So That’s What It Means!

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: General | Response: 0

Often you will hear other webmaster talking about things such as unique hits, banner exchanges and, AVS systems. The article below is a simplified glossary of those and many other terms that you will begin to hear day in and day out of your working life as an adult webmaster.

AVS (Adult Verification System)
The protection system that was designed to prevent minors from accessing adult sites. AVS services usually also have a large network of sites that adult surfers can access with one password. You can find a list of Age Verification Systems at Adult Sponsor Programs

AVS Site
A site that uses an AVS system.

Banner Exchange
A program that enables an exchange of traffic between a whole variety of adult sites. They provide you with some coding which you put in your HTML in order to get additional visitors to your adult site. You can visit: Porn Client for a highly respected Banner Exchange System.

Blind Links
When you place a misleading link on a site that will encourage the surfer to click on it. They will be sent to a new site that has nothing to do with what they expected to see. For example, if you had a text link saying ‘Free Porn’ and they get sent to a paysite when they click on the link.

Browser
A program that displays and navigates web pages you are using a browser now to view this page.

Chargeback
A chargeback is what happens when a surfer changes their mind or decides they don’t like the site or service they signed up for and tells their credit card company they will not pay the fee for your sponsor or paysite charges. Chargebacks are bad for everyone concerned because do you not only lose income for the sale, penalties are applied and sometimes they are applied to you.

Click-Thru Program
A sponsorship program that pays you an amount of money for each and every single visitor you send to their site. You can also find a list of per click sponsors at Adult Sponsor Programs.

Content Provider
A company that offer adults pictures, video clips for sale or lease. For a complete list of the best content providers head over to http://www.adult-content-providers.com.

Dead Or Broken Link
A link that is no longer valid or isn’t working. When you click on the link you get a page not found error.

E-Zine
An E-Zine is in simplified terms and online magazine.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
You need to upload (FTP) your web pages from your computer on to the web for everyone to see. One of the most well known FTP clients is Cute FTP.

Hits
Number of times your page was viewed over a specific period of time.

Hit Counter
Tool used to track the number of surfers that click onto your adult site. A good hit counter can be found at: http://www.sextracker.com

Hot-Linking
When someone links to an image on your server to display it on their site instead of linking to the image on their own server. You can prevent Hot-Linking by having a .htaccess file on your server.

HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
This is the language used to write web pages. This page is written in HTML.

ISP
Your internet service provider. AOL is a well known ISP.

Java
A programming language used by programmers to build and create programs. Not to be confused with JavaScript (see below).

JavaScript
A scripting language you can directly insert into HTML documents. They only work with surfers that have Java enabled on their browser.

Legal Content
Adult content for which you have rights to display on your site.

Model Release
Document that a model signs at the time the photographs of them are taken.

Message Board
A message board is a place where you can ask and offer advice about the industry or just generally chat with other adult webmasters for example the message board at: http://www.europeanwebmasters.com.

Newbie
A new adult webmaster.

Partnership, Sponsor or, Affiliate Program
A revenue program that pays you a percentage or fixed price for every member you send to your sponsor’s site.

Pay Site
An adult website where surfers have to pay a fee for access.

Pic Post
A site where you can submit a picture and your ad on a daily basis.

Plug In
A plug in is a ready-made type of web “CONTENT”. Many plug in providers will even host the content on their servers and allow you to change colors, Fonts and, add a logo graphic, so the plug in matches your site. Plug In content is generally more expensive than image content.

Ratio
A ratio like this refers to click throughs and actual sales made from them. When a webmaster says they got a 1:250 ratio, they mean that out of 250 people who clicked on his sponsor banner, one of the surfers paid for memberships.

Signup Ratio
The amount of surfers that paid to view your adult site (See the example above headed RATIO).

Spamming
Promoting a site or service to newsgroups or e-mail addresses that have not given you permission to do so. Spamming can also mean posting your referral codes on message boards constantly inn order to get other webmasters to sign up beneath you.

TGP (Thumbnail Gallery Post)
A site where you can submit your gallery pages. They in return put up your gallery and send you additional traffic.

