• How To Claim Back European V.A.T

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Billing Solutions, General | Response: 0

    With the recent legislations requiring US businesses to charge Value Added Tax to EU Member state customers for purchases of digital product / image downloads there are many new questions going around enquiring how companies and small business owners can claim the VAT back this is what we will look at in this brief article – The basics of claiming back your VAT from Europe.

    What Is V.A.T?

    Value Added Tax (VAT) is a consumption tax levied on goods and services in many countries across the globe. Over the last decade, legislation in the tax systems of Europe, Canada, Japan and South Korea allow for a refund for the majority of non resident entities, worldwide to a refund of VAT in most instances however, especially in the business world, registration must be achieved prior to claiming back your VAT and, preferably before the purchase of Vat able goods takes place.

    Who Is Entitled To A VAT Refund?

    Most businesses will be entitled to receive a VAT refund however, as the laws vary from country to country, the best way for you as a business owner to find out the laws as they affect you is to contact your company accountant who, should be knowledgable enough to inform you of what you need to claim back from each of the EU member states where V.A.T has been charged.

    What Products Can I Claim V.A.T Refunds For?

    Most typically value added tax recoverable expenses can take form as one or more of the following items:

    Business Property Expenses.
    Transportation Costs.
    Inter-company Billing.
    Marketing + Promotional Services.
    Exhibitions, Conferences + Business Meetings.
    Importation V.A.T.
    Digital Downloads (Business Related).

    How Do I Register For V.A.T?

    When a company inside the domestic US conducts transactions in the EU countries where value added tax registrations may be required the registration for the VAT refund should be done prior to the transaction taking place however, on occasions which vary from individual EU member states this registration process may be done retroactively. By becoming registered to claim your VAT back the company is legally required to d the following:

    1) Register for the VAT in the EU country where the transaction takes place.
    2) Account for VAT on all invoices or receipts issued to your European customers.
    3) Deduct the V.A.T incurred from your European suppliers of goods or services.

    Value Added Tax – An Overview.

    When all is said and done, other than the obvious need to increase your pricing structure for certain global markets registering for and, charging value added tax actually has a great deal of benefits. You now get to claim addition refunds from any expenses that you incur from the day to day running of your business, your promotional activities become vat’able so you can now increase the level of global marketing you do and, claim full value back from the EU member states (where applicable). basically, registering in the EU member state will enable your business to grow on a global scale and, at the same time, afford you the luxury of being able to market your goods and services to a greater client base at virtually no cost to yourself this is a good thing especially when you take a look at the growth that international internet usage is making each month.

    Article written by Lee

  • Direct Debit Payment Explained

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Billing Solutions | Response: 0

    Something that is very rarely spoken about as a means of payment is Direct Debit, this is a popular payment method across Europe and, especially in the United Kingdom. Direct Debit can offer your surfers a cost effective, easy way to pay for products and services from your site especially, if they have a ‘recurring’ cost associated with them.

    Direct Debit – What Is It?

    Direct Debit is quite possibly one of the simplest ways to collect funds from your surfers basically, a form is filled out by the surfer, where they enter their bank payment details, account number, name, sort code. Then, the form is signed either electronically or, in person by the customer, in this case, electronically by the surfer.

    Once you have the direct form filled in by your surfer, you may continue to deduct funds from the bank account on the Direct Debit form until such a time whereas the surfer cancels the Direct Debit agreement.

    At the present time, around 45% of the population in the UK currently choose to pay their utility bills online by Direct Debit and, around 75% of the total population in the UK have used Direct Debit at least once in addition Direct Debit is also an alternative method of payment in the vast majority of European countries and, it is also used (although not as much) in Australia.

    Direct Debit – What Are The Cost?

    Direct Debit payments cost around $0.5 for you as a merchant to process, however, this charge, rather than happening on the processors side of the transaction, happens when the Direct Debit request hits your banking account.

    This in itself is god news after all, you now ensure that if a membership or product costs $35 per month, you will get virtually the full cost of that membership until such a time when the surfer cancels the direct debit at their bank.

    Direct Debit – An Overview.

