Upselling body healthy luxury toys, in general, tends to be much easier in a brick and mortar store. When you have sales people interacting with your customers you have the edge. It becomes a lot more difficult in e-commerce because if your customer comes to your site looking for a giant blue jelly dong that’s most likely what they’re going to leave with.

But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have options. There are four areas that you can focus on to help upsell in a sex positive way through your e-commerce store:

1. Reputation and branding
2. Education and Customer service
3. Variety
4. Cross selling

If you are known for selling high end toys that is what you will sell. If you are known for selling cheap jelly toys that is what people will expect from you. Your brand – the image you project and the demographic you attract with that image will dictate what you can and cannot sell. This is influenced by everything from the images and copy you choose to display on your website to how you interact through social media. Watch closely how you talk about sex, people’s bodies, and the products you’re selling. You can’t use the same kind of language to sell a 12 inch dong as you do for a $200 luxury vibrator.

If you’re not currently projecting the image of a store where customers will come for luxury sex toys you should know that you can change your image, but only if you’re willing to put in the work to make that happen. As sex toys become accepted in the mainstream more and more customers are becoming more educated and are choosing to shop with companies that reflect their views of sex toys as normal and healthy. If you speak about the toys you’re selling in a misogynistic or degrading way you will turn off many of your higher end customers.

So how do you create a brand that’s good for selling luxury products? Educate your customers. Dedicating your site to sexual education shows that you care about your customers. You see them as more than dollar signs. You have a vested interest in their sexual health. Tell them what products are made of and what the pros and cons are of those materials. Point them towards the products that are more body healthy. There are numerous ways of doing this including creating a materials and ingredients page that product pages hyperlink to, making product videos (or using videos made by the manufacturers) to highlight the body healthy toys, creating a body healthy toys and lube category that is easy to find on your homepage and can easily be linked to by your affiliates, if you have bloggers writing
reviews for you encourage them to also write a short review on the product page, include staff reviews and picks, and offer easily accessible customer service with a representative who is knowledgeable. Just because you are online doesn’t mean you can’t interact with your customers. Offer instant messaging and make your 800 number visible on every page.

Education is important and you will change some people’s minds and teach them how to better take care of their bodies, but sometimes people just want a cheap blue jelly dong and if you don’t sell it they’ll get it somewhere else. This is why it’s so important to offer variety to your customers.

Make it very known which products are safer than others, but leave the decision making up to your customers. You’ve informed them, now let them make their choice. For truly dangerous products like anal desensitizers this may not be the best option, but a jelly toy that is packed full of phthalates and BPA doesn’t have to be harmful if your customers use a barrier to protect themselves. But you have to inform them that this is the best option.

That’s why cross selling is so important. Not everyone can afford a $100 100% pure medical grade silicone dildo and to presume to know what’s best for your customer is patronizing them. If they can’t afford it, they can’t afford it. It doesn’t matter that that dildo will last them a lifetime unless you can offer them monthly installment plans. But they can afford to buy a $20 dildo and put a condom on it every time they use it. Yes, this will cost them more money in the long run, but they shouldn’t have to choose between food and a dildo. The same goes for people who are inexperienced. If you’re just learning to cook you don’t go out and buy the pots and pans of professionals because they’re too expensive. Yes, your food might taste better coming out of those professional pans and they might last 20 years, but if you’re not even sure you like cooking you’re going to opt to buy the $20 set from Target. The same goes for sex toys. Most people aren’t going to drop $100 on their first sex toy and you shouldn’t push them into it. Instead educate them on what options are available in their price range. There are many body healthy options made from ABS plastic that are much more affordable or they can always use a barrier between their sex toys and them. Making your customer happy is more important than upselling because that college student who can only afford the $20 dildo is more likely to come back when they have more money because they had a good experience with you. By being honest with your customers and selling to them based off of their interests instead of their insecurities they will feel safer buying from you and you will create loyalty.

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This post, Sex Positive Upselling Online, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 07/14/2011. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: Sex Positive Upselling Online. Thanks for visiting!
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This post, 10 Year Old, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 04/08/2011. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: 10 Year Old. Thanks for visiting!
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What makes it so good? It’s food grade with real ingredients: Water, White Sugar, Brown Sugar, Dutch Cocoa, Whey Protein Concentrate, Non-fat Milk, Potassium Sorbate, Sodium Benzoate. In other words, it’s real chocolate. And it’s wonderfully spreadable. Just keep in mind that because it has ingredients like milk in it, you should refrigerate after opening.