Thumbnail
A smaller version of an image used to link to a larger version of the same image.

Turnkey Site
An adult site that is already designed and finished with logos, content, billing solutions and, hosting. All you have to do is maintain the site. Newbies often make the mistake of buying a turnkey site before they properly know how to market them.

Traffic
The term used to refer to the amount of visitors to your adult website over a specific period of time.

Uniques
Number of visitors to your site. If 10 surfers visit your site on any given day and 2 of them click onto your site 3 times the same day, it will be referred to as 8 unique visitors for that day.

URL
A web address. Actual address to a page would be a URL. For example: http://www.adultwebmasternewsletter.com is the URL to our Adult Webmaster Newsletter Site.

Warning or Entry Page
The page before a surfer sees the main content of your site.

Web Host
A company that will provide you with a hosting account so that you may upload your website on their server so that surfers may see your site. For a reputable host you might like to try http://www.webair.com.

Article written by Lee

Promoting Safe Sex In The Adult Industry

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: General | Response: 0

To most webmasters, the only thing that needs to be considered when building and marketing our websites is the layout of the site, the sponsors that they will be using and ultimately, the amount of money they will make from the site however, there is another side of the adult industry that we should also be considering, the moral side.

Safe Sex – Morally Speaking.

We all have our own morals and work ethics however, I think that sometimes most of us push these to the back lines a little when it comes to making a buck which is understandable however, we are in a position of power somewhat over a lot of things that many of us do not even think about, we know that for the vast amount of industry webmasters there are more than 90% of them will actively report child porn sites when they find them however, how much further does this reach and, how much harm could you potentially be doing long term?

Promoting Safe Sex – The Issues At Hand.

Step out of your webmaster persona for a short while now while you read this next paragraph and actually think about what is being said, all of us in our communities realize that sexually transmitted diseases and especially HIV/Aids is on the increase although maybe not reported as much the one thing that you can be certain about whether you go to a gym, a bar or a doctors is that we are constantly shown images promoting safe sex, ask yourself how you feel about that and, furthermore, ask yourself if you would have unprotected sex with someone if the answer to this question is yes then the rest of this article will be of no consequence to you however, if the answer is no, then you may like to read on.

Safe Sex Online.

Now we have ascertained how you feel about safe sex, why do you not promote this more often on your sites and galleries? We are giving surfers a product that will, in all likelihood fulfill their fantasy and, quite possibly, be mimicked by them at some point in the future. With this in mind I would suggest the following to you if I may. When purchasing content, try to purchase photosets where the models are practicing safe sex, if a surfer see’s a famous porn star using a condom then, ultimately, they themselves may use a condom when they next have sex. When building a site or gallery why not promote a condom affiliate program on the site, either through the use of a text link or a button or banner, not only are you being responsible but, you are also still going to make money should your surfer buy something from your condom sponsor. A good sponsor for Condoms is http://www.condomexpress.com.

Promoting Safe Sex – The Bigger Picture.

As mentioned in the opening paragraph of this article, more often than not, webmasters choose to go with bottom line profits over their morals however, thankfully this isn’t always the case. Whether you decide to start promoting safe sex as a method to promote condom sales or, whether you choose to promote safe sex as it is a moral that you believe in, one thing alone will stand true, by showing the surfer that sex can be safe and fun, we are definitely doing our part towards making sure that not every webmaster is seen as morel-less.

Article written by Lee

Tips For Submitting To TGP’s

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: TGP | Response: 0

One of the most popular ways for getting traffic to sites these days is to submit galleries to TGP’s and because it is so popular there is a lot of competition for getting listed. If you like, it is a buyer’s (TGP’s) market, with the supply of galleries exceeding the demand. For example, at Richard’s Realm we only list about 60% of the galleries submitted and that’s after we’ve filtered out unwanted free hosts, free email addresses and submission bots. If we didn’t do that we would be listing about 20%-30% of all submissions.

