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How, when, and why did you start Submissive Guide?

In 2003, I started a website on Geocities (does anyone remember that site?). It was just to collect and chronicle my exploration of BDSM and the information I picked up from home pages, pre-blogs, and pre-resource sites. The internet was in its infancy, folks. One of the most significant sites of the time was called Castle Realm; you can find an archive of that homepage on the Wayback Machine. When I met KnyghtMare in late 2003, he purchased a domain for me to collect information on and where my first blog lived. That site is The Iron Gate. It still has all the essays and information I had gathered. The blog no longer exists, and the site has undergone many changes. Right now, it just sits and gets a bit of monthly traffic. The information hasn’t aged well, but some are good. You might enjoy the essays section!

After KnyghtMare moved here and we were getting serious about exploring kink and finding accurate information, I couldn’t find information about submission that wasn’t Gorean-centered or more fantastical. None of it felt like it applied to real life, and it certainly wasn’t common sense. So, I started another site called Sensual-Service (also archived on Wayback Machine), which focused on the female submissive's submission and service. It did well, and it motivated me to branch out further, stop focusing on female submission, and make it about submission as a whole.

At the time, I was in a few forums and discussion groups online for submissives, and they expressed that lack of factual, real-life application sort of information took a lot of work to find. That pushed me to think I could provide a place to gather that information and continue sharing what I was learning about myself and submission.

In late 2008, KnyghtMare purchased another domain for me, Submissive Guide! I started working really hard on what I was going to put on it, but its sole purpose was to share what I was learning and thinking about submission in the hope it would help others grow in their submission. Submissive Guide went live on January 1, 2009.

Over time, the site's purpose grew and changed. Submissive Guide’s current purpose is:

To provide education for submissives and their partners that help them live healthy consensual D/s dynamics

To dispel BDSM myths and misinformation by offering common-sense, real-world examples and first-hand experience.

To build a supportive community of members with a wide variety of experiences and dynamics.

In order to build on our purpose, we began to include other people’s viewpoints, guest authors, and more in-depth articles versus the blog-style short posts that were more common at the beginning of the site. By 2018, it housed over 1800 posts written by dozens of authors, bringing over 350,000 pageviews each month. 

That’s when Submissive Guide became more than a site. KnyghtMare and I brainstormed ways to make the educational experience of Submissive Guide approachable and affordable. Social media channels blossomed. I started producing ebooks and physical guides on Amazon. Then came an educational podcast and bigger dreams.

Our Patreon page helps us move forward with that plan where we hope to offer guided lessons on topics, self-paced classes using the information on Submissive Guide, and other places to help submissives learn more about themselves than simply reading an article can do. We’re so excited about the future of Submissive Guide as an educational hub for submissives and can’t wait to release our first lessons and classes for patrons.