12/29/2004-01/31/2005

02/05/2005-03/02/2005

03/04/2005-04/02/2005

04/09/2005-01/07/2006

01/08/2006-08/12/2007

Alas, my blog doesn't include online comments, but feel free to share your responses with me at cyan@protgp.com

11/15/2009

Two new stories, my total output since June. In the free section is "Everything Off" about a man who asks his reluctant wife to dominate him. And in the members' section is "That's Crazy" about a wife who suggests to her husband that he'd be turned on if she strayed.

I do have some ideas in mind and today I considered writing out one, but the truth is, I'm definitely not much into this writing these days. And a large part of the reason is Real Life: it seems I've acquired one, much to my amazement. There's no doubt in my mind that writing for me has been a substitute for what's missing in my life. I'm now in a promising relationship after a long dry spell, and when I observe myself, I see someone who isn't much focused on the type of fantasy these stories represent.

So I'm sure you are curious: is my real life relationship a wall-to-wall fest of the type of adventures recounted here? So far, not a bit of it, and all indications are that it will be quite the opposite, but I don't seem to care. That's budding romance for you, and I suppose that's how kinky people get paired up with vanilla spouses, despite what common sense might suggest.

These stories are fantasies for me, but while the notion of such an adventure in real life has some attraction, in my case, I'd have to say I write these stores because they are nothing like my real life. Who wants to write about what they experience every day? (Apparently some do, and it's good that we have some folks like that around to do that for us. Me, I tend to read fantasy fiction.)

I'm not taking the site down, and I'll probably turn out a story once in a while, but I can't promise new stories on a regular basis. Who knows? Things might slow down for me and I find myself writing again.

07/04/2009

I just uploaded two stories into the membership section. Both I wrote in this past week. "Preferable Arrangement", from a very recent idea, is about a couple and their arrangement whereby she is allowed to have female lovers. I see reference to such arrangements occasionally and it occurred to me to use the situation as the basis for a story. Hm, it never ceases to amaze me how long I can overlook such an idea that seems so obvious in retrospect.

I wrote the other story, "Pretty Woman", yesterday, but it is from a story idea I jotted down a couple of months ago. It's a hypnosis story and I'm curious to see how it works. I might post it somewhere else to give it a bit more audience.

And so, my low output continues. I still dream up and record story ideas, with over forty this year so far. Among the ideas is to write a story about a marrying couple who decide to attend an orgy for their wedding night sex. Hm, I suspect someone in the world has done this for real, and if I write the story, you can read about it here. Or, at least, a version of it.

I made some sales over the past three months: three, that were all in May. By my calculation, I have ten members at the moment.

I am making a bit of progress on one front in trying to attract folks to the site. I did some more studying on effective web page titles and used the results to retitle my pages that list the free lesbian, femdom, and spanking stories. What I did was look up "lesbian", "femdom", and "spanking" in one of the search-engine search-string statistics sites to see what phrases people search for that incorporate these words. Then I checked g o o g l e to see how many hits it listed for each phrase. I retitled the pages with phrases that have the right meaning, but are definitely searched for, and for which g o o g l e lists relatively few results. For example, g o o g l e currently shows 448,000 results for "lesbian stories", but only 36,000 results for "free lesbian erotica" (both searches with the quotes). Using all this information (including searches with and without quotes), I made some judgment calls and came up with titles Lesbian Erotica, Free Femdom Stories, and Spanking Fiction. The unparallel phrasing of these titles is hardly attractive, but they do carry the right meaning. I also created a new website Site Map, carrying these names as links for these pages. The point is that search engines generally rate a page as a better result for a particular phrase if that phrase is the title of the page, and also if there are links to the page that employ that exact phrase.

So how is this working out for me? That's the true news: I made the change a month or two ago, and I just noticed that g o o g l e lists Spanking Fiction as the 21st result, at the top of its third page of results, for that phrase, without quotes. First-page results get a huge advantage, but third-page results are pretty decent when you think how many sites there are out there. Of course, the proof would be seeing more people entering the site through that page, and I haven't seen that yet.

As usual, I have a bevy of new links found at Janes Guide's never-ending list of must-visit sites (What would we do without Always Aroused Girl?): atrashynovel which publishes and sells their own brand of romantica, True Sex Stories on which you can post your (supposedly) true adventures, Bedroom Angels Bedtime Stories with a good-sized story collection, Too much, too soon which is sort of a blog of photos, FRENCH GIRLS by JG which is a photographer's site and blog, and Vintage Erotic Pictures with pictures from vintage post cards, stereographs, and more. Some blogs I've run across in my surfing include: Over Her Knee with stories, spanked hubby which features pictures, Hermione's Heart, Brambleberry Blush, Starting a FemDom Marriage, Yes, I'm a submissive man!, Her Secret Corner, and Bottomless girls.

Other sites include the interesting essay, Why is non-pornographic erotica so rare? as well as the fascinating pay site (with samples), Naked and Clothed. I also added a link to the RTA site which provides labeling for adult sites.

And one last thing. I feature a couple of sites every day as my "Link of the day", and my "Erotic referrer of the day", and I usually update this daily. For example, today, Wet Place is my link of the day and Strap-On Lovers Guide To The WWW is my erotic referrer of the day. Well, I keep track of what sites have been so-featured, and as of now, there have been 998 such sites. I'm nearing a thousand! I actually don't have a thousand links, so some of the sites I featured in the past, are gone, alas.

erotic writing, erotic links, website statistics, website publicity

03/28/2009

Hm, seems I haven't written here in a while. I just uploaded the one story that I've completed this year, which is called "Your Style" and is in the membership section. Sorry about that. It's about a couple being enticed to join a D/S club.

In January, I did add one free story, "Little Question", about a woman receiving a very unexpected question from a female co-worker. And in the membership section, I added "Pleasant Scene", about two women indulging themselves with each other while on a private picnic. They're into spanking, not surprisingly.

It is clear that my output is declining. Things are going on in my life, or rather they are not going on and I'm devoting more energy to trying to make them go on. And I still wonder how much I'll keep this up. I do get story ideas and I got to recent ideas that I really wanted to write up, but have not found the focus to sit down and do it. The most recent idea I recorded, for example, is about a professional man's assistant who "helps" him in ways we'd consider far above and beyond the call of duty. It's my take on a story plot that I just read, and that I know I've seen before. I even read a plot akin to it in English class, years ago, in a Somerset Maugham story, "The Treasure".

As regards to sales, I'm still cruising along at my usual success rate. I scored four sales in October-December and four more in January-March. I believe the membership area currently has ten readers with access.

New links include a bunch from Janes Guide's new listings: World Sex Records, The Bondage Awards, X Critic, The Exotic Erotic Ball website, unseen.tv, Ardor's stories and art, LushStories.com, and The Naughty American. And Jane's newly-listed blogs include submission & metaphor, EllaRegina, and My Fetish Diary Blog.

I got wind of Noble Romance from an ERWA call for submissions. I received an invitation to swap links from the online store, Sh! and I received an invitation from the spanking link site, Spankerama.com, to apply for a link, but am still waiting on an answer. I found links to this site at EuroStrapon TGP, and SMBD. Free Hardcore, which is an advertisement for kink.com pay sites, is a site I used to link to, and I've found it again.

In my occasional surfing, I've run across Samarel Artcore Fantasies, Spanking Diary, alt porn, Take It Like A Man, Fet Spank, Comstock Films, ErosBlog, Erotic Writers Club, Eros-Thanatos, Michelle Carlyle, Beauty in Darkness, and Ariel Anderssen / Amelia Jane Rutherford.

erotic writing, erotic links

10/03/2008

My new stories are out. "Interesting Assignment" is about a model who runs into wholly unexpected demands at work. "Little Thing" begins with a wife making an unreasonable demand of her husband, but that's just the beginning. "My Turn" is about a deal that a husband and wife made. I think I've written this story before, but when I do repeat a plot (hard to avoid with 300-plus stories out), each one has its own flavor. "Pleasant Morning" is about nice summer morning, perfect for laying out in the sun. "Sex Survey" begins with a woman's shock when someone asks her her answers on what she assumed was an anonymous survey, but that's just the beginning. In the free area, "Little Question" is about an unexpected little question about having sex.