    All in all, Direct Debit is probably one of the only payment solutions that allow you to collect the full price from your surfer at the point of sale and, furthermore, because the Direct Debit method of payment is trusted, this offers your surfers something that no other form of payment can – Peace of mind. There is however one major drawback to this method of payment, it is very hard to find processors that will allow you to utilize Direct Debit on your sites in fact, to date, the main use for the Direct Debit payment method has been payments of utility bills, Gas, Electricity, Water Supply, etc however, many financial institutes will let you pay for goods and services using Direct Debit on ‘credit’ terms which can vary from 1 day to a year interest free or, not as the case so often is.

    I strongly feel that within the next 12 months this method of payment could become advantageous to the adult webmaster however, the current online payment processors need to be pushed in order for this to become as widespread as credit and debit card processing is. That said, there are a few online adult companies already accepting Direct Debit as a form of payment so, at least the ‘DD’ revolution has already started.

    Article written by Lee

  • Mirroring Adult Sites – Stage Four

    Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: Promotion, Tutorials | Response: 0

    We are now going to take our basic template and start to make some pages for the link lists for this you will need to open up your original warning page. Once you have this page open you need to visit a couple of the link lists that you use. Go to the submissions page of the link list and download their reciprocal buttons.

    In the same way that we did with the TGP pages we created you now need to edit the warning page you have open and insert the recip links on your warning page, ideally and, as most link lists will require this, the recip links should be placed above the enter and exit links.

    Once you have done this, you now need to save your newly edited page as linklist1.html in the /FreeSite/LinkList/ folder, do this for as many of the link lists that you wish to submit to, each time saving the new page in the /FreeSite/LinkList/ folder.

    Also at this stage, we should add a console to our link list page, ideally a blur console with links going to your surfer trap FPA’s. You can find the Java coding to create a blur console on the tutorial about building a surfer trap.

    Once we have done this, we now have some more sites created. However, this time, the page/s we have just created are designed to build the traffic we have to our site/s.

    Once you have these pages saved you now need to re-open your original warning page once more.

    This time, we are going to optimize the page for the search engines, again, in the same way we added our ALT tags on the surfer trap we are going to add them to the warning page however, we are also going to optimize our keywords, description and, site title.

    Once we have optimized our original warning page we should now save this as se1.html in the /FreeSite/Engine/ folder we created at the start of this tutorial. Once one SE page has been created, you need to create a selection of others making sure that you swap around the meta tags to ensure they are all different to each other, I would suggest making three variations of these SE pages each time saving them in the /FreeSite/Engine/ folder.

    The next thing we are going to do is to ‘dirty’ these SE pages up some more, pretty much in the same manner as we did with the surfer trap tutorial. What we need to do is add a small pop up console to the three SE pages along with a blur console, these consoles can be the same ones that we used for our surfer trap or, we can create new ones however, I think the smart thing to do would be if we used the ones we currently have online. So once we have added these consoles we need to save the pages.

    Also, to these SE pages we should add our Banner exchange code, as these will be going into the search engines there are no rules as to what we can and can not do on these SE pages so we should make sure that even if they just get one hit, we get additional traffic from them. By adding a banner exchange code as we did on the surfer tutorial we can drive additional traffic either to our sites or to our surfer trap, where you send this traffic is your choice. If you want to sign up for our new banner exchange you can find it at http://www.pornclient.com.

    Now we have the completed site template built. We need to submit the pages and sites we have just completed to the TGP’s, AVS’s, Link Lists and, the Search Engines.

    Once we have submitted these sites all that we need to do to create a new set of sites is to find another set of 50 images, rename the images as we did at the start of this tutorial, pic1.jpg, thumb1.jpg etc and simply upload the site to our server without the full size images and the thumbnails. Once the HTML pages are online, we now have to upload the full size images and the thumbnails and we have a set of sites using different content to our original one built in less than 5 minutes.

    The best thing with these sites is that if a any time we want to alter the layout, all we need to do is edit the HTML of the version we have saved on our HD and we have a new template ready to use.

    I hope you have found some use out of this tutorial and, I am sure you can think of other ways in which we can use templates of this style, this tutorial was just detailing some of the basics however, we can make the template as simple or as complicated as we like. Our only limits are what we make for ourselves.

