Bagongflu Have Blog

June 19, 2007

Getting Approved by Adsense

Filed under: Tips-tips, Adsense

Google Adsense make Your Future   emoticon

emoticon  I don’t understand why everyone makes Adsense out to sound like some kind of devil. So far, I have a 100% approval rate for my consulting clients. You would think that we spend months developing the site to submit for approval – but to be honest; I spend less than a day (if that!)

What we found is that Google is not nearly as picky as they make themselves sound to be. The trick is to make your site in such a way that you are just providing content; we have found that the less selling you do on your approval site, the better.

Don’t worry, once you’re approved you can use that code wherever you want – so put it on other sites that sell later. But for the purposes of getting approved, try to limit to just content, content and more content!

Now, for the disclaimer before we start talking about how to get your site approved for Google Adsense. I am not a member of Google at all, everything I am about to say is all speculation and experience. I have helped over 50 clients get approved for Google Adsense without having even 1 of them not get approved – we have 100% approval rate on FIRST try.

All I am going to teach you is exactly what I do for them.

(more…)

June 12, 2007

(Cara) Rahasia agar tidak dibanned Google Adsense !!

Filed under: Tips-tips, Business, Adsense

Sekarang saya bagikan tips, boleh dibilang triknya, tetapi nantinya kemampuan andalah yang menentukan, bukan kemampuan mencurangi Google Adsense. Apakah selama ini anda tidak mengclick sendiri iklan Google Adsense yang ada diwebsite anda, lalu anda merasa pasti selamat tidak dibanned Google Adsense ? Tidak sama sekali, banyak faktor yang menyebabkan publisher di banned meskipun tidak mengclick iklan sendiri. Faktor utama yang paling penting adalah perbandingan Impression terhadap Jumlah CLICK. Biasanya jumlah click tidak boleh lebih dari 30% dari jumlah impression. Misalnya : Jumlah impression mencapai 1000, dan jumlah click mencapai 300. Dari situ anda sudah harus berhati-hati. Jika tidak percaya, coba saja anda biarkan selama satu minggu dengan persentase seperti itu, tunggu saja surat dari Adsense yang berbunyi, “Hello …” seperti ini: (more…)

June 9, 2007

25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog

Filed under: Tips-tips, Business, Adsense

Decide on a stand alone domain name www.myblog.com or directory of existing site www.mysite.com/blog. Sub domain is also an option blog.mysite.com. Avoid hosted services that do not allow you to use your own domain name! Obtain and install customizable blog software - WordPress and Moveable Type are my favorites. Customize blog look and feel templates - aka design. Research keywords and develop a glossary - Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, SitePoint, SEOBook Keyword Research. Optimize the blog: Template optimization - RSS subscription options, social bookmark links, HTML code, Unique title tags, URLs, Sitemap Add helper plugins specific to WordPress or MT Create keyword rich categories (reference your keyword glossary) Enable automatic trackback and ping functionality. Create Feedburner Pro account and enable feed tracking. (more…)

SEO for Newbies

Explaining search engine optimization to newbies is something that anyone with sales or account support responsibilities at a search marketing or interactive agency is going to have to get good at. I used to spend a lot of time using the notion of “organic” and the whole “making fertile ground, planting seeds, nurturing, cultivating, watering, air, sun, bear fruit” kind of analogy but it gets old using the same description all the time.

The best way to explain the notion of optimizing web sites for search engines can vary depending on the starting point. For people stuck in 1999 SEO land, where it’s all about meta tags, submissions and SEO as a “one time” event, an explanation of the need for fresh, themed content and an ongoing pursuit of inbound links can become the focus.

On the other hand, if the company has been through 3 or 4 SEO overly aggressive SEO consultants, the situation may warrant some bad news about all the reciprocal links, third rate directory listings and keyword stuffed doorway pages that need to be cleaned up or dealt with before a reinclusion request can be filed.

The thing is, many of the companies that think they need SEO are in dire need of other process improvements first, such as a well defined conversion process, tracking and analytics. Sending a ton of qualified traffic to a site through relevant visibility on the major search engines, news search, blog search, social media and high profile links isn’t going to do you much good if there’s no accountability between the marketing and sales departments.

Many companies think they’re getting results from their online marketing, but do they REALLY know? In many cases, they don’t and need to spend some time on process and interdepartmental communication right along with their search marketing.

Search engines aren’t the only source of quality traffic either. The art and science of optimization can be extended to any document or file that can get crawled, indexed and ranked. Add to that the idea of social media and the effects of personalized search and explaining the variety of ways to optimize can become information overload.

The moniker, “search engine optimization” is a bit of a misnomer, since you’re not optimizing seach engines, you’re optimizing FOR search engines. SEO is fundamentally a set of methodologies that make it easier for search engines to find, include, categorize and rank your web content. That’s the starting point.

Because so many companies are in dire need of improvements with other matters related to marketing and business processes, many search marketing agencies that specialize in SEO provide a lot more than just keywords and links. That means the definition of what SEO “is”, means more as well.

So rather than spending a lot of time explaining algorithms, ranking and conversion analysis to someone who is very new to the idea of SEO, another explanation might have more to do with business marketing optimization. Or as an upcoming article I’m writing is titled, “Optimize Your Business for Search”.

This is a holistic approach to optimization that can affect a company from branding and communication to public relations, direct marketing and online marketing. For example, something as fundamental as including keyword research into corporate wide messaging can create many opportunities for search visibility as part of an ongoing process rather than individual “optimization” events.

How do you explain search engine optimization to newbies? Have you found clever analogies or metaphors?

by Lee Odden

5 Reasons Why Google Will Challenge Microsoft’s Office Monopoly

Filed under: Tips-tips, Business, Adsense

By: Robin Bloor Google is now head-to-head with Microsoft in the Office Apps market, as you may have guessed from the recent Google Apps announcement. What you get from Google is word processing, spreadsheet, calendar, chat, web page creation and email. There are two price points:

1. It’s free. Just log on to Google and register. But prepare to be advertised at and you’ll get less storage space what Google gives you is still all you’re ever likely to need if you archive your email every year or two).

2. Google Apps Premier Edition costs $50 per user per year and, you can use your own branding and domain name on email, etc.

So will it actually take market share from Microsoft? I think the answer is "yes". Here are the 5 reasons why.

