I think the problem is that I don’t do enough merchandising. OK, I don’t actually do any merchandising for this site. But, apparently, merchandising is thing these days for people running websites, You Tube channels and the like. It doesn’t matter what content you put up, the thing, it seems, is to have a line of merchandise to flog to your followers. Indeed, it seems now to be an essential ingredient to actually getting followers, that you have a line of over-priced cheap tat to sell them on the side. Not that there is anything really new about online merchandising. I remember that, back in the day, there were sites like Cafepress, which allowed you to sell punters over priced mugs and T-shirts with your logo on them, (I just checked and they are still going). I seem to recall that a lot of sites back then, (the early 2000s), just about every site I stumbled across, in fact, large or small, amateur or professional, were hopefully offering visitors such stuff. I have no idea how much, if any, they ever sold. Mind you, those were also the days when you could actually get an abundance of real visitors via organic search, (before Google established an effective monopoly on search and stifled traffic), so, by the law of averages, I suppose that you were bound to sell stuff to some of them.

Personally, I could never be arsed to set up anything along those lines for The Sleaze. Quite apart from the fact that I was just too lazy, I honestly couldn’t see why anybody would want to buy a mug or T-shirt with ‘The Sleaze’ emblazoned on it. Or even a coaster or mouse mat with our old slogan, ‘Incredible Lies Today, Still Bollocks Tomorrow’ on it, for that matter. Which leads to the question, what sort of merchandising would be appropriate for The Sleaze? How about a colouring book to bring in the younger demographic? It could contain outline drawings based on some of the site’s best stories, like ‘I Was a Sex Pest From Outer Space’, or ‘I Shagged Hitler’s Brains Out’, for the kiddies to colour in. So, if they want to give Hitler greeCn hair as he is shagged senseless by an American GI, or have an alien sex offender’s ten foot penis bright orange, then all to the good – it is all about encouraging the artistic expression of the younger generation, after all. While making a few quid on the side, obviously. Then there’s always the old stand -by of the calendar, with me striking a different pose for each month, (all fully clothed, of course). Or maybe an illustration based on a suitably themed story: ‘Hollywood Sex Pests’ for January, perhaps, with ‘Cult of the Christmas Cock’ as a seasonal treat for December.

All of this, though, is pretty generic in marketing terms: everyone does the t-shirts, calenders and the like. Now, as I like to think of The Sleaze as being a unique site, it really needs a unique line of merchandising – something that nobody else would do. A series of pop-up book versions of some our best stories, for instance. Just imagine opening the pages to see a tableau of Elvis being buggered by a dud with a goat mask on as part of his initiation into the ‘Hollywood Satanists’. Or even David Cameron popping up to take his wife roughly from behind as part of a party political TV broadcast, from ‘Sexual Politics’? You could even have a tab to pull which makes his arse go in and out. Maybe a line of Sleaze branded inflatables would be appropriate – not just sex dolls, but perhaps a blow up crime-fighting Pope or a ‘Kick Ass Jesus’? I think this sort of stuff could sell, (provided we manage to avoid getting sued).

The ultimate step in this purely passive money making strategy would, judging by what all those professional You Tubers get up to, would be to set up a Patreon account and indulge in the high tech version of begging. Well, not entirely begging, as in exchange for the monetary support you have to offer exclusives available only to your paying customers: exclusive content, autographed photos, exclusive access, (ie, a guarantee that their email won’t automatically be classified as spam and will instead get a ‘personal’ automated response – the actually get sent an email telling them to ‘Fuck off’, rather than me just thinking it). I know, I know, I’m being far too cynical, but all this merchandising and paid access stuff seems to me to go against what the web was all about when I first started creating content: exchanging off beat ideas and giving access to all. In effect, it is making the content merely a vehicle for selling stuff, rather than being the point of your site or channel. Back in the day, most of those site runners using the likes of Cafepress were simply hoping to generate some funds to cover stuff like hosting costs. The idea of making a profit was just a crazy dream.

That said, there is nothing new about using the content simply as filler between the ads, so to speak – that sort of thing certainly was going on back then. Not to mention the rise of the affiliate site, designed solely to publicise and sell a product with the site owner getting a cut of each sale made via their site. Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that, the problem is that this sort of stuff now seems to dominate the web, seemingly encouraged by Google, whose increasingly questionable search results seem to favour these sorts of low quality, content lite sites over those with actual content, regardless of their relevance to the search term. It makes the web a far less interesting and useful place. But that was inevitable once the celebrities and big companies discovered it and found ways to commercialise and monetise it. Real content was already getting crowded out before Google started its shenanigans. But I still miss those days when people just created stuff for the Hell of it and naively thought that selling a couple of mugs made them an internet entrepreneur. Then again, I am a dinosaur, I know.

Doc Sleaze