Wannabee Newbie: Lots of questions; any help is appreciated

[slickrick]

What do I need to know? The website has told me all I need is a domain name that can be linked to a theatre that they will build. Then I need to hire someone to perform the link. Where do I find a person to do this? How much should I expect to pay?
Right now I have the tiniest amount of cash for this venture plus my computer access is restricted to two-hours a day at my local public library. I am led to believe that my job is to direct traffic to the site. What suggestions do you guys have on how I go about doing that within the limitations I am working?
I would like to get going in this business. Is it possible or am I just too stupid to live?

[StunnerJesse]

Welcome to the board. First step is to learn HTML. There should be no reason to hire someone to do those things for you as when 99% people start they have to do everything themselves or won't make any money. Also, you'll need to invest more than two hours a day if you want a good shot at making income.

[x0pa]

start blogging but you should really promote the stuff your interested in that way you wont get bored writing about stuff you dont care about ;p

[slickrick]

Welcome to the board. First step is to learn HTML. There should be no reason to hire someone to do those things for you as when 99% people start they have to do everything themselves or won't make any money. Also, you'll need to invest more than two hours a day if you want a good shot at making income.

Learning HTML sounds fairly daunting. Will I have to use it alot or often?

[slickrick]

BTW Thanks for the welcome. It makes me feel less isolated in this venture.

[slickrick]

Should this blog be somehow linked to my theatre? Do I just research google for how to start a blog?

[HunkyLuke]

popping in to quickly welcome you to gww.

[Bec]

Should this blog be somehow linked to my theater? Do I just research google for how to start a blog?

What program are you wanting to get a theater setup with? AEBN or some other similar group?

If you do a blog, it gives you a way to market the theater by writing posts about the videos inside your theater. Write some hot sexy text, include a picture or a short 30 second - 1 minute teaser clip (or both a movie clip and photos) and then link out from the blog to the page the video is on. With a group like AEBN you can probably just setup a Wordpress plugin to add an RSS feed (url provided by the sponsor) to your blog which automatically makes posts for you.

If you setup your own domain here's the steps:

Go to a domain registrar like www.GoDaddy.com or www.Netfirms.com and find and buy a domain name that fits your site concept. You will make an account and then renew that domain every year. If you buy more domains, you just log into your account and purchase them from that account and they will all be together for easy management.

Go over to www.exxxpired.com and type in a niche or some other keyword you'd like in your domain name to find some names that have recently expired. You can then see if it is still available at the domain registrar or get some ideas on names you might want to try to get.

Now you can either get hosting for say 4 or 5 dollars a month (both of those domain registrars also offer pretty cheap hosting) and setup a Wordpress blog on it (www.Wordpress.org is a free program) OR skip the blog and hosting and just setup your DNS of your domain to work with the theatre you will create with the sponsor you have chosen. (The sponsor with the theater can help explain to you with instructions on how to change the DNS of your domain).

Doing just the theater doesn't present you with a way to market it, so I highly recommend the:
1. get a domain,
2. a host for the domain, and
3. have the host setup Wordpress on it for you, and then
4. have the theater setup on a subdomain.

So let's say your domain name is BestGayDVDs.com. (that's a domain of mine that just has a white label theatre and no blog) In your case the theater url would be on a subdomain and could just be called "theatre" and the url looks like this: http://theatre.bestgaydvds.com. The blog gets setup in the ROOT of your domain, so that when someone types in www.bestgaydvds.com they go directly to your blog.

Once you have the blog going with a few weeks of good posts on it, you can submit it to link lists and blog directories like www.gaydemon.com or www.maleblue.com/webmasters/, or http://boydirectory.com and start getting traffic that way. You can also do blogroll trades with other blog owners to get traffic to your site. Just post here and ask for trades once you're setup and rollin'.

I realize that's hard to follow since you are new, but it really isn't difficult or expensive to get started in this business. Just keep asking questions when you get stuck on what happens next.

.... and welcome to the GWW forum~!

[slickrick]

This week I have completed my first html course. I plan to affiliate with AEBN. What would you say my next step is? Should I get the domain name as well as the theatre now or is there an intermittaent step(s)? I have also worked out access to more hours. Do I use those hours for marketing or is it something else?

[Bec]

I already listed out a sequence of steps in an earlier post. Get the domain name, and if you intend to blog so as to be able to market your site and submit it to link lists, you'll need hosting. check out http://cheapadulthostingxxx.com/ ... personally I'd opt for NakedHosting/Certified Hosting (same group). Set up the domain with the host, and once it is live, install Wordpress and install the AEBN theatre on a subdomain. Example: let's say your domain name is XXXGayVideos.com --Have the theatre on a subdomain such as theatre or videos ... the url to it becomes theatre.XXXGayVideos.com

Now when you blog about a video you will send the surfer to that video on YOUR theatre on your sub-domain url. If they decide to watch the video, you get a commission. Once you have a few posts under your belt, start submitting your blog to various adult blog link lists to get traffic. You just add their link list url into your blogroll and then submit your site via their submission page. You can also ask on the forums for blogroll trades -- directly trade links between you and another blog owner's site.

Hunky Luke has link lists you can get added to: http://gayblogsubmitter.com/

Some others I can think of off the top of my head:
http://www.gaybloglinks.com/
http://www.hunkhunter.com/blog1.html
http://www.gaydemon.com

Loof for others to submit to by using Google and searching for "gay blog links" or "gay blog link lists", or just start a new thread here asking what sites people are using to submit their blogs to.