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

Adult Webmaster Health

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: General | Response: 0

Sounds to me like you are a webmaster. Most of us realize that working at a computer everyday can and often is, bad for our health in one way, shape or, form. However, how do we alleviate these potential problems with our health?

Well in this article I will detail some of the things that can often affect the webmasters in our industry and how they can be solved.

RSI (Repetitive Stress Injuries) are the results of, as you may have figured out already, the effects of constantly doing the same movements over and over again using specific parts of your body. One of the most common of these that webmasters are aware of is CTS (Carpal Tunnel Syndrome) which is a result of typing a lot.

So, how do you combat the effects of CTS? First and foremost, if you experience any form of pain at all, your first port of call should be the doctor, the pain you are feeling could be an indicator of a bigger problem. If you think your pain might be caused by use of the computer then an occupational therapist might also be a good person to visit.

CTS is often attributed to use of your digits and poor hand positioning when you type one way to solve this problem is to go to Office Depot and purchase a wrist rest, this will ensure your wrist has ample support whilst you are working throughout the day.

You might also like to try re-positioning your monitor, as a general rule of thumb, having your monitor placed about 20 inches away from your face will usually result in good posture and that in itself can often be a solution to the potential medical problems. One other thing on your posture, get a good chair, one with a high back may be good, these generally offer you more support and, can stop that awkward habit of leaning into your keyboard when you type.

Eyestrain, Eyestrain is another common problem that the webmaster faces, often it leads to things such as excessive headaches, fatigue and, blurry vision, the most acceptable relief from eyestrain is the use of screen filter that will reduce the glare your monitor emits.

There of course, some other things you can do to alleviate this problem such as, Adjusting your monitor so the top of the screen is no higher than eye level, as already mentioned, keeping the monitor a safe working distance from you, usually between 18 and 30 inches is recommended by doctors.

We know computers are machines and tend to forget that our own bodies are complex machines which, should be looked after just as our computers should be, we often forget that sitting at the PC building what was meant to be a 10 minute site can turn into an hours worth of ‘online work’. Take some time every now and again to stand up and walk for 5 minutes, even if it is just to the local store to buy some more smokes, you are actually getting some exercise and, even though the tar in your smokes will end up killing you anyway, you’ll at least be able to work a little longer without getting any problematic computer related medical symptoms.

This article is not meant as an alternative to visiting your physician and, should you think that any of the above are relevant to you then it is recommended that you visit your doctors without delay and follow any advice that they give you.

Article written by Lee.

Now They Signed Up – Learn How To Keep Them

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: General | Response: 0

Member retention is going to have a large effect on the adult industry over the next few months, with Visa chargeback rates being lowered and, many affiliate programs lowering their payout model something has to give and, hopefully, the thing that does give will be that affiliate programs start to realize that once they have your surfer, it becomes their responsibility to make that member retain.

With that in mind this article will look at a few things that we have been doing on some of our paysites for the last few months and, instead of having to provide an excess of plug in content we have started updating our sites regularly within the niche confines of what our members are actually looking for, also, despite this increase in content, we have started doing something unique so far as member retention goes – actually communicating with the member directly.

Communication Pays.

Actually spending the time to listen to what your members want can be beneficial on many levels for example, how many of the big sponsors offer the member a chance to become involved in a ‘community’ inside their paysites, i can only think of 3 paysites that i have personally visited that do this.

Often, offering your members a way to communicate to YOU what they want inside the site can, and usually will increase the value of their membership to you in the long run. offer your members weekly polls, offer them incentives to keep an active membership, perhaps some kind of loyalty program, in addition to a method of your paysite members being able to communicate to each other inside your site.

Content Updates.

We all know that paysites need to update however, how many paysite owners spend the time to ask their member what they are looking for? As mention in the previous section, offer your members polls on the next updates you will be doing, ask them what sections of the site need improving and, more importantly, ask them if they are happy with how your site looks and feels overall.

