i don't care for verotel. their stats are annoying and cumbersome and as far as i know it's harder to link directly to free hosted content through them. also several of my friends moved to ccbill and saw an immediate and substantial increase in sales.

recyclemysoul - there is no way anyone here can generalize number of sales in the first month. these pretty much count on three things - but the one that is essential is traffic. i know people who start out with a few hundred hits a day, a few thousand hits a day and many many thousand hits per day. not amazingly, the guys who start with thousands of daily hits make more sales than guys who start with a few hundred.

and then we get into affiliate programs. the easiest way to make some sales without really doing anything is to submit your site to review sites. i write reviews for several, and a few of the best sites i write for can make 10 - 20 sales on the first day of a new review.

and don't forget the tour. a good tour, which is not always a slick and sophisticated tour, can make you 3 or 4 times more sales than a not great tour - and this is no exaggeration. in fact, a really poor tour can make sales at worse than 1:1500 even with great content where a good tour for the exact same content can sell at 1:250. there's a certain amount of experimenting involved for EVERY site - and don't forget the join pages. your site should end up with several looks and layouts and prices on the join page before you settle for one or more.

even your video trailers and pic choices for the tour can have a huge impact on sales.

the bottom line here on what affects your sales:

plenty of traffic
a good niche or theme
good content (which can be amateur quality)
the right tour
the right prices
the right join page layout
good trailer

there is no one size fits all here. some great looking sites start out at 1 sale per day or less where amateur looking sites start out with 20 sales a day. why? more traffic, better page flow, better niche - you name it.

and don't forget text and how well you give your tour a personal feeling. that can also make a big difference.

btw, if you think 2257 is simple, perhaps you are looking at the original version and not the new regs. right now, the DOJ isn't even sure about some of the stuff that came into effect june 23, 2005. i'm not kidding. you may OR MAY NOT be able to use i.d. with blacked out addresses for models. you may OR MAY NOT be able to use content shot in another country by a u.s. producer. what is considered sexually explicit was just redefined by another law. or try this one - do softcore dressed images from a hardcore shoot require i.d. to be supplied to affilaites? no one is sure INCLUDING the DOJ.

and we haven't touched the obscenity laws.