X-rated Products And Services
IN THESE ENLIGHTENED times the world of X-rated products and services is not just one of seedy shops and Soho side streets. Sex education is more widespread, nobody is afraid to talk about or buy condoms anymore and X-rated and sex-related products and services are bought and consumed by perfectly intelligent men and women. The result is that there is a massive untapped demand for all kinds of X-rated products and services.
By stripping away the ‘seedy’ aspect and perhaps exploiting the anonymity offered by mail order and /or the Internet you can do extremely well (obviously you must take every precaution to make sure your products are not sold to any children). Here are 20 excellent X-rated products and services you could offer:
- Games
A huge range of games currently exists which can be modified and altered to give them and X-rated appeal.
One idea is to produce ‘strip’ versions of games such as snakes and ladders, ludo, poker, lotto and snap. In these games losing, and forfeits such as missing a go, would be replaced with commands to strip off one item of clothing for example, or you could add your own ‘adults’ forfeits.
X-rated jigsaws and role playing games are other games you could produce. These could be sold to wholesalers of X-rated products, retailers, including gift and joke shops, or sold by mail order.
- Mail order products
X-rated products in general are ideal for selling by mail order.
The advantage of mail order selling is that it removes the seediness and stigma attached to buying certain products, and by advertising in the right places it can be done very easily and profitably. Lingerie, sex aids, toys and contraceptives are examples of products you could sell this way, either selling products you have purchased wholesale or that you are marketing on behalf of others.
A good idea is to place advertisements in overseas trade and business magazines stating that you wish to purchase X-rated products suitable for selling by mail order. It is best to produce a catalogue listing all of the products you offer, which should be of as good a quality as you can afford. The products themselves can be advertised in suitable newspapers, magazines and other publications.
An additional idea is to set up a mail order club, offering a different product every month in return for a subscription, along with the usual catalogue.
- Party club
Something that can be run alongside (or as an alternative to) mail order is selling X-rated products through a party club.
Having first booked up with your client you would take your catalogues and a selection of products round to their house, where they will have invited their friends round to sample them, rather like the old Tupperware parties. The occasion is treated in as light-hearted a manner as possible in order to encourage a party atmosphere where people can relax and try out products for themselves, but with the more serious aim of selling as many of your products as possible. The parties are likely to be popular choices for hen nights and gatherings of women, although they could equally be tailored to men’s tastes.
Once you have begun to generate clients initially it is likely that through people telling their friends you will get lots of repeat bookings.
Start by advertising your service in magazines and newspapers (an ideal place is in the same section that wedding and bridal services are advertised), and you could try leafleting pubs, shops, bars, restaurants and nightclubs too.
- Condoms
Due to the promotion of safe sex, condoms have enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years. As well as being sold for their more traditional uses they make great novelty items.
You could develop personalized condoms featuring people’s names, humorous slogans or pictures, Another idea is to offer a service delivering inflated condoms for birthdays, wedding parties and work celebrations, perhaps personalized especially for the event, and inflated with ordinary air or helium.
- Bed linen
Another product which can be developed and modified for the X-rated market is bed linen. It could feature scantily-clad women and men, designs based on the Kama Sutra or even amusing sports-related slogans like ‘With Dunchester United you score every time’.
- Sex educational products
With more adults than ever looking for methods of educating themselves and their children about sexual matters in a moral, un-patronizing and un-embarrassing way there are ample business opportunities for sex educational products.
A series of videos and audio cassettes about the many aspects of sex education could be produced, perhaps along the lines of ‘101 way to please your lover’ or ‘How to teach your kids the facts of life’.
Books could be produced as an accompaniment or separately and you could even develop a home study course.
- Saucy warmers
Saucy warmers are a great novelty idea which will sell well, at gift and joke shops, being the ideal present for the ‘person who has everything’. You may have seen ‘willy warmers’ in novelty shops – use your imagination and create your own variations.
To package the product you could place the ‘warmer’ itself, a card naming the product plus a list of ‘instructions’ inside a small box or plastic bag.
- Cardboard cutouts
A range of life-sized cardboard cutouts featuring female and male models could form the basis of a novel business. These are ideal products for joke and gift shops, although fold-up versions could be sold by mail order.