Renewal Time.

So you have managed to keep hold of your paysite member for a few days without them canceling and, their trial period is ending what now? Well, more often than not, communicating to the member that they are about to get rebilled can have a positive effect, send them an email prior to the rebill informing them of what your next set of updates will be, let them know they are a valued member of the site and, more importantly than this, that you are there to help them and listen to their suggestions. This is also an ideal time to remind them of why they joined your site in the first place, you have a lot of exclusive content that, simply put, no other paysite can offer them, you listen to their feedback and, again, value their feedback, all of these things will ensure that your member base retains well over the trial period.

Second Month Renewals.

So you have managed to keep your member for a month, and, again they are due a rebill, as with the first rebill you gave them, re-iterate the points of your site and, tell them what has changed over the past month, give them some sales speak about how your site is doing and, more importantly, what you have coming next month, by communicating these updates to your members a day or so before they have to renew, you should, in all honesty, keep their interest in your paysite and, more importantly, make more money from your members.

So Your Member Cancels.

Okay, so perhaps you managed to rebill your member for a few month or, perhaps they left after the trial period, what now? Simple, send them a follow up email, find out the reasons they cancelled their membership to your site and, see if you can offer them an alternative to stay, perhaps a reduced cost membership or, maybe even an alternative site altogether, if they entered your teen pay site and, were looking for amateur teen pics, even though you know you don’t have them yet, you will probably know of a site that does, tell this cancelled membership about this site and, get them to try it out, if you can match what the surfer is looking for to a site you own then you have a second chance at keeping their membership and, making money.

Retention Overview.

When all is said and done the one thing that is apparent so far as pay sites go is that a lot of them do not communicate with their members and build the sites they operate around what their members are looking for, we can all say we actually do this constantly but, how many of us really, hand on heart, can prove that they ask, listen and, more importantly, implement the feedback from their members base?

Article written by Lee

Using Full Page Ad’s

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Promotion, Traffic | Response: 0

Full page ad’s can be used for more than just ‘adverts’ in fact, there is a wide and varied range of uses for them, below I have detailed some of the uses that I have tried in the past and from my experience, they seem to work well enough.
Creating A ‘Hub’ Site – By interlinking FPA’s together in a range of niches and, offering your surfers a money bar linking to other FPA’s in different niches, you can actually get some good rankings in the SE’s and, if you utilize banner exchanges or counters on your FPA ‘hub’ site you can also ensure you get a fair amount of additional traffic. One thing I like to do with my FPA hub is use it as the ‘exit’ page when a surfer leaves one of my sites. This ensures that I am getting optimum traffic for my time spent a) building sites and B) building my hub.

A lot of people I have spoken to about ‘hub’ sites simply forget about them once they have been built, personally, I do not see the point in doing this, if you build something like this why not send your exit, top list, counter, banner exchange traffic to the first page of your ‘hub’?

Doorway Pages.

FPA’s also make exceptional SE doorway pages, by optimizing your image names, meta tags and text on the individual FPA’s you are not only ensuring they WILL get ranked by the SE’s but, if you ‘hub’ them together as explained above you will also get some premium listings from them.

Filter Pages.

What I learnt to do early on is rather than send my surfers directly to the sponsors using the ‘standard’ linking codes is to send them first to an FPA with a money bar (or table ad) on it, this way, if they click the link in error and not realize that they are going to a pay site, you can give them an option, not only to use their ‘back’ button but also, to go to a different niche or, to continue into the sponsors tour. Now that you can link directly to a specific tour page on ARS sites, this method is a good way to give your surfers a ‘fresh’ tour front page.

PPC Listings.

An FPA is an ideal way to get sites listed in the PPC engines, not only do you show the surfers EXACTLY what is in the site they have just clicked on but, you also have the added option of being able to utilize blur consoles and exit consoles on them.

One other thing that I will mention, is that often, you will find that FPA’s that you have made yourself, no matter how ‘amateur’ looking they are will work better than the ‘pretty’ sponsor built FPA’s.

