My Journey Building an Erotic Story Marketplace

**How it began**

A few months ago, I started working on a platform with friends from college. The platform enables writers to make the most out of any single piece of written content—a marketplace for erotic writers to sell their stories directly to readers. I had the idea after trading stories on Reddit via PM; here I was investing hours of my day writing stories that only one person would read. I wanted more. (this will be a theme in this post) I asked myself; surely someone else would enjoy and appreciate my stories; maybe they’d even pay for it. So I decided to put my theory to the test. I attempted to sell my story for a commission. The first time I was taken advantage of, the reader promised me $100 for an 8-page personalized story; once I delivered the story, I never heard from him again. I learned an important lesson that day: always protect yourself. The second time I was more successful, the reader paid me $15 for a 5-page personalized story. What a rush! Most writers do not make that much money from a single-story, let alone a book. But I wanted more. (I told you there was a theme here.) So I marketed my skills, hoping that readers would commission me. This worked for a while but proved inefficient over time. I was continuously advertising to the point where I got banned from subreddits. Reflecting on this point, I thought to myself, what if there was a place where the reader might find me organically? Then I wouldn’t have to be as aggressive in my advertising.

**Trying something new**

I then made a landing page and a Webflow site with the assistance of a friend. My intention was to see if anyone would be interested in purchasing personalized stories from my website. I assumed if I could get four readers to pay $15 per month, I’d be doing better than 80% of the authors on Smashwords. And in less than 24 hours I got 100 sign-ups, with more than 10% of them becoming paying monthly customers. I was ecstatic! I would go on to establish genuine relationships with my readers over the next couple of months. We’d talk about everything from adultery to proposing polygamy to their spouse; these were my people, and it was a lot of fun to connect with them. Every time I engaged one of my readers, I’d think to myself, “How lucky am I?” and I wished that all writers should experience that connection with their readers. And good friends, red bull, and lockdown were the perfect combination for creating a platform that would make it possible for writers to earn and connect. Our mission? Make it easier for writers to be discovered, monetize and connect with their readers. Writers might use our platform in two ways: Writers can transform previous stories into reader-insert templates and fulfill each order without creating new content which I’ve discovered to work as long as your previous stories are properly tagged and categorized. Or a writer can write each reader request individually. In each case, the writer is selling their work at scale. Onboarding writers ensure that we’re building a product that writers want and prove to prospective writers that they’re likely to be successful using our product.

* What would make you want to join the platform?
* What doesn’t make sense?
* Could you see this being useful?

If you’re interested in becoming a beta tester for the platform, you can sign up here ([https://www.untold.ink](https://www.untold.ink)).

Screenshot: [https://imgur.com/hnSjcts](https://imgur.com/hnSjcts)

Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/or2kji/my_journey_building_an_erotic_story_marketplace