Sadly folks, we have been dudded. Eros Boutique offered a marketers' program where, if you had one of their approved ads on your website for 3 consecutive months, you got $250 worth of free sex toys. We put the ad up, advised them of it so that their bots could automatically check it every day for the 3 months and sat back and waited. At the end of the 3 months, we contacted them, but got no reply. We contacted them again, but still have not got a reply. We advised them that if we had not heard back by 24 July 2009, we would be taking the ad down. Eventually I received a bounced email message, so I tried again. I can understand one email message going astray, but not five. And before you ask, yes, the email address was correct; I'd clicked on the link on their own website, so it wasn't a transcripting error on my part. I have since sent a further four emails, some to different addresses, and have received more email bounces.
We have still heard nothing from them. As a result of our experience, we would not go near Eros Boutique again and we don't recommend that you do either. We can only conclude that this was either a rather clever ploy to extract free advertising from unsuspecting website owners, or the company has gone bust. Their website is still there in all its glory; I pity anyone who tries to purchase via the website, as I think they will lose their money.
Why did we even bother to do it in the first place? Well, $250 worth of free sex toys is a good reason. We don't get paid to write this site and all costs associated with it are born by us. That is not a cry for money; it is a statement of fact. We enjoy doing it, so we are prepared to wear the costs. We have tried other forms of advertising, but we found the little text ads along the lines of "Local hottie wants to fuck you now..." were incredibly tacky, not pleasant from my perspective, lowered the tone of the site (as much as you can on an adult products review site) and did basically nothing for us from a revenue perspective.
We gladly (and freely) list the sites of companies whose products we like; we ask for nothing in return. Had Eros been a better organisation to deal with, we would have added a permanent link to their site, giving them further advertising.
We have a very dear friend (known on this site as Professor P) who used to own a porn shop and website in the USA. We would order items and he would throw in freebies. Occasionally, a box of stuff would just turn up out of the blue (generous Professor, lucky us). Unfortunately, one of the big chains moved into his neighbourhood and drove him out of business. Bad news for the Professor, bad news for us.
Earlier this year, the Professor sent us a huge box of products left over from closing down his business, that had been cluttering up his garage and were otherwise destined for landfill. That has given us the fodder for a lot of the reviews that we have published this year. However, this can't keep going on. For a start, the Professor's garage holds a finite supply, and now that he's no longer in the business, good-quality sex toys are going to be harder to come by. Secondly, it costs quite a lot to ship goods from the USA to Australia, and we don't want our good friend to be out of pocket.
Hence, when we found out about this scheme, it seemed like a fantastic idea. Sadly, it was too good to be true. We've handed out free advertising and end up looking silly. We've been burnt by it and are now (hopefully) a little wiser. Just don't ask us to be polite about Eros Boutique.