(more…)

How to achieve greater Adsense revenue by designing the site

Filed under: Tips-tips, Business, Adsense

Here are some ideas on how to achieve greater revenue by designing the site :

If you’re starting a fresh designing a site specifically for Adsense revenue, you’ll want a simple design that makes it easy to paste Google’s code into a horizontal or vertical space on the site. For experienced webmasters, that’s easy.
To increase your click-throughs, design a simple, uncluttered page with the AdSense ads displayed prominently.
Use white space, so that the AdSense panel catches the eye.
Stick to only one topic per page – that should make it easier for Google to serve up highly relevant ads on your pages.
(more…)

Adsense Features

Filed under: Tips-tips, Business, Adsense

The important AdSense features are listed below. Context Sensitivity, Google ads are based on your website content. The keyword rich content decides your ads. Google says : "We go beyond simple keyword matching to understand the context and content of web pages. Based on an algorithm that includes such factors as keyword analysis, word frequency, font size, and the overall link structure of the web, we know what a page is about, and can precisely match Google ads to each page." Occasionally Google gets it wrong. It places great importance on the file name. So be sure to use important keywords in the file name of each page, such as "contextual-advertising.html" for an article on contextual advertising. Ad Types, Google adsense allows you to display either textual ads or image ads or both. Example Adsense Ad Formats, Multiple Ad Units, (more…)

Istilah-istilah Umum di Dunia AdSense (Dan Penjelasannya)

Filed under: Tips-tips, Adsense

Bagi pemula yg baru mengenal AdSense mungkin belum mengetahui istilah2 yg sering dipergunakan. Berhubung pepatah mengatakan “Tak Kenal Maka Tak Sayang”, maka tidak ada salahnya untuk mempelajari terlebih dahulu arti dari istilah2 tersebut sebelum mempelajari lebih jauh mengenai AdSense.

Publisher
Publisher adalah orang atau pemilik situs yg sudah bergabung dengan Google AdSense dan sudah pula memasang iklan AdSense di situs mereka.

Ad Units

Yg dimaksud dengan Ad Units ya iklan AdSense itu sendiri. Ad Units ini terdiri dari beberapa jenis dan ukuran. Yg paling umum adalah jenis Text Ads (lihat gambar di bawah). Pada saat pengunjung meng-klik unit iklan ini, maka, jika valid, publisher akan mendapatkan pemasukan sesuai dengan nilai CPC-nya.

Dalam satu halaman, publisher diperbolehkan untuk memasang maksimal tiga buah Ad Units.

Link Units
Link Units hampir sama dengan Ad Units, hanya saja formatnya mirip dengan format menu yg biasa kita temui di situs2 web.

Contoh lain dapat dilihat di sini
Yg membedakan Link Units dengan Ad Units adalah pada saat pengunjung meng-klik iklan ini, maka ia akan diarahkan pada halaman hasil pencarian di search engine Google. Publisher baru akan mendapatkan pemasukan apabila pengunjung meng-klik salah satu Ad Unit yg ada di halaman tersebut. Pada prakteknya, Link Units terbukti menghasilkan pemasukan lebih banyak dibandingkan Ad Units biasa.

AdSense for Content
Yg dimaksud AdSense for Content adalah iklan AdSense yg dipasang di dalam suatu halaman. Iklan2 yg muncul adalah iklan2 yg berhubungan dng isi halaman tersebut. Atau istilahnya menggunakan konsep contextual. Ad Units dan Link Units adalah yg termasuk dalam AdSense for Content ini.

Alternate Ads
Pada AdSense for Content, iklan tidak selalu muncul. Sebabnya antara lain bisa karena memang stok iklan yg berhubungan dengan isi situs sudah habis atau Google tidak dapat memperkirakan apa isi situs itu sebenarnya. Jika ini terjadi, secara default, yg ditampilkan adalah iklan layanan masyarakat atau sering dikenal dengan istilah PSA (Public Service Ads). Karena bertipe donasi, maka jika di-klik, iklan ini tidak menghasilkan apa2 bagi publisher.

Untuk mengatasinya, Google memperbolehkan kita untuk memasang Alternate Ads atau iklan alternatif. Jika Ad Units yg dibuat telah di-setting dengan menggunakan Alternate Ads, maka apabila Ad Units tersebut tidak dapat tampil, yg muncul adalah iklan alternatif yg ter-setting didalamnya.

AdSense for Search
Selain memasang iklan, publisher AdSense juga dapat memasang form search box di situs mereka. Form ini dinamakan AdSense for Search. Apabila ada pengunjung yg melakukan pencarian dengan menggunakan form tersebut, maka ia akan dibawa menuju halaman hasil pencarian yg bersangkutan. Sama halnya dengan Link Units, publisher akan mendapat pemasukan apabila salah satu iklan yg ada di halaman tersebut di-klik.

Referrals
Referrals adalah satu lagi sumber pendapatan publisher di dunia AdSense. Ya, publisher dapat melakukan iklan referral, baik berupa banner maupun text, di situs mereka. Yg perlu diingat, iklan jenis ini bersifat CPA (Cost Per Action), dimana publisher baru akan dibayar apabila pengunjung yg meng-klik iklan tersebut telah melakukan tindakan tertentu.

Misalnya, pada iklan referral AdSense, pengunjung yg meng-klik iklan dan bergabung dengan Google AdSense baru akan menghasilkan pemasukan bagi publisher apabila pengunjung tersebut meraih $100 dalam jangka waktu 6 bulan (180 hari).Contoh tampilan iklan Referrals adalah sebagai berikut: klic disini

Channels
Channels adalah semacam label yg dapat diberikan pada Ad Units, Link Units, AdSense for Search, dan Referrals. Satu unit iklan dapat memiliki lebih dari satu lebih, dan sebaliknya, satu label dapat digunakan untuk lebih dari satu unit iklan. Di halaman laporan Google AdSense, hasil laporan akan dikelompokkan berdasarkan Channels, sehingga penggunaan Channels akan sangat memudahkan publisher untuk menganalisa perfomance AdSense mereka.

Umumnya, publisher akan memberikan nama Channels yg sama pada unit2 iklan yg ada di satu situs. Jika mau lebih detail, sah2 saja untuk memberikan nama Channels yg berbeda untuk tiap2 unit iklan di tiap2 situs. Yg perlu diingat, maksimal jumlah Channels yg diperbolehkan saat ini adalah 200 buah.

Page Impressions
Page Impressions adalah jumlah yg menunjukkan berapa kali halaman yg mengandung Ad Units dibuka oleh pengunjung. Nilainya tidak terpengaruh oleh kuantitas Ad Units yg ada di dalam halaman yg bersangkutan.

Clicks
Rasanya tidak perlu diterangkan panjang lebar. Clicks adalah jumlah klik pada Ad Units milik publisher. Dalam halaman laporan AdSense, publisher dapat melihat total klik yg ia dapatkan, maupun berdasarkan Ad Units maupun Channel-nya.

CTR (Clickthrough Rate)
CTR adalah perbandingan dalam persen antara jumlah klik yg diterima suatu Ad Units dengan jumlah tampilan Ad Units tersebut. Misal, satu Ad Units yg ditampilkan 40 kali dan di-klik 10 kali memiliki nilai CTR 25% (10:40).

