Industry News

The controversial topic of sex toys haunts novice businessmen. Is it worth climbing into this niche? The answer is yes: the demand for thrills has been and will always be. And the online store successfully solves the problem of “shyness”.

1.Offline vs online

Having a physical store has the advantages of high speed and low shipping costs. It's one thing to order goods from the supplier's warehouse and give a contract to third-party logistics. At least one day will pass. And it’s quite another thing to wrap the goods on your counter and send a fast-footed courier. The toy will arrive in a couple of hours.

But more often than not, keeping a warehouse and a courier is more expensive than outsourcing it all. In addition, the presence of a point, even at a passage point near the metro, does not mean a flurry of customers. The theme is such that there are not so many who want to “touch, see live”.

With the site, everything is simpler - complete anonymity. I placed an order, introduced myself as Ivan Sidorov - the next day a courier arrived with a neutral black bag.

2.Positioning

For the most part, sellers of toys for adults do not reinvent the wheel, do not look for zest and position themselves openly and clearly: a sex shop, an intimate goods store, and so on and so forth. But there are those who like to distance themselves from competitors and sell themselves as a curiosity.

Option one：

Check out the Family Strengthening Store. This is an online anti-sex shop where the focus is on the happiness and health of the family. Not only will they sell a vibrator here, but they will also teach the basics of sexual maturity and culture at the "Academy of Love".

And when you have kids, you'll come back here for diapers and a quadcopter.

Jokes are jokes, but you need to pay tribute to the Rabbit online store. They are very cool in the "adult theme" and literally make this market.

On such sites, as a rule, they try to write that sex is normal. What are we talking about high here. We are for the idea. Sometimes it looks organic, but the line from normal to comical is very thin. And if you go over it, you can strain the client. I mean make you nervous. “Let me just buy what I want, and leave me alone!”

Option two：

Here the situation is completely opposite - the kingdom of sin and vice. You go to the site and you will definitely see a sexy beauty from the photo bank. The logo contains yin-yang or the symbols "Me" and "Jo", or a five-yard organ, or angels and demons. A black background with purple tints is often used to further emphasize the "forbidden" theme.

Option three：

The extreme degree of positioning is products for a very, very narrow target audience. Probably, the owners of such stores read the book about the "blue oceans" and decided to put the author's ideas into practice. And be sure to test it in your business. This is how “Sex Shops for Women” (hello feminists), “Sex Shops for Men” (well, what about!), “Shop for those over 40” and other brilliant ideas appear.

Usually such masterpieces do not last long.

Positioning is probably good. You decide. But, as practice shows, experiments are not always crowned with success.

Difficulties of promotion

If you decide to open a sex shop, get ready for all sorts of restrictions on the use of online services. We are talking about Internet marketing tools and ready-made modular solutions for the site.

For example, you won't be able to use retargeting. Trite in "Yandex.Direct" you can not set up display in networks. Only search is available for you. This is fair, because hardly anyone will be happy if this kind of advertising is chasing him.

You can buy links for SEO, but you need to keep a close eye on the words. keywords. If there is a hint of porn in the link anchors, advertising platforms can ban you.

And here is a piquant moment in working with Yandex.Checkout (a real case). The service sent an email with the following content:

“The bank has claims against your site: remove pictures with bare body parts, maximum topless images are allowed. How to do it, let me know by reply. The term is two days.

And then a couple of links to cards of silicone dolls. By the way, Yandex.Checkout knows something about dominance. What to do - we sat filtering causal places in Photoshop!

And now more about ways to attract customers. Where to look for our traffic and customers who want to remain incognito? Of course, in search engines.

contextual advertising

The context in the "adult theme", by the way, is quite beneficial. Of course, if you know how to set it up correctly: get confused with quick links, additional phrases, etc.

For example, many are tormented by the question: whether to advertise at night. On the one hand, it's cheaper. On the other hand, is it effective? By experience, we managed to find out that it is possible to place ads at night, but at the same time you need to customize the site. For example, we made a separate advertising campaign from 22:00 to 08:00. In the ads they wrote: "10% discount at night." We made special UTM tags for this. The site tracks them and, if it sees the “night” tag, displays a banner about the nightly discount.

In this case, it is really effective. Because a person sees the same message on the site as in the ad. He understands that it was not just a "bait".

Average market players unscrew in the context of 15-20 thousand rubles daily. And now estimate the demand for goods and the turnover of stores, if such budgets are poured into advertising.

Search engine promotion (SEO)

While everyone is solving the dilemma “links: to be or not to be?”, sex shops are successfully engaged in link building. Only these are not some satellites, doorways, exchangers, runs and other black methods. Don't even think about it this way. Links are placed naturally by webmasters, bloggers, youtubers, SMMs on normal sites where there is traffic.

An important detail for SEO (however, as well as for contextual advertising) is not to use any obscenity in keywords and link anchors, such as genital designations, obscenities, jargon from porn, so as not to get banned from search engines. Take the nomenclature and go straight for all product requests.

By the way, this is a real screenshot from the SeoPult interface, where many metropolitan, regional stores and their colleagues from Belarus and Kazakhstan are promoted. See the budgets? 50 rubles, 100 rubles for one line The text is taken from the chic BroDude.ru ovo - this is the monthly cost of links. Available? Not that word. Even if there is no money for context, welcome to SEO. Yes, with him the path to the start of sales is longer, but if there is no money, then you have to hold on.

Work with clients

An online chat is required. Modest and not so modest buyers will probably want to clarify some details of the assortment. Therefore, you need to be in touch. Stress resistance and a sense of humor are the qualities that your consultant should be endowed with.

Let's sum up our message: toys for adults are a fertile topic, there is always demand, there are still places in a niche. You can safely start with an online store according to the scheme that is convenient for you dropshipping, sales from your own magazine, and give people joy. With the promotion of problems should not arise, given the simple rule - step back from porn topics. You can share your thoughts in the comments if you have something to say on the topic.