. On a recent night, 8,000 men were online. It is a paid site that began in 1997. Aside from marking its 10th anniversary, "March is also the month we begin installation of the most extraordinary site changes since we first required that every ad must have a photo back in 1998. The changes will be simpler for members to use," says its site director, Steven Alexander. "The changes will alter access to M4M-usa.com, and we need to insure that we can maintain site speed and access with a much heavier load factor."
Men4now is also definitely hard to ignore these days. With a tagline Point, Click and Cruise, it calls on visitors to check out the goings-on in its site. Its success did not surprise site developers and marketing strategists.
Recon.com specializes in fetish, with 400,000 paid members. Most of the site is devoted to standard fetish scenes: B/D, S/M, watersports, and so on. But there are also other interests, such as "men in suits" (a sexual fetish unto itself, actually).
And, if length (and size) matters, click on paid site Bigcockworld.com. Here you will definitely find some big and long stuff like its competitor, Hungguyz.com, where thousands of well-endowed men, get free lifetime membership. (Although, on a recent visit, I had no trouble getting onto the site without "proving" any exceptional endowment, so one wonders how the filter-for want of a better word-works in this case.)
Early evidence suggests that as the number of niche sites grows, people grow with them, too. It’s a long shot to find compatibility and mutual chemistry and all the other bedeviling and bedazzling intangibles that make the sparks fly. But even if that’s absent, there are pleasures in encountering others and having sex with them while waiting for Mr. Right to come along.
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