Before you begin

Submitting to TGP’s is a numbers game. It’s all about volume and percentages. The amount of money your gallery generates can be estimated using a formula with 4 elements:

Total Hits To Gallery X Click Through Ratio X Signup Ratio X $ Per Signup = Total Revenue

So, for example, 1 in 25 surfers to your gallery clicks on a banner or a link, you use a sponsor paying $30 a signup and you have a 1:400 signup ratio with them from your TGP traffic. The formula then becomes:

Total Hits To Gallery X 4% X 0.25% X $30 = Total Revenue

You can see now that the only thing remaining that will affect your Total Revenue is the Total Hits To Gallery. If you increase the Total Hits To Gallery the Total Revenue will also increase.

Of course, experienced TGP submitters also know that you can work on improving the other elements of the formula to improve Total Revenue. They tweak their galleries and change banner and link placement to maximize the Click Through Ratio. If it is improved and rises from 1 in 25 (4%) to 1 in 20 (5%), their Total Revenue increases overall by 20%.

Building the gallery

Examine the formula above and you will see that two elements can be manipulated at the gallery building stage: Click Through Ratio and Signup Ratio.

It is always said, and surprisingly often overlooked, but select a sponsor for a gallery which complements the gallery’s content. For example, if you build a big tits gallery use a big tits sponsor. With more and more TGP’s becoming categorized people surfing the big tits category will be looking for bit tits and are more likely to be interested in a big tits sponsor!

In addition, be sure to use sponsors which are not overly-used, sponsors which are little known. If you go through a TGP you will see the same sponsors and banners showing up all the time. If a surfer sees a banner 10 times they are only going to click on it the once. So even if you build the perfect gallery with top notch banner placement and pictures, if the surfer clicked on the same banner on the previous gallery they’re not going to click on yours!

Selecting TGP’s

There are hundreds of TGP’s you can submit to. It is usually advantageous to select TGP’s that only post your type of gallery, as well as the more generic ones. For example, submit to TGP’s which only list big tit galleries or galleries with one-legged midget lesbians (if that’s your niche). The more targeted traffic will usually result in better click-through ratios and better signups, especially if you’re using a new or little-known sponsor for the particular niche.

TGP’s with a moderate level of traffic that send a few hundred hits tend to be quite good. Admittedly, to get any real volume you need to submit to quite a few, but consider using TGSW to do the bulk of it. My reasoning for using the smaller TGP’s is that they tend to list fewer pages and the surfers tend to be less “professional” and adept at dodging banners.

Submitting your gallery

There are no real tricks to this bit, but it is very important to remember that TGP’s usually get far more submissions than they need or want. You must try your best not to give them a reason to reject your gallery:

• Read the rules carefully and follow them. The TGP webmaster doesn’t put them there for fun and if you break them it’s possible you will be blacklisted.
• Look at the galleries already listed on the TGP to get some idea of what the webmaster likes.
• Don’t try to be smart and use different names and email addresses to avoid the per webmaster submission limits. Although galleries can look very different, reviewers have a good memory and can often recognize designs, layouts and descriptions. If they spot you trying to cheat you’ll probably end up getting blacklisted.
• Take a look at their TGP and see what kind of description they like, Adult Buffet have very different descriptions to Richards-Realm. This might not determine whether or not you get listed, but it’s a chance to get a good description of your choice and, hopefully, more hits.
• Select the right category for your gallery. If you submit your gallery to the “Teens” category and it should be in the “Mature Women” category it will get put there or rejected. If you get the gallery listed in the wrong category you may get more hits, but if a surfer is expecting a nice young lady in the pictures he’s just going to hit his back button and look at the next gallery in the list – probably not even giving your banners a chance to load.

Monitoring your gallery

Once you’ve submitted your gallery you should keep an eye on how it performs. View the stats to see who listed you, how many hits they sent and how much you made from the gallery. It is even worthwhile to create galleries dedicated to specific TGP’s, so you can monitor their performance even more closely. If a TGP sends lots of hits but no signups it’s probably worth no longer submitting to them or changing the gallery to see if you can improve the click throughs or signups. Compare before and after stats if you make changes in the gallery layout or sponsor to see if they’re working.

