What is “die” is this context? The sites don’t need any visitors to remain online.
They “die”, by you taking them down.
The site would be dead if noone creates any new content for it.
OK. I agree there.
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So my muscle memory and my phone browser’s autocomplete have been trained to go to gay spiral stories for years now. Me switching to the other sites isn’t from lack of communication about their existence. It’s all about me having to learn something new.
That said, it’s also for stuff that I’m not that bothered by. I’m not really into bondage and dom/sub stuff outside of transformation and mind control, and I have other avenues for romance stuff (mainly Amazon/Kindle).
When it comes to transformation and mind control stuff, my tolerance for bad writing (bad meaning grammar, spelling, formatting, or plotting, lack of plotting, character development, etc) is quite high. I will ignore and read through a lot because I’m hoping/excited that even something poorly written will scratch that itch I continually have. And to be really honest, I’m even less inclined to wade through bad stuff now than I was a few years ago. For various reasons.
I mention that because one of the reasons I’m not inclined to check out even gay Cupid stories on its own is because I assume that the writing quality won’t be as good as I want it to be. For some authors, it might be. I just have limited time and don’t want to try something unless someone tells me ahead of time I’ll enjoy it. For instance, The Gardener is fantastic and started on muscle-growth.org years ago. I’m happy I read it, but probably wouldn’t stumble across it accidentally now for all the reasons listed.
Do I want to support aspiring authors to write more? Yes.
Do I want to read stuff from authors I don’t know and don’t know if I like yet, there as opposed to on Amazon where I can at least read some reviews first? Not really.
Do I support Martin’s decision to spotlight these sites and do his best to advertise them to others and get traffic to them? Yes, of course. I think that’s a fine goal.
I will start training myself to use Gay Kinky Stories as my landing page / story stream from now on, in case something there catches my eye. It can’t hurt, and just requires me to spend a tiny bit of effort to go there instead of to gay spiral.
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I think the fundamental issue is that we’re trying to build a user base and the only form of recruitment we have at our disposal is advertising to a pre-existing user base for a different niche. Of course, advertising on any kind of public venue is probably off the table due to both funds but also wanting to keep a fairly low profile since a lot of this content is controversial to people without this kink.
Think of the Venn Diagram of GSS users, people who know they are interested in amateur gay romance content, and people who don’t know they would enjoy amateur gay romance content but would if properly exposed. There is overlap between GSS users and the other two, but I suspect the vast majority of the other two circles exist outside of GSS users. The fact that GSS somehow formed a user base without any formal marketing (that I’m aware of) is a testament to the drive that comes from having such a niche itch to scratch. In fact, I only discovered GSS after years of reading other (worse, IMO) sites and somehow stumbling into GSS.
IMO, collar and cupid are (at least slightly) less niche/stigmatized topics and would require more of a marketing effort - e.g. encouraging authors who post on other sites to link back to collar or cupid, a dedicated Tumblr, etc. Plus, the internet landscape is arguably different than it was at the start of GSS and it’s precursor - whatever method worked for getting new users before might be different now.
I also agree that there could be more inter-site “advertising” so to speak. Personally, I was an early GKS adopter because I somewhat closely follow site developments and I’m (IMO) more willing to take the risk of trying a new site/feature than an average user (e.g. the reluctance @MonsterMash62 describes, I think most users probably feel similarly - especially those who don’t engage with the forum or discord). But, I suspect that many would-be users need more nudging, either because they don’t pay attention as much, or because they need more persuasion. I also believe that this kind of marketing really needs impression counts and click rates so that you can actively analyse its effectiveness. I think it would also be smart to analyze the impression and click rates of story site, e.g. how often to GKS users click on primary cupid stories vs how often GSS users click on primary or secondary cupid stories.
But my main point is that I think trying to create a following primarily from the pool of existing GSS users is a doomed-to-fail approach. How did people discover GSS? I don’t really have an answer, but for me I think I made several Google searches for this kind of content and stumbled into it, or I might have specifically searched for an author who was on another site, and found that they crosspost here; honestly I don’t remember, but it was certainly the result of my persistent active engagement with the genre and eventually hitting something that brought me here. I don’t think you can rely on prospective users for GCS to do the same, since it’s a more socially accepted niche, and there are some decent alternatives e.g. Amazon or fanfiction type sites. I think encouraging users to repost on AO3 as appropriate, or maybe starting a tumblr and reposting pieces of stories (with author consent), or sometime like that might be useful or needed for the user base to properly take off.
