Cupcake butt plug and Shilo. The cliché is true — it feels like just yesterday and like forever ago. This week marks 10 years since I first published a review of a sex toy on the internet. It was fall 2007, my junior year of college. That summer, I’d moved out of the dorms and into my first apartment. I was 20 years old, almost 21. If you’d asked me what my career was going to be, I would’ve hesitated and posited, “…writer? I hope?” A cautious optimism underneath which lied a practical fear. A fear that I could never make a living with writing, that I’d end up in an office job, probably, and that the only skill I’d spent my . . . read more

“Holy shit, you masturbate for a living?!” This is how people often respond when I tell them what I do, and honestly, I can’t blame them. On the surface, “sex toy tester” sounds like a dream job. “You’re so lucky!” they exclaim. “You get paid to orgasm!” But this is an oversimplification — and it starts to get annoying after a while. Aside from dismissing all the behind-the-scenes work that goes into running a blog, it glosses over the aspects of this job that are less than idyllic. While being a sex toy reviewer is definitely more fun than most jobs and has its fair share of perks,1 there are a number of drawbacks too. The following is a list of 22 unfortunate . . . read more

“Glamorous” is not at all a word I would use to describe my life, yet the world continues thinking my days are filled with orgasms and sunshine. My job is sweet, I’ll give you that, but unless your definition of “glamorous” includes Photoshopping hairs off dildos, it’s not usually thrilling. On Friday, December 6th, I had the idea to document my day for your consumption. While this day didn’t include one of my signature marathon masturbation sessions, it was filled with many mundane yet very characteristic-of-my-life tasks, such as answering an avalanche of emails, tirelessly photographing sex toys, wrangling a sneaky cat, preparing a post, and yes — masturbating. 9:00 am: I wake up to see it snowing outside. The first . . . read more

Welcome, EdenFantasys refugees, ex-pats, survivors. Gather ’round. Did you recently decide to leave EdenFantasys after their latest bombshell? Worried that you are now like a ship without an anchor, lost at sea without the forums and the people you used to interact with? Still wanting to review sex toys, but not wanting to support a corrupt, unethical sex shop by doing so? NEVER FEAR! I am putting on my shit-stirring hat yet again just for you. Because let me tell you, life outside of EF is sweet. It tastes like honesty. A quick little bit of history: I started my sex toy reviewing career with EF back in 2007. I started this blog in 2008 and was banned in 2010 . . . read more

Want more guidance? I teach an entire online course for budding sex bloggers. So you wanna become a sex toy reviewer. I know, it sounds so glamorous and enticing. Packages bursting with free sex toys! Masturbation as a job! Merely writing about how something makes you feel! Instantaneous fame and fortune! But of course, it is not like that. One does not just become an awesome, popular sex toy reviewer overnight. Or ever, if you suck at writing or are prone to wandering away from projects. Blogging in general takes a shit ton of time, energy, and motivation, and sex blogging in particular has a few extra caveats, like protecting your anonymity and not upsetting Facebook with scandalous photos of . . . read more

Look, I get it. You think this is a picture of a FUN FUN SUPER FUN night. I know — you’d kill to own that many sex toys. But I would gently ask that you acquire a sense of scale and absorb what you are seeing here — five dildos, two of them enormous, two vibes, and a bottle of lube, consuming my desk. So many toys that I ran out of paper towel, so I resorted to setting them on my notebook as I used them. These toys were for one masturbation session, and I had a reason for using every single one. I did not choose this line-up based on what I actually wanted to put on/in my genitals . . . read more

Want more guidance? Check out my beginner’s guide to sex toy reviewing. I also teach an entire online course for budding sex bloggers! There is no rulebook for writing sex toy reviews, but any longtime reviewer will tell you that there are definite amateur mistakes, mistakes that make our eyes glaze over with terror. When a person begins reviewing sex toys, their first impulse may be to write a cutesy, coy, infomercial-like review. This is no surprise, since sex toys are seen as taboo and “naughty,” and new reviewers (perhaps unknowingly) feel the need to perpetuate those stereotypes. My first reviews were, admittedly, pretty atrocious. I’m guilty of breaking some of these rules myself — under “cons” for a glass . . . read more