01/26/99- Updated 07:49 PM ET 

Sex sites hot on the Web

Then Mansfield, 36, who calls herself "a family-oriented person," decided to try her hand at creating a site with adult content on the Internet's World Wide Web. Within five months, people were clamoring to buy advertising on Persian Kitty, a directory of sex sites she whimsically named for her three cats. It now grosses over $900,000 a year. 
  "I never expected there would be income like this," Mansfield says. "The first checks were more money in a week than I made in a month." 

Welcome to the dawn of the mom & pop virtual sex shop. 

As Mansfield and others have discovered, there is an insatiable demand for sexual entertainment on line - and the Web makes it so easy to get into the business that even people with no prior experience in adult entertainment are giving it a shot. This, entrepreneurs say, is one of the reasons the number of sex sites continues to grow almost geometrically. 

And their popularity continues to increase: Media Metrix/PC Meter, which monitors consumer activity on line, says 28.2% of Americans visited adult sites in May, up from 23% a year ago. 

Sex-related searches make up 10% to 20% of requests by visitors to search sites on the Web, industry sources say; sex also is widely considered to be the Web's current top moneymaker, though online analysts expect that to change as the Net continues to grow. 
  While some may see this multibillion-dollar pornucopia as a shocking anomaly, its rapid growth seems to reflect an overall mainstreaming of pornography in the USA. Americans spent $8 billion to $12 billion last year on a Rabelaisian supermarket of sex, from videos and phone sex to magazines. 

Even so, sex-related sites make up just 2% to 3% of the Web's 200,000 commercial sites, estimates Internet marketing expert Donna Hoffman, of Vanderbilt University in Nashville. 

That's 4,000 to 6,000 sites, out of approximately 500,000 Web sites overall, and "not all sex-related sites are porn," Hoffman says. "Sex is a small part of the Net experience in general and a small part of the commercial Web experience." Operators of adult sites give slightly higher estimates, saying 5% of commercial sites are sex-related. 

Whatever the number, voyeurism is a magnetic force in the virtual world. 

CyberErotica, one of the Web's largest sex sites, is a typical destination. It offers 55,000 members more than 10,000 sexually explicit images, adding nearly 1,000 new pictures every week. More than 250,000 people visit daily; the owner grosses $800,000 a month. 

Aside from pictures, sites also offer "digital stripping" and "live nude video" of couples, group fetishes and more. Visitors can download audio and text files of erotic stories, peruse the "erotic software library," or inspect previews of skin magazines. Some adult sites also sell phone sex, vibrators, bondage gear and a pharmacopeia of carnal lotions and potions. 

Many might wonder why anyone - given the risks of arrest, a potential obscenity conviction, and the social stigma attached to selling porn - would choose to become a Netsex merchant. 

But as Mansfield and others have discovered, independence and the lure of money are powerful incentives. 

"I've had companies tell me I could make more money," Mansfield says. "It's doing fine as it is. It certainly has enabled me to provide my children with a better lifestyle." 

What does her husband, who works full time in a field unrelated to adult content, think of his wife's new career? 

"My husband isn't computer literate," Mansfield replies. "It's just not his forte." 

But for people with some computer and Internet skills, the barriers to entry are low. Almost anyone with some business savvy and a small investment can create a reasonably successful site, and make thousands of dollars within weeks, says Nancy Tamosaitis, author of The Penthouse Guide to Cybersex. 

Sites try to stand out 

The competition forces sites to distinguish themselves by specializing or trying to be unique in an overcrowded field, says Hester Nash, 39, of Los Angeles. Nash co-owns RetroRaunch.com, which charges members $24.95 a month to view more than 5,000 nude pinups and erotica dating from 1910 to 1975. 

Offering "a century of smut," RetroRaunch prides itself on not depicting "bionic women or astonishing examples of the plastic surgeon's art," says Nash. A disclaimer on the site warns that it "takes no responsibility for distress caused by seeing naked pictures of your grandmother." 