Hopefully, this article has given you some ideas on how you can better utilize FPA’s and not just use them in the same manner as every other adult site on the internet. If you have some good results from using FPA’s in this manner feel free to post about it on the ARSR Support forums and likewise, if you can think of any additional uses that have not been mentioned here let us know on the forums.

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

European Surfers – Porn High On The List!

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: General | Response: 0

Adult web sites were visited by 3.8 million home Internet users in the UK in June 2001, according to Internet monitoring company Net Value. This accounts for more than a quarter of the entire UK home Internet population.

UK visitors to adult websites spent more than 45 minutes on these sites each in June. Adult sites make up 41.2 per cent of all the sites visited in the UK with a significant audience. Students (23.2 per cent), manual workers (15 per cent), and professionals (12.8 per cent) are the largest groups of UK visitors to adult sites.

However Germany has the largest audience for online porn in Europe with more than 5.3 million Germans visiting an adult site in June. They also spent more time on these type of sites than any other nationality – each German visitor spent almost an hour on adult sites in June. Net Value data also showed that more than half (52.3 per cent) the websites visited in June by a significant number of German users were of an adult orientated nature.

Spain has the greatest proportion of visitors to pornographic sites – 40 per cent of Spanish home Internet users visiting a pornography site in June 2001.

“Pornography has become a lucrative online business, with many companies now recognizing it as a valuable additional revenue stream,” Net Value’s Alki Manias said. “And this would seem to be a stable business area – the popularity of online pornography continues unchecked.”

Adult sites are also popular amongst the earliest adopters of the Internet. People who first got online at home before 1997 account for 18.5 per cent of visitors to adult sites, though they only make up 14.1 per cent of the whole UK online population.

In the UK, Lastminute.com has just introduced an auction for adult toys and aids, whilst in Germany, Freenet.de and T-Online are also moving into the adult business.

The following charts detail various demographics relating to European surfers usage of adult sites:

Number of adult websites visited, June 2001

* Sites with a significant reach

UK visitors to adult websites by occupation, June 2001

As you can now see, we, as adult webmasters, have a considerable chunk of the online adult industry sitting in our laps and, we should concentrate on tapping into this market as more and more American companies are realizing the importance of these figures we will inevitably reach a stage where the European market will be passed across to our US counterparts.

Why Have More Than One Index Page?

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Search Engine Optimization | Response: 0

The first thing you should do when you start designing a web site is to create an index page. You would think that this is a basic knowledge in web design, but I still encounter web sites that are lacking in this.

If there’s no index page, and if the web host server has not set a directory access limitation, any visitor will see a directory listing of all the images, html pages, CGI-scripts, and other files in the directory. Everything will then be accessible for reading and downloading, and the CGI-scripts will also be executable!

So, for a basic security it is most important to have an index page in all your directories, whether they contain only pictures or garbage. In the directories that are private or containing things other then HTML pages, the index pages need only to print out a text like “access forbidden” or something in that spirit. In the directories containing one or more HTML pages, one of the pages must be named “index.html,” whether it is a page with real content or for security reason.

If you have a directory specifically for CGI-scripts, it will run a higher security risk, because most of the times these directories are called CGI-bin, or a variant of that, and anyone who is after your scripts is undoubtedly familiar with this and can access the directory by typing the directory name in the targeted site’s URL, if it’s not properly protected by an index page. Imagine the horror when someone uses your mailing list program to Spam all your subscribers or decides to sell your email list. It’s quite a big business in selling email lists. A large email list is worth thousands of US dollars nowadays.

I could have done all these things if I had any bad intentions when I accidentally bumped into an unprotected site. Actually, I bumped into two unprotected, huge subscribers lists in the last two months, which prompted me to write this article. But of course, I did the proper thing and emailed the web sites’ webmasters about their oversight. You would think that these professional looking and operating web sites with email lists of respectively 8,000 and 15,000 subscribers would know better.