And as a little bonus, I added "Interesting Assignment" to Stories Online. Check it out. (Having submitted it, I keep having to go back to see how many downloads it has had and what score readers are giving it. The very first to score it gave it a 10. Yay!, but it's downhill from there. My stories never seem to score at the top.)

Cyan Stories has had three memberships since the end of June, and according to what I see, now has nine members. (Be the first on your block to join!) A note about our membership service: we use Membership+, which was always a small player, and is now very small, but kindly continues to serve its existing clients who remain with it, such as ourselves. They do reliably handle orders, but not instantly. If you give them weeks, your order will go through.

Cyan Stories now has 819 links to other sites and receives about 800 visits a day. Over its lifetime, it has received 6 million visits, with over 13 million hits.

Hm, the new links. Janes' always provides me with a great bunch. Veg Porn is a pay site with, well, a conscience? Ned Rosen Erotica is a stylish site of erotic photos, Nuexpo.com is another, in french. Nude in San Francisco has its own take on nude photos, and Decorative Girls is another rather specialized site. Some literary/story/author sites are Wilted Rose.Com, Amelia June, Erotic Fiction Author, and Carmenica Diaz. Blogs include, smutty intelligence, Linda Sue's Diary, Erotic Fiction by Zander Vyne, Sexy Swinging, Wife Worshipper, Sublime Submission, and Urban Roguery. And The Best Sex Bloggers should help you wend your way through the way-too-many blogs you want to read.

I also gleaned some links from Erotica Readers & Writers Association' site: Total-E-Bound (E-books! What were you thinking?), Wanted List (adult DVD rentals), videobox (adult movies collected and offered online), and Wade erotic, an erotic writing course.

I got a couple of sites from Quantcast, which is not an erotic site, but includes web statistics for erotic sites such as this one. It also classifies sites as similar or related, and this site's relations apparently include AllMe.com and My First Time.

The Passion List is a collection of erotic links for women. Short Fiction is for short stories of all kinds, but includes erotic stories.

And as usual, I spent a little time just wandering around. Wintermute's Spanking Stories seems familiar to me, and I'm not sure why I didn't have a link before. Sex in Cinema is the sex section of a non-erotic movie-related site, Greatest Films. Naked Chicks on Post-it Notes (just what it says!) is another site I recall and was surprised I didn't already have. If that isn't enough for you guys, TenThousand Girls Page should keep you occupied for a while, and when you are done with that, there is Bounce-OMeter, which is not an erotic page at all. Really! MoSexIndex is a site-rating site where participants contribute to the ratings. KeepItNice.com has its own particular somewhat-humorous take on soft-core.

Happy reading and surfing!

erotic writing, erotic links

09/20/2008

Hm, today I'm going to point out some of the spanking video's I've run across. No, I'm not wasting too much time. I hope. (It's research.)

Please note that these are truly painful rather than playful spankings. If that's not your thing, I advise you to skip this. Also note, that over time, these videos are likely to disappear, leaving this entry with broken links. Can't help it.

My own taste runs toward what are termed domestic spanking scenes, as opposed to whips, chains, dungeons, fetish outfits, and the like. My preference is also for scenes with parties more-or-less the same age who appear to have agreed to the proceedings. That's a type of consensuality that appeals to me, though the spankee may be reluctant. In fact, it's good if the spankee is reluctant.

However, there are many hot scenes that stray from these criteria, so not all these fit. Marking is something else that doesn't do a thing for me, but apparently some people mark quite easily while others don't, so whether marks are left often depends more upon the "victim" than on the actual severity.

A good male/female caning, but which is a father/daughter scene, is Caned After The Shower at the site Spanking Tube. It stars the model Samantha Woodley, and for more about her, you can read an Interview at The Spanking Spot blog.

On the other side of the coin is the female/male video Chick Spanks Dude's Ass Hard at XVIDEOS.COM. Unfortunately for me, the site has chosen to improve their videos with a format that we don't all have, and I have to go elsewhere to see any videos.

A rather severe female/female scene is Naughty Girl Gets Strapped, etc. from xHamster, staring spanker Kelly Payne, who has her own site, Tantrum Trainers.

Another female/female scene is Cruel Aunts, also from XVIDEOS.COM.

Some YouTube videos show spanking scenes in (mostly) mainstream movies from various decades. A couple are Top 10 Modern Spanking Scenes (1990-2007) and Top 10 Classic Spanking Scenes of the Eighties.

A few more videos: TUBE8 has S/M Lesbian Whipping.

The site, xHamster has quite a few other spanking videos, including Severe Caning, Severe Whipping of a disobedient submissive, 40 strokes of the whip, another Severe Whipping of a disobedient submissive, Teen Gets Red Bottom, Cane dans le gymnase, and Spanking this slave girl very hard.

And at Fetish Tube are a pair of spanking videos with model Niki Flynn and aficionado, Ludwig, are Niki-Flynn---The German Lesson and Ludwig's Comeuppance. (Update: Fetish Tube, which nicely made these two videos available, no longer supports these links. Catch them now at Spanking Tube at Niki Flynn - The German Lesson and Ludwig's Comeuppance. Thanks to Ludwig for pointing this out.)

Happy viewing!

videos, spanking

08/29/2008

I now have five stories written, waiting to be added to the site. Lately I haven't been in an erotica-writing mood, but chances remain good that I shall hit my target of six by the end of September.

I recently happened on an article about Wonder Woman, of all people, in Bitch Magazine, and I was completely sucked in by the story. That led me to Wikipedia and Alan Kistler's site and I remain intrigued. Personally, I'd always counted Wonder Woman as a pop culture heroine, conceived when comic book companies were in the market for fresh superhero ideas, later adopted as an icon by feminists apparently hard up for role models, and whose stories innocently incorporated fetish elements simply by using the standards of beauty of the time along with the typical melodrama-bondage of days past, much like the proverbial damsel tied to the railroad tracks. But now I shall report what I found out regarding Wonder Woman's history, which I shall present backwards toward its beginnings.

I've been aware of the 1970s television show. And I am aware that comics often let characters languish, later to revive or reboot them. I was also aware that Wonder Woman had an early World War II history, complete with the skimpy outfit, and the big chest. That people had noticed the tied-up women in the story-lines seemed a bit natural, since, after all, these were comic book conflicts, and in this instance, they would incorporate, at minimum, one woman. I was also aware that before the 1970s comic books adhered to a rather strict decency code, but I just learned that this code resulted from a huge 1950s comic book decency campaign, which brought on the decade of cleaned up mainstream-comics somewhat analogous to the Hayes code for mainstream movies. (Have you ever watched the 1930-era pre-Hayes movies, as they moved toward more sex and nudity? Such as Jane's apparent nude swim in "Tarzan and His Mate".)

So the original Wonder Woman wasn't necessarily as toned down as the censored comics of the late fifties and sixties. But there's more. The specific decency complaint leveled against pre-censorship Wonder Woman was that she was indecently unfeminine in her independent attitude and that she encouraged lesbianism. Ironically, at the time, Wonder Woman had already been watered down quite a bit as the writing chores had passed from hand to hand. In her very first incarnation, well, she fought Nazis a lot, but also spent a lot of time encouraging other women to live up to their potential and be independent, and she most definitely did not glue herself to her boyfriend's side: in fact, he was frequently off stage contributing elsewhere to the war effort. And in each adventure, she was almost certain to be bound sometime, as were her allies and at other times she was, in turn, capturing her enemies. Her superpowers actually encouraged stories with bondage: her weapon was the Golden Lasso, which when she roped someone, caused them to be obedient and truthful. And when she herself was bound, her powers were nullified. And clearly, as a woman who fulfilled the days' standards of beauty, and who wore a skimpy superhero outfit, she strikes us as something of a dominatrix.