CPC (Cost Per Click)
CPC adalah jumlah uang yg akan didapatkan oleh publisher apabila Ad Units tertentu di klik. Nilai CPC masing2 Ad Units berbeda dan ditentukan oleh banyak faktor, termasuk perfomance publisher dan kualitas situs milik publisher. Namun secara umum, nilai maksimal yg mungkin adalah 20% dari nilai bid dinamis yg ditawarkan pemasang iklan.

eCPM (Effective CPM)
eCPM atau CPM (Cost Per Million) adalah hasil pembagian antara jumlah pendapatan publisher dengan jumlah page impression (per 1000) yg ia dapatkan dari iklan2nya. Sebagai contoh, publisher yg menghasilkan $200 dari 50,000 impression akan memiliki nilai CPM sebesar $4 ($200/50).

Sumber : cosaaranda.com

Internet Marketing, the latest Trend of online marketing!

by jumphigherInternet Marketing is a new trend used for promoting your product or your website over the Internet. With increasing number of people becoming net surfers, it has become a vital part of your marketing to sell your product or promote your website via Internet.

In brief you can say “Internet Marketing” is a word which can be the perfect definition for a successful online business”. The latest trend of online businesses considers Internet Marketing as one of the best techniques for generating remarkable revenues through the websites. Latest Internet Marketing Techniques:

* E-Mailers: E-mailers are simple e-mails which we use to send to our friends. In case of business e-mails we send information about our services or products to a potential client who can be a possible buyer for that service or product. By using any e-mailer software you can send emails in bulk containing special offers which can be provided with your product. This particular technique of the Internet marketing is called E-mail marketing.

* Affiliates: It is one of the most popular methods over the Internet. In this you can offer money to a person, if he is able to sell your product over the Internet through his/her website.

* Paid Listing on Web Directories: Most of the web directories offer the facility of submitting your website within their relevant categories. They charge some money for that which can be annual or on monthly basis as per their policy. After paying, your website will appear on their directory within the relevant category.

* Pay Per Click Advertising: Now days the most demanding technique for Internet marketing is Pay Per Click Advertising. Pay per click advertising is offered by all the major search engines. By paying some money for your choice of keyphrases which is called bidding, your website will appear in the search engine’s sponsored listings. This is an easier technique to get instant returns on investments.

* Search Engine Optimization: Search engine optimization is another globally accepted technique for making any website visible on search engines. Search engine optimization takes time and tremendous efforts. Search engine optimization is another name for enhancing a website according the algorithms of search engines. Your website should follow the criteria made by the search engines to get top rankings. In case of search engine optimization you need not to pay any money to the search engines for showing your results. The results which come through ethical search engine optimization will be reliable and stable for a long time period if you will be updating your website time to time according to the search engines algorithms.

Increase PageRank Fast with Quality Backlinks

The PageRank of a website is determined largely by the importance, or popularity, of the site based on the PageRank of the sites linking back to it. You must take advantage of quality backlinks to increase the PageRank of your site. What are backlinks? Plain and simple, backlinks are links that point back to your site. They are links you have exchanged with or received from other sites, as well as links placed strategically by you in forum posts, blog posts and comments, and the resource box of submitted articles. The submission of your site to website directories also provides backlinks that are highly favored by search engines. Ideally these links, especially those placed in your forum signature and resource box of published articles (see my related article "Your Signature - An Internet Marketing Goldmine"), will contain keywords in the text of the link to create "anchor text." For example, "Online source for anniversary gifts" instead of "Click here for online anniversary gifts". Placing keywords in the text of the link anchors your keyword(s) to your url rather than anchoring "Click here" to your url. Not only do you have a backlink to your site, you have created a link of higher quality that includes the keywords you are targeting in your overall marketing campaign. <!–more–>Why do I need backlinks? The number of quality backlinks linking to a site is one of the main criteria used by Google and other search engines to rank and place websites. This statement, written by David Austin in a Feature Column of the Monthly Essays on Mathematical Topics, sums it up: "The fundamental idea put forth by PageRank’s creators, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, is this: the importance of a page is judged by the number of pages linking to it as well as their importance." With this all-powerful statement from the creators of Google, the importance should be clear: you need backlinks to attract the robots that determine the importance of your website. The value of your page, your website, in the eyes of Google’s robot lies in the number and quality of the links that it finds from other sites to yours. As the number of other popular, high-ranking sites find your site worth linking to grows, your popularity goes up along with your position in the search results. In other words, quality backlinks are needed to entice search engines to stand up and take notice. Backlinks are also helpful in leading visitors to your site. In this regard, backlinks are much like bread crumbs left by Hansel and Gretel to find their way back home. When your site is new, the robot will not place your site at the top of the results list immediately no matter how much time and effort went into the design and SEO of your site. Links from other sites that searchers are likely to find could lead them to your site if they look through the links page to find related products that might be available on your site. In addition, links placed in posts to forums and blogs and the resource box of published articles have the potential of being seen and followed by thousands of visitors every day. If the forums, blogs, and article directories have high page ranks, you have more than just a link for visitors to follow, you have a quality link that will serve to increase your page rank as well as your traffic. What are quality backlinks? Quality backlinks are links from websites that have a higher page rank than your site, links from websites that have content or purpose related to your site (also known as relevance), links that include anchored text, and links that are built naturally over time, not a sudden increase in links just for the sake of having a high number of links. Google has made it very clear that the importance of a site in the eyes of Googlebot is greatly influenced by the number and importance of the pages linking to it. In order to increase your PageRank, your website’s importance in the eyes of search engines, seek out links from higher-ranking sites that have related content, include anchored text in your signature for forum and blog posts as well as your resource box in articles, and let links build naturally over time. These practices will be a valuable part of your overall marketing strategy.