    Article written by Lee

  • The Next Big Traffic Craze – Thumbnail Link Lists

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Link Lists | Response: 0

    As adult webmasters are constantly thriving to create the next craze in traffic sources to garner sales from their sites it comes as no surprise that there is already talk amongst the ranks of the next big thing, what is this new idea? The Thumbnail Link List.

    Thumbnail Link Lists – Re-Inventing The Wheel.

    As the past year and a half have taught us as webmasters, regular TGP’s have almost become a thing of the past with more and more thumbnail TGP’s being created and submitted to daily, why then, has it taken so long for someone to think up the idea of the Thumbnail Link List? Quite simply I think it has been a case of to much has happened over the last 12 months in the adult industry for webmasters to think this idea up.

    So What Is A Thumbnail Link List?

    A thumbnail link list is in effect a way of displaying free sites on your own standard Link List by utilizing small thumbnail samples of the images contained within the free sites galleries, in fact, much the same way that a thumbnail TGP works however, instead of only listing single image galleries your link list will consist of links to individual free sites.

    Much like the Thumbnail TGP traffic source, the thinking behind the Thumbnail Link List is that by showing your surfers what type of pictures the sites within your link list contain they will be more likely to visit the free site thus improving your CTR to your webmaster submitted sites and, ultimately, your site overall allowing you to manipulate the traffic to garner more sales for yourself as the Thumbnail Link List owner.

    Submitting Your Site To A Thumbnail Link List.

    Looking at the Thumbnail Link List idea from a webmaster who would be submitting your free sites for listing (and ultimately traffic) how do the rules of the Thumbnail Link List differ to that of the regular link list which we are all used to seeing, well for a start, the main difference will be that you either need to submit a thumbnail yourself or, enter the url to one of your gallery pages in addition to the main entrance to your free site, this will actually be the only significant change in how you operate your link list submissions compared tot he current link list method, however, as each Thumbnail Link List owner will have their own individual rules you should check before submitting as to what is required from you as a submitter.

    Thumbnail Link Lists – Overview.

    The whole Thumbnail Link List idea is one that, in all seriousness should mean more traffic not only for the submitters of the free sites but, also for the Thumbnail Link List owner themselves, by offering the surfers a preview of the content contained within the free sites they will be visiting they can simply reduce the amount of sites that do not appeal to them and focus more on the sites that do meaning that the webmasters who submit highly niched free sites to the links lists will now be able to benefit from a larger traffic base and ultimately, more sales.

    Article written by Lee

  • HTML Page Load Times – Making Them Quicker

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

    Surfers on the web are here for one thing and one thing only, they want information, they want it to be correct and, more importantly, they want it now. We cant always help when it comes to getting the information however we can help them so far as making sure that when one of the surfers clicks on our pages they load quickly.

    Taking Control Of Speed.

    For many webmasters hand coding their HTML pages is an often timely and costly method and, because of this they turned to the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You get) editors such as Dreamweaver and Frontpage to create their pages for them however, even this in itself requires some manually intermission on the webmaster part. Many of the older style WYSIWYG Editors added a fair amount of un-needed code to the HTML so, spending a few minutes after you have your pages created to physically go through the HTML code and clean up the junk html can in effect, cut down your page size by up to 25% in some instances.

    HTML Quotations And Hyphens.

    In addition to un-needed HTML tags you may also want to consider removing any quotation marks or hyphens from your HTML code, both of these can quickly clutter up a page and laden it down with more code than is actually required.

    For example, ‘HTML Coding’ makes just as much sense as me telling you HTML Coding when read in sequence. The trick with using quotations and hyphens is actually knowing at what point in your text you can ‘get away’ with removing them and, this is only something you will know yourself after proofing your completed page.

    Hyperlinks.

    If you are only going to provide links from one page of your site to another then, why use absolute paths? http://www.domain.com/linking.html is the same as /linking.html when you use it in a link from one page on your site to another and, well, in all honesty you have increased the load time of your page by only linking to the relative url instead of the absolute and that’s what we are trying to do here right? Make our pages load faster.

    White Space.