So where did this distinctive character come from? As I said above, I'd always assumed it was a perfect storm of the need for more superheros to sell comics ("hm, why not a female superhero?"), along with the beauty standards of the day, a feminine take on the superhero outfit, and the past's delight in innocent melodramatic bondage: heros, heroines, and villains tied up at various times. And her personal feminist campaigning could naturally follow from the character, who is supposed to be a capable fighter, thus a capable woman and a believer in herself and feminine potential. The result might carry a subliminal dominatrix/feminist/lesbian message, but is it possible that this was by design? Was there a hand behind this that was aware of what we perceive in all this?

The creator and original writer of Wonder Woman was William Moulton Marston. Marston fell into the comic industry in a unique way, taken on as an educational consultant. A company offered him such a post after he wrote on the educational potential of the widely-read comics of the day. The company was intrigued by the idea of comics being considered something more than simple throw-away entertainment.

Marston was a psychological researcher by profession with a doctorate from Harvard, and was very well known. You could say that his field of expertise was how people react, for example, to entertainment. He'd know a lot about what the Wonder Woman story and presentation was doing. Any "subliminal" message delivered by the Wonder Woman story seems to be something he would understand explicitly. An earlier major study of his had been how people react to movies.

Would he have been interested in the themes we perceive? He was indeed an outspoken feminist. He had studied women, and observed them in submissive and dominant situations. And he thought that the violence of comics could be toned down by expressing the conflict with people captured and freed rather than showing how hard the characters could hit each other, much less shooting and killing.

And he lived in a menage a trois with two women. And, get this, under a pseudonym, he wrote and published erotica, or at minimum, a novel that was risque for the times. There's everything to suggest that Wonder Woman wasn't merely a product of the times, but a very specific creation.

There's more. A claim to Marston's fame is his development of the idea of using blood pressure to test if someone is lying. Real-time blood pressure measurement is one of the measurements incorporated in the polygraph, i.e. lie detector. He used it in his studies as a way to gauge people's reactions. Supposedly such studies led him to feminism as he found women to be more truthful, very hard working, and devoted and willing to accept authority. Such qualities, he felt, made women far more valuable and capable than they were being given credit for. He is quoted as saying that if all goes well, in a hundred years, we'll be living in a matriarchy. We now have about 25 years to go if we want to make that happen, but it is interesting that now more women earn college degrees than men and that women are making significant strides in professional positions and management. It is notable that as a developer of a lie detector, Marston gave Wonder Woman the Golden Lasso with its truth-revealing powers.

Wonder Woman's feminism clearly took deliberate effort on Marston's part to maintain. For example, once others took over the writing, when Marston died, the character was immediately watered down. And though Wonder Woman was included in the "Justice Society" (a 40s comic book series about a squad of the comics publishers' superheros such as Superman, etc, later revived as the "Justice League"), in that storyline, lacking Marston's writing, Wonder Woman's role was the society's secretary!

Marston deliberately made Wonder Woman attempt to rehabilitate her enemies rather than kill them off or simply lock them up. And this was part of his plan to reduce excess violence in comics and society's outlook.

Besides movies, another area of Marston's studies were college sororities and sorority initiations. This has been cited as demonstrating Marston's interest in domination and submission.

Regarding his personal situation, the threesome was formed with one of his female students moving in with him and his wife. Their private relationship isn't clear, but after Marston died, the two women continued to live together, raising both their children.

It's quite arguable, that of all 30s and 40s comic book superheros, Wonder Woman was by far the most planned and deliberate, by a true expert, designed to be exactly as we see her.

I've only given part of the story here. Wonder Woman's backstory, and more aspects of the stories as well as more aspects of Marston's research make this even more fascinating.

So, given this history, does that make Wonder Woman exclusively a male creation? There is a quote, that when Marston first voiced his idea for a superhero that would triumph with love rather than fists, that his wife Elizabeth Halloway Marston suggested that it be a woman. He is said to have modeled Wonder Woman on Elizabeth as well as his other partner, Olive. Incidentally, it's also been said that Elizabeth first observed that her own blood pressure rose when she was untruthful, thus providing the seed for much of Marston's work.

wonderwoman, comics

08/22/2008

I've been pondering my writing process some more, and how I come up with stories.

When I get a story idea, I may think through the whole plot, step by step, with dialog. Whether or not I do that, I may actually write down either the story itself or a synopsis for later use. I only occasionally use an idea from my collection of synopses, and I now have at least twice as many unused synopses as stories. I've found that writing down the synopsis frees my mind to give attention to another story idea.

Translating thought to the page does not always go smoothly, even though I often feel I'm thinking it through word-for-word. But while doing this, I could be glossing over some transition that turns out to be difficult to put in actual words. A lot of my writing consists of dialog, along with the narrator's train of thought, and I am often in a position of trying to get from A to B seemingly smoothly and naturally, i.e. someone is thinking or talking about one idea and I need to get them to the story's next idea. I feel I do reasonably well at this and writing these stories has given me practice, though undoubtedly I'm sometimes more successful than others. I have even thought about other ways I could put this skill (or inclination) to use: play writing is intriguing.

But in these erotic stories, the need to get from A to B often stems from the need to get to the right kind of sex or ds scene. Or if the story has ambitions to be something more, to get to some other sort of plot point.

What sort of things do I write? It varies. I clearly set out to write sex stories that please myself. I got into this writing after reading sex stories, then imagining how they could be better. In fact, I still believe a sure-fire way to get an idea for a story is to read someone else's story, then write your own story based upon the same idea, but to your own taste. If the story's idea is not something you would normally choose to write about, then you have the opportunity to stretch yourself, and see if you can make it appealing to yourself. And you can incorporate the kinds and aspects of erotic scenes that you find hot into many different plots and themes.

How have I mentally "improved" stories I'd read? Before I began to actually write, often my imagined improvements included adding a touch of irony to the story. In an SM story, a reversal of roles at the end often made it seem better to me, even if it were only mentioned. Having things turn not to be not what they seemed was good. Stories that are too nicey-nice, either about sex or love, leave me cold. A nicey-nice sex story is one where they look at each other, just know they're going to love having sex, drop their clothes and go to it, all in a nice, consensual, "sex-positive" way. Sex as good clean fun. Such a scene just doesn't offer me that much. Often, much of these stories was in their descriptions, such as "ripe melons". The truth is, I didn't need to hear about ripe melons. What I needed in a story was at least a touch of pepper.

I discovered eventually, that for some people, even a tiny bit of irony in a story adds a lot: makes it seem less like a sex story and perhaps, just a touch more like literature.

Another thing happened as I wrote more and more stories. Some of them took on a life of their own. For some writers, characters take charge of themselves and start doing what they want rather than what the author had planned. In other words, the author's concept of the character has crystallized to the point where the author can no longer make the character do any arbitrary thing and still feel the character is in character. In my case, it was more about where a story led itself. A story that began as a simple sex story idea sometimes evolved into a story that has very little sex or seduction. A few stories have had a science-fiction or fantasy theme, and often in this case, the world view has required a lot of attention. I don't believe the science fiction stories I write actually have much science-fiction depth, but it has been fun taking ideas and fleshing them out a bit. Where does this type of thing lead? I can't say whether such a story ends up as a good sex story, or a good science fiction story, or even just a good story (that's for you to decide), but what I can say is that it was sometimes quite different than a story written solely for sex.

There are a couple of cases where I conceived an essay, then turned it into a story. That turns out to have a couple of advantages. If my essay was to express a mere thought or point of view that I don't fully buy into, then by putting it in story form, I further avoid appearing to endorse it. Someone can have definitely a thought that seems worth sharing, yet not be willing to swear by it. For example: "You know, McCain's attitude toward today's Vietnam might well indicate that he'd have far more to offer our foreign policy than bravado and flag waving." The other advantage of putting the essay in the form of a story is that I have my captive audience. That would be you. People read my stories. Where would I post an essay where anyone would pay attention to it? Thirdly, stories are more fun. Hopefully for you as well as me.

writing, erotica, erotic writing

08/15/2008

I found out about sites that show you your site's G o o g l e page rank, and Cyan Stories has a rank of 3, which isn't bad. Zero is bad, higher is better, ten is highest. I found a few quality erotic sites with rank 5. Facebook, Yahoo, and YouTube all rank 9. What site ranks 10? Well, G o o g l e lists itself as 10.

