SexualAlpha

My Sex Toy Review Site Is Visited By Nearly 1 Million People Per Month

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Dainis Graveris

Founder, SexualAlpha

$10K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

SexualAlpha

sexualalpha.com

from Riga, Latvia

started January 2018

$10,000

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Discover what tools recommends to grow your business!

Hunter

Gmass

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Medium

Twitter

Instagram

productivity tool-icon

Evernote

Slack

seo

Ahrefs

Discover what books Dainis recommends to grow your business!

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Want more updates on SexualAlpha? Check out these stories:

Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?

Hi! My name’s Dainis Graveris, and I am the founder of SexualAlpha.

We are a sexual wellness blog that provides honest sex toy reviews, well-researched guides, and free sex education straight from the experts. I strongly believe that everyone deserves to have an incredible sex life, and it’s our mission to make sure that happens to everyone who comes across our site.

Our blog focuses on finding and recommending the best sex toys for everyone. And by everyone, I mean anyone who wants to feel sexually empowered, have control over their bodies, explore their deepest fantasies, or add excitement and variety to their relationships.

Of course, we recognize that “the best” sex toy will be different for different people – everyone and every body is different, after all. Some people are on a budget, while some care about the product’s overall quality, power, or size. That’s why we spend crazy long hours researching, scouring forums, reading real-user feedback, and testing different sex toys ourselves before we write our reviews because our readers are our priority.

As of this writing, our website gets 900K visits per month, and we make around 10K/month on affiliate commissions. While we get paid from our affiliate links, we always aim to first uncover the best sex toys for our avid readers. Our affiliate programs only come second.

Dainis Graveris via Unsplash

What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

Before SexualAlpha, I created a couple of other blogs to inspire fellow freelancers and bloggers alike to hone their skills and pursue their passion.

I started my first blog, 1stwebdesigner, in August 2008 when I was in my second year at Web Design Academy while working for a design company and freelancing on the side (cheers to sleepless nights!).

Only after working for others did I realize that blogging makes money if you give your readers value. So I collected helpful information from experience, interviews, and case studies and shared all my learnings and opinions through my blog.

I received around 40K unique visits the first month I launched the site, which grew exponentially over the next 4 years. Once I started earning from my blog, I created a team of programmers, designers, and writers. I later decided to stop writing to train and manage new people.

However, I went on to sell that company to pursue another passion. While I may look serious on the outside in my suit and tie, 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.

I got so hooked on this industry that I knew I needed to up my skills. So I took courses, bought books, did lots of research, and started writing again until I became good at recommending these adult products to others.

I knew I had found the industry I wanted to be a part of in the long run. But unfortunately, I was also having issues with my then-current relationship. Our sex life no longer had the fun and excitement that it used to. So I went on a deeper dive and learned everything I could about sex and how to satisfy my woman inside and outside the bedroom.

I created FounderTips, another blog where I share all the knowledge and skills I have accumulated from my studies and experience – sex included. I’ve written many guides that helped couples understand each other better and rekindle their sex lives. However, learning a skill or two requires serious time, patience, and commitment, and not a lot of people have that. Moreover, I wasn’t getting any younger; I wanted to be my boss.

I returned to what reignited my passion for learning, writing, and teaching: sex toys.

I also realized that if couples wanted to add variety into their sex lives fast, sex toys were the answer. I finally created SexualAlpha to provide sex-curious individuals and couples exactly what they want – unbiased sex toy reviews. The site also paved the way for me to collaborate with sex toy stores and makers to earn money through their affiliate programs.

We also feature expert sex advice and free sex education resources to help break the stigma around sexuality. After all, our bodies are meant to be explored and enjoyed.

Take us through the process of designing and creating the original blog.

Building a blog from scratch will cost you more or less $100 for the theme, domain, and hosting. From there, it’s all about your hard work.

My background and experience in web design helped me keep the costs to a minimum, which is a good thing. I already had a good idea about what I wanted my website to look like and knew how to implement the basics. However, the most challenging part was figuring out what topics to publish on the site.

While I was keen on writing about everything sexual wellness and sex toys, I knew that I needed to make an impression on Google before I could make an impression on other people – real people, sex toy shops, sex toy makers, etc. (That’s real talk, folks.)

So I started understanding the trends, analyzing the stats, and looking at what competitors in the same niche are doing. I didn’t have a team from the start; I was on my own, but I was determined – now or never. I used SEO tools to find relevant keywords to learn what people were looking for when it came to sex toys.

The thing about starting a website and increasing your odds of being recognized online is that you need valuable content – posts, articles, etc. In short, you need to write a lot. 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 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 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.

Strike a balance between your work and your personal life. When you’re burned out, you lose your drive and focus. Your mental health and emotional being are equally important as you navigate new waters.

Describe the process of launching the business.

I launched the official SexualAlpha website in early 2020. It was mainly a one-person show, from personalizing the website, setting up Google Analytics, and optimizing search engines to uploading articles and monitoring the site’s progress. And then, I also needed to get social media engagement from various platforms.

Unfortunately, the website started weak, with only educational content and no sex toys and affiliate links. That’s why after my Medium experience, I decided to move all articles from Medium to SexualAlpha. It took 2-3 months to get to my first 30-50K monthly visits. The growth was quite fast since I had already established my website out of the sandbox.