Salah satu cara google mendeteksi invalid click

Filed under: Tips-tips, Business

Menurut analisa beberapa pakar google adsense (atau setidaknya pemain yang bermain lama di adsense), Direct hits adalah salah satu yang bisa dikategorikan sebagai invalid clicks, bisa karena persentasenya yang tinggi, walaupun bukan merupakan metode utama “robot google” mendeteksi invalid clicks (perbandingan jumlah persentase impression terhadap jumlah clicks tetap merupakan faktor paling utama). Meskipun begitu, tetap saja faktor ini tidak boleh diremehkan, terutama bagi para pemain baru adsense dan juga website / web blognya masih sepi (berhati-hatilah dengan direct hits ini). Lalu apa itu direct hits? <!–more–>Direct hits sebenarnya istilah lama yang telah dipakai misalnya oleh visit / hit counters untuk melaporkan referrer (dari mana pengunjung datang sebelum sampai kepada website / webblog anda). Informasi ini dikirimkan / disampaikan oleh browser melalui sepotong script, jadi, dengan metode ini, hit / visit counter anda bisa melaporkan kepada anda dari mana visitor anda berkunjung sebelum singgah ke website / webblog anda, sehingga anda tahu website mana saja yang mempunyai link kepada anda, ataupun dengan keywords apa seorang visitor dapat mencari di search engine sehingga muncul website / webblog anda di search engine. Dan dengan metode konvensional inilah, google adsense mendeteksi invalid clicks. Sebagai contoh, jika website / webblog anda belum terindex di search engine seperti google,yahoo,msn live,dan lain-lain karena mungkin anda belum mensubmit / mendaftarkannya atau mungkin anda sudah men-submitnya, tetapi belum tampil di SERP tiba-tiba ada beberapa iklan google adsense yang di click visitor anda, robot google akan tentu menandai click ini, dan dijadikan bahan analisa mereka. Mungkin jika hanya satu dua kali click, robot google tidak akan mempedulikannya, tetapi jika persentasenya sudah tinggi,maka ingatlah (google adsense tidak memberikan warning tertulis kepada anda, tidak ada peringatan), anda bisa langsung dibanned mereka. Mungkin google adsense tidak akan langsung menendang anda dari bisnis mereka, tetapi bayangkan jika anda yang sudah di tandai mereka, baru saat income anda mencapai hampir seratus dolar, setelah anda isi PIN baru dibanned mereka, apakah tidak menyesal ? Untuk itulah, jangan sekali-kali (atau berulang kali) melakukan click sendiri (manual click) atau menyuruh teman atau kerabat anda mengclick iklan google adsense anda, apalagi anda pemula di bidang ini. Agar anda yakin, saya berikan contoh sepotong script ditulis dalam javascript, bagaimana cara mendeteksi DIRECT HITS tersebut: Selipkan kode ini di dalam file HTML anda. < !– if (document.referrer&&document.referrer!=”") document.write(’Anda aman karena anda berasal dari ‘+document.referrer+’
’); else alert(’Ini bisa dikategorikan sebagai invalid click karena ini termasuk DIRECT HITS
’); //–> speedytown.com

How To Set-Up An Interactive Social Network Site That Draws Hundreds Of Daily Unique Visitors

In 2006, Google spent around $1.6 Billion to acquire YouTube - one of the most prolific interactive websites around was gobbled up by the biggest dot com in the world. What’s remarkable is that YouTube wasn’t earning anything near an income worthy of comment and it still isn’t. Google bought it for two reasons - first, the massive subscriber base that YouTube had, and second, YouTube is a new breed of interactive site that Google believes is the future of the internet. Google have spent more money researching this than you and I will ever have in our banks so you need to pay attention to this fledgling trend before it transforms into a cash-yielding craze (it will, by which time you risk missing the boat). (more…)

June 7, 2007

Why Do We Have Sex? Part 2

Filed under: Sex-Sex

Although there are countless exceptions and variations when it comes to reproduction, there is one fundamental characteristic that typically distinguishes between sexual and asexual organisms - the structure of their genes.

* * * * ** * *
Most asexually reproducing plants and animals carry a single complete set of genes in their cells. In biological terms their genes are haploid, which is just a Latin word for simple.

Sexually reproducing organisms, on the other hand, are generally die-ploid, meaning they carry two complete sets of genes. Every one of your cells effectively has twice the genetic information it would take to make a single person. Your mother and father each contributed genes that encode the color of your hair and eyes, the size of your nose, the proportions of your limbs, and so on. Your mother’s genes determine some of your traits, your father’s genes determine others, and some of your traits are determined by both your mother’s and father’s genes.

Asexual reproduction has some distinct benefits. For one thing, it’s fast. If a typical bacterium takes twenty minutes to split in two, it will have eight descendants in an hour, and sixty-four in two hours.

If there’s sufficient food around to support a population explosion, a single germ dividing at this rate could boast more than a million offspring in seven hours, and over a billion in ten hours. It’s what physicists call exponential growth.

Sexual creatures can grow their numbers exponentially as well, although not as fast as asexuals. If two populations of organisms, identical in every way except for their mode of reproduction, were to squeeze into the same ecological niche, the asexual population wins, at least in the short term.

Rabbits are the iconic example of animals that breed like, well, rabbits. Imagine a fertile valley that’s settled by two colonies of ten rabbits each. One colony consists of five male and five female rabbits that reproduce once a year in the usual way. The other is a colony of ten asexual females that also reproduce once a year, but have no need of males (fortunately this is a purely hypothetical type of rabbit).

If every female rabbit can bear a litter of ten babies each season, then in one year the sexual rabbits increase their numbers by five litters - one litter from each female - resulting in fifty babies plus the ten original colony members, for a total of sixty sexual rabbits. The asexual colony has ten litters, one hundred babies, plus the original ten for a total of a hundred and ten rabbits.

Presumably, the amazons give birth only to females, while the sexual rabbits produce half male and half female babies. After a single breeding season, the females in the colony of asexual rabbits outnumber the sexual females by nearly four to one.

The all-female asexuals will swamp the sexual rabbits in a few generations. Even if there are limitations of food and water in the valley that keep the total number of rabbits in check, the asexuals efficient breeding scheme allows them to overrun the sexual rabbits in short order.

As you can see, males are the true liability in breeding populations - they eat food that could go to the girls, produce waste, and take up precious space in the colony. But they are of little help in increasing population numbers other than donating sperm, which asexuals can live without.

Why don’t we see asexually reproducing rabbits, squirrels, rats, elephants, or humans in the real world? The answer lies in adaptation to stress. And we can thank males for that.

Asexual populations consist essentially of clones, with each child carrying exactly the same genetic material as its parent. If a new disease, parasite, or predator were to come along with a particular talent for attacking our asexual rabbits, the whole population could be rapidly decimated.

Sexual rabbits have a better chance of surviving in the face of stress thanks to the presence of the boys. In mating, the male and female of a species each contribute a portion of the offspring’s genetic material, which means babies are always at least slightly different from their parents. Sex stirs the genetic pot, leading to combinations that may occasionally handle stresses better.

When a fox finds a valley full of bunnies, you might imagine that it eats the slowest ones first. All the asexual rabbits are equally swift because they’re identical. If the fox can catch one it can catch them all.

Some of the sexual bunnies however, will be faster than others as a result of the variability that comes from male-female breeding. Pretty soon, the pressure of having a fox hanging around might lead to natural selection of fleet-footed bunnies. Of course, rabbits could deal with foxes in other ways - developing better camouflage, enhancing their wariness, or growing wickedly sharp claws. But in any case it’s the sexual ones that have the potential of finding solutions, while the asexuals are doomed.

Once sexual rabbits have developed an adaptation to deal with a specific stress, you might wonder what is to prevent them from spontaneously changing reproductive tactics to become a new asexual super rabbit that can fend off a given type of threat.