G o o g l e lists Cyan Stories as 76th for the search string "erotic stories" when searched without the quotation marks, and 83rd when searched with them. An improvement from January when it was listed 787th without quotes. Moreover, it's now listed 24th for "erotica stories" without quotes and 6th with. And, thankfully, first for "cyan stories". Not in top 200 for "sex stories", "erotica", "erotic fiction" or "erotica fiction". Gee, with these improved placings, I might expect to have more visitors, but I haven't seen it.

I also discovered the website, Quantcast, which offers fascinating free website statistics. I suppose I'm addicted to statistics that show who visits this site and others. After all, I've gone to a lot of trouble to try to attract visitors. Among what Quantcast offers for free is, for any site you care to query about, an estimate of visitors per month, along with breakdowns, by gender, education level, age, and more, and an estimate of how many visitors are regulars and how many are "extremely regular", i.e. "addicts". For example Facebook has an extremely high percentage of visitors that Quantcast terms addicts.

So what did I find out? Cyan Stories gets about 15,000 visitors a month (respectable for a personal site or any story site that's not one of the biggies) with 63% being regular visitors, no addicts to speak of, 32% female, 57% college educated, including 8% with graduate degrees. One surprise is that, according to the stats, 51% are fifty years old or older! I have no idea what the latter means about the site.

How does that line up with other erotic sites? Obviously some sites are wildly popular while others are quiet little sites, so the monthly total varies widely. But other than the age, the other statistics I just cited appear fairly typical of the sample of erotic and porn sites I checked. For example, the video site, redtube.com is listed as having nearly 6 million visitors a month, with 35% female, 54% college educated, 75% regulars.

My sampling of a few sites suggests that erotic sites typically attract about 1/3 women or one woman for every two men. It's no surprise that men lead the way, but one wonders whether that really is the overall ratio. I tried to pick some sites that were not aimed at women, but even then, that seemed to be the typical ratio, and a rather wide variety of sites, had percentages of women between, say 25% and 40%.

Of course, I can't say how good Quantcast is at determining gender. Do they really manage to ferret out when a woman's teen-aged son is using her computer? Perhaps the number is inflated a bit, but if you suspect that is so, for the the rest of this discussion, imagine I'm saying some smaller fraction, such as 1/6 rather than 1/3. Even if the actual number is a bit smaller, it's still interesting to see the relative appeal to women of various kinds of sites, and it still suggests there are significant numbers of women looking at these sites. For example, literotica.com. is listed as getting about five million visitors a month, including one and a half million women. But if that percent is inflated and actual percent of women was a mere 1%, that would still be fifty thousand female visitors a month.

But the listed percent is in the general range of 1/3, largely regardless of whether the site is aimed at men, women, or both, and whether it was done by men or women or both. janesguide.com is listed as 1/3 women, same as many porn sites and story sites, both with an erotic and porno slant, though the pure sex story sites seem to have a slightly lower percent of women.

The percent of women is indeed a little higher for some erotic sites aimed specifically at women. But on the opposite site, it was typically a bit lower for bondage and spanking sites. In some cases, the effects more or less canceled, in other cases, one or the other trend seemed to take precedence. For example, bedroombondage was right at 1/3 women, as was spankingbethie.com. On the other hand, disciplinarywivesclub.com, elisesutton.homestead.com, shadowlane.com, scarlethill.com, and spankingblog.com were closer to just 1/4 women. The spanking video sales site, pacificforce.com, which features wonderful articles and letters seeming of interest to both sexes is listed as having only 15% women.

However, BDSM and spanking sites appear to have a larger percent of visitors with graduate degrees. Somehow, this fits my expectation. I can't say if these educated visitors are the female visitors, the male visitors, or both.

Some of the sites that show higher numbers than typical regarding female visitors include pinkflamingo.com and herwoodshed.com for which about half the visitors are women, and erotica-readers.com is listed as having 42% women. Interestingly, the spanking video site spankingtube.com is also atypical, being listed as 42% female.

And then there's ellorascave.com is listed as having 82% female visitors! Obviously Ellora's Cave has the formula for attracting women. Or has it? It's clear they've found a niche, but to look at it another way, in absolute numbers of women who visit the site, far more visit literotica.com. What ellorascave.com does offer is a kind of erotica that doesn't generally appeal to men, yet clearly has an audience. And there's nothing wrong with that!

Another type of erotic site that I was curious about is personal sites by women who are into the erotic, who don't mind appealing to men, but one suspects they don't feel they are specifically aiming at men. puckerup.com and remittancegirl.com are about 1/3 women, while rachelkramerbussel.com is a little higher at 37%.

I was also curious about lesbian sites, given the variety of flavors of such sites as the Internet offers, and the seeming contrast between those offered by members of the lesbian community and those that are simply going for the biggest (male) audience. Once again, 1/3 seems to be the norm, including typical male-aimed "lesbian" sites as well as sites that I know to have been developed by/for lesbians. One site that has a slightly higher percentage of female visitors is a site done by a man, sapphicerotica.com. This is a site that does not oil up the bodies, dress them in leather, high heels, and heavy makeup, but does show young, feminine, conventionally attractive women. The photo sets in the site's previews do include some posed shots of women demonstrating to us how and exactly what they are licking, which don't appeal to me much, but they also always include excellent soft-core shots, of kissing and cuddling. Another lesbian site with a similar high percentage of women is mysecretobsession.com.

But the most singular statistic I saw in all this is Cyan Stories statistic of half the visitors being fifty years or older. I saw nothing like this on any other site. What does this mean? Should I worry?

And the statistics also made me think again about my readership. If Cyan Stories gets 15,000 visitors a month and 63% are regulars, that's pretty close to 10,000 regulars! I have to be pretty happy with that! On the other hand, if all these regulars joined, then, well, the total revenue generated would be $100,000 and even after the fees and expenses were taken out, I could go pro! Hm, given my actual average of perhaps one new member per month, that suggests that I get roughly one new member for every 15,000 visitors. In the business, you call that a .0067% conversion rate. Hm!

website statistics, erotic website trends

07/04/2008

Perhaps you've found the seven new stories I posted for the beginning of July. I have more news: I've already got two additional stories in the bag for the next time I post. That certainly increases the odds of a next time.

In the free section are "Good Habits" about a college student who is talked into taking steps to assure her study habits, and "Owned Outright", which is not my first story about a woman who is suckered into blackmail by someone who is bluffing. The story "Dangerous Knowledge" in the membership section has a similar theme.

For the site's eight current members (six of which joined or re-upped these past three months), are the other five new stories. "Just Friends" is about a man who finds out that his "date" hadn't considered this a date. She has a solution to their dilemma. It's sort of a variation on my previous free story, "Nice Girl". "Not Wired" is about a wife that promises her husband more than she bargained for. What she's ostensibly not wired for is women. "Romantic Mood" is a short about a woman who knows exactly what she wants. "So Simple" is a bit of a stretch; I tried to create a "Stepford Husbands" tale but it's a bit short on plausibility. I suggest you just go with it. "Try It" is another married-couple tale that hints at gay sex, but this one goes elsewhere. I always do my best to sure you'll miss something good if you skip any stories based upon your preconceived notions.

The brand new stories not yet on the site, are "Little Question", about a woman whose female friend asks for sex out of the blue, a common theme of mine, and "Pleasant Morning", a short about neighbors and sunbathing.

Yet more links. From Erotica Readers & Writers Association, I bring you the author sites, Erotica by D.L. King and Jordan Grace. And from SpiceMedia, which I originally got from ERWA, is Oysters and Chocolate with stories, poems, and photos.

As usual, Jane's Guide has interesting links: Speak Sexy has a variety of information and links, Author Alison Tyler's blog, Trollop with a Laptop, Erotic Romance writer Ann Jacobs' site, Paige Tyler's site about her romantic spanking fiction.

And I've run across other things in my own surfing. Porn for the Blind is fascinating. Spanking Tube is an X-rated "tube" site focused on you-know-what, SPREVIEW.NET, with reviews of spanking videos, books, with pictures and a lot more--a hidden gem, Spanking Art, and Hot Female Dominant Utopia!, the beginning of an online femdom novel in blog form.

