The Business of Writing About Sex: January 2015

Can I just tell you how glad I am that January is over, and February is finally here? The month was rough, y’all, and from what I can tell thanks to Facebook, I’m not the only one who feels that way. Professionally, it was an okay month – vanilla and kink. Personally? A lot of shit happened, and John Brownstone and I hung on by our fingernails to keep our sanity.

It’s a new month, and a new day, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to look back a bit. Welcome to the January 2015 edition of a look into the sex writing world – or my version of it.

As you probably already know, the website got a re-do, ad space is now available, and I’m writing more and more. So how did January fare?

Sex Blogging

A Sexual Being

• 22 posts
• 14,833 views – thank you Cosmo!
• 17 new subscribers (this doesn’t include “followers” on WordPress only those who entered their email address in the subscribe bar)

Top Post of January: I Will Not Be Shamed for Squirting

Masturbation Monday

• 5,541 views
• 9 new subscribers (again this doesn’t include followers on WordPress)
• 52 posts shared by various bloggers

Sex Bloggers Unite Triberr Group

• 16 members
• social reach of 25,000

If you write about sex, are willing to share other people’s posts, and want to grow your readership, I’ve got room in the tribe for a few more people.

Erotic Book Sales

Paid – this includes The Adventures of Sir and Babygirl, Sir and Babygirl: Bound by Love, and on Amazon only, The Visitor and The Big Game

• Amazon – 39
• Smashwords – 2
• iBooks – 4
• Barnes & Noble – 1
• All Romance – 1

Free – the only free titles I have are The Visitor and The Big Game

• Smashwords – 93
• iBooks – 10
• Barnes & Noble – 11
• All Romance – 140

Stacked, an anthology focusing on one thing, and one thing only…BOOBS released on February 4. I have a story In Training featuring Marcus and Dahlia. There’s nipple play, orgasms, and D/s – ’cause that’s how I roll. You can get your copy here.

Oh, and I also created a Facebook page as an author. I’d love, love, LOVE it if you’d give it a like: Kayla Lords Author

In other news, the feedback on the website has been very positive. Thanks to everyone who answered my poll. Not a ton of votes, but the overwhelming majority said that yes, a newsletter would be just fine with them. At this point, I don’t know how often it will go out – weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, but it will have a few things in it:

• Posts you might have missed.
• Masturbation Monday posts – not mine, y’all. I’ll share my favorite of the week or month or whatever.
• Sexy, kinky, interesting, whatever news from around the web.
• Book promos – not a lot, not spam, and not necessarily mine.

If there’s anything you’d really like to see, let me know.

Once I get it all set up, I’ll send out the notice to subscribe to the newsletter and we’ll go from there.

My Two Cents

This is where I offer my personal and definitely unsolicited advice to bloggers and writers. Since we’re still in the early part of the year, I say let’s discuss goals. There’s less advice and more questions to this one. What are you writing goals? What are your goals for your blog? If you’re an author, please don’t say the goal is to make a million dollars – not because it’s not a worthy goal, but goals that don’t require a supreme amount of luck are more achievable than “goals” that require a wing and a prayer.

Take a look at the writing you’re doing now. Do you want to do more of it? Do you want someone to pay for your words? Do you want to go in a completely different direction? If you’re writing with no distinct goals, you won’t post as often and you’ll have less direction to your writing. And that’s okay if your only goal is to write when you feel like writing about the topics that interest you. There is nothing wrong with that!

For those who are trying to build a business or a brand, you don’t have that luxury. You need a goal. Once you have a goal, you need a plan. Once the plan is in place, now it’s time to deal with tactics and strategies.

If you can’t tell, my goal is to earn a living from kinky fuckery. I’ve put things in place to monetize my blog with ads. I offer my services (for a fee, of course) to adult-oriented websites that need written content. I’ve got nine (it was eight, and then I had an idea) on my list of books to write. I don’t think I’ll get them all written in 2015, but at least I’m working on something.

Strategies include more advertising of my own on social media and in different places, using social media to advertise my blog for hire (mostly Twitter because Facebook can be an asshole about that kind of thing), and to simply write more. For the authors out there, I’m even considering making my next release, Madame Gretchen, an Amazon-only book to see what that does for sales and ranking (any feedback is welcome).

So those are my goals, plans, and tactics. What are your writing goals for the future?

And if you aren’t a writer, but a reader, what kinds of books do you like? Who’s your favorite author? Share a good book with me. I love making my TBR list grow. 🙂