The Story of Rainbowsauce.com

         That would be me, aka the 'Webmaster' or Sam (short for Samantha, but NO ONE calls me that). I'm a 25 year old lesbian from Sydney Australia (blonde hair, blue eyes...oops, heading down the wrong road there!). I design the occasional website for money - I tend to do theme style/advertising websites that have a lot of character, so I don't get a huge amount of work from boring businesses - but when I do produce a website for a business - it looks good, it's functional and it gets results! 

         If you've had a good look around Rainbowsauce, you would have seen comments like 'we recommend this book' or 'we're working on this part of the site'... in case you haven't worked it out - we means me! Over 370 pages of gloriously gay content, designed and researched from scratch and no one has had their sweaty little paws on it except me. So if you're ever wondering why major changes take a while, there's a poor little dyke staring at an overworked computer screen and completely giving up her social life all for the obsession that is this website!

     Did it have inspiration or was I just bored for 10 months?!! I guess it started when I walked into pretty much every bookstore in my local area and couldn't find a single relevant gay or lesbian book. I had the thought that a lot of people probably  don't have easy access to glbt reading - hell, I just wanted one of those cheesy romance novels where the girl got the girl for a change!

       So, to cut a long story short,  I started scouring the Internet for glbt authors and book titles and I ended up with over 4000 different books! The only way to put these online and get to show off my design skills (can't help myself) was to link to Amazon. My theory was, it would pay for itself.... domain registration, hosting, all that jazz..... I'll let you know when it does!! I've now even had gay and lesbian authors emailing me to add their books to the site - I've got to tell you - that's a totally cool thing to happen!

     After at least 10 months work, taking up a lot of spare time...no, not really! Rainbowsauce still owes me money for hosting (I say that like it's an entity lol) and of course slave labour, I've added more content to boost the money side of things... it may work someday.. but design and sheer hours, it's a labour of love for me. It's the only website I've ever done with gay content.... why can't I learn to start off small?!! I'm doing my best to list everything I can get my hands on.... but then I do something stupid like offer books from the UK and Canada.......adding 10,000 links one by one isn't hard... really... don't make me think about it.... getting there.. One compensating factor money wise is the pridewear section... this is stuff I sell on weekends around the Sydney area, unfortunately, until recently I was unable to accept credit card... so orders outside Australia were a problem... I've implemented Pay Pal now... which certainly helped with online sales. The hand painted bamboo curtains are getting a lot of attention through the search engines - feel free to check them out *shameless plug* - Don't miss our custom made pride flag curtains now in store!

     I'm not done yet... I' redecorating, I've finally finished adding links to the UK and Canada for all of our book listings - it was a huge task! I've also added live links to all our authors, so readers will be able to click through any name to view all books by each author. I hope my visitors find that a useful function. Then of course, for those who don't use my live links, I have to keep all the DVDs, videos, books & CDs updated!!

     Unfortunately, I have one big problem keeping Rainbowsauce from paying the bills and that is what has become known online as 'Scumware' - basically, this is software that installs itself without the user realising when you download and install a program, such as; comet cursor, bonzi buddy, kazaa, morpheus and other file sharing programs (as well as countless others). Aside from tracking your online habits, this software stays present in your browser and when you click through any affiliate link to buy an item from a website - it overwrites the proper ID and steals the rightful commission from the person who put all the hard work into that website. I'd estimate (based on tests) that at least 40% of the sales through Rainbowsauce get stolen by scumware.  If you've ever had one of these programs installed, chances are, you have spyware/scumware on your computer. If you care that your online habits may be being monitored - you can download adaware free to scan for and delete this rubbish!!

     For the want of something different, but mainly coz I love the whole look of them, I've added a little sub-website to Rainbowsauce recently - I'd discovered these arty retro advertising posters when adding posters and art prints to the site and thought some of my visitors may also admire the vintage style. 
     Plus I just had to show off the totally retro Russian propaganda posters from the war - they are just too cool! Of course, any sales from these art prints also help keep Rainbowsauce afloat!!

     Yes, yes we are! Keep in mind, that I wrote this at some ungodly hour... maybe I've enlightened visitors to this site, maybe I'm just talking to myself... either way, I'm just about done! Sometimes I think I've made the site a little too business like...trust me, that's not an image that fits me (duh!), hopefully someone out there will find my site a useful resource... where else can you pick up the latest CDs, buy gay erotic videos, pinch a few pride graphics for your homepage, easily find that book on gay and lesbian identity you always wanted and stock up on pride jewelry at the same time?? Of course, if you really want to get involved, you can always check out our forum and post nonsense (but amusing) messages with the rest of us - the link is on the front page! 

     If anyone out there has any feedback about the site - feel free to email me: webmaster@rainbowsauce.com - before I forget... check out over 200 original Rainbowsauce pride designs in our Pride Store! - Sam