Another thing I've done is try to figure out how blogs are searched. As a result, I've begun adding tags. Unfortunately, I can't think of interesting tags because the blog posts here generally cover the same ground.

erotic writing, erotic links, spanking

05/10/2008

Hm, maybe there is something in the water. Cyan Stories (Now, with Storymatic!!) sold two memberships in a mere three days, after one sold in late April. By my count, the site has six members at the moment.

I recently spent some time (home, lying in bed, sick for the day) doing some search engine optimization on my new Femdom Stories, Lesbian Stories, and Spanking Stories pages. It occurred to me that these pages, useful as they are for surfers at my site, could also be search-engine attractors. This led me, for example, to change the name of the femdom-theme page from "Stories With a Female-Dominant Theme" (or some such thing) to "Femdom Stories." At the same time, I changed all my links to these pages to have the same text as the title. The hope is to give search engines a consistent short phrase that matches what many folks search on, so perhaps the page will reach high enough in the search engine's relevance/popularity rating to appear on a results page that people will actually see. In that case, someone looking for "femdom stories" might actually find my page of such stories.

Before I did this, I checked various search words and phrases to see how popular they are and how many pages they turn up in G o o g l e. In doing so, I discovered the Overture keyword inventory still exists, even though Overture was apparently bought out by Y a h o o. The keyword inventory is slow (sometimes to the point of stopping), but does still work, though it's data is from the month January 2007. Fortunately, I don't care so much about month-to-month changes as overall relative usage of the words and phrases. I also checked around on blogs to see what folks said about Overture's circumstance, and found what I really wanted: pointers to two additional similar sites, freekeywords.wordtracker.com and www.keyworddiscovery.com.

I try a bunch of words like "femdom", "dominant", "lesbian", "spanking", "story", "fiction", and others to make it tell me how often people search for various keyword combinations. Then, I tried these in G o o g l e, along with what I figured was the most likely quoted phrase. For example, if people searched on words "spanking" and "stories", I figure the word order they most likely used was "spanking stories". In this example, G o o g l e claims to list 1,490,000 sites for "spanking stories" when you search without the quotes, and 1,010,000 when you use quotes (i.e. sites that have the exact phrase "spanking stories" rather than having those two possibly-separated words in the page).

In the process of doing this, I ran across some quoted phrases, for which G o o g l e listed no (zero!) sites. This is of some interest, especially since I've seen a phase as obscure as "cyan stories" inserted on Internet postings, included for no other reason than to attract searches. An example phrase for which G o o g l e listed zero sites when I checked is: "female dominant erotic books". Even more phases had very few sites, a few under ten, and quite a few under a thousand.

Unfortunately, none of these magic phrases were suitable for my theme pages except, in perhaps a case or two, for use in a descriptive subtitle on the page. I am willing to search-engine optimize, but I won't do it by inserting irrelevant phrases. Everything has to be useful, relevant, and truthful. However, some of the phrases could easily be useful for my links page. If I have an existing link to a site that specializes in female dominant erotic books, then I certainly ought to use that specific phrase as a site-description for the link!

One curious thing I noticed: in number of hits, my Femdom Stories page gets the most, then Lesbian Stories, and lastly, Spanking Stories. However, according to the Overture keyword inventory the phrase "spanking stories" is just barely less popular than "lesbian stories", both of which are considerably more popular than "femdom stories".

When I created the story-theme pages, I very quickly went through all the stories to give them a new set of keywords, specifically "theme" keywords rather than keywords simply indicating content. For example, a story might have some sex between women, yet that be a small part of the story rather than a major theme. For the theme pages, I wanted stories for which the topic represented a major part of the story. One thing this led me to do was to briefly scan many of the stories, and in some cases reread them in their entirety. I've also been rereading stories at random lately, including the Storymatic (stories of the day) stories.

And I've been editing, when I see problem spots, and periodically uploading the revised versions. So if you reread a story, it might be different than the last time! Self-editing works best when you haven't read a story in a while, and, in effect, that's what I'm doing. Some of the stories I wrote a decade ago. These new edits are all relatively small, to smooth things out and make them clearer. (Also, I now feel that I misused the word "reticent" on occasion, at times when "reluctant" is the more proper word.) For example, if I get lost trying to follow the story (and it's not some place where I intended the reader to be a little lost) I try to shore things up a bit.

I generally think my writing is improving with time. However, I have run into old stories of mine that I liked and that I think it would be very unlikely to come up with now. I wonder if my imagination is shrinking over time. I still get far more ideas than I ever put into story form. Ah, well. We do the best we can.

writing, erotica, erotic writing

04/18/2008

Yet another feature, brought to you by Cyan Stories: my new lists, lesbian stories, spanking stories, and femdom stories. The membership area also has lists the same three themes.

I have some stories in progress that you'll see on the site, eventually. Once I wrote a story ("Nice Girl", in the membership area), where a man discovers the woman he is interested in is attached, and she suggests that though they can't date, she could spank him. An upcoming story, "Just Friends" starts similarly, but her suggestion is that they can't date, but that he could spank her. The woman's position isn't totally logical, but she's either oblivious or doesn't care. Or is doing it on purpose. "So Simple" is about a woman who discovers that the women in their neighborhood have developed a program to train their husbands. "Try It" presents yet another scene where a woman suggests to her husband that he receive anal sex from her. Look for them in the future.

I have some additional story ideas, some of which might get fleshed out into stories. For example, one is a straight, probably happily married woman who loses a bet, and the payoff is to kiss another woman. Naturally she falls hard.

Some new links I've found surfing include the personal BDSM site, Meg's Journey from a woman who has a particular kind of historical BDSM fantasy, as well as Abel's Spanking Stories, the spanking story and blog site, Smiling With Teeth as well as Spanking Storybook, a blog about spanking stories including romance novels, and that has story reviews! I also found My Secret Obsession Lesbian Erotic Stories (check out the "visions of beauty") and GoodShit, a blog of photos and oddities, and the Novel by Le Marquis Divin, Whipping Girl.

From Jane's Guide, I have just one new gem, the blog Imelda Imelda, but from that, I got three additional blogs, Dirty Thirties, On Female Dominance of the male, and Smart Girls Who Do It.

erotic writing, erotica, erotic links

03/28/2008

I posted five new stories, including one in the free section.

Two of the stories are sad spanking stories. The new free story is "Deal Breaker", about a heterosexual couple, and "Sad Moment" is about female roommates. The latter story is just a single scene demonstrating an excuse for roommate spanking. "Deal Breaker" grew out of the first scene, where a relatively-vanilla woman, out of the blue, asks her date to spank her. I'll get an idea as simple as that, then try to spin a scenario and story around it.

"If You" is a little story about a medical doctor who ought to know better. It is a good example of a story (along with "Deal Breaker") which I started before I had any idea how it was going to end.

The other two membership stories both involve married couples falling far into female dominance at the wife's insistence. The couple in "Clearly Enjoying" already engage in light kink, but she suddenly pushes hard for more. I believe my initial inspiration was the couple's initial habit. In "Complete Fulfillment", the wife in a vanilla marriage gets her husband to meet a female-dominant couple.

Hm, I'm trying to be more selective about my links, but there is just so much good stuff. Gems from Jane's Guide include Black Velvet Seductions (books), SAXON Spanking Web (all things spanking), CollarednCuffed.com The Beginners Guide to BDSM, and Bi Sex Land.

Jane's Guide also had the blogs, Silent-Porn-Star, Naughtywords, My Dabble In The Middle End, and Natty's Spanking Blog. The latter, I also saw at Spanking Blog, where I also found the blog, The Disciplined Feminist. We try for all points of view, here at Cyan Stories central.

From Monica's Reviews, I got Lucy Felthouse and from Le blog de Camille, I got the art site, Des sens.

Erotica Readers & Writers Association also provided me with a couple of links, Kinkabella's Erotic Stories & Fantasies, and Erotica By Helen E. H. Madden, and at this latter site, I ran across a link to EREC: Erotic Romance E-Publishers Comparison Site.

I found a couple of sites because people searching for these sites ended up at Cyan Stories: the story sites, Tit-Elation and emerson fitz. And I ran across 101 Erotic Stories Archive by looking at G o o g l e for sites related to Cyan Stories.