Whatever you do keep tweaking and monitoring your galleries to get the best possible performance for each of the elements in the revenue formula.

Article written by Richard

Think Fresh – Work Smarter

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: General | Response: 0

We have all experienced it at some point in our webmaster career, more often than not though, we hear about it all the time. What is it? Wanting to give in when we hit that proverbial brick wall.

Hopefully this article can offer you some help and advice when it comes to getting your sales back on track or, even getting them started at all.

Ask For Help.

The one thing that amazes me about this industry is that despite the fact we are all business competitors we are all (mostly) willing to help other webmasters out for little or nothing in return. if you hit that brick wall then imply ask for some help.

As webmasters we have a barrage of free tools readily available to us for asking the advice of others whether it is in email from your sponsors support reps, icq or even on the many industry related chat boards, by actually spending sometime to help yourself by asking others you can often see things from a new perspective and, get advice as to why thing that should be working are not.

Start Over.

So you have been doing this webmaster job for the last few months submitting to the TGP’s, building free and AVS sites but you still haven’t made a dime, something is wrong somewhere but how do you pinpoint the error? By far the easiest way to find out what is wrong is to start afresh. Head over to one of the webmaster resource sites and see what others are doing ask for advice and feedback on your sites and learn from the experiences they tell you about. Just because you might have heard the same information before doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask about it, often one webmaster will be able to tell you an alternate way of doing something that another webmaster is. One of the best ways to get a grasp on this learning curve is to read articles and tutorials, there are thousands of them on the net from HTML to Programming and everything in-between emulate the information contained in these articles and adjust that same information to suit your needs.

Don’t Stagnate.

If you are not having success at the AVS side of the business try something else, you already have a good base for building free sites and even TGP’s just because you have never tried using these sources of traffic and income doesn’t mean you wont be any good at them.

If traffic is your problem as mentioned above, ask others where they get their traffic from and how they built it up, learn to start small and grow instead of running head first into millions of hits a month that are being wasted.

Research The Industry.

If you are thinking of quitting, before you do spend a day or two just doing a little background research in the industry, its no secret that webmasters who join the online industry today have to work two or three times harder than our peers who joined several years ago, this is and always has been true in any business. By researching the industry you should be able to find out how others that joined before you failed and, more importantly, WHY they failed, learn from those experiences.

Finally.

No matter how hard and meaningless you find the work stick at it, just because you are not making any sales it doesn’t mean you wont make any sales tomorrow or even next week / month / year. Keep turning those sites out and, soon enough, when you least expect it you’ll make a sale and, you know what… the euphoric feeling you will get will be more than enough to make you realize that you HAVE been doing something right all along.

Article written by Lee

Using Basic Server Side Includes (SSI)

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

Server side includes are what their name sounds like.  A way to include the contents of another file into your current web page BEFORE the web page gets sent off to the surfer.  Not only does this include contents of a static file but you can also include the results of a CGI program and on some web servers, you can even have it display the current date and time.

Now, many web hosts do not normally have server side includes turned on. You will have to ask your host if they have SSI turned on and if they do, what is the file name extension for SSI.  By default, SSI files have an .shtml extension.

Sometimes, you can turn SSI on yourself.  If you host doesn’t have SSI turned on for you already, you can try adding the following two lines to your .htaccess file.  Then create a file with the .shtml extension, include a SSI command and see if it works.

AddType text/html .shtml
AddHandler server-parsed .shtml

When you use SSI commands, you place them exactly in the location within your web page where you want the output of the SSI command to appear when you finally browse the page.  If you have SSI, then you can use the following command to include a file.  When you include a file, you can either give it a path name to the file or you can give a URL to the file. I’ll list both here.

<!–#include file=”/some/path/above/my/web/to/my/header.html” –>

This is an example of how to include a file based on its path name.  Now,
here’s the same file put included with its URL.