But this so goes back to the issue of “maybe we don’t want these sites to be super known in mainstream due to often controversial content”. (Or, maybe this is less of an issue than I think it is? I just know that part of the reason I felt comfortable to start writing here is that I knew it was a large enough community to get enough readers to stroke my ego, BUT small enough that realistically no one I knew IRL would read it unless they also happened to share this kink.)
Sorry for my meandering. It’s 3am where I am and I can’t fall back asleep 
it’s certainly a tough and complex issue. Getting a new site to take off in general is hard enough - adding in so the unique issues that arise with this kind of site makes it all the more difficult.
I tried to do a banner promotion through TrafficJunky. It didn’t bring any significant raise of accesses (it could be measured, but that’s it) for the $200 I invested. A higher investment is out of the question, as I have to pay that out of my own private funds.
Gay hypnosis kink is a well-connected niche and one that really works well with google. Search for “gay” and “hypnosis” and you’ll find GSS pretty quickly (10th hit or so down the list). So people interested in that kink will find GSS sooner or later.
Also, the history of NCMC and all helps too, of course.
Absolutely. It’s way too common that a new site will just show up on anyone’s radar like that.
I don’t track that directly as of now. I also want to keep the stats data manageable - I’m not using GoogleAnalytics, because I don’t want to share access data with any external entity for privacy reasons. I’ve created my own internal collection of data for accesses to the website, but that doesn’t differentiate between which pages are accessed. That would be data overkill for me.
I agree that it would be interesting. I am tracking how often a story is clicked and read, and in theory, it would be easy to also count the site from which that click originated separately. I wonder though, what this info would actually tell me or the authors.
My idea with the new sites was to offer an alternative for nifty, AO3 and the other sites, because in my pov, our sites arguably do a better job with providing content to the reader. For me it’s a shame that nifty has such a huge userbase but such a poor presentation and usability. I’d love to see the crowd move over to us, even if I have to the implement some features that might be missing on GKS to cover everything they do.
But to achieve that, first of all, we have to move out of the mind-control niche. That was the reason to create Cupid, Kinky and Collar in the first place.
However, as we see on GSS itself, you cannot get the crowd to move “just like that”. It is a chicken-egg issue. If the nifty owners would say: here, take our story database and integrate it and we redirect to you, we would have an instant success. But since that’s certainly not going to happen, we either have to find another way to get more tracking or we’re just happy with what we’ve already achieved. Which, seeing all the work I’ve put into GSS, is a bit of a shame.
A matter of my personal pride maybe.
Is that an issue? Do you really WANT to remain part of an exclusive club so the danger of the wrong people finding out about your sexual fantasies is minimal?
Is that really a risk if you remain cautious? I mean, noone knows who @dreamweavr really is - and if you made the mistake of using that name outside of this world, it would be a good idea to create a new identity for your stories anyway.
I really appreciate your thoughts and your inputs.
This discussion helps me to find out what you, the users want. Also, what I want and to make you understand, where I’m comming from.
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Thanks Martin, I really appreciate such a kind and thoughtful response - especially to someone who’s moderately ignorant to a lot of the site’s history haha. I’ll just say some quick replies.
I will say that today I’m not really concerned about this, but as a prospective contributor, it concerned me more. And, I think I have seen other users express concern about this on the forum. Most specifically about things that might be illegal in certain regions - e.g. anything with minors or expression of what would definitely be rape IRL. (This is certainly not YOUR responsibility - as you say, if it’s a concern, users should be cautious. But I do think it’s a concern for some, and having the site be off the mainstream radar I think might be an appeal for those.)
I am 100% feeling the same way about this; the GKS suite of sites is worlds better than these alternatives. But those sites have a lot of users, and it’s probably the most accessible pool of users who would be interested in these alternatives (after GSS users). I was only suggesting cross posting as a means of converting (or poaching lol) users.