Obviously, I still do too much surfing. My Secret Life is the entire well-known Victorian book online! Writing Erotica is an online course, and The Journal of Desire is archives of the defunct zine. I have Adrianna Dane's author site, the nice informational sites, Colorado Spankers, and DOMestic Bdsm and Female Domination. Story sites include Story Mistress, True Dirty Stories, Short Erotic Stories, and Adhara's Erotica (old, but great to have, since Adhara's more recent site is now gone). Commercial sites (videos for sale) include Pacific Force, Inc., and Women Who Spank Men.

Blogs I've run into during random surfing include Reading in the dark, The Edge of Vanilla (at which I found Uniquely Rika), Cigi's World, Jon Woods' Bondage Blog (Jon, of Bedroom Bondage and Bondage Babylon fame), The Punishment Book, Femdom Romance, Strictly Female, as well as the interesting blog directory, Femdom Weblogs & Forums.

Regarding Cyan Stories (now, with Storymatic!) membership sales, I have two sales since the beginning of 2008, one in January, and one today!

03/22/2008

You know you've made it when they use your site's name as fodder for search-engine spamming.

I poke around G o o g l e Groups for "cyan" occasionally, see if anyone talks about me. Very seldom. But here's part of a spam message posted by someone looking for traffic:

Sex story by cyan

He placed a sex story by cyan kiss to the sex story by cyan of her neck, scratching his fingers down along her sex story by cyan David was driving Tracy home sex story by cyan dinner. As they kissed sex story by cyan another goodnight and held one another close, Tracy invited him sex story by cyan But the ...

Someone believes folks search for the phrase "sex story by cyan", so they've created a post that they hope will appear in such searches. Viewing the post takes you to the content they are trying to get you to see.

In other news, I added a page called Sites we miss, alas with links to gems that I used to link to, but are gone now, or, in some cases, have been reduced to mere shadows of there former selves. I fully admit to a dual motive here: I truly want to honor these sites, and would be delighted if some return. If you notice that any of these sites now lives, or you know a site's new address, by all means, let me know! However, I am also quite well aware that someone could search for these sites by name and discover this page. Since it would specifically be someone who shares my taste in a website, there's a real chance they'd like my stories.

I do have one concern about making this page. There are undoubtedly some folks who had personal pages who wish to leave this part of their life behind and would prefer that all reference to their site would simply disappear. If they successfully avoided their real name being associated with their site, then perhaps the reference on this page means little to them. However, if they used their real name or someone did associate them with the site, then perhaps they'd prefer it not be listed here. If I hear something specific in this regard about one of these former sites, I'll certainly remove the reference.

One last item: according to what I can figure out, This site became fully working on 3/27/02, which is also the date I began trying to get folks to link to it. That means the site is about to reach its sixth birthday. Thanks to all who have visited, and thanks especially to the intrepid few who have joined!

03/18/2008

I added something silly, for your amusement. I want to give you a way to read a story chosen at random. It is done, so you can give it a try, but it actually gives you the same story for a whole day, so I could choose to call it "the story of the day". But I decided to call it Storymatic, just so I can say Cyan Stories, now with Storymatic!.

Other important news: I recently went through pages and pages of G o o g l e results for the search string "erotica stories". Cyan Stories was the 787th site listed.

03/08/2008

I recently finished checking and reviewing all seven-hundred-plus links on my site. Since I carry out these efforts in odd bits of time, it took me months. I corrected and updated some links and eliminated those to sites that are no longer with us. It was sad finding personal story sites and interesting blogs that have simply disappeared. Among the sites that do still exist are over two hundred that link back to mine, over four hundred with no such links, but that I link to simply because I like their site, and another ninety sites to which I've requested links, but they have not yet provided one. In each of the latter cases, I just asked once again.

This gives me the opportunity to vent on some link-trading issues. This is mostly of interest to those attempting to run a website like this one, and like me, are trying to get people to come to it. There are many sites that have links, and for some of them, that is their business, being directories of links, operated to make money off surfers' desire to find sex sites to their own taste. You can e-mail these directory owners to ask for a link, or in some cases, they provide a form on their site to apply for a link. The response you receive depends a lot on who is running the directory site and how much they are paying attention. In some cases, I get an immediate friendly answer saying "Yes, I'd love to carry a link to your site! Thank you for asking!" In others, I receive a friendly or neutral "no". Other responses are not so friendly, and quite frustrating is to receive no answer at all. When that happens, you don't know if they simply choose not to answer anyone they won't link to, or if they aren't currently giving sufficient attention to their website e-mail. And then, there are the down-right rude answers.

Like most people, I can get moody or angry and feel a real desire to tell off some folks, or to simply write them off, but operating this site at least a tiny bit like a business has brought out the better in me: I try very hard to treat folks the way I'd prefer to be treated. I've engaged folks in a friendly way: if the e-mail I receive appears to be a personal response, rather than an automated e-mail, and it turns me down without being rude, I'll probably say thanks for the attention, and if they cited some reason why they're declining, I might find a way to comment on it. Some folks have actually changed their minds, in one case, a site that has sent me a tons of visitors for years.

Another thing I've done to campaign for links is to remain extremely persistent. I keep a log of the sites to which I've applied, and use it as a "tickler list" that I'll come back to. I also link to a site before they link back to mine, and I retain that link to their site pretty much forever, having had many such links for years. If it is a site I really like, I consider the link permanent: even if they aren't linking to me, I link to them. That would likely be a personal site, a story site, or a site that is unusual in some respect. There is a case of a very well established directory of sex sites that I applied to regularly for years, perhaps ten times, after which they eventually added a link to mine, also giving me a lot of visitors ever since. Lately I've pared down the list of directories that I persistently ask: if the directory's links seem stale, or if they now have links only to photo sites, I may give up, remove the link from my site, and stop asking. As I said above, I just reduced the "pending" list to about ninety sites.

Some of the directory sites have rules about what sites they will link to. The rules are always one-sided, listing what they expect. They take the attitude that they are a business, and you are one of many, who is asking a favor from them. Such rules might include a requirement that my link to their site be on my site's very first page, perhaps also requiring the link to be placed above the "Enter" link so my visitors are more likely to actually see it, and perhaps limiting the number of other links that may be on the same page as their link, so theirs stands out sufficiently. A huge number of sex-oriented sites carry photos, and many directories are oriented to small, free sites that carry a few free photos along with money-making ads. I've seen rules specifying the minimum number of photos required before they'll link to it, and other directories that actually have a rule specifying a maximum number: the operator of the directory has a problem with everyone seeing so much sex for free and doesn't want to link to sites that give away what this operator is hoping you, the surfer, will pay for.

You can tell that some of these directory operators have been burned by site operators without scruples. Naturally, a directory operator could have been contacted by a rude and abusive site operator, but site operators can also do sneaky things like carrying their link back to the directory only as long as it takes to get the directory to link to them, then discarding the link or sending the traffic elsewhere. Also, they can make their site so it looks different when real folks surf it as opposed to when the directory operator had a chance to look at it. And they can change the nature of the ads they run on the site after the fact. And many other things. They can also let their site die, leaving the directory with a dead link, My own link list accumulates dead links over time, but for directories that basically link to short-term sites out for a fast buck, the directory can easily end up with a lot of dead links and make the directory's surfer feel they are getting nowhere. The surfer will go somewhere else and the directory operator's ad revenue falls.

This has made some of the directory operators testy: they, in effect, yell at you when they tell you the rules, and sometimes say things like "if I catch you breaking one of my rules, I will blacklist you".

This whole business of passing visitors between directories and free photo sites seems to have become a big game: somehow, surfers get themselves connected with a directory of sex sites, and the directories link to each other, passing around the traffic, often to sites tailored to have just bit of content, the links they are required to have to get directories to link to them, and ads for pay sites, to make their money. It seems to me they would all be passing around the same bunch of surfers, who are on the lookout for something "good".

