Swingers Go Legit?
By Alan Cohen

(FORTUNE Small Business) – Andrew Conru owns the largest personals business on the Net--and he's miserable about it. Of the 15 sites that make up his FriendFinder Network, the most popular by far is AdultFriendFinder ("The World's Largest Sex and Swingers Personals Site"), drawing seven million of Conru's 19 million users. Conru expects his sites to pull in about $100 million in 2004, but growth is maxing out. Because he can't advertise his hottest site on top-tier web pages, FriendFinder has relied on affiliate referrals, which aren't as effective. So Conru has gone legit, bulking up advertising for his less risqué sites. His ads are sprouting in places like Hotmail.com, and he expects to spend $12 million on ads this year. But Conru's definition of respectability may be relative. One of his newest sites is Passion.com, which Conru describes as a "tamer" version of AdultFriendFinder. How much tamer? "It takes more clicks," he says, "to get to the nudity." --ALAN COHEN