Like RetroRaunch, many entrepreneurs are making money through membership fees. Others, like Mansfield, profit from advertising. Still others share revenue with an "adult verification system" such as Adult Pass, AdultCheck, or AdultSights. These systems bill credit card holders a flat fee (generally $10) for a year or two of password-protected access to thousands of participating sex sites. 

Not all Internet service providers will rent server space to adult sites, but many others have no restrictions on content. Sex sites generate enormous traffic, however, enough to fry a computer system unprepared for the onslaught. So adult site operators generally obtain business accounts (which can cost about $5,000 a month) or even buy their own server, essentially a large computer system that will house the operation. 

Once entrepreneurs have their server and a unique domain name (such as porn.com, babes4u.com or hotsex.com, all taken, of course) they must find a source for content, generally pictures of naked men and women posing or having sex in every possible variation. 

Such material is easy to find, especially on Usenet, the system of nearly 20,000 discussion groups, a small percentage of which feature sex-related photos, sound and video clips. 

HotSex.com, for example, which has grossed $40,000 in a month, sells memberships to access an archive of pictures drawn from Usenet. A small staff based in Cambridge, Mass., culls tens of thousands of images, sorting them into categories, deleting obvious copyrighted material. (Usenet has been described as "gigabytes of copyright violations.") 

Other adult sites buy CD-ROM libraries of X-rated images from suppliers catering to adult sites and bulletin board systems. ZMaster, for example, sells its Busty Babes series, Entrepreneurs can go into the adult business almost overnight with a $350 ZMaster site license, complete with model releases. 

Some post original material 

Some sites generate original material, including Danni's Hard Drive, which former exotic dancer Danni Ashe started two years ago as her online fan club. Casual surfers can visit for free and see some photos and other features, but Ashe sells $10 monthly "Hotbox" memberships, offering hundreds of photos based on partnerships with more than a dozen other nude and adult film models, photographers and men's magazines. Her popular site, "created and run by women," has a 12-person staff based in Los Angeles. 

"You're always getting this message that you're wasting your life, that it's a dead end. And that's not true," she says. "I know lots of models who have become agents or created their own video companies. Me, I built a Web site." Ashe expects to gross $2.5 million this year. 

But operators must be willing to work 10 to 16 hours a day at the start aggressively promoting their sites, says RetroRaunch.com's Nash. This involves advertising by posting online messages, and often by slapping out "spam" - the unsolicited commercial e-mail almost universally despised by Netizens. 

Online sex merchants also must deal with the headaches of stolen credit cards, password swapping and customer service. Whatever its financial rewards, this is not a business for the faint of heart, Nash says. 

Still, competition is fierce and growing, say those in the Netsex biz, as the big-money players in phone sex and mega-operations like Playboy and Penthouse plunge into the Web. Playboy recently launched its $6.95 a month "Cyber Club," offering live chat, archives of interviews and Playboy Advisor columns, as well as every Playmate photo ever published. 

Penthouse NewMedia has even bigger plans, says spokesman Steve Becker. Focusing on "user-generated content," Penthouse will create a "worldwide Webcam network" of video correspondents, he says. Eventually, "we hope to transmit not just audio and video but actual sensations." The company is already discussing this "with potential manufacturers of neural and sensory interfaces," Becker adds. 

There will eventually be a shake-out, predicts Glenn Grattiano, proprietor of Porn.com, as smaller players are squeezed out by larger companies' advanced technology and promotional clout. Sales and activity may also drop off as the "forbidden fruit" appeal of Netsex diminishes with time and wide availability. 

But adult content is so popular, says Ashe, that a well-designed adult site can still generate considerable traffic. "You've got to bring some personality to an impersonal medium to get people to pay attention," she says. "Otherwise it's just dead and boring." 

Whatever the controversy, sex is just business as usual for adult operators. "If it was No. 2 pencils people wanted to see," says Grattiano, "I'd have nice yellow streaks going across the screen. But sex sells. Look at advertising, television, movies. It's the way of the world." 

And if the sexy side of the Web is proving anything, it is that the wages of sin can be seductively high. 

By Vic Sussman, USA TODAY