If you’re a fan of our adult work and websites, you might be wondering WHY IN THE WORLD IS TRIXIE STARTING A NEW WEBSITE AND FAN-LIKE PAGE instead of restoring full functionality to their paysites or just updating her JustForFans?
Oh boy … so many reasons!
One big reason for starting a site focusing on mainstream (non-adult*) content is that I’ve always made a lot of content that is clearly not pr0n**. I want to keep doing that, and even do it a lot more in my golden years.
In the past it was important to me for all of my content (both the pr0n and the not-pr0n) to be TOGETHER on my sites, but decades later it is more important to avoid the problems that come with lumping all of the stuff together, and to make it clearer when visitors and fans can expect naughty stuff, and when they should not.
So what are the problems with lumping my mainstream (non-adult) content together with my pr0n? HIGHER PROCESSING FEES, for one. Adult content is considered high risk, so we get much smaller cuts of transactions on our adult sites, even without going through platforms like OnlyFans, etc. By separating non-adult content from s3xy stuff, I can benefit from significantly lower processing fees and not have to give such giant cuts to adult-rated processors and platforms.
Another problem with hosting mainstream content (think pop-culture reflections on books and movies in a blog, for example) on a site with noods is not being able to get approved to promote mainstream sponsors. Example: I lost my amazon affiliate account for linking to books on my blog that happened to be on my “pr0n” site even though the posts with links — and most of my blog posts in general — contained little to no spicy content.
If you want to make money with adult content, it is virtually impossible to diversify your income from the same brand that is tainted (in the eyes of banks, the government, and mainstream brands/sponsors) by cvm or just a pair of harmless b00bies. Similarly, it is very difficult to get good search engine ranking when our sites with explicit content are pretty much shadowbanned.
Speaking of my blog, another big weird problem caused by putting regular non-s3xual posts on my “high risk” adult site is that Visa and Mastercard and their minions of middlemen spider pr0n sites looking for words like “farm” and “young” and “blood” and “force” and “asleep” and just all kinds of words that throw up red flags in s3xually explicit content but are just normal words that people use every day to talk about things that everyone talks about in life and via mainstream media. It’s frustrating to not be able to talk about a movie or the news of the day on your own site without getting emails from credit card company’s censor bots threatening to revoke your payment processing because you discussed a movie in a completely non-s3xual way that had non-adult characters in it.
None of these things are new to me — we’ve been dealing with them for literally DECADES — but with our paysites in transitional mode and closed to new members for now (a subject for another long post), I’ve been forced to look at that setback as an opportunity to make more significant changes than I was ready for at the time I moved our stuff to a new host under emergent and less-than-ideal circumstances.
I don’t want to go into this in depth right here and now, but it bears mentioning; the political landscape, shall we say, is rather fraught. With another election looming in our country and the unpleasant benefit of knowing what we know, it is super unwise to take anything for granted. It would behoove anyone in our position to diversify their revenue streams and not rely on stigmatized sources of income.
All of these things have been very tiresome and take a lot of wind out of our sails, so I want to embrace keeping things a bit more separated.
I’m excited to work on sites that are more specific where people who visit them have a clearer picture of what to expect and I can do a better job of being more consistent within narrower boundaries. It might seem counter-intuitive, but having more websites each with fewer kinds of content makes me feel FREER to be more creative. With more targeted and confined visions, I feel more focused, confident and energized.
As far as the ko-fi page and shop, I’m super stoked to be able to sell things and accept tips with almost no processing fees. I love giving people opportunities to make one-time payments and purchase single small items with flexible pricing and micro-transactions. I love the way it is set up to sell a variety of different products, from ebooks to tangible goods to memberships (even if I do not plan on offering all of those things) AND accept donations AND do crowdfunding. I’ve dabbled a bit with substack and patreon, so I have a bit of basis for comparison to recognize ko-fi as a platform that offers more than other mainstream platforms popular with people these days, including being better set up for integration with streaming sites like twitch and youtube.
The timing of this ko-fi shop launch is pretty impulsive for me as I’m getting ready to go on the trip of a lifetime; I wanted to be able to easily sell a cheap little ebook for folks who are curious about my trip while also offering a user-friendly tip option in the same place for anyone excited about contributing to this adventure I really can’t afford, so part of why I’m leaping at this mainstream-ish right now is out of rushed time-sensitive necessity. I also don’t want people to be under the impression they’re going to get something s3xy or interactive (especially for the low pay-what-you-want price I’m offering it at), so spicy fansites are not a good platform. Plus I don’t want to be dinged high-risk transaction fees and fansite cuts for content that is quite innocent. It sucks to give up 35% to 50% for the privilege of adult payment processing only to disappoint people who are not interested in anything but The S3xy. Totally understandable! Which is why I’d love to avoid that and be super clear there’s none of that overt s3x stuff here.
Another reason for making ByTrixie.com and linking it with ko-fi: I’m not making this site (or any other site) “instead of” fixing our adult membership dot coms. Rather, making mainstream sites and other niche-focused blogs IS PART OF fixing our adult sites. In fact, there are a couple of exclusive reveals in my ko-fi shop that are great examples of that: providing solutions to cumbersome resource-sucking legal and administrative problems I want to implement before re-opening our adult sites.
More than anything, though, I really love making and learning new things, and synthesizing lots of seemingly-disparate stuff that excites me. I LOVE BLOGGING. I LOVE MAKING WEBSITES. I LOVE LOOKING AT BEAUTIFUL THINGS AND TAKING PICTURES AND VIDEOS OF THEM. As the years have gone by, being so consumed by the adult websites we’re best known for while they got less and less profitable and harder and more costly to maintain, I’ve not been able to learn and grow or even freely experience all the pleasure that life has to offer and the parts of running my own websites that I love so much. At fifty-one years old, the only way I can level up and thrive is to allow myself to branch out and be good at a lot of stuff I was doing that was hidden, uncredited, or forced to play second-fiddle to the s3xy stuff.
I want to let my brain shine and be its best self! Allowing myself to build mainstream products may not offer the kind of gratification our long-time fans are looking for, but it is gratifying to me, and the only way I can see to go forward and circle back around to the pr0n0.
*While my mainstream content is still geared towards adult audiences what I mean by this here is content that is clearly not “pr0n”. By “mainstream (non-adult) stuff” I mean things I’ve made that are not intended to be used primarily for “sexual gratification” and should not be categorized by payment processors and other regulatory bodies as such.
**While I strongly dislike playing cute-looking games to avoid spelling out dirty-ish words, I’m doing it to try to avoid getting categorized by spiders as pr0n, though maybe typing pr0n so much is going to make it happen anyway.