Let's say you just created a vibrator hack that's taken over the internet and now tons of people are begging you to put in on the market and are saying "OMFG LET ME THROW MONEY AT YOU IN A NON-STRIPPERISH WAY" (unless they're the commenters, at which point just remove the non-).

Kickstarter is a maybe but most likely no, in that you can post things that discuss the topic of sex (plays, documentaries, etc...), but actual sex hardware ain't happening.

Apparently the play this image is from is not using it as the poster. I'm sad.

Kickstarter's prohibited devices list includes "Pornographic material", "Medical and safety-related products", "Offensive material", and "Baby products", all which are valid classifications for sex hardware/projects.

As the enterprising capitalist perv that you are, what are your choices to let that fool born every minute give you their hard earned cash for genital aimed vaporware? Well, there's:

This article will cover each of these approaches, as well as their strengths and weaknesses.

Passionate Produce

Passionate Produce is a everything-positive (seriously, look at the footer. EVERYTHING.) sex project crowdfunding site by robotics PhD turned dildo making robotics PhD Kristen Stubbs. This is a site that's actually yet to be. They're currently looking for beta projects to post on the site. Yes, the crowdfunding site is still crowdsourcing. It happens.

That said, as seen above, Kristen's already shown she can actually complete projects, so this is a project borne from first-hand experience that I'm hoping to see good things out of soon.

Offbeatr

Offbeatr has already enjoyed the first-to-market media spoogefest, with their August 2012 launch getting metric shittons of press. The difference with Offbeatr versus Passionate Produce is that Offbeatr has a section for physical products, but concentrates mostly on indie porn projects.

Apparently the play this image is from is not using it as the poster. I'm sad.

Their campaign structure is multi-stage, and requires fees along the way. You submit a project proposal to their site, then it is voted on by users. Once it gets enough votes, it is then reviewed by the offbeatr staff. Then you pay a fee, and the project is rehosted on the site to actually start bringing in cash. The fee, according to their FAQ, is due to the nature of running an adult business, dealing with chargebacks, etc... If your campaign succeeds, they hand you back your fee, but take 20-30% of your campaign funds.

So far the only successful projects the site lists are all furry. Really. I just don't even.

This setup seems like it makes things difficult on anyone interested in getting projects going, as you now can't really have an "impulse funding" option. You have to market to users in order to vote the project up, then get those same users to come back and fund. Not only that, the maximum you can set to raise on the site is $30000, which is nowhere near enough to do any sort of appreciable hardware development.

But, who knows. A Furry Video Game managed to make $40k US on there, which is an impressive amount. I don't think we'll see any major hardware advances coming via Offbeatr due to funding restrictions and weird campaign setup, but there might be some fun small runs or one-offs.

Making Shit Up That Looks Like Crowdfunding

Those who can't join, lie like the dickens via CSS. A fucking mastermind move of marketing in 2012.

Ya see that up there? That's LovePalz website as of the day of this posting. Back in early October, LovePalz came out of nowhere to announce a new set of teledildonics toys based on new air pump technology. Now, don't worry, I have my usual hyperbolic screed prepared on this whole project, but that's neither here nor there for this article, because how they marketed it was INSANE.

They said Kickstarter rejected them at the top of the page, and that's why they're self hosting.

That's it.

Of course, this is the Kickstarter that's been posting record after record of crazy crowdfunded projects this year. The Kickstarter that the media are pissing themselves stupid over because it's the "TRUE FULFILLMENT OF THE CONSUMER" or something like that. The media lost. their. shit.

Now, Kickstarter, having at least a modicum of media savvy, didn't say shit about this. I emailed them. I'm sure many media outlets emailed them. If Kickstarter said they did reject them, press for LovePalz. If Kickstarter says it didn't reject them, press for LovePalz. Kickstarter says nothing, press for LovePalz. Fucking fantastic work by the LovePalz marketing team. (BoingBoing actually somewhat called them out on this.)

Not only that, their "order" button wasn't actually an order button. It just signs you up for a mailing list for whenever the product might be ready. So they inflate their "orders" number on the front page, a number we have zero sources of truth on. Along with the press raving about the fact that you can have sex over the internet (this happens at least once a year), they can easily play this into a very nice "peer comfortableness" system where people think "Wow look at that number so many people signed up so it's gotta be OK and cool and sex is good with it right? Right!"

'course, we don't know if it's gonna be a product, but they harvested a fantastic amount of emails, I'm sure.

Absolutely. Fucking. Fabulous.

But, not to be left out, 1 month later...

It's Vibease! And god bless 'um, they're doin' the exact same thing. This is a kickstarter-lovepalz-alike page to sell their vibrator, which is supposed to ship in February 2013.

Now we at least know that Vibease can execute, since they actually have a live app, and their CEO would show up at a startup competition at a Chuck-E-Cheeze if you held one there. They got hustle, if nothing else. (Note: To be fair, I would go to a startup competition at a Chuck-E-Cheeze.

But, same idea applies as above. Make number on front page, make people comfortable, harvest emails. Certainly ain't crowdfunding, though.

There you have it. There are ways to source cash from wacky cloud dwellers for internet butt plugs right now, but they're either in their pre-infancy, expensive and dodgy, or lies. It sounds bad, but I can think of many successful, viable industries where the start sounded pretty much like that sentence. There's money to be gotten via angels and VCs too, but that's an article for another day. In a world where it's still difficult to buy already made adult products due to chargebacks, international law, and other fun issues we don't cover here, there's a tough road ahead for these services. But if history has proven anything, it's that we like sex and will throw resources at it however we can, so it's probably just a matter of time.