    White space on a web page can be a good marketing tool however, white space in your HTML code is a bad thing, placing spaces between certain parts of your HTML code can quickly bog down your load times instead, try to use the tab key to separate certain parts of code likewise, keep the use of &nbsp to a minimum, this can quickly become the most relevant term on your page if used in excess.

    One other benefit of making your pages as small as possible is that a webmaster wanting to steal your HTML code is going to have a harder time finding the exact piece of coding if the HTML is all on a single line than they would if the code was laid out nicely however, this in itself is only a deterrent and it wont stop those webmasters determined to steal your HTML code.

    Page Load Time Overview.

    Hopefully this brief article has given you some idea of ways in which you can practically reduce the load time of your pages without affecting the overall look and feel of your site and, who knows, if your page loads quicker, then you have a better chance of your surfer getting to your sponsor quicker.

    Article written by Lee

  • Hard Hitting – In Your Face – This Is Reality

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: General | Response: 0

    It started on terrestrial television some 5 years ago with the first episode of Big Brother, then it went from a house of captive stars to talent scouts looking to create a new pop sensation. From there we saw a variety of television series with ‘reality’ as the main focus.

    It only follows suit that this popular marketing machine should hit the adult internet; and, it hit in a major way. And now, almost every major adult sponsor has one common type of site in their portfolio – a reality site.

    However, one thing that many in the adult industry are not aware of is that the ‘reality’ type adult sites have been around for longer than what most realize. Before the live sex up-sells and chat rooms, Brandon Marley, a gay website owner, has had a site catering towards the gay reality niche – the premise of his site, as a gay male on the prowl, he goes to the street looking for straight guys to use as content; once he has them in the studio, he lets them work their magic and, inevitably, gets down to business, sometimes persuading the guys to have sex, sometimes, grossing them out whilst they up and flee the studio, all of this is caught on tape and published online.

    Next is the web cam phenomenon. Reality at it’s utmost, watching live guys talk, strip, jerk off and discuss the most intimate desires in a chat room. The gay market flocks to reality like a moth to a flame. And surprisingly, much of the focus of ‘reality’ has been pointed to the straight adult audience, with a limited amount of gay orientated reality sites being launched.

    That is until now, more and more programs and providers are coming up with reality to the gay market. The key to the on going success and growth of these sites is the, always allusive, original idea.

    From M.I.L.F To D.I.L.F.

    One of the popular types of reality site we saw explode was MILF (Moms I Like To Fuck). Spurred not only by the popular teenage movie American Pie, this type of reality hits a spot of desire within some surfers to days gone by where they had a secret crush on someone’s mom. Well if it’s possible that a straight man could have a crush on a mom, what about the young gay man having a crush on a dad?

    “Well, if the straight markets can have MILF, why can’t the gay arena have DILF?’ asks Gary-Alan, owner of the new gay reality site DILF.com from http://www.studmoney.com.

    The gay markets have been yelling they are looking for something different to sell. So rather than taking DILF to the straight adult reality markets DILF takes it’s unique flavor and gears it toward to gay market.

    ‘Reality sells! It is one of the freshest and highest converting niches yet. We see this from great sites like Chi Chi La Rue and Brandon Marley – two of my most favorite sites. I have been listening to webmaster for years. They are looking for something different not just in a reality sense but something that features older guys, not your typical young buff stud. I think when the idea to finally launch StudMoney came up, the first thing that was mentioned was DILF. So we’ve brought the two aspects together and given the gay market webmasters the opportunity to promote a reality site that will convert and, convert well on their traffic.” Alan tells us.

    So What Are Reality Sites?

    Reality sites cater to a specific target audience, those people who don’t want to see the usual porn stars that are found on almost every other site on the web. Instead, these sites offer exclusive real-life models that could next door neighbor’s sister, mother or, in the case of DILF, their father. Reality opens your site offerings, giving you the opportunity to retain surfers with frequent updates and story lines that will peak their interests. You get to set the standard of your entire site to promote not only the content but a familiarity with your core performers.

    Starting Reality Site.

    So how do you go about setting up a reality niche pay site? In all honesty, there is more involved than putting up a cookie-cutter site online.

