The Transparency Report – Top 100 Sex Blogs

by Molly Moore
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In light of the Kinkly Top 100 sex blogs list and some of the posts that were written as a result of it, most notably this great piece by Dangerous Lilly I thought it would be a good idea to write a post with some additional information about the Top 100 Sex Blogs list that I inherited from Rori at Between my Sheets. If you want to read about the history of the list and how I inherited it then the answers are in Top 100 Sex Bloggers 2015 Redux

I have always said that I believe this list is hugely important to the community for various reasons and in order to make it something that is respected and welcomed being transparent about how it is compiled seems vitally important so here goes.

The number of nominations you receive has no effect on your final position within the list.

However you do have to be nominated by someone else at least once to be considered for the list.

The reason for not making nominations count is twofold, firstly it means that blogs with high traffic don’t dominate the list. Just because you have high traffic does not mean you are producing the best content etc, neither does it mean you are not. If nominations counted it would mean the list was unfairly weighted in favour of the more established high traffic blogs which basically becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy making it much harder for small blogs to get in on some traffic action. Secondly, I am not doing this to get you all sending me a ton of traffic, if I was, then clearly the obvious way to do that would be to make nominations count.

Helpers

If I am not sure if a site that has been nominated is actually a blog or if they maybe don’t meet the rules then I send it to Girl on the Net for a second opinion.

The Magic Spread Sheet

There are four columns of scores for each blog; Design, Content, About Me and my personal score (more details on those below)

Each section has a maximum score of 10

The fifth column contains a blogs aggregate score out of a maximum of 40

The sixth column and the one that gives me the final list order is an average score of the 1st four columns out of 10.

The Scores are

based on the following things.

Design – Out of 10 possible marks you get a point for

  • Blog roll – Is it up to date, does it link to a variety of things, are the links to live sites?
  • Search – Is there a search function and does it work (I have a found a few that don’t).
  • Category/Archives – Can a reader find past content that interests them? Quite a few people seem to not have Archives but they are a good way for readers to explore your back content.
  • Social Media – If you are on social is it linked on your blog. Not being on social media will not count against you.
  • Is it mobile responsive – With over 50% of all internet traffic now coming from mobile devices this is really important if you want people to actually read your work.
  • Related or random posts – Having recent posts in your side bar is redundant as it is just duplicating your blog into your sidebar, related posts in a post or random posts are far more likely to offer readers past content they may have missed.
  • Recent comments – This shows activity/community on your site.
  • Easy to navigate – Is there pagination at the bottom of the page? Can I easily find past content or do I have to scroll back through each post individually etc.
  • Easy to read – Is your text lilac on grey, or red on black. Do links disappear when you hover over them?
  • Overall look – This one is the most subjective and as such a little harder to explain but basically if your design makes my eyes bleed you are going to lose a point.

Top tips

At least a few times a year try using your blog, not logged in, as a potential reader might on both a laptop and phone. Can you find stuff, do the clickable links actually work, are your social media links correct and working, do drop down menus cover up content or spill over the page, is your header image too big for your theme and causing your site to scroll left & right, how long does it take for stuff to load? According to goggle if your site takes longer than 2 seconds to load you lose an average of 70% of readers!!!

Content – Not quite so easily quantifiable as above but things it covers things like

  • Pronouns – are your pronouns listed in your sidebar or on your about me page?
  • Are you using images ethically?
  • Is the content original?
  • Spelling, grammar, use of English. I am aware that some folks have issues with things such as dyslexia and I always take that into account. Using text speak for example ‘unless relevant to the content’ is not good writing.
  • Is there a variety of content? Again this can be tricky because some people are blogging in a very narrow field but even then I would hope to see at least a 2 or 3 posts over the course of a year that mix things up slightly. For example, if you are a poet you might have 2 or 3 other posts that are not poetry. Or if you write reviews you might have at least 2 or 3 other posts that are not an actual review.
  • An authors voice – another hard one to quantify but I want to say it is one of things that when it is there is obvious.
  • Is your content sex positive? In the past blogs have been removed from the list because they do not meet this very important criteria. If you are writing posts that are misogynistic, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, whorephobic, etc. or are essentially pick up artist tips, then your blog is not sex positive and your blog will not be included on the list. Additionally, if you are promoting unsafe practices like vaginal douching, “surprise” anal sex or anal sex without lube then your blog will not be included on the list.
  • Does the content feel honest/real/authentic – Again a bit of ‘how long is a piece of string’ but I think we all know it when we see it.