With the website’s promising traffic growth, I knew I needed to develop more plans to grow as a company and make more money. And the only way to do that was to have a team to help move different operations simultaneously.

So the search for the right people began. That’s one of the major lessons I learned when I started my first blog/company in 2008. Find the right people for your team, teach them, and delegate tasks well-suited to each member. On the other hand, I started focusing on higher-level tasks and finding ways to achieve my vision for the company.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?

In the past, we tried to get our word out through our socials – Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Unfortunately, some people still shied away from sharing sex toy-related content, even up to this day. While some people noticed us, hitting the share button wasn’t enough to attract buying customers to our site.

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.

I decided to take another approach. 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.

For example, if one of the websites we’ve reached out to featured us, interested readers will be redirected to our website, where they learn more about us, what we offer, the sex advice we give, and the sex toys we recommend. This approach has helped us get more SEO traffic juice. With our growing online presence, more people came to us if they needed the latest scoop and the most honest reviews on sex toys they plan on purchasing next.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

In terms of expenses, it depends on how hard we push the content. Our main expenses go to our content. Then, my main decision is which topics to write about. That will be Keyword research. We don’t spend anything on ads – 90% of our traffic is Google, and 4% return visitors, so we could do better. We don’t have an email funnel, and that’s something we need to work on.

In terms of visits, most of them come from the US – 30%+.

I currently manage a team of 8 full-time employees that handle our content operations and email comms. Everyone else I hire as freelancers (e.g., graphics designers, writers). All team members work remotely and hail from different parts of the globe. We communicate via Slack and get everything done using the cloud.

I plan to reach out to more platforms worldwide to eradicate myths and taboos on sex-related issues and the shame of using sex toys. In addition, I want to continue educating individuals and couples on the importance of one’s sexuality and expressing it. Moreover, we plan to create more helpful content to arm people with the proper knowledge and empower them to take charge of their sexual health and wellness.

Of course, I also want to collaborate with more sex toy makers and stores and continue building meaningful relationships with other sex-positive folks in the industry.

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

Be ready for a bumpy ride. Creating a website or any business online is not for the faint of heart. There’s a lot of competition, especially from experienced people with the right tools and knowledge. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t learn.

To make it to the top, you need to open your mind and heart to learn new things and embrace the process. Invest in the right tools and invest in your knowledge. You might think you’ve got everything figured out, but you can never be sure. The only constant thing is change. With how fast the internet evolves, you need to learn how to adapt – continue learning about the industry and update your business as necessary.

I learned this the hard way when I was hesitant to learn new things and ignored what other people around me were doing and saying. So I got stuck in my old ways, and my once-booming business didn’t grow. I don’t want to make that same mistake again.

So, have a clear vision and work with passion. Don’t be afraid to create something new or tweak the process if things go the other way. Don’t allow your mistakes or setbacks to slow you down. Keep hustlin’, persevere, commit, and you’ll reach your goals over time.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

I use ahrefs to check what keywords are ranking, analyze trends, see what people are looking for online, etc. it’s such a powerful tool that has helped me navigate the online world and write about topics that currently matter to a wide array of people.

We use Hunter.io to find the right people relevant to the business and connect with them. We also use GMass to send out mass emails and keep better track of our outreach campaigns. Then, of course, the good ol’ Slack for internal comms.

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

Big Leap helped me understand how I am unconsciously limiting my growth. This book teaches how to leap forward and live in your genius zone.
AuthorityHackerPro Podcast - great for building authority sites, the smartest guys.
Traction - Gino Wickman - great systems on how to run business.
Felix Dennis - Narrow Road - explains the best with no B.S. on what's important if you want to succeed as an entrepreneur.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

No matter how much you study or how great of a business idea you have, it remains that if you don’t take action now. You might not have everything figured out, but you’ll eventually learn the ropes as you set up your business from the ground up. Rome wasn’t built in a day, after all.

As I often tell my team, it’s now or never. Experience is your best teacher; you’ll never learn the industry and how it works if you don’t take the plunge. Moreover, be prepared to work hard from the start. That means sacrificing your weekends and holidays if need be. As you ease yourself into the process and figure it out, you will learn how to work smart and manage your time – teach your team and delegate tasks.

Strike a balance between your work and your personal life. When you’re burned out, you lose your drive and focus. Your mental health and emotional being are equally important as you navigate new waters.

Love your job, and your job will love you. I know it sounds cliche, but hear me out. If you’re not passionate about your business and vision, then minor mistakes will set you back. Those little downtimes will eventually snowball into a bigger issue, and you don’t want that to happen. So learn from your mistakes, but don’t let them hinder your success.

Furthermore, learn how to step back and assess whether your actions are good for or hurt the company. If there’s something wrong with your process, try to tweak it. If it remains the same, then perhaps it’s best to stop it. Adapt, and don’t be afraid to unlearn things. If things didn’t work out the first time, there’s always the next time.

I wouldn’t be where I am now if I let my past failures stop me from trying. It’s when you stop trying that you lose your chance of actually succeeding.

Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?

I’m currently looking for a full-time SEO person for the website. A sharp person who would understand how to do keyword research, optimize articles, track rankings, oversee content updates, and oversee our link-building process to point our links in the right direction.