Ms. Nikki Nefarious - msnikkinefarious.wordpress.com - is a FetLife Member

Originally I was going to interview John, from FetLife for this post, but then I got to know him really well and I became a greeter at FetLife.  I consider myself to be like the head cheerleader, in fact I even started the John Baku Fan Club!  I also started the Kinky Charlotte (and the rest of North Carolina) and the Redheads and Redophiles groups.  Yes, It’s safe to say that Catalina loves Fetlife.  If you notice in my blogroll, Fetlife is the only social networking site where I link to my profile.  There’s a reason for that.  It’s the only place I spend any time and actually put in effort.  I’ve been writing about FetLife on CatalinaSays.com so much it has its own category!

Months ago a blogger friend invited me to Fetlife, and I looked at the invitation in my gmail inbox and said to myself, “Oh God, another fucking BDSM social networking site,” and then promptly deleted the email.  Months later I found myself at the doorstep of FetLife again as a result of getting pissed off at Myspace.  I jumped in and signed up and had an email from an official FetLife greeter, Thursday’s Child.  Yes, you have read about Thursday’s Child recently.  I had followed her blog now and then, but it wasn’t until we connected on FetLife that we connected!  That was then, this is now.

Present day:  I’m a FetLife Whore.  I am an official greeter.  I’m waiting until payday so I can donate (just $5, but just $5 from each member would make the site self-sufficient and you could do away with advertising).   So now, being friends with John, and he is one of the few I consider a true friend, I know that he’s way too busy to do an interview with me right now.  FetLife is growing in leaps and bounds as people tell the people they know about this great site they just joined.  So I’m going to answer the questions, myself, that I had originally intended for him.  If I don’t know the answer, I’ll find out!  This is the first time I’ve ever interviewed myself for another site.  Should be interesting!

How would you describe FetLife?  What is the purpose or the mission?  What is it that makes FetLife unique to all the other adult social networking sites?

FetLife is a community of likeminded people.  As far as I can tell, drama is held to a minimum, groups aren’t filled with haters and flamers and trolls, comments are real as opposed to Myspace glittery hearts, and people can find each other based on interests and on location.  As for what makes it unique?  Aside from the sense of community that I never felt at the other places, the actual interface and design is nice.  It’s backdoor coded, so spam is kept to a minimum.  It’s the little things, like it says “perv” instead of “prev” to go back to the previous image in someone’s album.  It’s the fact that 20 greeters say a personal hello to tens of thousands of people and will continue to as long as FetLife exists.

Did you come up with FetLife on your own or was it a joint venture?  (Some of my best ideas were a result of a joint venture… ha ha… I got a million of ‘em.)

I’m not 100% sure on this, but I do know that FetLife is done completely by John.  Every single change that is made to the site, he does.  Every time someone asks for something to be changed, it’s John that would have to change it.  There is no group of programmers.  It’s just John.  One man, thousands of emails and messages, and a whole lot of website to administer (that’s why now, as a friend, I can’t ask him to spare his time for this interview).  We (the 20 greeters) try to help him in the FetLife Town Hall, which is the place to make suggestions and ask questions, but even we get overwhelmed and we’re 20 people!

When did you realize that FetLife had taken on a life of its own?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that John realized that FetLife had really taken on a life of its own when he had to add 10 more greeters to the original 10 to keep up with the amount of new members.  Because we (again, we being the greeters) do send a personal message to every single new member, it became necessary to add more greeters to meet the daily increasing membership.  We’re already talking about adding more greeters again within six months.  It’s clearly become a huge project.  I’m not sure John knew that it would grow so big so quickly.

What is your vision for the FetLife of the future?  Will it ever be too big?  Would you ever cap membership or screen members?  Will it be full of temporary profile trolls who just want to sneak a peek at our smut (like Myspace)?

I can’t imagine that John is going to cap membership.  That just seems stupid, and I think he would only close off new members as a last minute resort to take care of the site long enough to be able to open it back up.  There is not a screening process for new members, but it’s a tight community and the troll factor is kept to a minimum.  For one thing, when the greeters greet new members, we look at each profile.  If something is creepy or just wrong we send a little email to John and ask him to look at it.  He usually messages the person and asks them to change it.  People are also discouraged from sending friend requests to people they don’t know and encouraged to send a message first.  You are also limited to the number of friend requests you can make within a certain period (it’s reasonable) and to sending too many messages (again, you can always wait a few hours and go back).  I haven’t had a single spam message there yet, and that’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  For realsies.

Do you receive corporate sponsorship?  Do a lot of private individuals or BDSM groups sponsor FetLife?  How do you manage to keep such a great site going (and growing) without charging or having obnoxious banner ads?

There is no corporate sponsorship of FetLife, it’s just a guy and a site.  There are quite a few FetLife members who proudly have the donor banner on their profiles, and there is now paid advertising available. This is taken from the FetLife site:

One of the most important things for me was to create an advertisement network that catered equally to both the big companies that are looking to go after a wide audience as well as the local mom & pop shops who are looking at building their brand locally (I guess in our line of work that would be Dom & sub or Master & slave shops?).

If, for example, you have a physical store or run events and you want to target your ads to only appear to kinksters in a specific geographic location; you can do that. This way, every single time your ad is viewed, it is viewed by exactly your audience so that you can get the most out of your advertising dollars.

What separates us from your other options?

Here is a list of some of the main differences:

• You speak directly to your audience: kinksters.
• Your ads can be targeted by location (country/state/province) and gender. Or not targeted at all!
• With each ad you can also include up to three lines of text describing your product.
• You will not be competing with 10+ other ads on any give page. We display a maximum of 3 ads per page.
• You associate yourself with a site that you yourself like.

How much does it cost to advertise on FetLife?

Per 1,000 impressions we are charging $0.50 USD with a minimum order of $25 USD. Or for those in the advertising a $0.50 CPM (cost per thousand). So, for every $25 you spend your ad will be seen 50,000 times.

You get a $10 credit on your first order if you have a FetLife Banner on your site.

So how do I start?

If you want to place an order or have any questions contact me.

What is your favorite cereal? (If you read my interviews you’ll see that I have a thing for cereal)

Hmmmm….  I’m going to say that John’s favorite cereal is Cocoa Puffs, because I think he’s Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

Of Related Interest:

Another greeter and sex blogger, Ellie Lumpesse, did a Podcast interview with John a while back that I didn’t even know about.  Now how can this be?  She’s one of my favorite bloggers!  Even I miss one now and then.  In case you missed it too, here is a link to her awesome podcast interview.  Take a listen!

Tags: BDSM, Blogs, Catalina Says, D/s, FetLife.com, Fetish, Interviews, Ms. Nikki Nefarious, Projects, Reviews //