Regarding analytics, I’m not suggesting using Google analytics necessarily. I think it would be fairly doable to implement a simple counting system, incrementing impressions by embedding a lazyloading file into the story descriptions, then incrementing clicks. Then you can calculate a conversion rate. And this doesn’t need to be for individual for every story, just some profiles of stories, e.g. Cupid impressions on GSS, Collar impressions on GKS, and other combos. Performance might be a concern though - I don’t know.
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I wonder if the new sites could be advertised on nifty? It doesn’t have that feel, but maybe?
I wonder if we could cross post stories there from Collar and Cupid that link back to Collar and Cupid at the beginning / end?
I wonder if propositioning semi-prominent authors on Twitter to link out to Collar and Cupid would help? I’m thinking of Aardvark if he has any romance stuff or Wesley Bracken for Collar. That kind of thing. And by propositioning, I mean asking them 
Apologies for the somewhat detour my comment makes from the original post. It’s all got me trying to think of ways to get more eyes on the new sites. I think content tailored to those sites is necessary (not necessarily new, but good content) and a bigger audience (authors and readers).
I’ve noticed over the years that BRK at Metabods tends to message authors of stories he likes and if they agree, post those stories on his site. Would it be worth messaging some decent authors on Nifty and trying to cross post their stories? From an author perspective, Kinky is way way better than Nifty. It’s immediately obviously so, just by virtue of having low friction comments from readers.
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IMO this is a great idea. Both encouraging our authors to crosspost, and contacting other prominent authors in different spaces. I mean personally I’ve had no interest in cross posting my stories since I started here and GKS seems way better, but if it were part of a campaign to get new readers I could be persuaded.
Nifty is actually carrying a ad banner on their site. I could ask them how much they’d ask for placing a banner to GSS there.
Right now they have a Gay Harem ad at that spot. Coincidentally, I’ve just been asked once again by Gay Harem whether I want to add their banner on our sites, which I declined like so many times before.
There are already some authors on Twitter linking to Spiral, and of course they could and should link to Cpuid and Collar, too, if they’re publishing there. I could write a Newsflash and a posting on Discord asking them.
Of course, contacting authors specifically and ask them to post on Cupid/Collar/Kinky might be the most effective way. But that’s something I’m not really fit to do. First of all, I practically read stories exclusively on my own sites, just because of lack of time (and interest), and secondly contacting strangers to come to my site is not something I feel too comfortable with.
Having said that, I do think it is a great idea, but I’d prefer to look for some volunteers who frequent nifty and the other sites and know a couple of active authors there. And I’d ask those volunteers to do the contacting, too. That would be an amazing help and could have a profound impact.
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I’m finding it funny after having suggested it now - I don’t frequent Nifty anymore, on account of how much superior the experience of using GayKinkyStories is. I actually haven’t been there in years 
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LOL, you’re like guy of the infomercial.
Can we make a video of someone reading NIfty, but like… falling off their chair and their desk collapsing with a big red X and in black and white.
Then someone reading GayKinkyStories with refreshing music and full colour.
I think for me, I’ve never thought my stories were capable of being posted on Collar. I know I have a couple of story ideas that would fit on Cupid, but personally, I always thought that Collar was for BDSM and me leaning towards slaves that were more consensual in nature didn’t fit in. So maybe explaining what kinds of stories Cupid and Collar allow for might help bring stories to the sites.
BDSM is actually all about consent in reality. For me BDSM is more about phsyical restraint, mild pain and dom/sub relationships without any supernatural elements.
I’ve been using Kinky as my main hub ever since Martin told us to. It works fine. It’s easy to not read stories I don’t wish to read.
I did try cross-posting a kink story that (in my opinion) had a romantic element early on, and the reception from the romance readers was grim. I have never attempted that since, even though all of my stories are ultimately romances and end with a loving relationship being established regardless of how perverted the actual story was. Clearly, I’m not on the correct wavelength for pure romance so I’ll leave them to it.
