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ResidentSadist -> RE: Does anyone know of any other sites like this one? (8/25/2010 10:35:03 AM)
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Now that we established FetLife's software system sux, their black and white design causes eyestrain and is obnoxious, lets talk about the dozens of other free sites.
Any RandomFreeBDSMsite.com has between 100 and 10,000 members. In the beginning, the site is "seeded" by staff with fake accounts to make it appear active. Often, questionable advertising techniques are used to trick people into visiting the site. Eventually, one ofthese things happen. The site doesn't generate enough advertising funds to maintain a staff and it fills with unmonitored spam, eventually closing. Or it sits idle with nothing but year old posts in its forums.until it closes. Or the spam traffic is high enough that the URL is sold to some unwitting sucker. Or it developes a small specialized following and generates enough money to justify keeping the URL and hosting. In this case, usually a small clique of a few thousand people make the site appear active. These clique sites are usually local to an area of geography or biased to a particular sub-set of interest in the lifestyle i.e. castlerealm.com was a hetro D/s male dom/fem sub site or that German female supremacists site (sorry, forgot URL). Both examples shunned all other lifestyle choices, were very limited, very biased and very small. Their graphic designs may not have hurt my eyes with the black and white contrast, but their content hurt my mind with their black & white precepts.
From my investigations, last year, Collarme.com had up to 80,000 new members monthly. There is no other site like it. That is why I donate what free services I can spare to their cause. Even with that respectable volume of traffic in a very small niche market, it isn't huge in the overall web advertising market. It won't attract CocaCola or AT&T at Collarme.com as advertisers. No one around here is getting rich and in my estimation, this site just turns enough profit to pay some of the owner's bills which makes it worth their wild to keep it running.
So answering the OP in full detail, their aren't a lot of other free BDSM web sites and of those that do exist, none are even half as large or well maintained as Collarme.com. It's hard to maintain a good web site with limited funds in a niche market. I salute Collarme.com for doing such a great job with what they have. I also praise the moderators that volunteer their time to maintain this place.
Oh yeah, did I mention the FetLife sux? I fucking hate that place. It is a dating site, only they flirt in the forum threads instead of just surfing profiles. Which means that 99% of the posts are useless drivel that defeat the purpose of the forum search engine. The site is jammed with online voyeurs trudging through forums looking for an excuse to post some drivel so their nude avatar will appear. That whole site is just chock filled with people jerkin' their gerkins to avatars.
. . . did I mention the FetLife sux?
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