educational

Adult Webmastering Basics: Part 6: Fetishes

Don’t say we didn’t warn you! There’s no lifeguard on duty when it comes to treading water in the fetish market. These categories range from the tame to the extreme, and encompass everything in between. Let’s dive in, and find out if you sink or swim.

Many of us assume we know the definition of a fetish, and have at least a passing knowledge of their importance to our visitors. In order to shed additional light on the subject, we’ll consult an entry on the Discovery Health web site: “Fetishism is a fixation on an inanimate object or body part that is not primarily sexual in nature, and the compulsive need for its use in order to obtain sexual gratification. It is almost exclusively a male paraphilia [psychosexual disorder]. The object of a fetish is almost invariably used during masturbation and may also be incorporated into sexual activity with a partner in order to produce sexual excitation.”

There’s a golden rule you should always keep in mind when marketing fetish sites. If you don’t take the time to learn the fetish, and to provide what your users are looking for, they will quickly go elsewhere. Many fetishes have progressed to the point where the user can no longer achieve gratification (or has a difficult time) without being exposed to a very specific type of material. Your job is to provide this content to your surfers, not to inundate them with ho-hum offerings in other categories.

Ethnicity/Characteristic Fetishes
Ethnicity fetishes can either be very broad (Ukrainian or Asian fetish sites) or very specific, perhaps combining multiple categories (ebony men with big cocks on ivory women with small breasts). As a reminder, no matter how you slice it, catering to an ethnicity or characteristic fetish is an all or nothing undertaking. Users signing up for an Asian site aren’t going to be pleased if you provide them with generic content. In other words, this fetish shouldn’t be used as a marketing hook to bring users to a generic site that offers only a few pictures catering to these surfer’s needs.

Characteristic fetish sites include BBW (Big, Beautiful Women), small breasted gals, puffy nipples, pregnant women, midgets, giants, and many more. If you can imagine it, someone has created a fetish around it.

Clothing and Uniform Fetishes
Clothing fetishes are less about the model in many cases, and more about what the model is wearing. Specific clothing items typically include lingerie, jeans, skirts, shoes (high heels, sandals, sneakers), stockings or pantyhose, gloves, leather outfits, silk garments, bras, panties (especially upskirt or flashing shots), and corsets.

Uniform fetishes involve the clothes necessary to associate a model with a specific profession, activity, or other demographic. Examples include nurses, cheerleaders, college co-eds, teachers, secretaries, and maids. As with many fetish categories, these sites can achieve success by incorporating elements of role play in videos or photo shoots.

Object and Action Fetishes
Object fetishes revolve around the inclusion of specific objects in a shoot. These items might include food products, weapons such as knives and guns, ropes and ties (especially involving bondage), and may involve cross-over with clothing fetishes such as leather or high heels.

Action fetishes incorporate certain sexual acts, or specific undertakings of a non-sexual nature that become gratifying when viewed by someone with that particular fetish. Examples include rough sex, anal sex, oral sex (sometimes involving facials, cum and cock worship), whippings and S&M, leashing, and role reversals.

Choose Wisely, Grasshopper!
The world of fetishes is difficult to understand from the outside. Either commit yourself to tedious research, or call upon your own understanding of a particular fetish. Either way, don’t go in blind, or your results will be disappointing.

The dominos keep falling! It’s time to select content for your budding adult enterprise. The basis for your entire promotion will hinge on the effectiveness of this material. Next week, we’ll look at how to make the right choices...

Copyright © 2026 Adnet Media. All Rights Reserved. XBIZ is a trademark of Adnet Media.
Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission is prohibited.

More Articles

opinion

Inside the OCC's Debanking Review and Its Impact on the Adult Industry

For years, adult performers, creators, producers and adjacent businesses have routinely had their access to basic financial services curtailed — not because they are inherently higher-risk customers, but because a whole category of lawful work has long been treated as unacceptable.

Corey Silverstein ·
opinion

How to Build Operational Resilience Into Your Payment Ecosystem

Over the past year, we’ve watched adult merchants weather a variety of disruptions and speedbumps. Some even lost entire revenue streams overnight — simply because they relied too heavily on a single cloud provider that suffered an outage, lacked sufficient redundancy and failover, or otherwise fell short when it came to making sure their business was protected in case of unwelcome surprises.

Cathy Beardsley ·
opinion

Building a Stronger Strategy Against Card-Testing Bots

It’s a scenario every high-risk merchant dreads. You wake up one morning, check your dashboard and see a massive spike in transaction volume. For a fleeting moment, you’re excited at the premise that something went viral — but then reality sets in. You find thousands of transactions, all for $0.50 and all declined.

Jonathan Corona ·
opinion

A Creator's Guide to Starting the Year With Strong Financial Habits

Every January brings that familiar rush of new ideas and big goals. Creators feel ready to overhaul their content, commit to new posting schedules and jump on fresh opportunities.

Megan Stokes ·
opinion

Pornnhub's Jade Talks Trust and Community

If you’ve ever interacted with Jade at Pornhub, you already know one thing to be true: Whether you’re coordinating an event, confirming deliverables or simply trying to get an answer quickly, things move more smoothly when she’s involved. Emails get answered. Details are confirmed. Deadlines don’t drift. And through it all, her tone remains warm, friendly and grounded.

Women In Adult ·
opinion

Outlook 2026: Industry Execs Weigh In on Strategy, Monetization and Risk

The adult industry enters 2026 at a moment of concentrated change. Over the past year, the sector’s evolution has accelerated. Creators have become full-scale businesses, managing branding, compliance, distribution and community under intensifying competition. Studios and platforms are refining production and business models in response to pressures ranging from regulatory mandates to shifting consumer preferences.

Jackie Backman ·
opinion

How Platforms Can Tap AI to Moderate Content at Scale

Every day, billions of posts, images and videos are uploaded to platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X. As social media has grown, so has the amount of content that must be reviewed — including hate speech, misinformation, deepfakes, violent material and coordinated manipulation campaigns.

Christoph Hermes ·
opinion

What DSA and GDPR Enforcement Means for Adult Platforms

Adult platforms have never been more visible to regulators than they are right now. For years, the industry operated in a gray zone: enormous traffic, massive data volume and minimal oversight. Those days are over.

Corey D. Silverstein ·
opinion

Making the Case for Network Tokens in Recurring Billing

A declined transaction isn’t just a technical error; it’s lost revenue you fought hard to earn. But here’s some good news for adult merchants: The same technology that helps the world’s largest subscription services smoothly process millions of monthly subscriptions is now available to you as well.

Jonathan Corona ·
opinion

Navigating Age Verification Laws Without Disrupting Revenue

With age verification laws now firmly in place across multiple markets, merchants are asking practical questions: How is this affecting traffic? What happens during onboarding? Which approaches are proving workable in real payment flows?

Cathy Beardsley ·
Show More