Even if your site is made by a web design company, make sure all your directories are protected. In fact, one of the two unfortunate web sites I uncovered is a web design company. So, check out your site for this unnecessary security gap, right now.

Article written by Lee

Foreign Search Engines

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

‘Suchmaschine’ | ‘Moteurs de Recherche’ | ‘Motores de Busqueda’ ? Or, to you and I ‘Search Engines’.

Well what if I told you there was a huge chunk of the market (again I know) that your missing out on because, frankly, you haven’t attempted to get into it?

What is this wondrous market? Simple.. Foreign search engines.

I would say that AT least 80% of my traffic comes from the search engines, Google, AltaVista, etc, etc however a large portion of this se traffic is from countries whose language even some of my translators don’t know.

So, how do you get the foreign search engine traffic? again that’s simple, there are several ways to get it, you can:

1) Submit to your favorite search engine and wait, and wait, and wait… or 2) You can submit to your favorite search engine then, instead of leaving the page, go to the foreign equivalent of that same search engine!

Guess what, if you submit to Google in English then go to google.de the submit form asks you exactly the same information as your submission on the English form would do…so, ya don’t even have to speak German to submit to google.de, isn’t that handy?

In my previous article a few weeks ago I mentioned what countries were top of the ranks for surfers in Europe, well, this week I want to run some figures past you again about which search engines ‘seem’ to be sending a decent amount of foreign traffic.

So here goes, we have the top 6 search engine referrals for December 2001:

http://www.crawler.de/

http://www.lycos.de/

http://www.infoseek.com/Home?pg=Home.html&sv=ES

http://search.yahoo.co.jp

http://www.excite.co.uk/

http://www.infoseek.com/Home?pg=Home.html&sv=FR

As you can see infoseek (which has an English version) sends me lots of foreign traffic although, in reality, this is only for English pages, don’t ask me why but I guess the Spanish and French surfers love surfing for porn in English..

On a separate note, for those of you who are either to stubborn, lazy or, stupid to try submitting to the foreign search engines we will shortly be releasing a foreign search engine submission chart on European Webmasters which will tell you step by step what to put in each of the boxes on the submission form, so even you have no excuse!

Of course, the foreign traffic is going to mean you will need to pay more attention to your sites, perhaps offering these surfers a site in their language to sign up to or, before sending them off to a dialer, trade these foreign surfers off for some ‘English speaking ones via the use of a toplist. Admittedly, I haven’t found sending them to a toplist productive myself however, you might get different results to me.

Basically, if you start to get the traffic, hell, the chances are your getting foreign traffic now and don’t even know about it… USE IT!

If you want to ask questions specific to the foreign market that’s what our forums on EW are there for, we would gladly spend all day everyday answering your foreign traffic questions however, as yet, very few US based webmasters are taking the initiative to investigate further this GREAT source of revenue so, I guess ill just have to go back to my foreign search engines and get a bigger chunk of the ever increasing foreign porn surfer for myself.

Article written by Lee

New European V.A.T Laws – Are You Prepared?

Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: Billing Solutions | Response: 0

Under a new law that has been passed in the EU from July 1st 2003 any internet based company selling services or goods to customers inside the EU will have to pay the member state of their customer/client the equivalent V.A.T (Value Added Tax) Rate.

This in itself is not a big problem, online business have been paying taxes for many years, the problems start to occur when you take a look at the current state of the V.A.T system in the EU state members on an individual basis.

The following list shows the percentage of V.A.T that you will need to add to your clients bills if they are located inside a member state of the EU:

Austria – 20% VAT
Belgium – 21% VAT
Denmark – 25% VAT
Finland – 22% VAT
France – 19.6% VAT
Germany – 16% VAT
Greece – 18% VAT
Ireland – 21% VAT
Italy – 20% VAT
Luxembourg – 15% VAT
Netherlands – 19% VAT
Portugal – 17% VAT
Spain – 16% VAT
Sweden – 25% VAT
United Kingdom – 17.5% VAT

This will pose several problems for the adult industry namely, how will our billing processors be able to handle transactions from European Union citizens? After all, with so many different VAT rates across the EU their billing systems need to be able to correctly calculate the correct amount of VAT to the surfers final order.