It also comes in a pretty glass jar with a pink handled paintbrush. The directions say that it can be microwaved for a warm chocolatey good time, but I wouldn’t know anything about that since I do not own a microwave. It sounds like a good idea though after hanging out in the fridge. I’d say put it in another container first though so that you don’t microwave the same jar of fondue over and over again. Unless you plan on using all 7.5 ounces in one sexing … that’s just dedication, or an orgy.

I painted on myself for your amusement and mine. Keep in mind that I am no artist and have a difficult time even drawing stick figures. I was completely useless with finger painting, but was able to make legible pictures/words with the paintbrush. Mostly though it was just fun licking the chocolate off. In fact that’s what I do now when I have a chocolate craving. Head to the fridge for my jar of Melt for an interactive chocolate experience.

Get your own interactive chocolate experience at MyPleasure. Of course you can also put it on other people too :).

I do work for MyPleasure, but this is indeed an honest review and I was not paid for it.

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This post, Booty Parlor Melt Chocolate Body Fondue, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 03/03/2011. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: Booty Parlor Melt Chocolate Body Fondue. Thanks for visiting!
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But even if it wasn’t for all that I find that it’s becoming more and more difficult to keep this blog up. Not that I will stop writing here anytime soon – it just won’t be as often. Back in Chicago I was busier. I worked non-stop. But the difference was that I mostly worked in accounting so that all of my sex ed related work was more like a really fun hobby. In other words, it didn’t feel as much like work. It felt like an escape from work.

Now that I am doing the work that I want to be doing – I even recently received another promotion – it becomes more difficult to do my own stuff on my own time. Stuff like this blog, stuff like workshops. That stuff is fun, but it’s a lot of work for not a lot of pay. Plus I’m really enjoying my free time. For the last 2 years in Chicago I felt like all I did was work. It was constant stress and frequent illness. Right now I’m not stressed and I’m hardly ever sick and it’s fantastic.

So basically I expect my inspiration to come in spurts, as any good sex related thing should. I will probably become motivated and write a bunch and then stop for awhile and back and forth. It is to be expected. Mostly though I feel bad because I have a ton of questions from readers sitting in my inbox going unanswered. Not to mention the reviews I owe more than one company. I really should know better on the latter one since I handle blogger outreach and reviews at my job.

But really I have to just stop writing blog posts about how I don’t write enough. So this one will be the last for … awhile anyway.

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This post, Spurts, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 03/02/2011. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: Spurts. Thanks for visiting!
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Make sure you’ve got your membership before the party starts. VIP membership is $29.99 per month for downloaded and streaming movies, cancel any time. Or you can buy or rent movies individually starting at $12. But for how much we’ll be watching I recommend getting the VIP membership.

Don’t have that kind of scratch? I’m giving away 1 one month membership to the site. All you have to do is comment here and promise to show up for the party. Contest will end on the 17th at 11:59 PM PST, winner announced the following day.

For a list of the videos we’ll be watching checkout Sinclair’s post.

In other news, I often have people asking me for recommendations for ethical porn so I decided to add my own video on demand (VOD) service to the site. You can click the above menu tab that says “Porn” or click on “Garnet Approved VOD” under Porn I Love in my right sidebar. It can also be reached by simply typing in vod.askgarnet.com. The service is hosted by HotMoviesForHer and it allows me to filter by studio. Through vod.askgarnet.com you can only view studios that I feel are ethical which leaves about 650 movies which is still a giant chunk. I then whittled it down to 70+ featured films which are easy to find on the front page. These are my absolute favorite studios. And then to highlight my absolute favorite movies I created a top 10 under Editor’s Picks. I tried to include a variety of films in this section, but I will point out that I’m missing gay male porn. I really am unfamiliar with it unfortunately. However, if you know a gay porn studio that you think is ethical please tell me about it and include how they are different and I’ll consider adding them.

Every time you watch a movie through my VOD service I will get a percentage. Think of it as a way to support me, this blog, and ethical pornography.

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This post, Porn Party & New Ethical Porn VOD, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 01/15/2011. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: Porn Party & New Ethical Porn VOD. Thanks for visiting!
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Anyhoo, there are certain things that go along with this new responsibility. Some of them are good. Like I’m going to LA this week for a product show. Some of them are bad. Like seeing this kind of awfulness in catalogues:

Bad, but also pretty hilarious.

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This post, Buyer, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 01/04/2011. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: Buyer. Thanks for visiting!
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