Loyal Micro Niches

[Dianna Vesta]

Menstruation, trampling, rubber, strong body odor, infantilism, enema, CBT, girdles- old fashion underwear, pantyhose, heels… the list is quite long. I remember writing a monthly column for a fetish magazine back in 1989 and receiving hundreds of letters each month. Desperate fetishist wrote pleading letters often with tributes of cash. I began to see that these bizarre little niches were more common then one might think. A typical tits and ass boy who buys Playboy to jerk off to may also have some other little demon in his closet that he keeps safely guarded. Maybe he has a thing for smelly socks and keeps a few pair hidden away in a Ziploc bag. He stole them from his girlfriend or he’s found a private mail order source in a black and white fetish newspaper.

The purveyors of these micro niches are home based businesses catering to a client base larger then you could imagine. I myself use to sell my worn shoes and stockings for replacement and profit. A worn pair of stockings would easily make me $50.00 and shoes I sold for $100.00. I could have made more off pictures and video but I just didn’t have the time.

Certainly there are sites profiting from these micro niches. The most successful are run by webmasters who are also into that fetish. A perfect example is Steve from Lightening Cash. He was into Cheerleaders and began developing his fetish. The only real way to harness this is to be into and really understand the mindset of your subscriber. Collectively these sites make up a larger chunk of the web then you might think.

These customers are loyal and will retain month after month as long as you’re able to feed their niche. Typically these sites don’t charge as much as most because they normally don’t run strong affiliate programs and there aren’t any revenues to split or share. If you speak to a fetishist they will tell you that they have several reliable sources yet there are always one or two companies they stay in close contact with. A few years back I did a survey with a large group of fetishist. One of the questions was how much they spent each month on fetish paraphernalia (items, books, magazines, videos). The average was $100.00! There were even higher amounts which included phone sex. I asked if they preferred going to the web verses a bookstore. This was a few years ago before broadband so many still prefer mail order or going to the local smut store.

It would be impossible for large programs to harness this traffic unless they were will to assign site publishers or consultants to work with staff on producing a site that successfully caters to a niche. There is a larger investment in the front end as you work to secure a niche base. Once successful and you supply the goods, that customer probably won’t ever leave.

We’ve seen the growth of niche in the past couple of years. It isn’t surprising that webmasters are realizing that subscribers prefer sites that cater to a niche and not a smorgasbord of tits and ass. They have begun to realize the loyalty in this market even if they can’t successful harness it.

I know Photogregg is reading this. Maybe he’ll confirm what I’m saying. Niche producers have an eye for the niche they are into. Gregg shoots great niche because he has an eye for it and we all know what a kinky little fuck he is! I’m asked to produce content; articles, stories & pics – because of my experience in niche. Just like Gregg gets the right angles or the correct props, I’ll make sure I use certain buzz words or detail my sexual description catering to a certain niche.

Are the number there? Yes. If I get 5 signups a day off a micro niche it’s worth it to me because I know I can retain them. If I have a base of 200 subscribers at around 24.95 a month that’s 4990.00. Keep in mind that my content demands aren’t as high. I can get away with a small weekly update. A few photo sets, a few video clips and one story. You basically want to give them enough masturbation material to last them through the week. Most don’t want to go searching through archives when they have good weekly updates catering to their niche.

I’d love to hear your feed back on this. Do you currently run niche sites?

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Dianna