How To Start An Adult Website With WordPress: A Step-By-Step Guide

Intro

Adult entertainment is one of the richest industries in the world. Just as importantly, since starting an adult website is so easy and affordable, anyone can profit from it. As a result, many ambitious entrepreneurs are joining in, hoping to take some of that fortune for themselves.

If you ever thought of doing the same, this article will teach you everything you need to know. Read our quick step-by-step guide for starting an adult website with WordPress, and you’ll be making impressive numbers in no time.

Why is starting an adult site with WordPress a good idea?

Most people shy away from starting porn sites because they have no coding knowledge. After all, it’s natural to think that you’ll need it to both build and maintain a site.

However, that isn’t really the case. In fact, many successful sites operate using premade themes or scripts, as they require very little work and no programming skills. Because they are cheap, easy to set up, and even easier to maintain, WordPress themes are the most popular of the bunch.

So, it’s not at all surprising that around 43% of all sites are made with WordPress. Adult websites make up a healthy chunk of this sum, and you can join the fun by adding your own to the mix. Just follow the steps below, and you’ll be all set.

Making an adult site with WordPress: step by step

Step 1: Choose an adult site type

While the adult industry is brimming with different website types, not all of them are a fitting choice for a beginner. In that regard, your best bets are:

• Free adult tube sites (such as XNXX)
• Premium adult sites (such as Brazzers)

The first option is the easiest, as building and growing a tube site is quite simple. You have great monetization options, so making good money isn’t a big problem, either. However, the downsides include high competition and big hosting expenses, especially if you store your content on your own servers.

Premium sites bypass both of these issues, as they typically don’t feature a lot of content. Still, since people need to pay to access it, said content has to be exclusive. So, this option is only viable if you’re making or licensing premium videos. If you’re not, you’ll have trouble finding paying customers.

Now, whichever option you go for, the remaining steps stay pretty much the same. Choosing a niche is the next one.

Step 2: Pick a niche

To make it big in the adult industry, your site should stand out from your competition. Therefore, you’ll want to pick a specific niche that will appeal to a unique target audience.

In other words, don’t try to have something for everyone, as your content will easily get buried. Instead, select a broad niche that consists of many microniches, which will allow you to expand your reach later on.

For example, you can make a site focused on cosplay. And in the beginning, your microniches can be Asian, busty, and teen. As you rank up from there, you can easily add more subcategories and expand your audience pool even further.

Step 3: Choose a domain name

Now that you have your niche, you can start hunting for a killer domain name. Although it’s not the most important part of this journey, choosing a catchy domain can indeed help you stand out. To do that, you should ideally pick a niche keyword that is equally simple and memorable.

For instance, if you’re servicing the cosplay niche, a good website name would be CosplayTube.com. The .com extension will make your site look more trustworthy and professional. So, try to choose that one if it’s available with the domain you pick.

Resources like Thesaurus.com and UrbanDictionary.com can help a lot, especially if you’re looking for funny or kinky wordplay ideas. When you find something you like, it’s time to move on to the next step — searching for a great adult hosting provider.

Step 4: Find an adult hosting service

While many hosting services swear they allow adult content, that claim is rarely true. Namely, most site owners have to put up with content takedowns and service interruptions every day.

That’s why finding a hosting provider that specializes in adult content is pivotal. For starters, the best adult hosts offer servers on offshore locations. As such, they ensure that your content won’t get taken down for copyright infringement.

Next, they own and maintain their own hardware. This fact guarantees that your site remains online and that any potential issues can be resolved quickly. And lastly, a reliable adult hosting provider always puts privacy first. That is especially important if you’re making a site that will require users to input payment details.

Now, the industry is brimming with both great and not-so-great options, all promising the best hosting plans out there. To help you make some sense of it, here are the top 3 industry players, ranked in descending order:

1. Vicetemple
2. AbeloHost
3. TMDHosting

Step 5: Choose a WordPress theme

As we have already mentioned, the beauty of using WordPress to start an adult website is that it requires zero coding experience. By picking a premade theme, you can get a site similar to XVideos or Pornhub without having to build it from scratch or pay someone to do it for you.

Another advantage of WordPress themes is that you can customize them down to the smallest details. So, your site can feel 100% your own when you’re done. Also, most quality themes let you add premium features, integrate different payment methods, and optimize your site for all devices.

Like with most tools for adult creators, the market gives you countless themes to choose from. Sadly, not all of them are equally good. At the moment, we can only really recommend Vicetemple’s PornX due to its excellent balance of cost and quality.

Step 6: Post content

After picking a theme, it’s time to post sexy content in your niche. As for your options, you can:

• Embed the videos using WordPress plugins (more on those below)
• Download videos and post them on your site.

The former is quick and easy, as it involves embedding videos from other tube sites via special links. When you integrate these links into your site, the videos will appear on it for everyone to enjoy. Although you can tinker with your code and add the links yourself, several plugins (like Mass Embedder) let you fully automate the process.

The main benefit of embedding is that you’ll have access to a ton of quality content, none of which will be hosted on your server. Therefore, growing your site won’t be expensive, as you won’t need extra storage space. However, you will not be able to feature your own ads, as you’ll be embedding the whole video player from another site.

If that’s a deal-breaker for you, downloading videos from other sites or forums is the way to go. Doing so will allow you to bypass the ads issue, so you’ll make more money. Still, the videos you post will actually be hosted on your server this time around, so you’ll definitely have to pay for extra storage space.

Besides these two options, you can also let other users upload videos to your site or even post your own content. However, the first option is often risky, while the second requires quite a bit of effort. So, as a beginner, picking one of the first two we covered will be your best bet.

Aside from the fact that they’re easier, they’ll also leave you more time to focus on bringing traffic to your site and employing SEO strategies.

Step 7: Monetize your site

Your available monetization methods will depend on whether you’re running a free or premium site. Let’s start with the former, which commonly monetize via ads. More specifically, they often get into arrangements with ad networks. These are middlemen that connect the website in question with advertisers.

However, just like with the host you picked, you’ll need to find a specifically adult ad network. That way, you’ll be sure that they won’t care what your content is and, even more importantly, where and how you got it. There are many such networks that you can go for, but these are exceptional choices:

• Adsterra
• HilltopAds
• Clickadilla

Premium adult sites, on the other hand, monetize by selling subscriptions, individual videos, image sets, or merch. However, getting people to pay for content that is already available for free elsewhere will not be the easiest thing. So, it’s best to give ad networks a shot first, and only think of other options when you expand.

Step 8: Promote your site

Finally, you’ll need to promote your site every time you get the chance. One way of doing so is to reupload shortened versions of your videos to major tube sites and embed them to yours. You’ll enjoy new visitors and some ad revenue, so it’ll be a win-win situation.

Next, you can also post teasers on socials that allow adult content (such as Reddit or X). That way, you can direct horny peeps to your site and get even more traffic. And lastly, exchanging links with other new sites or buying some at porn directories is also a good idea. It can help direct a lot of traffic your way, especially if you find partners in similar or complementary niches.

Conclusion

Now you have all you need to start your own adult website with WordPress. Follow these steps, do additional research along the way, and you’ll be at the top of the game in no time!