<!–#include virtual=”/to/my/header.html” –>

And this is an example of how to use a URL.  With a URL however, it cannot be a complete URL such as http://www.somesite.com/somefile.html.  It has to be within your current website.  You can also use the URL method to run a CGI script!  Here’s an example of that:

<!–#include virtual=”/cgi-bin/somescript.cgi?myfirstarg=1amp;mysecondarg=2″
–>

As you can see, we can even pass arguments to the CGI script just as if you typed it into your browser!  There is also another way of running a CGI script but this is not as widely used any more and you should use the #include virtual method instead.  Here is the same example so that you will know what it means when you see it.

<!-exec cgi=”/cgi-bin/somescript.cgi?myfirstarg=1amp;mysecondarg=2″ –>

As I mentioned earlier, you can use SSI to display the current time and date. Here’s how:

<!-echo “$DATE_LOCAL” –>

This will display the current date and time. SSI is usually used when you  want to have a standard header or footer on each page.  It’s also used for displaying rotating banners or page counters. As you see above, you can also  use it to display the current date and time or the date when the page was  last modified.

SSI has also been used for cloaking and some tracking  software uses SSI to track each incoming hit to the web page.  If you would  like more information about SSI, go to
http://www.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_include.html.  This is the definitive guide on SSI on the Apache web server.

Most other web servers that use SSI also follow these conventions.

Article written by Lee

Viral Marketing – Catching The Marketing Bug

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Viral Marketing | Response: 0

The term viral marketing is offensive. Call yourself a viral marketer and, people will often take two steps back. I know I would do. It is a sinister thing, the simple virus is fraught with doom, not quite dead yet not fully alive, it exists in that nether region somewhere between horror movies and disaster films.

That said however, you have to admire the skills of the viral marketer. They have a way of winning by sheer weight of numbers alone. They piggy back on everyone else and use their resources to grow their own. In the right circumstances the viral marketer can grow exponentially. A virus doesn’t have to mate, it just replicates itself again and, again and, again increasing its power, doubling its effect with each replication.

I
I I
I I I I
I I I I I I
I I I I I I I I

In a few short generations, a viral marketing population can boom as seen in the diagram above.

Viral marketing defined.

What does a virus have to do with viral marketing? Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for mass growth in the messages exposure and influence.

Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to hundreds, even thousands in a relatively short period of time.

Before the advent of the internet viral marketing was often referred to as ‘word of mouth’. However, for better or for worse, the term viral marketing has infected.

One classic example of this marketing technique is Hotmail.com one of the first free web based email services. Their strategy was simple.

Give away free email addresses and services.
Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out.
Watch people email their friends, colleagues and family.
Watch these same friends colleagues and family join up to their service.
See the message propelled to an ever increasing audience, all for free.

In closing viral marketing is like watching the tiny ripples of a single pebble dropped pond, one small splash can create ever increasing circles which in turn could create ever increasing revenues.

Article Written By Lee

Pay Per Click Or Search Engine Optimization

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Paid Traffic, Search Engine Optimization | Response: 0

What would you choose to run your business? Well each has their own benefits and drawbacks over one another.

PPC or SEO The Breakdown.

Pay Per Click or, PPC as it is most often referred to looks to the novice to be the better option for ‘immediate’ traffic results, you enter your desired keywords, place your minimum / maximum bid amount and you are set for top PPC engine listings for as long as you can maintain the balance in your engine account.

Search Engine Optimization or, SEO on the other hand, is the more traditional way of attaining high ranking search engine pages. Either you or an SEO expert optimizes your websites pages and random other elements of your website and hopefully within a month or two, you achieve high rankings in the major search engines.

So Which One? PPC or SEO?

Generally speaking, SEO work is most commonly more cost effective to your business than utilizing PPC results to gain your traffic, you could pay an SEO expert anywhere from $500 plus to optimize your site and get high rankings indefinitely or, you could put that $500 into a PPC engine account and get high rankings until such time as your account balance runs dry.

But lets look at this in terms of actual traffic…

Say you get 1000 visitors to your SEO based website which you paid $500 for, each visitor has cost you $0.50c now lets say your site remains at the top of the engines for a few months perhaps even years each month you receive another 1000 visitors to your site, you have basically cut the cost of each surfer hitting your site down to less than a penny per hit (not taking into account bandwidth costs obviously).

