About a month ago, I saw a blog post from one Sam Sugar, asking for somebody with LAMP skills and experience with Wordpress. Evidently he was having some trouble moving some of his blogs, and needed a skilled hand.
Ever since that first few emails, Sam and I have been working together to bring to fruition a vision of his–something he’s been blogging about for a couple months. While there are several large blog networks that hit various topics, there is yet to be a proper unified blog-network treatement of the adult space. Sam’s been in (pardon me–his term) the “jizz biz” for many a year, and is, as far as I can tell, the first adult industry insider to really embrace blogging, podcasting, and all the other Web 2.0 grassroots publishing media.
If you think about that, it’s pretty shocking. The internet is built on porn. Quite literally, ever since Tim Berners-Lee published the HTTP spec, the adult industry has been pushing the edge of what’s technologically possible, expanding the environment into which e-commerce players, search engines, and ultimately bloggers, podcasters, and all the newest wave of content creaters were born and ultimately able to flourish. To pretend that adult content is the “seedy underside” of the internet is to have the cart entirely before the horse (in fact, I believe there are a couple websites dedicated to the cart-before-the-horse fetish).
I’ve worked for adult e-commerce clients before, but never for somebody with such a vision. These were overgrown brick-and-mortar latex peddlers, creeping stealthily into the e-commmerce space. Sam’s about something totally different. He’s boldly going where no adult oriented website has gone before. He’s out to blast down the barriers to sexual self-expression. And, man-after-my-own-heart that he is, he’s out to make a healthy buck in the process.
Now, in my long and storied career in web development, I’ve been approached a few times by people pushing the old “I have no money to pay you now, but I’ll give you a percentage when my brilliant idea hits!” line. To a one, I’ve turned them down, and watched from the sidelines while they quietly fail and sink into oblivion. But when Sam came to me with basically the same offer, I could see he had something. He’s a recognized name in the adult blogging and podcasting world–his podcast, Podnography (NSFW, obviously. Though of course, I never promised to keep this blog worksafe.) has over 1000 listeners. His blog, Sugarbank (ditto) is subscribed to by hundreds of readers. Just to give you a feel for it, mine is subscribed to (as of yesterday) by like 35. So I could see he had enough prominence in the blogosphere to really make a go of something.
Over the last few weeks, Sam and I have been laying the foundations for several new blogs that will go live in the coming weeks. Those of you who found your way here from Sam’s sites, you’re in for some super cool stuff.
Okay, so why write this post? Because since Sam linked here from the “Team” section of a few of those sites, my traffic here at danray.net has roughly doubled. That surprised me–how many people click the “Team” links on blogs like that? More than I’d have thought, it turns out (and bless you for it!).
So: WELCOME, my porn-loving brethren and cisterns! I invite you to explore here. And, to those of you who know me from non-SugarBlog-related things, go check out my new client! I mean, you know, if you’re so inclined. Mom, I don’t need to know whether you did or not. 
