Surveys show that one in three visitors to adult sites are women, which suggests that women are looking for more ways to enjoy sexual pleasure as well as understand more of what men want from a sexual partner. Both men and women enjoy fantasy, but for women, adult sites can provide new ideas that she could possibly use in her real-life relationship as well as a safe way to discover what might arouse her, not just him.
We all want something for our money, but women go a step further. Not only do they want to see what they just bought, they want to feel it and connect with it. For women, physical possession is important, so in purchasing adult, being able to keep the content is a step in the right direction.
One of the biggest challenges in marketing adult to women is that sexually explicit material caters to men's desires, but what women are looking for is a more realistic view of a woman's sexuality. A little romance goes a long way for women looking for sex with substance; even if the words aren't there, the pictures or video could have a plot. Whether the content is hardcore or not, female adult surfers require a more realistic approach.
It's not impossible to sell adult online to women, but in some cases adult content might require a so-called upgrade to successfully capture this market.
"The vast majority of adult content is made for men," said Karen Jackson, owner of ForTheGirls.com, an erotic website for women. "It reflects what men want to see. The focus is on male pleasure and the male orgasm, and the needs of women are secondary. With adult for women, we're trying to better reflect a woman's perspective and pay more attention to women's pleasure. Obviously derogatory stuff like you find on a lot of reality sites is out. Women want to be respected; they don't want to be told they're sluts because they like sex."
According to Monique Cousineau, a producer of erotic content for women and the owner of MistressMayhemStudios. com, adult publishers can either reinvent the wheel when it comes to drawing in female surfers or simply add content to sites that has stronger appeal to women.
"In mainstream movies, women look for stories; they want to know more than 'the what' they want to know 'the how and why,'" Cousineau said. "Guys just want to get off. Women want to get off too, but they also want to experience the getting there."
In terms of traffic volume, Cousineau doesn't believe women's sites are more heavily trafficked than men's sites, but that, over time, they will be.
"It's only a limited market if we don't look for ways to reach women in mainstream," Cousineau said. "They are already on computers and roaming around shopping and looking for information."
Based on statistics from Nielsen //NetRatings, nearly 30 percent of all adult surfers are female.
"I would say that appealing to one in three surfers is not really a limited market," Jackson said. "There's huge potential there. The Internet has really been a boon for women. Before they had to face walking into a sex shop to buy adult. Now the Internet gives them the advantage of anonymity. They can enjoy adult in the privacy of their own homes, and no one needs to ever know. Our society has expected women to be less interested in sex, or to be more 'moral' than men when it comes to sexually explicit material. The Internet overcomes that obstacle of moral expectation."
According to Cousineau, the female adult surfer can easily be reached on the computer, but a content provider needs to be able to move with them to other places too, such as videos and books.
As for the profitability factor in the female adult market, Jackson said there is huge potential.
"I know that other adult sites for women who got the 'vibe' right are doing well," she said. "Candida Royalle's movies are still strong sellers, despite some of them being almost 20 years old. There's money to be made, provided you do it right."
