Site Building Question

WOW... great advice in this thread!

I feel like an old timer and I've only been doing this for 2 years. I remember the day when you could get a Bait Bus hosted gallery listed on a few TGP's with no effort and get a few sales in a day. I remember the day you could get a site listed on several AVS's using sponsor content and a freehost and make some sales.

I wasted 6 months doing that and I would never recommend that to anyone now. I could never get past the $500 month point back then and I imagine it would be near impossible now.

I honestly don't think there is a way to get started without a significant investment now... and constant reinvestment. You need a domain, hosting and lot's of fresh content and most importantly, a niche you can make your own.

TGP's only seem to make the TGP owner money. Hosting costs a fortune and getting listed anywhere with high quality traffic is virtually impossible. Sales text is everything, but very few people have that magic... myself included :umm:

You need a critical mass of AVS sites directed to your hub site to start earning good income. Quality, niche and originality are most important. The 5 minute template crap sites are killing the AVS's!

A good alternative for someone with some web design skills is a Movie AVS site. Hosting and content are provided, but you will need to send your own traffic to programs like this... that's the hard part! ;)

if i've learned one thing from my parents' business and my mom has personally told it to many people ... if you wanna make money out of your business you have to put money back in.
my aunt had a sewing business, and she constantly complained that my mom's business became huge and her's was tiny and wasn't growing.
when she finally started to put money back she started growing.

and as always try to pay as less taxes as legally possible

:bow:

Quote:

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and as always try to pay as less taxes as legally possible

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Great topic for a new thread! Who wants to start it? This is the first year I will need some tax advice.

I definitely think a big thing is the quality of the product.
Alot of people are under the impression that so long as it has some porn on it and you put it online, it'll start making money.
Little effort is put in to the product itself. So not even including how they're going about trying to get traffic to it, where they're submitting it, the look and feel of thumbnail galleries or optimization for the search engines... its just a bum site.

A visitor isn't lost once they've come and gone without a sale. They can come back. They can come back frequently. They can develop a genuine interest in your site and be just a tiny nudge away from pulling out that credit card.
Giving people something worth bookmarking can't help but result in sales. That way, every new traffic source and every new visitor isn't a start from scratch. It's an addition to all the ones who found you in the past and have kept coming back.

Xstr8guy - i make a full time living through gallery posting. it's really all about marketing knowledge and using a good sponsor.

i doubt that posting would work as well on free hosting, but i know people doing well with revshare hosting.

Oh, I'm far beyond free hosting now... that's how I got started. I ocassionally build galleries to send traffic to my Platinum AVS sites and hub pages. I just am not very good at it and I get frustrated with the constant rejection from TGP's. Surprisingly, I have quite good luck getting accepted at The Hun. But to get accepted there, you have to soft sell you sponsor so much, that it's hardly worth it. I've never had a site accepted at any of the other MAJOR TGP's... hell, some of them don't even accept gay galleries!

I'm one of the fortunates that Basschick tucked under her wing -- that advice she offered up is sound and really helped me to fine tune how my galleries look, and taught me how to really study the tours and have my galleries "match" their selling technique - with the pics I choose and the text I used to push the surfer to that click thru.

I know I've said it to ya privately - but thanks again Basschick for spending so much time helping me with learning so much!

aw, shucks *blush* you're very welcome!

Xstr8guy - can we see a typical gallery? maybe some of us oldtimers can help figure why they're being turned down and stuff.

great advice!
thanks for sharing it with us.

Hey Lee, great thread! Lots of great advice.

I can offer some stuff on this one. I launched my site at the end of April last year, after I lost my job. I decided that I never wanted to work for anyone ever again, and I never wanted all of my money coming from one source. So, I now do a number of things, including web design, SEO, and of course, my porn sites.

When I was re-structured out of my job, I didn't have a lot of money to invest in a site. I had the design skills, so I bought some pictures and started building a site. I launched my site just after a Google update, so I missed the boat, and that freakin' boat didn't come back until June. (Do anyone of you remember Esmeralda? Shit that was a long haul -- 50 days to be exact, I was counting.)