    First you need a concept. With as many niches available today you need something fresh. Mind you there are ideas to mimic but new sells. Once the ideas are down then you need to find content. This isn’t as easy as buying a standard CD, it has to be fresh and new so finding a good photographer to shoot exclusive custom content. Even if you decide you will shoot your own content, you will need to be sure to schedule fresh new shoots frequently. This is important with any type of site, but none more than reality.

    Once you have the content aspect figured out, you need to work on designing your site. You may think that’s easy, but the regular cookie-cutter designs, that are so often seen across multiple sites, simply do not cut it. You should seriously give your site design as much consideration as you do you concept for the site itself. A unique approach to the overall layout and design the site and it the member’s area has an equal impact on your members retention rates as having unique content.

    Reality Niche – Overview.

    What it all comes down to is reality is here, and here to stay. From market to market, niche to niche the one thing we have seen on and offline is that audiences around the world are looking to satisfy the voyeur, the deviant or the simple curiosity that lurks just beneath the skin. So the next time your driving past the mini-mart or peak inside the dressing room at the department store, remember you’re not only in public places – you are probably walking through the next set for an upcoming reality site.

    Article written by Lee

  • Adult Webmaster Conventions

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: General | Response: 0

    Networking Overload

    Adult Webmaster Conventions – Networking Overload.

    As the industry changes more and more another thing that has been overdone to the extreme in recent times is that of the webmaster convention, there used to be two or three of these webmaster conventions a year with the biggest being the Internext Expo – Las Vegas. Now however it seems there isn’t a month that goes by without a new webmaster convention being announced.

    Webmaster Networking.

    Adult Webmaster Conventions however offer all types of webmaster (for the most part) something useful, interaction with other webmasters in a relaxing and friendly atmosphere however, with so many of these conventions to choose from how do you judge which of the monthly shows you should attend and, which of the shows you should not?

    Webmaster Shows – The Top Three.

    In all honesty and, remember these are my own feelings based on attendance at a variety of shows over the last four years I would say if you stick to the main shows then you cant really go wrong, so the must attend shows list from me would include the following.

    Internext Expo – Las Vegas – January.
    Phoenix Forum – Arizona – April.
    Internext Expo – Florida – August.

    By attending all three of these shows you will get the opportunity to not only meet the people and companies you have been doing business with but, also get to meet new webmasters to further develop your business from a range of levels including new webmasters right up to the industry old timers.

    Webmaster Conventions Advice.

    When you consider attending your first adult webmaster convention you should keep one thing in mind, the shows themselves can often be costly so far as airfares and hotel accommodations so, you should book early to enable you to plan your budget for the shows and, also to ensure that you get the best deals available.

    Many of the larger shows are held in hotels such as The Venetian in Las Vegas which is directly next door to the convention center itself as is the Doubletree La Posada at the Phoenix Forum and the Westin Diplomat at the Florida show however, don’t be afraid of booking a hotel down the block from the one where the show is actually being held, often you will find people staying at hotels outside of the convention location and this means you can often relax with them away from the hustle and bustle of the show itself.

    Webmaster Conventions Overview.

    With so many webmaster conventions being held each year one thing is for certain, webmaster want to network at new places and often, these conventions can yield more business by themselves than a simple phone call or email however, be careful of the conventions or parties you choose to attend, just because a lot of people appear to be going to a specific party, it dos not mean you will get any business done there, choose your webmaster show attendance wisely and more importantly, make sure you have a set list of goals to achieve once you actually get to the convention itself.

    Article written by Lee.

  • Fighting Back Against Computer Viruses

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: General | Response: 0

    Only 10 years ago, the only way that a virus could have infected your computer was through you physically putting a floppy disk into your hard drive and running the program file that initiated the virus however, today’s viruses have become more complex in how they operate and, can spread like wild fire if they are not recognized as a virus doing damage not only to your computer but that of your associates and peers.

    So how do we minimize the risk of virus infection on our computers which, lets face it, for the Adult Webmaster are our livelihood and, need to be protected at all cost. This is what we will take a brief look at in this article, how to minimize the risk of getting a computer virus and, heaven forbid, how to deal with a virus if you actually have one on your machine already.

    Computer Viruses – A Little History.