Based on some physicists’ models, the primary reason is that foxes, germs and parasites evolve as well. A rabbit that adapts to the stress of a certain fox causes stress for the fox by denying him food, which in turn leads to the evolution of better hunters, forcing rabbits to evolve further, and so forth. Populations of rabbits and foxes ebb and flow as each adapt to changes in the other, leading to long-term stability of predators and prey that is maintained by sexual mixing of each species’ genetics.

As organisms evolve, they face lots of shifting stresses, which firmly establishes sexual reproduction as the procreation method among just about everything larger than an amoeba.

Even if there were no threat of predators, parasites or diseases, all life faces the risk of random genetic mutations. Mutations are changes that arise from errors that occur when DNA replicates, or from exposure to things like radiation and chemicals. Asexual organisms that have a single precious copy of their DNA are in deep trouble as errors accumulate. Sexual organisms gain protection through their genetic redundancy - if an error develops in a gene contributed from one of your parents, repair mechanisms in your DNA can use the genes from your other parent as a map for repairing the problem. Or the problem may be moot if a healthy gene is dominant over the flawed copy.

In short, sex provides multiple levels of genetic protection. It offers a route to adaptation through gene shuffling, ensures backup copies of genes are available, and keeps genes in good shape with DNA repair mechanisms

Why do we have sex? Part 3

Filed under: Sex-Sex

In the competitive game of natural selection, the winning organism is the one whose DNA is most prevalent and longest lasting.

When a bacterium divides, the offspring carry the same DNA as the parent, as do the offspring in the third and fourth generations, and every generation after.

Sexually reproducing organisms lack this sort of genetic continuity. Your children will each carry genes that come in part from you and in part from their other parent. When your children breed, the portion of their DNA that you contributed will be further diluted. In the course of a few generations, there’s not likely to be much of you left in your descendents. On the bright side, genetically speaking, at least your descendents and your species as a whole, can survive in the face of extreme stresses, while an asexually reproducing species could be wiped out easily. In fact, the scarcity of asexual species suggests that they hardly ever survive for long in nature.

I know what you’re thinking. If two sexes are better than one in dealing with stress and mutations, wouldn’t three be better still? The fact that there don’t seem to be any suggests the answer is no.

Nevertheless, physicists have developed mathematical models of hypothetical creatures that breed in sets of three. (The researchers who wrote the papers examining the three-sex models, unfortunately, didn’t bother to explain how these creatures would get their three-way groove on.)

Three-sex creatures and their offspring are triploid, with three complete sets of genes rather than the two of diploids like us, or the single genes of haploid amoebas and other simple animals and plants.

The numbers work out poorly for three-sexed creatures. For one thing, it’s much more complex to get a reproductive trio together. The simple fact that it takes more parents to produce the next generation means that the population will grow slower than that of competing diploids just as diploids are out-bred by asexual haploids. Triploids, however, have one thing going for them - they are less susceptible to random mutations than haploids or diploids, thanks to even greater genetic redundancy than two gene animals like us. Unfortunately, they lag behind when it comes to adapting to other sorts of stress. Like so many cases of competition in nature, too much of a good thing turns out to be bad.

If triploid genes work in the same way ours do (which seems like a good guess) then each of the three genetic sequences has a genes for every trait, but it’s the dominant one that wins out, or the trait ends up being a blend of all three. If the blue eye gene is dominant in a triploid population, the fact that each member of the population has three shots at getting a blue eye gene means that it is much more likely that everyone will have blue eyes.

It’s easier to grasp the problem if we take it a few steps further. Imagine a population with ten sexes (and ten sets of genes per cell), and blue eye genetic dominance. Even if nine out of ten genes code for non-blue eyes, the one remaining blue eye gene wins. In cases of incomplete dominance and co-dominant genes, blending more and more versions of a certain trait leads to genetic uniformity instead of diversity, just as mixing more and more colors from a painter’s palette results not in brilliant new colors, but to ever muddier shades of brown. While single-gene haploids have essentially no genetic diversity, increasing the numbers of complete genes in an organism beyond the two of diploids also leads to steadily decreasing diversity, which means less and less opportunity for evolutionary adaptation.

For most organisms, at least the larger and more structurally complex ones like humans, two-sex genetic diploids have an optimal combination of diversity, adaptability, reproductive efficiency, and resistance to genetic errors.

When humans rely solely on the tools nature provides us, we reproduce as most two-sex creatures do - a male provides semen, a female provides an ovum, and another generation begins. With a little medical and scientific intervention, however, we have lots more options.

Artificial insemination of course is one of the oldest and simplest alternatives to actual intercourse. Infertility treatments involving insemination in a Petrie dish are much like the external insemination practiced by fish and other aquatic and amphibious creatures.

While it is not triploid sex, when a woman serves as a surrogate mother for a fertilized ovum she is part of an interaction much like the three part male-female-female mating model.

Human cloning, however, is perhaps the most controversial method that may soon be among our potential reproductive options. Setting ethics aside, humans who reproduce via cloning would gain many of the asexual benefits that bacteria enjoy. Presuming that people who choose to clone are women who carry their own fetal clones in their wombs, and tend to have the same numbers of children over their breeding lifetime as other women, they would be able to increase their numbers much faster than sexual human couples could.

Men who opt to clone themselves need to seek out a woman to host the fetus in her womb, which means the process still takes a man and a woman. So that’s really not an advantage numerically. In addition, the woman host would have to agree to waste precious reproductive time and effort to bear a child of no genetic relation to her. Surrogate mothers do that today for couples who can’t, or choose not to, carry their own children to term, but surrogates usually require fee in exchange for the rented womb.

In a community where male-female couples and cloning women each choose to raise two children, the numbers of mating couples stays constant with each passing generation, but the numbers of clones double from one generation to the next. The clones’ numbers could grow exponentially. Again, it’s the males that are the reproductive liability in mating couples.

Other asexually reproducing creatures are highly susceptible to changing stresses in their environment, which favors sexual populations molded by natural selection. Humans, at least those living in more highly developed nations, tend to deal with stresses through controlling the environment and counteracting the stresses rather than through evolution.

If it’s too cold, there’s no need to evolve fur; we turn up the heat or put on a coat. If it’s too hot, we turn up the air conditioning. We no longer adapt natural immunity to diseases; instead we develop vaccines, antibiotics, and prevention methods. As a result, people who are reasonably well suited to surviving in modern society, and who reproduce via cloning, would face few, if any, drawbacks from their asexual reproduction while gaining all the benefits.

Scientists have managed to clone many types of animals including cattle, cats, sheep, and monkeys. As of this writing, there have been no confirmed human clones produced from adult DNA. The complexity of cloning and the risks of severe birth defects mean it may be years before human cloning is perfected. But it will happen eventually.

If cloning ever becomes accepted practice, society could rapidly become populated primarily with women who reproduce by strolling down to the corner pharmacy to pick up the Acme Home Clone kit, rather than wasting time and energy looking for a male mate.