Several accounting firms have set up new divisions to handle this for the mainstream side of the internet industry however, until just recently, the adult internet was unaware this was happening.

It would seem that although the international market place is a wholly viable one for adult webmasters to break into, it brings with it more complications that simply breaking the language barrier.

This new law will be a good test of the adult industry processors to see how they can handle the economic changes of the global market place and, more importantly, how they handle the new frontiers of international marketing on a global scale.

Article written by Lee

Basic Bookkeeping For Adult Webmasters

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Forms & Contracts | Response: 0

Knowing how much you are spending on expenses for your online enterprise each month can be a very powerful tool. Taking out that shoe box at the end of the year and giving it to the Accountant is one way. But a very simple bookkeeping system can provide you with exactly how much you made each month after all expenses. In this article I will provide you with the knowledge to setup a simple system to track your revenues and expenses. Not only will you then know exactly what your Net Income or Loss is each month but at the end of the year you will have a nice neat little package to hand your Accountant. Which will result in lower accounting fees at tax time.

The first thing you need to do is find a way to file all receipts. Your receipts are the backup for all your transactions. Go to your local office supply store and buy an accordion file labeled with monthly slots. Each time you receive a business related receipt, file in correct month. Remember you need to file all your receipts for your numbers to be accurate. When you receive an email receipt for content or hosting print it out and file it. File sponsor cheque stubs, credit card receipts, ISP bill, etc. At the end of each month take out all your receipts and divide into revenue and expenses. Remember you must have a receipt in order to claim the expense. The receipt should show the detail of the purchase, vendor, amounts and date. Ensure that the expenses are needed or used to generate revenue for your business.

Now the next step depends on how much detail you would like.
Revenue-Expenses=Net Income or Loss. For a quick snapshot of the month add up the revenue receipts, staple all receipts together and put the total on the front either adding machine tape or handwritten. Repeat with all your expense receipts. You can put a quick summary of the month in a spreadsheet program. Or for a very small investment you can setup a computerized tracking system. I recommend buying a very inexpensive software such as Quicken. Most major banks, credit cards and even paypal are setup to download transactions to Quicken. You can purchase the Personal Finance version of Quicken for around $70. There are several other inexpensive personal finance software packages that you can purchase that will work as just well. But I personally prefer Quicken. The software you choose will have a list of business accounts already setup. For an adult enterprise you will need to customize the account names. This is very easy and quick to do. Add in accounts for content purchase, hosting, isp, traffic purchase, etc.

Once a week you will open up your program download your transactions from your bank account, credit card, paypal etc. If you have an expense that you pay cash for you will need to add that transaction in. I am assuming that all your sponsor cheques are being deposited into a bank account or paypal. If you receive a check and cash it, manually add the transaction in. After you have finished entering your transactions for the week ensure that the receipts that you have balance to what you have entered in the software.

You will be amazed at how simple it is to use a software package such as Quicken to track your revenue and expenses. These software packages come with pre-made report tools. Such as income statement, analysis of expenditures, cash flow projections. You can even setup budget numbers for your business.

If your business consists of a lot of transactions in a month you might want to consider using a bookkeeping/accounting service. There are many online and locally owned businesses that charge a very low rate for doing small business bookkeeping. Remember you don’t need an Accountant to do general bookkeeping. Many small business owners think they need an Accountant to do the monthly bookkeeping. This could result in unnecessary fees. Depending on the size of your enterprise and your passion for numbers sometimes employing a bookkeeper to do the data entry can be a blessing! Most bookkeeping providers will even provide customized reporting based on your needs.

Article written by Lorna