About me page – I have written a whole post about this one About, about me

My Score

Now this is where things get a bit harder to quantify and really is the part of the scoring that reflects the fact this is at the end of the day a subjective list on my part. I try very hard to not directly compare blogs at this point but just to focus on them as individual entities. Basically does the blog grab me for whatever reason? The other thing I think about at this point is am I likely to go back and read more in the future. The list contains blogs covering a huge variety of sub genres within the sex blogging community and so it is impossible to judge them in a like for like manner, how can you compare a review blog to a poetry blog, or an image driven project to the written word? You can’t, and so I try to assess them for exactly what they are on their own individual merit.

A quick note on the ‘minimum of 24 blog posts’ in a year rule.

When I started the list it became obvious that I had way more blogs than places on the list and it also became apparent that some people nominated were barely blogging at all. So I took to twitter and also emailed a number of bloggers within the industry asking their opinion. The consensus was that a minimum of 24 blog posts over the course of a year was a perfectly reasonable threshold number. This is a list about blogging. If you have a blog but are not actively creating content then it seems unfair on others who are for you to potentially take a place on the list over someone else. Also the point of the list is to provide readers with new blogs to read. Those blogs should, in my opinion, should have some regular activity on them. Clearly quantity does not always indicate quality but having a blog and actively blogging are also two different things. That does not mean you are not actively working in the sex positive community or industry, you might be running kick ass workshops or writing content for another site, or writing a novel etc. This also applies if all or most of your content is hidden behind a pay wall of some description. If I can’t view it without having to pay then I am not going to include you on the list.

The final list

Once that is all done I re-order the list (it starts off in alphabetical order) so that the one with the highest score is at the top. Just to give you an idea of the score ranges. In the top ten last year there was a 0.8 difference between the blog in first place and the blog in 10th place. The difference between the blog in 10th place and 20th place was 0.3 and the difference between the blog in 1st place and the blog in 99th place was an aggregate score of 4.6

In previous years the list has been published as both a ranked list and a top 10 with the rest in alphabetical order. Previously I published a poll asking people to vote for the format they preferred. A ranked/numbered list was overwhelmingly the favourite and so that is what you get. Once it is all ready to go I publish the final list with full html code so people can republish the list if they so wish

And then I celebrate its completion with orgasms!

Feedback

I am more than happy to provide folks with honest and open feedback on their score if they ask me for it. However as the saying goes, time is money and I can’t afford to sit and write out 100 + detailed blog reviews so if you want to know your score and a VERY brief synopsis of why then I will do that for free but if you want more detail than that then as per last year I am offering a full site review. Please note a full site review will not guarantee you a higher position on the list next year.

A full site review includes (£100)

  • a server/site performance analysis with feedback on how to improve it (basically how fast your site runs & what you can do to make it better)
  • Detailed feedback on your blog design, navigation, about me page, etc and tips on how to improve it.
  • You will get a written bullet point style report detailing all this plus a 1 hour skype call to talk it through in more detail.

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26 comments

Marie Rebelle November 23, 2016 - 6:33 pm

First of all, Molly, I admire you for all you do for the sex blogging community. I have said it many times before and I will say it many times more.

Then, for all who read this and also read the comments: if you have a blog and you want to improve it, then please ask Molly & Michael to help you with it. I did and it has greatly improved my blog. We all do our blogs the way we do, but sometimes it’s just good to have someone else look at it. Between Molly’s creativity and Michael’s technical skills they have a lot of knowledge to make your blog kick ass!

Thank you for doing this list, as I cannot think of anyone better than you and Michael to do this!