    1981 – The first widely accepted computer virus is recognized. The ‘Elk Cloner’ virus was spread through floppy disks and, whilst by today’s standards, it was not a high risk virus it, non the less was still a virus, in fact, all this first virus did was to display a message on your computer screen.

    1991 – The ‘Tequila’ virus was the first recognized ‘polymorphic virus’ meaning, it was the first virus which actually altered its state once on your machine in order to remain undetected.

    2001 – 2001 saw the spawn of several highly potent ‘worm’ orientated viruses from the ‘Gnuman’ virus, the ‘LogoLogic Worm’ and the famed (is that the right word?) ‘Nimda worm’. These ‘worms’ were the first of their kind to actually spread themselves across the World Wide Web through infecting users email clients (specifically Outlook Express) and sending itself to every email address the infected machine had in the address book.

    Virus Infections – Prevention Better Than Cure.

    So we now have a little background on the main viruses over the last 20 years we will take a look at the ways in which we can prevent viral infections on our computers after all, as the subtitle for this paragraph says, a prevention is far better than having to find a cure.

    Here are a few simple ways you can help to prevent the spread and infection of computer viruses.

    1) Install a good anti-virus software package on ALL of your computers, Norton and, Mcafee, both have some good products to aid you in preventing viral infections of your PC. Also, you should ensure the software package you do install has updated virus definitions, a new virus is created almost every week so you need to ensure your software keeps up-to-date on the latest infections.

    2) Scan any and all email attachments you receive, irrespective of whether you know the sender or not, anything that you get sent in an email should be scanned, as mentioned above, there are complex viruses that can ‘send’ themselves from other peoples email address book, what happens if you are on the address book of an infected users computer? Can you afford not to be online?

    3) Ensure that, once you have an Anti virus program installed on your machine that you have it setup to start each and every time that your computer boots, the first thing that should be loading on your machine is an anti-virus program, you only have one chance to prevent infection.

    4) Avoid downloading .exe and .com files to your desktop unless, you know the person you are downloading the files from and, even then, before you launch or open the files ensure you scan them independently.

    Virus Prevention – Overview.

    Hopefully this article will have given you some insight into how you can protect both your computer and the computers of your associates and peers from computer viruses and, hopefully, by following the guidelines within this article your time spent online will be productive and virus free. One thing you should remember however is that no matter how hard we all try to remain virus free, someone will create a new program that ultimately, could infect our machines no matter how hard we try.

    Article written by Lee

  • Online Dating Programs – Working The Adult Angle

    Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: Sponsors | Response: 0

    As the industry starts to feel the effects over the coming months from the whole Visa situation the one thing that, at present seems to be true of the adult industry is that more and more webmaster/companies are looking to increase their revenues by utilizing mainstream sponsors on their sites. However in addition to this, the adult dating program appears to have been overlooked at least up until now.

    Online Dating Sites – The Options.

    There are actually a few good online personals sites available for adult webmasters to promote ranging from Love At First Click through the Advertising Revenue Service program to specific dating sites such as Match.com and Date.com. One thing is overwhelmingly consistent however regardless of which sponsor you use for your dating traffic, they all have a relatively low payout when compared to the ‘norm’ in adult sites with payouts ranging from $1 to $5 per signup.

    Marketing Dating Sites.

    So how should webmasters market dating sites in conjunction with their current streams of traffic, this is actually a lot easier than you may think for example, almost everyone has an exit link on their free sites, you could utilize this exit link to send traffic to a dating affiliate program in fact, you could also utilize a dating affiliate program on your exit consoles or even on TGP galleries instead of pay sites. The opportunities for you to make money by placing dating affiliate program banners on your web pages are virtually endless.

    Online Personals – Sales Techniques.

    When selling online dating sites there are, in addition to the abundant methods of generating the traffic, many different methods of generating your marketing speech to the surfers, you should ideally try a selection of methods on your sites to find out exactly which method works best for you. As an example of this, if you are using a dating program on a softcore site, you might want to try a hardcore approach to selling your dating sponsor in much the same way as you would sell a hardcore pay site except not as highly graphic. In comparison, if you have a TGP gallery you may like to tell your surfer that rather than looking at sex, they might actually be able to get sex for a change. The ways in which you can entice your surfers to your dating affiliate program are virtually limitless.