Now I have a rule about directory rules: I never read them. Or very seldom. One reason for not reading them is that it takes time. Another reason is that they are always very similar. But a prime reason is that there are directory operators that don't follow their own rules if they don't feel like it, such as if they like your site. I even recall some that actually stated in their rules: "if I like your site, I'll link to it despite all the above rules". This tells me I always have a chance of getting the site listed, but perhaps just as important, when such a site does list me, it is often because the directory operator has taste, and the directory will have some orientation toward my kind of site. And any operator who makes that statement "I might just link you anyway if your site is to my taste" is my kind of website operator.

A sort-of reason for not reading such rules is that I am not going to change my site to adhere to them. If I were running short-term sites designed to show a few pictures and make a fast buck, then I'd tailor the site to fit the rules of the directories that I want a link from. But this is not that kind of site: this is my personal site and it is here for the long term. In a very general way, it shows some quality, it tries to be fair to sites that link to it, it sends what traffic I can manage, and it follows the general spirit of these rule-lists as much I can manage. It gives directories a different kind of traffic, as well. I assume my site brings in folks who are not typical surfers-for-sex. Possibly they are folks unlikely to sign up for pay sites, but, on the other hand, they are more likely to be new faces, rather than the same surfers going through directories all the time, who have been there before. From the online-business perspective, if I were to turn my site into a make-money-fast-style site, then perhaps I'm going where the money is, but I'm no longer sending them folks from the "erotic story niche" of the market. (That's the business perspective; from my personal prospective, well, my real reason for being in this game is to write stories for you to read.) There was one operator of a directory who answered me personally (and politely) and told me that there was just one rule that my site ought to follow, and then he could carry a link to it. He figured this one improvement to my site would also make my site qualify for many other directories. However, my experience is that the rules that keep me out of various directories differ, and in some cases are the exact opposite. The very rule that this fellow wanted me to follow is one that would have kept me out of some other directories.

There are indeed some rules that I would be glad to tweak my site to fulfill, but in general, I've made the changes I find acceptable, long ago. The typical rules that conflict with my site are those that ask me to engage in practices that I decided a long time ago to be against my rules.

What do I like about all this link trading? Well, I've exchanged e-mail with some friendly and helpful site-owners, and who run some fascinating websites (see my links page). There are some site-owners who watch where their traffic comes from, and even if I haven't contacted them, will notice I have a link to their site that is providing traffic, and will write me and tell me they are glad to link back to my site. And a few folks from sites I haven't discovered will write and ask to exchange links. The latter are most often from boutique sites that are using normal business methods to try and generate some visitors to their site. I do carry links to them, and retain the links if I can find their link back to my site.

I do the same: if I find traffic coming to my site from some site I am not aware of, I add a link. However, this is where I do apply some censorship. I don't feature links to all the general search engines that send me traffic. Everyone knows how to find them. I do link to some sites that go into sexual areas that I will not go to in my stories: in fact, one of my pages states that if this site is not to your taste, you might try out my links page. However, there are bounds to what I'll link to, and I believe I've mentioned this before. I don't link to phone-sex sites or escort sites. Jane's Guide does, and Jane's is a highly respected directory, so I suggest you go there if that's what you are looking for. I don't link to gambling sites. That makes me wonder about myself: some folks might say I'm being inconsistent, feeding people's sexual obsession, but turning my nose up at another "vice" that's arguably no worse. And I don't link to sites for international brides or for international sex vacations. There are more that I don't link to, and in some cases, it is due to what is depicted. If you believe in total free speech, and that fantasies are harmless and to be encouraged, well, the Internet tries its best to present you with sites that will change your mind.

There is also something called "referrer spam". As a website operator, I get to see a list of sites where my visitors come from. A bright soul got the idea that they could get my attention by, in effect, visiting my site from their own site. Of course, they automate this "visit" rather than actually coming to see my site: rather than a person browsing, it is just a computer program asking for the data from my server as if it were a person browsing. A reason someone might do this is simply that I might sign on for whatever they are selling, but another is that my site might automatically feature the link of any site that sends me visitors. Typically, such a sneaky site, which makes it seem like it is sending me visitors, does not actually have a link to my site. I don't link back to these sites.

So if I don't follow all those rules, what do I offer to those who link to me? I won't follow a rule that says "my directory's link must be on your first page" because if I did so, my first page would be a huge list of links, and this directory's link would not be prominent in any case. Of course, I break this rule: there are seven permanent links on my first page: three to places that I suggest folks can use to find picture sites, for those looking for "more" than stories. And then I have permanent links, with banners, to Jane's, Persian Kitty's, Monica's Reviews, and the Authors of Literary Erotica. Hm, what's my excuse for this breach of my own rules? I suppose all I can say is that I really really want links from these four. In three of the four cases, it took considerable effort on my part to get my site reviewed. There are undoubtedly a few other sites that I'd do the same for, but I can't name any at the moment. A few other sites are also always on my front page because I display links to the fifteen sites that send me the most visitors. Sites at the top of this list are virtually always there, so if another site that sends lots of traffic were to choose to link to me, they'd get a virtually-permanent front-page link. Sites toward the bottom of this list of fifteen, jump onto and off the list as their numbers of referrals change. I offer a page with the rest of the sites that send me visitors (More Erotic Referrers). Also, I offer the "Referrer of the day" which is chosen at random from the 16th referrer on, the choice weighted by the number of visitors I have been sent from each site. This means any site that sends me visitors gets, to some degree visitors back in proportion. I got this idea from Jane's, which once had a feature to constantly show you from what sites its most recent visitors came from, updated continuously. This process automatically displayed a link more, the more visitors came from the site. I'm guessing referrer spam killed this cool idea. My process is slower, changing only daily, but carries out the same idea.

But that's not all: I also display a "link of the day", giving every link on my links page an equal chance. And then, I list ten more links of the day ("a few more select links"), which I chose by first choosing a theme, then choosing ten links at random based upon that theme. A good guessing game is to guess today's theme by inspecting the links, but there are some themes that aren't evident at all from the links page. One theme is sites that link to me, so any site that carries my link is also more likely to appear here.

So what will I rant on about all this? Well there are directory operators that do tick me off. I do my best to set aside personal reactions and treat them the way I'd like to be treated. Others may not be rude, but still seem to push their view of the world. As I said before, receiving no answer to a request for a link is a bummer. Something that even "very legitimate" sites sometimes do is drop a link to me without telling me. So later, I find I'm still carrying a link to their site, having exchanged links with them, and I'm sending them visitors, but months before, they simply quietly dropped their link back to me. Argggg! Some sites, and in fact some of the sites that have done this very thing, are the ones that make threats up front like "we'll blacklist you if you drop your link to us". In another very recent case, a "very mainstream, legitimate" (erotic) site suddenly dropped a link to me after we'd been cross-linked for years and I read on their site they have a minimum number of visitors they want to receive, which would simply seem to eliminate sites of this size.

This is where it takes effort to simply politely ask for a link again. But that's where the golden rule helps you in business, if you can manage to let stuff like that roll off your back. Doing so is no guarantee of success, but it's better than throwing a fit, sending angry e-mail to someone, and often better than simply walking away.

Another thing that has gotten my goat is someone that lists a bunch of rules that are hardly clear, then when you ask for a link, they reply: "No. To find out why, read my rules." Obviously I like it much better when they tell you the reason, and you know whether it's something you can fix or not.

I've noticed something a bit strange: the most-likely sites to treat you poorly either appear to be tiny, fly-by-night, sleazy operations, or else the opposite end: some of the biggest, or most "legitimate" sites. In the one case, they simply have no morals. In the other case, they are so large, that they simply no longer see that any but their own desires count. Their own desires, after all, are what you call a "business plan". One can see quite a bit of that in G o o g l e and Y a h o o. When they do something awful to you, it's perfectly legitimate because they are, after all, the epitome of legitimacy, the mainstream. The same happens with some larger sex-oriented sites, who consider themselves the upstanding, professional end of the business. Many of the sites that treat you best are in the middle somewhere: they "get it" about the golden rule, and they are not so big they can afford to be awful to you.