Rebel xox

Reply
Molly Moore November 23, 2016 - 7:01 pm

Aww you made me blush Rebel, thank you very much for your kind words

Mollyxxx

Reply
Ella November 23, 2016 - 6:37 pm

Thank you for this post, Molly. I did have some of the things you’ve pointed out here wrong with my site, such as the recent posts widget in my sidebar, so I’ve had a little switch around and it looks better than it did.x

Reply
Molly Moore November 23, 2016 - 7:01 pm

Cool. I am glad you found something useful here!

Mollyxxx

Reply
Dangerous Lilly November 23, 2016 - 10:33 pm

For the longest time I had the Archives widget in my sidebar. But then, something happened. I felt that in order to show my blog to folks I may meet in person (or to be taken “seriously” with the education & activism), the noodz and office masturbation posts and sex posts were just Not Good Things. Then I also felt the desire to hide things that had to do with a love who turned out to be sociopath (never a dull moment). I honestly at times wish I could just delete the first 2 or 3 years of content on my blog, to be honest. So I offer ways for folks to find the stuff that matters, without letting them trawl back to my days of stupidity, lol. BUT for many blogs whose other means of navigation are slim, yeah archives is way necessary.

Really fascinating though to see just how close the scores are! I think that it would really help a person who is feeling badly about their low rank to know their score vs others, which is definitely something Kinkly won’t do.

I really love that number of nominations don’t count. I seem to remember one year Rori pointing that out, which cut way back on folks getting dozens and dozens of nominations which often felt really crappy for those who didn’t receive as many. I remember those earlier years and feeling crappy about myself for that reason.

Reply
Molly Moore November 23, 2016 - 11:53 pm

Thank you for the comment Lilly.
As with all these things I think you have to work out what works best for you and how you want people to be able to access your content. In your case I can understand why you have changed that. I guess the only thing you could do is find a widget that allows you set the dates you want the achieves to cover. No idea if that exists by the way. I think one of the important things though is to make sure you are not losing all your content behind more content. I have found blogs where there is little to no navigation at all. Maybe they are OK with that but it seems silly to me to create all this stuff and essentially lose it.

I thought putting the score ranges would be useful because at the end of the day the difference between the top and the bottom of the list is not a million miles .

Mollyxxx

Reply
Modesty Ablaze November 23, 2016 - 10:55 pm

“And then I celebrate its completion with wine and orgasms!” !!!
Well, I certainly hope you have lots and lots of BOTH . . . after such a lot of hard work.
You certainly deserve it !!!

And . . . just like Ella, after noting all the things I’m missing as well . . . I think I need some of that wine, and orgasms, as well!!!

Xxx – K

Reply
Kayla Lords November 24, 2016 - 3:11 am

Not only do I appreciate the massive amount of time you’ve taken to simply DO this project, I love that you’ve taken even more time to explain how your process works.

So yes after all this you definitely deserve to celebrate with wine and orgasms – and all the kinky fuckery you both have the energy for. 🙂

Reply
Molly Moore November 24, 2016 - 11:08 am

Thanks Kayla. It was a bit of big write that is for sure but I felt it was important to do

Mollyxxx

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Stella November 24, 2016 - 5:24 am

You, Molly, are a dynamo. I don’t know how you manage all the things you do but I am thankful you figure out a way. After reading your post see a few things I will have to take a look at on my blog. It’s been gathering dust for a bit but I’m finally cleaning it off. 🙂

Stella

Reply
Molly Moore November 24, 2016 - 2:30 pm

Thank you Stella. I am not quite sure how I do it all either….haha!

Mollyxxx

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Hyacinth November 24, 2016 - 1:19 pm

You are an incredible woman, Molly. I really respect and appreciate the care you put into all you do and the nurturing into our community. You’re an integral piece!! Big, squishy hug to you!!

Reply
Molly Moore November 24, 2016 - 2:28 pm

Thank you darling Hy

mollyxxx

Reply
Melina Greenport November 27, 2016 - 6:13 pm

Molly, This is such an incredible service to our community. I learn so much from you. Thank you! xM

Reply
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This Article was mentioned on mollysdailykiss.com

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