How Do Mainstream Wemasters....

Get their traffic?

Ever just sit and wonder about something for no reason whatsoever? lol

Think about this for a second, we all know where we can find surfers to send to our adult sites, TGP's, Link Lists, Top Lists, SE's, Traffic Brokers, Etc and we do have a lot of diverse ways to generate surfer traffic to our sites but, how would a mainstream webmaster find traffic?

I mean its not like they can just submit a gallery of books to a book tgp site.

Do they really just rely on the Search Engines for traffic? If so, could that be why they arent as profitable as the adlt industry do you think?

Regards,

Lee

I own 3 other companies that are not adult related. One of them is 99% internet based. Getting traffic to any of those isn't as easy as in adult. We rely on paid search engine inclusions, overture, google, and other ppc. Our traffic doesn't increase easily. Drives me crazy trying to get more hits and never getting anywhere.

Jim

Jim you know what that brings up an interesting topic..

If mainstream traffic is so hard to find for 'free' why hasnt the adult / mainstream relation strengthened over the years instead of start growing apart?

Would certainly make sense to me for mainstream companies to start approaching the adult industry especially as it would seem like in some instances we have an excess of traffic when it comes to the web surfer.

Regards,

Lee

more and more adult companies are getting into mainstream, I think the merging is happening its just that it is also difficult for established mainstream companies to do anything that is in any way related to porn for fears of being shut down by their billing companies, webhosts, etc.

I think one of the better places to look if you want to get into mainstream is commission junction.


cheers,
Luke

Whereas I think adult companies use more ingenuity and creativity to acquire traffic from other online sources, I think in mainstream there's a greater meld between traditional advertising and marketing mediums and the online medium.

Which is to say that when I've worked with mainstream companies in the past and when it comes to the mainstream companies I work with today, they're more open to and prone to pursue offline advertising (TV, radio, print) and more used to the idea of paying for online advertising even (paying for banner spots, paying for PPC SEs).

You can quite easily promote an adult site without an ounce of material being presented offline. Going through affiliate programs, TGPs, AVS portals, SEs, buying traffic, link trades, link lists.

But those options aren't really available for mainstream sites to the extent they are for adult sites - if at all.

Most of the mainstream companies I've worked with had more substantial budgets and were more open and willing to spend fair amounts of money advertising so having to be intensely resourceful in coming up with online techniques just wasn't something people put much thought in to. When you had the investment or existing capital to pump 6-7 figures in to print ads, PPC, etc it was just normal and expected to go that route. Adult sites aren't dealing with that kind of overhead or willing to even consider it.

I used to manage an ad sales department for mainstream sites and there are just so many differences. While in many cases the actual audience is the same (i.e. your average porn site member may also be looking to buy a computer) the motivation for click on ads is completely different. A potential porn member is looking for instant gratification. Most likely they aren't going to go to 5 different sites and do their consumer research comparining content, features, pricing, etc. If they see something they like, they whip out their credit card (among other things) and buy it. With mainstream products, branding is much more important and customers tend to comparison shop. They take more time to read the text of the site, read reviews, etc. Like Brian said, branding plays a big role and so many opportunities are available to mainstream sites that aren't available to adult sites.

As far as traffic goes, I think mainstream sites use a lot of the same tactics, though they may have taken a while to catch on: spam, blind banners, pop-ups, affiliate programs, etc.

You'd be surprised at how some companies do work with adult traffic portals to drive traffic to their sites. I have been involved in several deals where a mainstream client would want a deal to drive mass amounts of traffic to their site via adult. Not concerned about conversions, but getting their traffic numbers up for IPOs and investors. Casino sites are a popular middle-site. For example, acme mainstream site sets up a casino portal, which they but "adult" traffic for. The casino portal drives traffic to their mainstream site.

I think mainstream is heavily dependent on either being a well known "branded" name and working the SE's in every way conceivable. I personally think that their usage of the multiple doorway script generators for SE's is what led to some major overhauls in how Google indexes websites now.