$40,000/Month Selling Sex Toys on the Internet

(In case it’s not obvious, this one’s probably NSFW 🙈)

Dainis Graveris is the founder of SexualAlpha, a site that provides sex toy reviews, guides, and education.

He revealed lots of details about the site in an interview last October, and shared via email recently that the site now earns “an average of 40,000 USD in monthly affiliate commissions” 💰

The backstory…

In 2008, Dainis was working as web designer at an agency and started 1stWebDesigner.com to blog about web design and development. He sold that site after 4 years.

Then…

I am a passionate dancer. At that time, kizomba piqued my interest, so I moved countries and created a dancing passion project – OnKizomba. Then reality hit hard. Creating videos of myself and other people dancing won’t pay my bills.

So I returned home without a lot of money in my pocket and got a regular job brick-and-mortar style from our next-door neighbor – a sex toy store (surprise, surprise). And what a wonderful surprise that was!

That was my AHA moment.

Working at this store gave him a good insight into the industry, which led to him launching SexualAlpha in early 2020 🚀

But he started out testing the waters on an established platform with lots of traffic…

After keyword research and competitor analysis, I wrote 100 articles on Medium.com to test the theories. I did all that in 2 months. Crazy grand!

Three months later, my Medium profile [link] received 2M monthly visits. Then, I added affiliate links to see what sells. I knew it was a matter of time till I got banned [by Medium] for either sexual topics or affiliate links. It lasted around 3 months. But then I already learned that sex toys sell a lot easier than education.

He then moved the articles to SexualAlpha and continued creating content 📝

Dainis tried sharing his content on social media but realized no one would hit the share button because of the topic 😕

So…

I went ahead and focused on SEO, updated our existing content, analyzed new keywords, and got new content out. While regularly publishing quality content helped us find potential buyers and keep our avid readers, it wasn’t enough to significantly boost our traffic. I knew we needed to reach out and make our online presence known.

After growing to 30-50k monthly visits, Dainis knew he needed help. 

He built up a remote team to handle content operations and email marketing. This freed him up to focus on high-level tasks and relationships.

Reaching out and building relationships in the industry was key…

I used my email, LinkedIn, and socials to connect with sex toy brands, shops, and relevant online platforms – anyone within the sexual wellness industry. I then started building relationships by contributing quality content and sharing my expertise across platforms. I got featured. Our website got featured. All these relationship-building efforts boosted our online presence.

Dainis’ advice to new entrepreneurs 👇

Experience is your best teacher; you’ll never learn the industry and how it works if you don’t take the plunge.

My main takeaway from this one is how a big failure can pave the way for a big success.

Dainis only ended up working at that sex toy store because his “dancing passion project” had failed miserably 😔

Reminds me of Derek Sivers’ favorite fable.