Clones won’t evolve, so there is no reason for them to lose their sexual urges. Although they will have to learn to rely on lesbian sex to fulfill their needs, because men will eventually die out as sexually reproducing people lose ground to the clones.

When clones come to rule the world, sexual intercourse will be nothing more than a source of recreation, relaxation, and social bonding. Sex will be useless for procreation.

Why Do We Have Sex? Part 1

Filed under: Sex-Sex

If your answer is “to make babies,” you’re wrong. Sexual activity among humans has nothing to do with fertilization more than 99.99% of the time.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Typical heterosexual couples make love an average of a hundred times a year. Assuming they keep up this pace most of their adult lives, they will end up having had sex as many as four thousand times.

In addition to sex with a partner, most people seek lots of sexual relief when they’re all alone. Men typically learn to masturbate in adolescence and keep up the practice daily until their twenties. The pace usually slows down as men age and often dips when they enter sexual relationships, but most men will probably masturbate ten thousand times in fifty to sixty years of sexual activity. Altogether, the average man can expect to experience fifteen thousand or more orgasms over the course of his life.

Women start off masturbating at a similar age and frequency as men. Most masturbate daily until their late teens, but slow down when they reach their early twenties to about a third the rate of men. Still, they typically enjoy sexual stimulation, either alone or with a partner, for a lifetime total of five to ten thousand sexual experiences.

Despite all that sexual activity, the population in the US and most other highly industrialized nations is fairly stable. That is, there is roughly a single child born for each person in the country, which means that there is one successful pregnancy for every ten thousand sexual experiences.

Humans are unusual creatures in this regard, though hardly unique. Certain apes, dolphins and wolves are among the animals that use sexual interactions for things like pleasure, bonding, and establishing social structure. But intercourse for most other organisms is all about making babies.

Even though humans rarely have sex in order to get pregnant, it’s primarily our genetic mandate to mate and bear young that is reflected in our sexual desire. Evolution ensures things that are good for the propagation of our genes bring us pleasure. For most people, and apparently many animals as well, the orgasm is the benchmark of pleasure. The fact that it produces the most enjoyable sensations and the strongest desires that we are likely to ever experience suggests that sex is effectively the most important thing we do in life, from an evolutionary point of view. Although we have found ways to separate intercourse from procreation, sexual ecstasy is nature’s reward to us for continuing the species.

Sex between a male and a female, however, is not the only way for organisms to reproduce. For millions of years, when life was new on Earth, plants and animals got on just fine without intercourse. Most of them were simple single-celled organisms. At times when there were plentiful resources to keep some organism alive, rather than letting anything go to waste, or go to a competitor, the organism would simply duplicate its DNA and split into two identical copies of the original. Modern bacteria, amoebas, and many types of algae and molds continue the practice.

A look at the pros and cons of various types of reproduction can help explain why we mate the way we do instead of opting for asexual reproduction, or some other scheme altogether. For physicists who ponder reproductive strategies, the subject is similar to many other sorts of problems in physics where systems, in this case populations, naturally find the optimal solution to complex and competing demands.

How To Have Sex With A Woman Who Is Not Your Wife

Filed under: Sex-Sex

Dear Nina and Rita,

I?m 38 years old and I lucked out in life and met the girl of my dreams in high school, and we?ve been married almost 20 years. The sex has been getting better and better as our kids are now old enough to entertain themselves, and we have a lot more time. The only problem is that we were both virgins when we started dating, and have been each other?s only sex partner. I can?t help wondering what I may have missed. Don?t get me wrong, we have an active sex life, and have been somewhat adventurous. I just have this nagging feeling that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. How do I let this go without having an affair, which I don?t want to do?

Signed,
Nathan

—————————————————————-
Dear Nathan,

Having sex with another woman will probably not be better than having sex with your wife. In fact, you will probably be so nervous that you won’t even be able to get an erection.

And yet, having sex with another woman could still be one of those life-enriching experiences like volunteering at a homeless shelter or seeing the Grand Canyon. If your marriage is so fucking awesome, then you and your wife should try swinging. Sure, “swinger” seems like the one label you don’t want associated with your identity, but you?ll feel better when you browse thousands of profiles of regular couples on reputable adult dating websites. (We?re not giving URLs because Rita and her ex-boyfriend forgot to take down their profile after breaking up.)

The nice thing about swinging is that you don?t have to lie to your wife. But, the hard thing about swinging is that you have to be honest with your wife. We suggest you tell her that you are very happy in the marriage, and you have recently become aware of some new sexual needs that develop quite naturally from becoming a middle-aged adult within a stable family lifestyle. You might even tell her that you feel there?s a lot of confusing messages in our culture, so that having an affair or denying oneself seem to be the most popular, yet unappealing, solutions. And then, take a deep breath and tell her that you want try wife-swapping.

Does it make the conversation easier or harder to assume that, deep down, your wife feels the same way? She?s curious about making love with other men. Before you have this conversation with her, you must become totally comfortable about her making love with other men. If you?re not comfortable with your wife making love with other men, then you are not ready to be a swinger, and you?re not worthy of our advice.

After you and your wife have reassured each other that you are totally in love with each other and completely happy in your marriage, then you can put a profile online and start flirting with other couples. A good couples dating website will have a list of rules and guidelines to help you establish appropriate contact with other couples. You?ve missed the era of online dating, so be warned that there are some fakes out there, but after a while you?ll be able to spot who is serious.

Before you make arrangements to meet potential couples face-to-face, you and your wife need to agree upon what you are seeking. Just like singles, some couples are looking for one night stands, while others want an ongoing connection. In the beginning, it?s fine for you and wife to say that you are “exploring the scene” if you’re not sure what kind of relationship you want. However, you absolutely must establish your boundaries–what body parts and activities are off limits–before you find yourselves in a hot tub with a randy schoolteacher and dentist couple from the suburbs.

All our love and more,
Nina and Rita

Good Pussy Health Precautions

Filed under: Sex-Sex

* Avoid lubes with sugar, colorings and flavors in them. Glycerin/glycerol is a sugar — read the lube’s ingredients, because yes Virginia, Astroglide contains sugar. Sugar feeds yeast: think about it. Nine times out of ten when I worked in sex toy retail this was the cause of most women’s irritation.

* And that means no whipped cream, chocolate or pussy sundaes, either. Sugar caution also applies to well-meaning lovers who go down on you with a cough drop or mint in her/his mouth.

* Don’t get oil in there either — oils are difficult to flush out of the vagina, though silicone lubes are fine (even though they feel a lot like oil). Mmmm, silicone lube (one brand recently tested and passed FDA regulations for safety). Try to use pussy friendly water-based lubes.

* Always pee after sex, even if it’s sex with yourself. If you have frequent bladder infections, this might be your solution.

