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How long do you work on it before launching it? I know there is a Payment processing time and a design time but how much more do you put into the pot?
Do you:
Plan out a 3, 6 and 12 month goal?
Think out all options before going into design?
Research new trends and try to incorporate them into the project?
Buy content of one theme or a few related themes and plan to work them in over time?
Go on with your day as if it was just another site, slop it together, add content and move on?
Start basic, supply the people (end users) with what they want to see. Don't worry about making things all flashy and fancy to start. Make things clean and simple, to the point. They want content. Don't add to many features from the beginning (feature creep). Run some tests, try and do some selling yourself first. 9 times out of 10 if you cannot make a sale on your site, how are you going to help others. Planning for the future is good, but in this biz planning 12 mos out is damn near impossible.
it is just another site unless you feel it is THE project of your lifetime. if you treat all your sites, galleries and projects with respect, it could only b ea good thing.
i always marvel that guys throw together an avs site with no thougtht and little design or appear or text, then they are dumbfounded when it makes no sales. they post saying "AVS is dead", convinced that 3 sites they gave no thought to or planning to not working proves it.
i figure out the niche. i think about them sometimes for months - while sometimes it just comes to me. if i'm not very very familiar with it, i usually spend a week to a month researching the niche, though three times i just went for it - all str8 sites, btw. i find or shoot the content only after i have an idea of what content i want to see on the tour. one tour i conceptualized - including poses on the tour, text, colors, i turned out to already have all the content i needed already.
after tour is built, or even before, start making traffic plans or even start the ads, galleries or sites that will make the traffic happen. that way, when your site is up, you're ready to go. if you feel you have the time and money to promote your own affiliate program, you'll need to plan the affilate pages and what the focus/message should be, plus plan your marketing campaign.
once the tour is live, often one will want to change things after seeing how the traffic does. i generally consider the things i want to change before the site is even live - there are usually 2 or 3 things i consider i might want to change if conversions aren't up to my specs.
for a smaller site where you either have the content or can get it within a month, this process can take a total of 2 months depending on how much time you put into it and whether your designer and your content brokers can provide everything on time.
many successful programs test the site or sites with their own traffic and tweak stuff before offering the sites to affiliates to promote. i know a lot of people who don't do that, too. you will have to decide if you want to put your site's best foot forward or just go for it and sort of tweak as you go along. remember that review sites may not change an unfavorable review for months or a year, so make sure the quality and presentation of the content is good even if the tour hasn't been tested.
i've seen paysites go live in 1 month, 2 months, 3 months and 6 - and i've worked with people who have taken a year or more so they feel they have everything as good as it can be before they launch.
Quote:
Originally Posted by IdolKnights
By very closely monitoring exactly what surfers are and are not responding (clicking) to and which images do and do not convert we are constantly refining. The one thinge we have found that runs counter to what is often stated as gospel is that a preview must be updated constantly. We have found that folks buy a membership within the first two visits. It is the constant membership area updates that keeps em coming back. When we were updating our preview area constantly, we had more visitors and fewer sales. We fine tune our preview and carefully track what surfers do respond to and we are very happy with the results. Get the preview to the point that you are happy with it and then be willing to change it based on its actual performance. Your numbers will tell you what is right and wrong far better than whatever conventional wisdom may state. Everything is so individual. Some folks say you must have a particular video format and yet if your members don't use it why waste resources on it. Some surfers will respond very well to certain images but they may not buy. With our site in particular, there was one model that folks hailed high and low as the hottest thing they had ever seen, but his clicks did not convert. Yet some that would not seem to be as popular sell like mad but don't retain. Some sell and retain far better then others. Careful management is what will make it work for you. Research is the name of the game. We put up two very different versions of our site. One that was designed by a company that does a lot of adult sites in the down and dirty style. The other was the one that you see now. The sales numbers were hugely different.
I guess what I am saying is that monitoring the movement within the site is key to fine tuning your product. You will soon see what does and does not work. It can be something as simple as a single image that gets a surfer to buy or move on.
i think it will depend on the tipe of site you want to do
i know a few people who have builted sites and have had them taking affiliate traffic within a couple of hours
i know some other peoples who have waited months before getting affiliated traffic