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In todays adult industry how many sites or rather, how many different types of traffic sources do you think newer webmasters need to have before they start making sales?
I know many moons ago you literally could just throw one site up and within days make a sale but the industry has changed so much over th years.
Has it become more difficult in your eyes to make money from porn surfers an, if so, what do you think the reasons for the difficulties are?
Regards,
Lee
Hi Lee... well i'm just a designer so i can't say too much about traffic and stuff... but i'm trying to put myself as a regular surfer with a credit card in my hand... what would make me sign up right now:
I'd ONLY sign up to a reality site. If i wanted to look at regular sets of pictures of naked guys well there are plenty of that on the web for free... what i''d look for is original content. Content that i know that only that site makes. I'd sign up for that. I would NEVER sign up for the regular paysite look. Because i know, being a designer, that most of the times the sets are bought from content provider (oftenly overused content), videos are crappy and chats are just shit. So yeah i'd happily sign up for real content.
:goof:
i don't really think it's a question of the number of traffic sources, it's the quality of the traffic.
I can buy traffic all day long that just doesn't convert.
my suggestion would be to allocate a small budget to a few different sources, track them heavily, and find out what works for you. make sure you maximize each visitor to the fullest. once you find a formula that works, buy as much as you can!
A good point but (lol) what about those webmasters who perhaps cant afford to start buying traffic as yet? Newbies and the likes who perhaps are still perplexed as to how the whole 'traffic' generation system works?Quote:
Originally posted by RainGurl
i don't really think it's a question of the number of traffic sources, it's the quality of the traffic.
I can buy traffic all day long that just doesn't convert.
my suggestion would be to allocate a small budget to a few different sources, track them heavily, and find out what works for you. make sure you maximize each visitor to the fullest. once you find a formula that works, buy as much as you can!
Regards,
Lee
hmmm.....as the old saying goes, it takes money to make money.
i would say start studying search engine optimization...
I totally agree with this, I am always shocked with people that complain about not making money and when you try to help them out you see they are using overused sponsor content on a free host with massive headers/footers and they refuse to buy any automation tools or scripts since they can do it for free!Quote:
Originally posted by RainGurl
hmmm.....as the old saying goes, it takes money to make money.
i would say start studying search engine optimization...
I guess that is a bit off topic, so Lee my answer to you is you need lots of traffic ;)
cheers,
Luke
So how do new webmasters go about getting lots of traffic if they dont have any $$$ to invest?Quote:
Originally posted by Chilihost
my answer to you is you need lots of traffic ;)
See what i mean? They need to invest money to make money yes. However if they dont have any money to invest, how can they make money that money for the investment for free? LOL
Regards,
Lee
get a day job?
LOL
Other than that? im sure there are ways to make money in the adult industry without the need for any initial outlays other than a domain name ;)
Regards,
Lee
i think SEO is the key. it's good traffic if you can get it. and you can, but there is a lot to learn and a lot to stay on top of. the se world changes daily.
other than that, there are link trades, tgps, etc.
it IS possible to generate sales building galleries or avs's off the bat - IF you've honestly understood what you read on the boards. anyone's gallery can start making money the day it is posted.
what i've observed is that it's marketing that keep new webmasters from making money. their galleries, free sites, and avs sites usually lack focus - badly - are often hard to navigate, and use terrible text to sell. they're also given to cutesy concepts that don't seem to work, and they often try the same approach over and over before finally admitting what they are doing doesn't work and moving on. some never admit it. they get attached to their idea.
if you're new, you can make money immediately IF you really studied a couple good gallery or avs tutorials and let some webmasters critique your galleries or avs's - and then truly considered their advice.
Hmm that is interesting, so far as the actual 'marketing' goes where do you think that newbies tend to go wrong more often than any other place? Do you think it is beause they dont know their target audience or because they have been given mis-information from other webmasters who dont know their marketing skills needed to be fine tuned a bit more?Quote:
Originally posted by basschick
what i've observed is that it's marketing that keep new webmasters from making money. their galleries, free sites, and avs sites usually lack focus - badly - are often hard to navigate, and use terrible text to sell.
On the other hand.. could it be to do with the 'lazyness' factor in that they think they see all these other webmasters making money on the boards wen in reality all they see are a group of people trying to prove to one another who makes the most money?
Regards,
Lee
Oh i also agree with you basschick that it is possible to mak money from day one well at least it was 2 or 3 years ago i guess when we have the community project started up in a week or two we will find out if that is still true to form :)
Regards,
Lee
i don't think it's laziness - i try to help a lot of people who (for some reason) get pointed to me for gallery help. it's amazing how hard they work and how ineffective the average newbie marketer is!
one guy has been struggling over a gallery for two weeks. he can NOT focus on the sponsor site's niche. he can talk about the model on the page, although never in terms of the niche. he can talk about the sponsor site - although usually in very general terms (number of pics and movies, etc). he can't seem to focus on the combination of things.
a lot of new webmasters - and non new webmasters who can't break $500 a month - seem to have this problem. they can't understand there are several things you need to do to market anything:
1. keep the ad in a central location that the eyes are naturally drawn to
2. describe what is good AND different about the product you're selling. to me, it's obvious that there is NOTHING different about having thousands of pics in a paysite. what about that paysite stands out from the herd? what niche is it? boys? what is different about those boys?
3. make sure your content represents what you are marketing. don't put up an ugly 30 year old dude and say he's a twink or a hunk. if you want to use him, make an avs site about "average dudes" and use him to market that.
4. use keywords and trigger phrases. don't be afraid to use a strong keyword twice on a page. if your gallery is uncut cocks, you can say "UNCUT" in both the top and bottom links.
5. don't make the links to your sponsor subtle!!! a lot of us our trained to be subtle, but in advertising you have to be obvious. you can tell your surfer to click, make the text fairly large, make it a bright color. as long as it doesn't fuck up your gallery's appearance, let the surfer notice the sponsor links as soon as he notices the thumbs.
6. don't rely on banners. always use some text to sell a site, and pick the banner with the most of whatever the site is about on it.
these are a few of the VERY common newbie mistakes. almost everyone makes 'em, and they work very hard to make those mistakes ;-)
Damn thats a great list and i think we can all benefit from trying to remember even one of the items in it for life :)
I especially liked the part about the 'Average Dudes' ;)
Regards,
Lee
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:
Great topic for a new thread! Who wants to start it? This is the first year I will need some tax advice.Quote:
and as always try to pay as less taxes as legally possible
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.