    Marketing Dating Sites – An Overview.

    Whether you are already using or are planning to use dating sites, the one thing you must do is ensure that you choose wisely not only the words for selling the site to your surfer but also the placement of the promotional material, a well placed text link can have a higher impact on your overall sales than a badly placed banner and well, the same is true in reverse, find out where you are missing out on opportunities to upsell your surfers to an online dating site.

    Article written by Lee

  • Masters Of Discipline – Have You Got What It Takes?

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: General | Response: 0

    So you want to throw in your day job and become a full time adult Webmaster? Well yeah, I can hear you saying, “Who wouldn’t want to be surrounded by pictures of beautiful women all day, make up their own hours, and be the master of their own destiny?” It just sounds sooo good when it’s put like that doesn’t it?

    Before you tell your boss you quit, you might want to read this article first, as the reality of working in this industry and especially for yourself can be a real wake up call for many.

    The main thing you need to succeed in this business is discipline, and lots of it. If there are temptations when you work for someone else to slack off, take a sick day, or simply not bother showing up, then you can double those temptations when you work for yourself.

    It’s so easy to roll over in the morning rather than get out of bed, stagger to the PC, and actually work.

    It’s so easy to decide to take the day off when the sun is shining and the beach is calling. You simply tell yourself you’ll make up for it tonight, and then find yourself coming home at 3am.

    It’s so easy to not actually work, when you work for yourself, that at times it can be unreal.

    The reality of doing any of the above is longer nights, less sleep, and almost inevitably smaller paychecks.

    Structure Your Day.

    The answer to this problem is to really think about your working day and give it some structure, just as you would if you worked for someone else. Work set hours and take frequent breaks. When you work for someone else they make you take breaks for a variety of reasons, but mostly, because as research has proved, you’ll be more productive after one. It’s also important to make sure others know your hours as well, and always remember to add what time zone you are located in on any correspondence. There is nothing worse than being awoken by an associate at 3am because you forgot that little detail!

    Set A Routine.

    Get into a routine! There are various tasks that must be done each week no mater how boring. By creating a work routine, you can control your time and structure the more boring jobs at the end of the day when for most our creativity levels are less. You can also structure that routine as I do, when I’ve finished those boring tasks at the end of each day, I reward myself with some time doing what I want to do.

    Going Solo.

    This can be a lonely business and if you don’t like working alone then maybe it’s not the right one for you. You’ll likely spend many hours in your own company and as someone else pointed out to me, while boards and instant messengers are great, they can also eat heavily into your working time if you’re not careful. Personally, I use the boards and chats as a treat when I’ve accomplished a goal, unless I need to talk to someone in order to get that set goal done.

    If, like me, your office is in your home, in reality you never really leave work. It’s just always there and there is always something else to be done, and it’s so tempting just to work a few more hours. Having the discipline to stick to your office hours is the trick and where structure comes into play. The saying all work and no play makes Jack/Jill a dull boy/girl is really true here.

    The biggest trick of all though, is learning to recognize your limits. Set them and stick to them. Unlike in the normal workplace, you won’t have the big cheese or even the little one watching over your shoulder, making sure you work or making sure that your paycheck and your bills are covered each week. That’s up to you now.

    Think Before You Leap.

    Another thing you need to consider is can you REALLY afford to give up your day job? Working for someone else means that for the most part you will have a reliable pay check each week or month, when you work for yourself you loose that security. There are other things to consider as well like health insurance, book keeping and how exactly you are going to pay for them. Of course if there is another bread winner in the house this may not be of such a concern, but it’s still something you should consider before you give in your slip. As a general rule of thumb, if you’re considering going it alone, don’t, at least not until you have enough cash saved to cover any outgoings you might have over a six months period.

    How well do you know the law? If you think the law doesn’t affect you because your just one person working from home then think again. If you don’t know your Title 18 USC 2257 from your arse then you may be heading for trouble. Standing in front of a judge and saying I didn’t know won’t get you out of a heavy fine or even a prison sentence.

    The real questions you need to ask yourself now are you up to the challenge, and do you have the personal discipline to make this work for you?

    Article written by Jenne.

    http://www.clitical.com.

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