* Avoid harsh soaps with intense scent or a high pH, like Ivory and ‘deodorant’ soaps. Use glycerin soaps if you think the soap might be a factor.

* Don’t douche. Just don’t. Douching kills all the good flora and fauna that keeps your pussy healthy.

* Drink plenty of water. Ever drink lots of coffee and no water and have your pee sting? That’s your urethra (G-spot area) getting irritated and pleading for water.

* Is your lover touching your pussy with clean hands? Don’t ever be afraid to have them use a glove or ask them to wash their hands.

* Never go from back door to front (anus to vagina).

* What’s your sex toy made of? (See above section.) When in doubt, try to use silicone sex toys (or metal, glass or Pyrex), or cover your toy with a condom. Keep condoms handy so you don’t have to hassle with washing a toy when you don’t want to get out of bed.

* If you’ve been using a jelly toy with no irritation but suddenly start experiencing irritation, time for a new toy (or start using it with a condom). Jelly toys are porous and can retain bacteria even after washing

Sex Toy Materials

Filed under: Sex-Sex

There’s no doubt: what the toy is made of makes all the difference in the world. Most commercially available sex toys are made of hard plastic, jelly rubber, silicone, vinyl and softskin (aka Cyberskin or Futurotic). But there are two basic hygienic differences you’ll need to know when choosing a toy: porous versus non-porous materials.

Non-porous toys are made of materials (like silicone, hard plastic, glass, metal and stone) that are easy to clean and do not retain bacteria in the tiny pockets or pores in the surface. What this means is that when you clean one of these toys, they’re completely clean and don’t have the potential to carry STDs or bacteria that can infect (or re-infect) the user. Plastic, glass and Pyrex, metal and stone sex toys can be rendered sterile surfaces by washing with unscented antibacterial soap (like Hibiclens) or a solution of 1:10 bleach and water (1:10 alcohol and water is a fine alternative).

Many consider silicone the perfect sex toy material. Of course, the popularity of silicone toys caused the ethics-free novelty sex toy industry to start incorrectly labeling jelly rubber toys as silicone (or sili-gel) to make more sales — again, buyer beware. Private companies make silicone toys from medical-grade silicone, so you should never be able to see through a silicone toy; real silicone is always opaque. The surface is 100% pore-free, and these toys have a silky-smooth surface, can range from very firm to floppy-soft, and they warm quickly to body temperature and retain their heat for a long time. Silicone toys can be boiled for up to five minutes or run in the top rack of the dishwasher for complete sterilization, which is especially awesome for anal toys. Some silicone toys react badly to silicone lubricants, so it’s best to use water-based lubes with your silicone toys.

Most sex toys are made of a material usually referred to as jelly rubber, though you’ll also see variations like jel-lee, latex jelly, or derivatives like glow-in-the-dark and “realistic” materials such as softskin, Cyberskin or Futurotic. Jelly rubber toys are very colorful, clear (though not always), shiny and visually appealing. It’s the ultimate “mystery material”, mass-produced in mostly Chinese chemical factories with so many mixtures and versions of the material it’s difficult to pin down a set of manufacturer’s ingredients.

It is known that these mystery materials contain latex and phthalates, they have a very chemical smell, they leach oils and can leave spots on fabrics and wood, and the surface breaks down over time. Softskin, Cyberskin and Futurotic toys are especially strange; while they feel amazingly real, they react bizarrely with other jelly rubber toys and actually melt into wet puddles of chemical goo upon contact — needless to say, don’t store these two materials side-by-side. Softskin is the most porous toy of all, able to absorb color from lipstick and even text from newsprint.

No one knows for sure how safe these toys are for internal use; again, it’s the novelty industry so we can surmise that it’ll be about 800 years before clinical tests are done on the long-term effects of jelly rubber chemicals are on the cervix and lower colon. Some people have no problems with jelly rubber toys and have used them for years uneventfully (except for the orgasm part, which is certainly an event). Others have had serious reactions to the latex, or other unknown chemicals, ranging from anaphylactic shock from latex allergy to recurring infections. Here you’ll find an article about the possible harmful and carcinogenic nature of these toys; here is a startling piece about a German chemist’s study that found ten toxic chemicals in jelly rubber.

Which is why many sex toy boutiques (and I) recommend that you use a condom on any jelly rubber or softskin toy that enters your body. If you have no reaction to jelly rubber, and most people don’t, remember to keep the toy really clean. Wash these toys with unscented antibacterial soap (like Hibiclens) or a solution of 1:10 bleach and water (alcohol and water is a fine substitute). Waterproof toys are wonderful in this regard, as they can be completely submerged during cleaning. Consider porous toys disposable, and once it’s been used for anal play, make it an anal-only toy. Keep an eye on the surface; once it becomes dull it’s starting to break down and you can never be sure you’re getting it clean; toss it out and get a new one. And hey — doesn’t everyone want an excuse to go sex toy shopping?

Novelty Products Not Safe At Any Speed

Filed under: Sex-Sex

* Nonoxynol-9 removes skin. Really. Avoid any and all lube, condoms and “toy cleaner” with Nonoxynol-9. N-9 is a detergent that has been shown to cause cervical abrasions, strips away rectal lining, and only kills HIV/AIDS in clinical settings. if you’re curious, look for the article, “The Nonoxynol-9 Scandal: How ‘AIDS Prevention’ Put Women and Gay Men at Risk by Patrick Califia” and also read, “The Scandal of Nonoxynol-9″.

* Anal-Eze can really hurt you. Lubricants with benzocaine, and numbing agents such as Anal-Eze, “good head gel” and desensitizing creams contain oils, flavors and colorings, and they are very unsafe. Numbing the back of your throat, the penis, the vagina, and especially the anus can lead to serious injury and infections that can (and often) land users in the doctor’s office or ER. Think: you can’t feel the skin breaking or tearing, and if it’s the anus, there’s fecal bacteria. When you can’t feel pain, you are getting injured, period. Pain sucks, but it’s an important tool during anal play, telling you something’s not right. If it hurts you’re either going too fast, you need more lube, the item is too big, you’re not aroused enough, or you’re not really in the mood. And when I researched my fellatio book, I communicated briefly with a dentist who’d seen signifigant bruising *inside* the throat of a female patient — again, just think about it.