Now, on the other hand, you want to attract 1000 visitors from your chosen keywords via the PPC engines, most Pay Per Click search engines have a minimum bid amount of $0.05c per hit so right away in your first month, you could receive a potential 10k hits however, as most of you who have already tried your hand at the PPC engines will know, getting 10k hits for one or more keyword at a cost of $0.05 is hard to do, in fact, some would say almost impossible. Non the less let us keep going with this minimum bid amount for the time being.

Immediately, you can see that you are already restricted to the actual amount of traffic you can receive from the PPC results to 10k hits however, this isn’t the case with the SEO traffic, you could potentially hit your top chosen keyword and stay there until another site out-optimizes you or, your site needs to be optimized again.

Ultimately, the reasons you will choose over one or the other will be for either ease of traffic generation, PPC will allow you to gain almost instantaneous targeted traffic form the second you open your PPC account up until the point when your account funds empty whilst, SEO work will give you long term targeted traffic over time and, in most instances, this SEO traffic can last for years making the cost of the initial SEO work minimal.

In Closing..

Search Engine Optimization can last you years and years whilst Pay Per Click results can diminish in a relatively short amount of time depending on the amount of bid needed to achieve top listings.

However lets look at a third option, using both PPC results and SEO results in conjunction with each other to minimize the traffic you lose from your SEO work and, to minimize the traffic you lose from your PPC results this will afford you the time to see what works with your Search Engine Optimized sites whilst being able to play with the targeting of keywords on your PPC traffic, once you have both types of search engine figured out, you can put them both together and use them to increase the traffic to your site for years to come.

Article written by Lee

GEO::IP – What Is It?

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: General, Hosting | Response: 0

As more and more webmasters investigate the international market place to expand their online businesses I thought it would be prudent to take a look at one of the more important modules of Apache and, just how this module can help webmasters to monetize their international traffic. What is this module? GEO::IP.

Geo I.p – The Basics.

GEO::IP is an Apache module which is able to recognize countries by specific I.P blocks. GEO::IP in itself is, in effect a database of the current i.p addresses in use on the internet across the globe. When used in conjunction with various scripting languages, Perl, Php, Etc the Apache GEO::IP module can assist online businesses with the following:

Detecting credit card fraud.
Automatically select the geographically closest mirror.
Analyzing your web server logs to determine the countries of your visitors.

What this means to the webmaster is that they can now market their sites to a specific language or, country in addition to either redirecting or, refusing other countries / languages access to their online sites.

GEO::IP Module – Where To Find It.

The GEO::IP module is available from several sources online in either paid or, free forms. The most up-to-date and professional form of the GEO::IP module can be found on the Maxmind website ( http://www.maxmind.com ).

Once you have the GEO::IP module you should either ask your host to, or, install it yourself on your Apache based web server.

Geo I.p – Different Modules.

In addition to the simplistic ‘country i.p’ based detection, there is also another more complex GEO::IP module, this module is often referred to as ‘I.p to Location’ which, in simplistic terms means that you can target specific cities of the world hence, if you want to offer a service to surfers in Miami, you are able to redirect your Miami surfers to a page with content of specific interest to them.

Redirecting Traffic.

Geo i.p is the basis behind most of the international traffic redirection systems available for webmasters to use in order to monetize their global traffic more efficiently, whether those systems are paid, free, subscription based or, otherwise they will ALL use the fundamental basics of the GEO::IP module.

Through the use of the geoip module you will be able to maximize and filter the traffic sources you currently have and, decide on whether you send your surfers to a Pay site, a dialer or, a traffic trade.

Scripting – Putting GEO::IP To Work.

Many programming firms are now looking at the global market place in addition to webmasters as they now have the ability to offer their clients a wider product base from country specific banner displays to multi-lingual tours, programmers can develop new ways to enable webmasters to profit from their traffic unlike ever before. One such company is Geo Scripting ( http://www.geoscripting.com ).

GEO::IP – Overview.