I regularly read stories on Nifty and have found some good ones (and some authors that I absolutely love, and strike the perfect balance between ingeniously kinky sex and not writing murder porn or psycho doms). But dear god it’s not fun finding those stories. The amount of torture and snuff porn and stories featuring very young children I have to wade through is obnoxious. So I love that Martin has set some sort of minimal limit on the level of depravity he will allow on the site.
I’m going to keep publishing my stories on kinky, and while the cross-over has caused a few spiral readers to accidentally read my freaky shit and be offended, it’s caused more of them to read it and tell me “I’m not into this kink, but I actually like the X, Y, Z thing that you did”. I’d call it a win for putting eyes on my stories overall.
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Stories which are too kinky are not suitable for Cupid, as it is more “vanilla” centered. Of course, if you’re describing a romantic love which has some kink aspects, it might still be suitable for Cupid, but not if the focus is more on the kink and less on the romance.
I x-posted my “Hardcore Hypnosis” to Cupid, because the couple is really in love and care for each other, which creates a whole level of issues for their hypnosis kink. I guess that’s a great example for a story that fits on Cupid, even though it’s certainly kink-heavy.
If you’re a regular on nifty, I wonder if you’re in touch with other authors there. We have been talking about in another thread to contact authors directly and ask them to look at GayKinky.
Or maybe you could link to GayKinky when you post your stories on your ABDL site or nifty. That would help a lot!
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I’ll be honest, I don’t see this as a problem for the site. I see this as a problem for your ambitions for the site.
Look, ultimately if I have the tools to curate the site the way I wish, so I only see the content I have been coming to this site for since forever, then I’m satisfied. I don’t really care what else gets added. I do think it sucks that we can’t just have a dedicated gay space for this fetish, given that everything you’re adding is readily found elsewhere, but whatever. I can make it a dedicated space with the tools I have on hand, both on the site and with my browser.
But I do have to ask: if this merging of the sites does not achieve the results you seek, what’s the next step? How far are you willing to go to get people that are already here to give you the clicks and traffic you want to see?
Because unless I’m missing something, you’re trying to build onto an established community, but was there demand for this going unfulfilled? Did you take a poll? Did this community ask for it? If not, then there are no surprises in that traffic report you gave. I don’t get why trying to force the growth of the other sites is so important, or why it feels like steps need to be taken to make them grow faster. You made them, they exist, they have an audience, and they’ll grow over time or they won’t. Why is it important to take on AO3 or nifty so fast?
At the start of this quote, you spoke about this as your idea, but by the end of it you’re using “we”. Who is “we”? The readers of this site? Why do we have to do anything? We have no skin in this venture. The issue some are having is this attitude that this community needs to be corralled in a certain direction to fulfil your goals.
That is inorganic growth, and it’s ultimately not what is going to get your new suite of sites off the ground. You need organic growth for it to last, and I really don’t think you’ll get much of it from GSS.
And I’ll just add, I agree with the others that are uneasy about attracting more attention to this fetish. The internet is getting increasingly unkind to harmful or harm-adjacent content. This fetish survives because its so niche, but the day is coming when pressure starts being felt by even niche sites. I worry genuinely about increasing the site’s profile and size. I never want to see notice the notice at the top of GKS “Hypno content is now banned”
That posting is mostly uncalled for and in many parts truly unfair to me.
You know that you can still switch GSS to being as pure as it was before. I’ve gone out of my way to preserve the spirit of GSS, to honor its history. However not using its popularity to draw attention to other material would just be stupid.
You might not agree with me, and that’s fine. All in all, I feel a lot of hostility from your posting toward me. That’s unfortunate, but something I have to live with. It won’t change my decisions, though.
I actually did have more than one long talk with other users on our Discord server about the options we have, and I can’t remember seeing you there. So don’t complain that you feel left out of this decision process. And in the end, I’d like to remind you, that even though I’m fully aware that it’s the work of the authors and the dedication of the users that keep these sites afloat, and I’m always going to honor that, this is not a democracy. It runs on my money and my time, ok?
I just had the feeling to write this, because I don’t appreciate this kind of hostility and unwarranted accusations toward me.
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Locking this for a day or two