It seems like every time you turn around, there’s something being billed as “the new niche”, only it usually reeks of an old concept repackaged and redesigned. Take voyeurism for instance, the new niche from a couple of years back. If you’re like me, perhaps you’re thinking, haven’t the hit TV shows “The Real World” and “Candid Camera” perfected the art of exploring voyeuristic tendencies? There are supposedly even new gay niches … Girlfriend, don’t kid yourself, gay people have been around a lot longer than “Will and Grace.” So it would seem that anything that can be done has been done, and what we term new is something like what Pert Plus did a few years back — we take something old and make it “New and Improved!”What is the new and improved niche for this next year? Real Girls: The girl next-door, the girl that’s so nice and sweet and innocent, and you’ll never, ever see her naked. Unless she goes to an island on Spring Break and gets drunk and crazy and enters a bunch of Wet T-shirt contests to fund her alcohol binge. Or the hot Mom (MILF) who is in the PTA and has yard sales and bakes cookies. You’ll never see her naked, right? Only if you follow her to Mardi Gras and offer her some beads at midnight!

Amateur content generally does well because of the preexisting idea in the surfer’s head that this the subjects are obtainable; This isn’t some out of reach porn star or goddess he/she will never meet in real life. The girl next door who would never dream of posing nude for pictures excites the surfer because of the innocence element. It seems especially naughty when you see a girl doing something they would not normally do.

Now, how do you, the webmaster, take this biologically-natural-train-of-thought and use it to give your surfers what they want while lining your pocket faster and thicker than before?

Our first stop, the paysite. Seems simple enough: You make a site, you put some stuff in it, and they will come, right? Wrong! You need some awesome pics with which to design your public nudity and wet t-shirt oriented website. Now it may seem simple and fun to go out into public and shoot your own content, but it’s a lot harder than it looks, plus there are usually drunk boyfriends trying to break your camera over the guys head who just called his girlfriend a “hot piece of ass.” Tip: Hire a hot female photographer. There are a select few content providers that even provide this content to begin with; none that I’ve found offer photo sets for designing and/or posting. Sometimes you can borrow their pics if you buy feeds, but make sure that’s part of the deal. If you do buy and lease all the content instead of shooting your own, look for high-quality content that hasn’t been obviously staged. Remember, this market wants the real obtainable girl, and the first hint of something staged, they’ll be gone and pissed at you for lying to them. These surfers are finicky, and with all the other sites out there competing for their money, they have the right to be. Also keep in mind, they may love public nudity content, but they also want variety. Give them a little something different here and there within your member’s section to keep your retentions high.

As for traffic? You want to leave all that guess work up to someone else. Let them worry about the content and designs and marketing, and pay you to send them traffic. That would make you the affiliate and the company or owner of the site(s) you’re pushing would be your sponsor(s). How to choose? Simple, look through them all. Look through their member’s sections. Remember, we are all wired pretty much in the same manner. Being in the adult business tends to blur our own views of sexuality a little, but we can still tell what catches our eye and what will catch our surfer s eye. How long does it take you to surf through the member’s section? Is there anything exclusive and truly unique in there? Does it make you want to call and give the password to your friends?

Finally, what type of traffic do you send? Well, I’m no traffic expert, but I can tell you what our affiliates and clients tell us. They do well on teen traffic, voyeur traffic, Spring Break traffic, and public nudity traffic. Even TGP and free site traffic is doing unbelievable conversions with the right marketing push. Maybe it started with the Spring Break videos on late night TV, but all of a sudden, the search engines are flooded with requests for “Spring Break,” “Wet T,” and “Public Flashing.”

One worry everyone seems to have going into this market is over the legality of the content. How can it be legal if there are no model releases? Can I get into trouble for promoting a site with public nudity? Is this content on the up-and-up? There are few laws pertaining specifically to this issue. None address it head-on, and all cases brought before courts have been dismissed, closed out of court, or quietly settled. Keep in mind that there have been, for quite a few years now, two certain fairly large companies selling videos of this type of content during late night TV and on infomercials. The company that provides our public nudity content has been taking photos since the ’60s, shooting video since the mid-’80s, and selling videos online to a very loyal fan base since 1997.

Basically, the legalities boil down to this. Most states in the U.S. recognize that individuals have a right to privacy, and a right to be protected from intrusions. A place where a person has this right is any place where any reasonable person would believe that she could disrobe in privacy, without being viewed, photographed, or filmed by another. Obviously, individuals appearing in a wet t-shirt contest, public Mardi Gras event, or other public place, where they are being openly photographed will have no reasonable expectation of privacy. There is also a clause that has been used obtaining to the journalistic attempt to portray those sexual aspects of society that are often overlooked of avoided by traditional media (such as public nudity, exhibitionism, lewd and lascivious behavior, flashers) .

Now go out and have fun getting started in our “new niche.” Pretty soon this, too, will be old and played out, and we will have to move onto something else ripe for improving. Like Netscape 6 (grin).