Bacchus

Sunni: So you've probably had some interesting exchanges with your readers who've assumed your political perspective is more similar to theirs than it is.

Bacchus: Disappointingly, not really. Usually folks act betrayed when they realize that someone can be sex-positive and a free speech absolutist without sharing their coercive politics. The ones I hear from usually tell me they have "lost a lot of respect for me" and aren't coming back.

Sunni: As I wrote to you in asking about your interest in doing an interview with me, ErosBlog is consistently the highest private site for bringing traffic to Sunni and the Conspirators. Sometimes it's even ahead of some search engines. That's been an ongoing source of amusement to me. How do you explain that?

Bacchus: I get this comment a lot from the people I link to. I don't think there's much to explain, really; I've been building traffic and readership for about three and a half years by posting as close to daily as I can manage. I get about fifteen thousand visitors on a good day, which is not huge by the standards of the commercial internet. But in the blog world, it's pretty respectable.

Sunni: Well, that's an answer, but not really an explanation. [pauses] But on thinking about it, it's not very reasonable of me to expect you to know why your visitors go where they do when they're done at ErosBlog! [laughs]

Bacchus: If you can figure out a sure-fire way to predict which links a web site visitor is going to click, please do share it with me; I can make us each a million dollars with it. Me, I don't have a clue.

Sunni: [laughs] Neither do I, but if I get one, you'll be the first person I go to! What led you to start your sex blog? Was it a sort of political activism, or the lure of money that's supposed to be behind both sex and blogging?

Bacchus: I can't blame political activism for it, that's for sure. Sometimes I'll admit to being a fighter in the culture wars, but I didn't have that intent when I started. At that time, I was working in a boring office job and dabbling on my own time with some adult web sites. I wanted to make money off the adult web sites, but they didn't have any traffic. Meanwhile, in the office, I was browsing blogs during my lunch breaks. When I thought of doing a sex blog, I thought I might someday get enough traffic to share with some of the adult web sites. But mostly, I just thought sex was a natural blogging topic, and at the time, there were just a tiny handful of sites doing anything remotely like sex blogging. It looked like fun, so I jumped on it.

Sunni: So, tell me about the money. Is it really a world of easy, instant cash? I rather suspect not ... [laughs]

Bacchus: It's true that there can be a lot of money in adult web sites, but because anybody with a computer can compete for it, there's an astonishing amount of competition, too. There's lots of money to be made, but it doesn't come without sustained, consistent effort, just like any other business. Persistence over time is a huge factor, because links and search engine mojo take forever to establish in commercial quantities. Most people who try this business give up before they ever have a chance to succeed.