* No one knows if “Shrink Creams” can hurt you. Widely available “shrink creams”, “sure grip”, “tighten up” and “feel like a virgin again” claim to make the vagina smaller or tighter. The key ingredient in these creams is alum. Alum absorbs water out of the outer layer of the skin; as more water is absorbed, the cells begin to swell, closing the ducts that water would normally flow through. No study has been done on the effect of these creams on the cervix, which is what they eventually end up getting rubbed on during penetration, but I’ll wager it’s not good. I kind of want to make the manufacturers snort a thick rail of alum, so they can study the effects on their own mucous membranes. What I really hate about these “shrink” creams is the fact that they’re trading on female insecurities about the vagina not being tight, pretty or good enough for their male partner — like we need any negative reinforcement from our pussy-phobic culture about how we look, feel or smell down there. The marketing text runs, “China Shrink Cream is formulated to tighten the vaginal walls. China Shrink Cream is to help with loose vagina due to multiple child birth and frigidity.” I also want to throw up every time I see the packaging on these creams, as they are often called “oriental” or “China Shrink Cream”, paralying off of racist stereotypes and exotifying Asian “sexual mystery”, much the same way the porn industry fetishizes skin color and markets (I think racist) negative stereotypes about black male sexuality with its “interracial” videos.

* Beware any toy sold as an anal toy that doesn’t have a flared base. Novelty companies put “anal” on the packaging of toys unsafe for anal use *all the time*, and no one wants a trip to the ER to get a Pocket Rocket removed, even if the package said “anal” on it.

Novelty Products Not Safe At Any Speed

Filed under: Uncategorized

* Nonoxynol-9 removes skin. Really. Avoid any and all lube, condoms and “toy cleaner” with Nonoxynol-9. N-9 is a detergent that has been shown to cause cervical abrasions, strips away rectal lining, and only kills HIV/AIDS in clinical settings. if you’re curious, look for the article, “The Nonoxynol-9 Scandal: How ‘AIDS Prevention’ Put Women and Gay Men at Risk by Patrick Califia” and also read, “The Scandal of Nonoxynol-9″.

* Anal-Eze can really hurt you. Lubricants with benzocaine, and numbing agents such as Anal-Eze, “good head gel” and desensitizing creams contain oils, flavors and colorings, and they are very unsafe. Numbing the back of your throat, the penis, the vagina, and especially the anus can lead to serious injury and infections that can (and often) land users in the doctor’s office or ER. Think: you can’t feel the skin breaking or tearing, and if it’s the anus, there’s fecal bacteria. When you can’t feel pain, you are getting injured, period. Pain sucks, but it’s an important tool during anal play, telling you something’s not right. If it hurts you’re either going too fast, you need more lube, the item is too big, you’re not aroused enough, or you’re not really in the mood. And when I researched my fellatio book, I communicated briefly with a dentist who’d seen signifigant bruising *inside* the throat of a female patient — again, just think about it.

* No one knows if “Shrink Creams” can hurt you. Widely available “shrink creams”, “sure grip”, “tighten up” and “feel like a virgin again” claim to make the vagina smaller or tighter. The key ingredient in these creams is alum. Alum absorbs water out of the outer layer of the skin; as more water is absorbed, the cells begin to swell, closing the ducts that water would normally flow through. No study has been done on the effect of these creams on the cervix, which is what they eventually end up getting rubbed on during penetration, but I’ll wager it’s not good. I kind of want to make the manufacturers snort a thick rail of alum, so they can study the effects on their own mucous membranes. What I really hate about these “shrink” creams is the fact that they’re trading on female insecurities about the vagina not being tight, pretty or good enough for their male partner — like we need any negative reinforcement from our pussy-phobic culture about how we look, feel or smell down there. The marketing text runs, “China Shrink Cream is formulated to tighten the vaginal walls. China Shrink Cream is to help with loose vagina due to multiple child birth and frigidity.” I also want to throw up every time I see the packaging on these creams, as they are often called “oriental” or “China Shrink Cream”, paralying off of racist stereotypes and exotifying Asian “sexual mystery”, much the same way the porn industry fetishizes skin color and markets (I think racist) negative stereotypes about black male sexuality with its “interracial” videos.

* Beware any toy sold as an anal toy that doesn’t have a flared base. Novelty companies put “anal” on the packaging of toys unsafe for anal use *all the time*, and no one wants a trip to the ER to get a Pocket Rocket removed, even if the package said “anal” on it.

Unsafe sex products

Filed under: Sex-Sex

Sex toys are an awesome gateway to an incredible sex life. These silly, bizarre little (or big) things can lead to hours of orgasmic exploration, self-discovery, sexual self-reliance and even deeper intimacy between couples (or a hilarious comedy of errors, depending).
But not everything mass-marketed for sex is safe to use. Plainly put, there are “novelties” and there are toys made for sex. Confused? Most sex toys (and products) that you’ll find in garden-variety retail sex toys stores are created, marketed and sold “for novelty use only”, meaning that while the toy companies explicitly know that people are using their toys for sexual use, they sell them categorized as “novelties”. Why they do this is anyone’s guess; perhaps it’s so they can avoid responsibility for faulty merchandise, as many sex toys are made poorly (almost all novelty sex toys are made cheaply in Chinese factories), or perhaps it’s so they can make outrageous claims on the packaging and marketing materials.

The short of it is that because sex toy companies label their products “for novelty use only”, they can get away with anything — even though they explicitly know their products are for sexual use (genital application). It’s clear that they just don’t give a shit if anyone gets hurt using their products. Same goes for the scary chemical materials many companies use in the manufacture of their toys (mostly in China), but that’s another rant, for another day.

Novelty sex toys are the most widely available as they have a virtual stranglehold on American distribution, and they are the least expensive. In practical terms, this is not such a bad thing. You’ll find the widest selection and best prices in the novelty toy market, making these toys a great place to try new things without breaking the bank; getting a certain size, shape or functionality you desire; or for finding that exact shade of pink you prefer. Novelties often feature the latest innovations in design and use — but also tend to break easily, some are made with noxious materials, and they can ship defective with user-unfriendly return policies.

Technically speaking, novelties aren’t made for sex, but they can conjure an orgasm pretty well. Identifying these toys in stores is easy, as they have the most polished, or garish (and sometimes offensive) packaging, “for novelty use” is printed somewhere on the package, and they typically come from companies such as Doc Johnson, Pipedream or Adam and Eve. In any case, it’s always “buyer beware” when purchasing a sex toy, and nowhere is it more essential for the consumer to be prepared with knowledge about the products, even before plunking down $5 on a plastic discount vibrator.

Not all sex toys are sold as novelties; the ones made for sex that come from independent manufacturers are created with the consumer’s pleasure as their express purpose. There are a growing number of high-quality sex toy companies in the United States and the U.K. who do not market their toys as novelties, and prize sexual health and pleasure as the key building blocks of both their businesses and their products. Many of these companies are women-owned, though many have as yet to break into the “old boys’ network” of distribution to novelty stores. You can find products — or rather, “pleasure instruments” — from Tantus, Vixen Creations, Fun Factory, d.vice, Vibratex and Sportsheets online and in sex toy boutiques that hand-pick their product selections. These companies have raised the bar on what people expect when they plunk down their hard-earned cash for something nice to shove up their (our) butts

Get free blog up and running in minutes with Blogsome
Theme designed by Ian Main