There was a time many years ago when sex-oriented sites began the wholesale practice of using pop-up advertisement windows, way too many, often to the point of making it difficult to surf them. This even earned the name "pop-up hell". It got so bad it was difficult to see what they were accomplishing: if it's almost impossible to surf, how can they be getting your business? Very soon, some sex-oriented sites distanced themselves from pop-ups. So, who has pop-ups now? Only the sleaziest fast-buck sex sites, as well as big, big mainstream (non-sex) sites, like E S P N. It is OK when the latter do it because, after all, they are legitimate, so what they do is, by definition, legitimate. Who avoids pop-ups? Sites that are a bit smaller and actually need to pay attention to avoiding annoying us.

I'm not the only story-site operator that has gone whole-hog trying to get links in this manner. Over the years, among the sites that have clearly solicited links in directories of sexual-oriented sites are Custom Erotica Source, ibblazin's (gone), Ciana Rose, Sabrina's Erotica, and Lliandrin's. These folks definitely know what I'm talking about, and all these site names have become common enough on the Internet to be used by sex site operators to try to attract visitors to their own sites.

01/10/2008

Just a short note. Take a look at Monica's Reviews' review of Cyan Stories. Sweet.

Thanks, Monica!

01/07/2008

Fourth quarter sales for 2007 picked up 50%! (The board of directors of Cyan Stories International are ecstatic and I think we're all getting bonuses! Look for a public offering announcement any day now and don't be surprised if G o o g l e buys us out and I retire to the beaches of Jamaica.) That's three sales in October-December (but with a very unfortunate story of a missed sale), as opposed to the lean months of July, August, and September when we had only two in total. I suppose that means I have five members at the moment, working their way through the nearly-three-hundred stories in the membership area. Now I'm not trying to entice you into becoming a member, well, actually I am, but I'm insisting you don't even think about joining, until you've read every one of the free stories. No allowed skipping any of them just because you don't like the descriptions.

01/06/2008

Hope you enjoy the new stories I just posted. I posted seven, including one in the free section, and that's more than I've been doing lately. I was inspired to write another seven, but I haven't followed through. As is typical, I have notes in hand that I really really want to turn into a bunch of stories.

The new free story is "Rather Specific", about a woman feeling a very particular desire. The membership area has "Going Back", "Pretty Well" and "Very Sexy", all three about men who discover their wives/girlfriends have a few dominant ideas and won't take no for an answer, "Loosen Up" and "No Prude", both about women who are being pushed to not be so uptight by friends, and "That One", a perhaps-slightly-sad tale about a college student who gets herself mixed up in something she is not prepared to handle.

Maybe I'll get some other stories written and posted soon.

I also have some recent links. I found Link Junkies when they sent me referrals, thanks! I found Yasmin's Lesbian Licks at Warrior Women. I found the astonishing site, a little game of sorts, Mise á nu, at Erotica Readers & Writers Association. Mise á nu, in turn, indicated the source of its photos, The Word Wide Beauty.

I found Spanked Men at The Spanking Spot, and found ThinkPink, Spanking Blog Aggregator, Bare Bottom Spanking, and Spanking pics and videos at Cutiepie's Sexy Spankings.

As always, Jane's Guide recently reviewed some sites to my taste: the really cool site with free text of classic (very raunchy) porn novels, xNovel; the astonishing movie clip site, Reel Buffs; the Gay/Lesbian publisher site, redlightbooks.com; the wonderful art blog, Sexuality in Art; the pay site, Good Dyke Porn; the erotica site, Jodi Payne; the writer's blog, Skid Roche; the blog, Scarlet the Harlot; and the femdom couple blog, Devastating Yet Inconsequential.

And I did far too much of my own surfing, as proved here. My finds include the blogs, My Erotic Sex Stories, Risky Thoughts, Trinkets and Treasure, Justine's Erotic Stories Blog, My Bottom Smarts, Angelinas Lips, and chross.blogt.ch. I also found the commercial sex site, Naughty Bookworms; a great site about kink in mainstream media, Kinkindex; the story site, Spanklit; the fascinating performance artist's site, Vanessa Beecroft; the publisher's site, Alyson Books; and the erotica sites, Pink Pussycat's World of Erotica, and Free Best Sex Stories.

Happy surfing!

10/05/2007

Here's a bonus story, in the free area too! "Not Right" is a story that came to me last night, and I wrote it out this evening and am posting it immediately. Usually I would put a story aside, to edit and proof later.

Also, I've also sort of gone crazy adding blog links, particularly spanking blogs. There are too many of those now, and if I'm going to limit the size of my link list, I need to refrain from adding these.

10/02/2007

I just uploaded five new stories to Cyan Stories. I have one more story that I really wanted to write out, but didn't get to it. Since the previous two site updates were just three stories each, this time is an improvement in quantity.

In the site's free area is "How Much", in which a wife finds her husband is less than helpful around the house, and the measures she takes to address her problem evolve into something more.

The membership area gets "New Arrangement", in which a new member of a string quartet requires some attitude adjustment, "Not Bi", in which a man finds himself talking about threesomes with a couple of female coworkers, but the consequences of this conversation are not what he might hope for, "They Say", in which a married man is talked into some innocent fun by the woman next door, and "Too Much", in which a woman goes shopping with a friend, but things get uncomfortable later when they try on their purchases.

This brings the total number of stories on the site to 355. Along with other erotic stories I've written here and there, the total is now easily 500, with well over a million words total. Think of all the diseases that might be cured if I'd spent this time improving myself and the world.

Enjoy the reading.

I should tell you about how many new members Cyan Stories has. Amazingly, I just went to count the e-mail notifications that tell me when someone has joined (but not who it was!), and a membership had just come through this evening! The only other memberships since the beginning of July were two that came through on September 24. (You can imagine how much money I'm socking away from this venture, at $10 per membership minus fees and expenses). By my records, this brings the active membership total to 6. You are a select group, so brag to your friends! Perhaps I can use that in my marketing, that you belong to a very exclusive club when you join Cyan Stories.

I set out to review all the links on the links page this year, and the work is pretty much done. I now have 700 links that I've checked within the last twelve months. The only ones left are some of the adult directories to which I've applied years ago for a link for Cyan Stories but have never received any response nor seen any referrals to confirm they linked it. These take a long time for me to review because I check to see if the site still exists, see if I can find a Cyan Stories link on the site, if not, evaluate whether getting a link is still worth pursuing, which might include checking its Alexa ranking, then hunting down the site's submission process, typically a form, and refilling out the form. Actually, as I reviewed these sites, I actually have found a couple that linked to me and I never knew it. These are typically sites I've submitted the link to numerous times, and I do need to strike most of them from my list. I have 38 such sites to go through, and I'm done going through all the links. That will be just about the time I need to start going through links again. Take my advice: don't get hooked on offering a nice big links page with all the gems you run across.

And, naturally, I've added links since my last blog update. As usual, I got some good ones from Jane's Guide: Brianna Martini's personal books site, the blog Molly's Mirror, which includes stories and poetry, another blog with stories, Easily Aroused (love that title), and I just had to include a link to the curious adult paysite, WatchGirls.net (think twice before you conclude what it's about).

From surfing at the Xandria Collection website's link pages, I found the "true story" site, My Masturbation, and I-stories, another site from remittance girl.

While surfing at Ann Regentin's site, I ran into the story and book sites, The Story Mill, Madeleine Oh, and Bridget Midway.

From Erotica Readers & Writers Association, I got the blog, Kathleen Bradean, and the author site, Louisa Burton.

Some other sites I found surfing here and there include the Dark Erotica blog (companion to Morgan Hawke's DarkErotica.Net), the BDSM paysite Training of O, the author website Joanie Writes, the link site The Naughty Guide, the book site Xcite Books, the Alt.Sex.Stories Text Repository personal story site Bedtime Stories with Kelly, the blog The Beautiful Kind, the photo posting site, eroshare, the spanking photo blog, Cutiepie's Sexy Spankings, and some female dominant sites of various "degrees", Ms. Kay's Chastity Primer, Female Led Relationships Net, A Married Woman's Guide To A Happier More Fulfilling Relationship, and Sexual Power for Women.

And finally, I linked to the link directory Link Junkies, because I received referrals from them and discovered they've linked to me. And to all who have linked to this site, thank you again!

-- Cyan

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