I had no money to spend on traffic. So, I hunkered down, hit as many webmaster boards as I could find, and I learned as much as I could about search engine optimization. I already knew quite a bit, but there was heap more to learn. That was a very long and hard month and a half between Google updates because there was nothing I could do, except continue to build, learn, write, and prepare.

Since then, I've learned a few things:

-I've learned if you are cheap, you won't get sales. LdyLnWolf1 pointed out to me one day that when I invited people "click here to see more" I was just sending them to a "join" page. Wrong. Give them some previews, she said, and so I did. Bingo. Yes, pictures cost money, but you've got to show a little leg to get some ass. :blush:

-Don't bother to submit galleries to an AVS on Wednesday's, no one's buying nothing on a Wednesday. I don't know why it's supposed to be "hump" day ;)

-Make sure you get someone else to check your navigation or test your site. Have a friend navigate your site and ask them to buy a membership? One of my friends pointed out that I didn't have a "join" button right upfront. It all made sense to me, but to him, he could figure things out. He said, "Where's the big fucking JOIN NOW button." I went "D'oh." Since adding it, I've been singing a different song.

-When a model contacts you saying that you are using their pictures without their permission, don't immediately assume that you are talking to the actual model. As I learned, you may be talking to a "competing" webmaster envious of your search engine rankings who is pretending to be said model hoping that you'll take down the gallery that's doing so well in Google.

-Learn how to read your site's logs. Use some freeware if you have to, but buy some software if you can (like WebLogExpert) to get you some good information about your traffic. I've learned heaps about how people were finding my sites. You'll learn a lot about the kinds of things that people are looking for in your niche. It'll give you ideas for new galleries etc.

-I've always been pretty cautious and protective of my sites. I had good SEO training, so I wasn't out for some quick "fix" to my traffic problem. I stayed away from sites and lists that seemed to be breaking all of the rules. Lie down with dogs and you'll get fleas, and all of that.

-I've also learned to ask for help. Don't be afraid to send people private messages. Ask. Ask. Ask. But at the same time, don't be surprised if you don't hear anything back, or if the message is weird. There seems to be an inherent mistrust in this community and maybe that's because there's a lot of BS. But every once in a while, when you ask, someone surprises you, like Reena from NakedSword who had some kick-ass hairy men banners made for widdle ole me. :blush:


-Don't create BS. I just saw a site submitted to MANcheck called "Yeah that's what daddy likes" and I'm sorry, but there's nothing daddy-ish about either of the guys in the galleries. Why do webmasters pull this kind of shit? They only piss people off. When I click "hair" there had better be a lot more than a skateboarder with three sprigs between his pecs. And if it says "daddy" he'd better be at least 40.

When cash flow wasn't such a problem, I decided to buy some advertising as a trial. I did what I could afford, and it's working. In another couple of months, if I can afford to do something bigger, I will.

And, I think the most important advice I can give is this: don't forget that once upon a time, you were a guy with a computer, five picture sets, and a 2GB webhost. When some newbie asks a question, do yourself a favour and extend them a hand.

Cheers,
Dzinerbear

this info is GOLD i tell ya! thanks for sharing :D


cheers,

Luke

Dzinerbear - wednesday was our best day this week :-/

that daddy site thing - look at paysites. most teen girl paysites feature girls over 25, sometimes over 30. same with teen boy sites. not to mention i've seen some mighty smooth bears, and skinny muscle men. they think that TELLING us these people are 19 will convince their surfers - yeah, right.

Actually, I had a great Wednesday this week, too, but it was all rebillings.

:)
Cheers,
Dzinerbear

Actually THE biggest day for internet usage is Tuesday. If you're selling stuff online in mainstream - like ebay for instance - you want your listing to end about lunch time Pacific Standard Time on a tuesday... No later than 6 pm PST as an alternate.

It would be interesting if we posted when we're finding the highest traffic/sales - day of week and time of day based on the PST time zone.