- Greetings service
An X-rated greetings service is both a tried and tested business and also one which you could add your own novel slant or personality to.
The more weird and wacky ideas you can come up with the better. Leather and bondage whip-o-grams, strip-o-grams, page-3-grams, French maid-o-gram, gay-gram and X-rated singing telegrams all seem to be popular.
- Computer simulated and video fantasy partners
Advances in technology have made computer and video-related hardware better, cheaper and more accessible than ever before.
A related X-rated product idea is to develop videos and computer simulations of fantasy partners. Featuring images of simulated potential partners with dialogue expressing their likes and dislikes – even pretending to make conversation – the service could be a good way of offering people simulated companion ship.
If you have necessary equipment and expertise you could even set up this service on the Internet. You could develop the characters using actors reading scripts, although it is possible using some computers to generate a completely made up image.
- Lingerie and underwear
Lingerie is one of the most popular X-rated products you could sell. There is certainly a wide variety of novelty underwear that can be sold or marketed, and there is a big demand for it, particularly by mail order.
You could either concentrate on a particular area of the market, such as lace or leather goods, or try to cover all bases. Another idea is to develop your own range of underwear, featuring messages and slogans that have been embroidered or printed onto the garments.
Wholesalers and shops selling lingerie, gifts and novelties are possible outlets for your products.
- Sex maniac scorecards and log books
These make two excellent X-rated novelty products you can make and sell. Both can be cheaply and easily designed and produced with the use of desktop publishing software, although they could also be printed up at a reasonable cost. They should be marketed as light-hearted and fun items to be purchased as novelty presents.
- Cassettes, CDs and videos
Three more obvious examples of big-selling X-rated items are audio cassettes, CDs and videos. The type of products of this nature that you could develop and sell are themed dirty jokes and stories, striptease and ‘dirty dancing’ videos, and even pretend sexual reminiscences and commentaries.
- Books
There are obvious opportunities for setting up a mail order club offering new secondhand books and magazines. It is possible to negotiate the purchase of books and back copies of magazines in bulk directly from the publishers, as well as trawling book fairs and secondhand shops for stock.
A less obvious idea is to write your own X-rated novels or short stories, perhaps on a certain theme such as a western or whodunit, and there is a great number magazines that will pay well for these.
Alternatively, if you have access to books and magazines featuring love stories that are over 75 years old where the copyright has lapsed, you could update them, making the language and action more racy, or perhaps put together a compilation of X-rated stories with different scenarios, with your name as compiler or publisher.
- Article writing course
An obvious spin-off from the above if you have writing experience is to set up a mail order course detailing how to write X-rated stories and articles.
Writing these in themselves can be very lucrative, so should certainly be considered, although stressing this point to potential customers could make the article writing course a big seller.
Things you should include in your course are: developing a style, writing dialogue, thinking up potential scenarios and plots, sources of information, which publications to contact to sell your articles to and how much to sell them for.
- Gay-tailored products
The gay community are one example of niche market, at which you could target certain products and services.
The sorts of products to get stocked at shops or sell by mail order that could be tailored for the gay community include books, magazines, posters, videos, cassettes, games – in fact about everything else mentioned in this section.
- Greeting cards
X-rated greeting cards could be a popular alternative to the usual run of the mill greeting cards available. Try to make them as original as possible and approach card wholesalers and retailers directly in order to get them stocked.
- Posters, slides and framed prints
X-rated prints, slides and posters are all examples of goods you could develop to be sold in shops or by mail order.
You could focus on men and women of a certain ‘type’ such as people with blonde or dark hair people from different countries, or models and famous people. Another option is to focus on a different part of the body.
- Nursery rhymes, poems, limericks and songs
Anyone with the relevant artistic talents might like to write their own X-rated nursery rhymes, poems, limericks and songs.
These could be collected together and published in book format or released as CDs or audio cassettes. You don’t necessarily need to write them yourself you could publish collections of other people’s work or release audio compilations under license.
Book and music retailers are the obvious market, although you could sell them yourself by mail order.
- Jokes and tricks
Finally, why not set up a service selling X-rated jokes and tricks? You could market these to retailers and wholesalers, or even better, produce a catalogue and sell them by mail order, building up a list of customers and sending out new catalogues and details of special offers to them.