All in all the Geo i.p Apache module is going to become more and more prominent in the industry, sponsors are already starting to use country specific redirects on their affiliates traffic base and, individual webmasters are beginning to capitalize on this module through redirecting their own traffic to the sponsors that offer them multi-lingual paysites. When all is said and done, I am all for anything that can better assist webmasters in monetizing their global revenue streams especially as in the last 4 years I have been online it would only seem to be the last 2 months when this untapped source of income has come into the forefront of the adult industry.

Article written by Le

Gay Adult Marketing 101

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

There is a myth out there that gay traffic is hard to convert because a gay surfer is reluctant to buy. This isn’t so. Conversions come down to two things:

• The gay surfer is discriminating; a membership to a site that has exactly what we want
• The gay surfer is loyal; I, believe, this comes from our experience as a community. When a Gay surfer decides to purchase a membership, it’s typically for a longer period of time.

This is evident with the better Gay Pay Sites; conversions may be lower than a straight hardcore site however, membership tend to be longer than the industry average. The gay surfer is discriminating; we look for a long-term membership with a site that has we want whether it’s teens, bears, amateurs, etc.

With that idea, I always advocate that age-old niche free site philosophy use a variety of sponsor programs on your sites. Typically, my free sites will have one main sponsor (I use Quality Males) then I’ll break my other banner slots down one Teen site, a Twink site and maybe a product like Viagra. But this will vary depending on the “flavor” or “personality” of your site – if you have a gay leather site, my main sponsor will be a Leather sponsor or product, with a variety of other sponsors (one mega site, a teen site, and maybe an adult toy store).

One marketing option, I tend to see working well is the full-page ad vs. only banners. I, honestly, do not know whether it’s a quality issue, a larger ad or the surfer’s disgust with banner ads, but it works well in our market.

One thing that experience has proven to me, it makes no difference whether you’re a webmaster to gay or straight traffic, you need to analyze your traffic. If you’re sending traffic out to sponsors and your not seeing the conversions, maybe you need to really look who your surfers are. If you’re lucky enough to know who your surfers are, then look for a specialty sponsor (whether partnership or click-thru program). It’s all a matter of finding the right sponsor programs and tweaking your site (and we all know how that can be). Don’t be afraid to experiment. It’s the long term that we need to be looking at. Remember that this isn’t “Who wants to be a Millionaire is 30 days or less”.

Gay traffic isn’t difficult to manage as many people think. It’s a matter of patience and understanding your market. And the best way to understand that market, is to ask a successful webmaster in the gay adult market..

Article written by Gary-Alan

The Curse Of The Broken Image

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

At one time or another we have all done it, uploaded a new site only to find out that when we view the page in our browser one of the images are broken because we either didn’t link it properly or the filename wasn’t named correctly on our server.

We may think that this is a bad thing however, recent experimentation on my part has found quite the opposite.

We all search for new ways of getting the surfer to visit our sponsors in order to have them buy a membership and earn us a nice little slice of $$$ in the process but, what methods could we use that quite simply are overlooked?

One such method is that of utilizing broken images, lets be honest here, no-one wants broken image son their site, it makes the site look unprofessional but, lets think about this, on a page full of banners and graphics all nested together neatly on an FPA (Full Page Ad) what’s more likely to grab the surfers attention, a completely loaded heavy bandwidth graphic or a single solitary broken image placed in a such a spot the surfer actually notices it?

Makes you think doesn’t it. Our recent testing of this method has actually shown that our CTR (Click Through Ratio) rose slightly on a couple of sponsors we used this method on all of the sites in question had nice looking text and banners with corresponding thumbnails leading tot he full size image but, upon deliberately leaving an image off the server thus resulting in the ‘appearance’ of an erroneous broken graphic the spot where that image should have been was were a great deal of our click throughs came from.

I am not saying you should immediately go and delete all graphics from you pages but, a single, well placed broken image on a free site can work wonders in getting traffic off your site and to your sponsors pay site tour which ultimately, is what we want to happen at the EARLIEST possible time.

Article written by Lee