When CE Cash launched City-Sex.com in January 2010, it was a major expansion for the Los Angeles based company.
CE Cash, which has been in business since 1996 and celebrates its 15th anniversary this year, has long been recognized as a leader in affiliate marketing on the adult Internet. But with the unveiling of CitySex.com, CE Cash plunged into the adult dating market. CE Cash has a long history of helping other companies’ adult dating websites, but with CitySex.com, CE Cash is now promoting an adult dating site of its own.
There are people who have mobile versions of their dating sites, but very few have actually come out with real mobile products for the adult dating industry.
“We have promoted every dating site from Amateur-Match to Fling to AFF,” explained Ardy, director of CE Cash. “You name it, we’ve promoted it. And after promoting other people’s dating sites over the years, it was a natural progression for us to launch our own dating site. The massive amounts of traffic we have on our own can go to something that belongs to us rather than a third-party sponsor.”
Ardy stressed that adult online dating is an incredibly competitive field, and because the field is so competitive, it was crucial for CitySex.com to establish its own niche and its own identity — and CE Cash, he said, envisioned a site that was adult-oriented but not as in-your-face as some adult dating sites can be. “It was definitely a bold move to get into the dating market publicly and open it up to affiliates,” Ardy asserted. “The competition in dating is staggering. There are a lot of really big players, and they know how to promote their sites well and are doing a great job at it. So we are trying to find our own little niche in the adult market.
‘We knew that in order to come into this market, we would have to do something a little bit different—and I think that difference has been not focusing so much on just the adult aspect, but also, focusing more on the social aspect of it. CitySex isn’t as aggressive a name as some of the other ones out there, like LocalFuckBuddies. You see so many offshoots of other dating sites these days that are very aggressive and very adult in nature.”
Social networking, according to Ardy, is a crucial part of CitySex.com’s business model. “CitySex.com has been, for us, more than just a dating site — it also has a very good social network aspect to it,” Ardy said. “The design has evolved very much from the likes of MySpace and Facebook to where people have comments and walls—the things you find on pretty much any social network site. Obviously, there is the tie-in with adult; you have the adult members-area features in there. But we have kept it more vanilla than other adult dating sites; it’s not just a big mish-mash of porn on the inside.”
Ardy pointed out that when a company that has been making its mark in affiliate marketing branches out into adult online dating, there is quite a learning curve. “CE Cash and all of its counterparts have always been free trial programs,” Ardy noted. “So for us, going into a world where we are billing people for one-month memberships and three-month and sixmonth memberships has been completely different.”
One of CitySex’s goals, Ardy emphasized, is to be as mobile-friendly as possible. Ardy explained: “Unlike other people’s mobile sites — which are just downsized versions for a phone browser — ours is a fully functioning mobile site designed for mobile for every system, including iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Symbian. That’s going to be a big advantage we have in this market because apparently, no one in dating has really focused on just the mobile side. There are people who have mobile versions of their dating sites, but very few have actually come out with real mobile products for the adult dating industry.”
CitySex.com will not be CE Cash’s only dating site; two niche-oriented adult dating sites (WebAffair.com and MillionaireDates.com) have been in the works. And a mainstream dating site is also being developed by CE Cash. By not making City-Sex.com too hardcore, Ardy said, CE Cash will have an easier time branching out into the mainstream side of the online dating market.
But all this expansion in online dating doesn’t mean that CE Cash is cutting back on affiliate marketing — not by a longshot. Rather, the company’s goal is to create some new sources of revenue while maintaining the old ones.
“With CE Cash,” Ardy explained, “we already have four different affiliate programs on the adult side for paysites and mobile. And dating is something that doesn’t compete with our existing traffic or affiliates. Adding dating is just a new revenue stream for us.”
