Newsletter Know How – A Guide To Writing Newsletters

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

Email newsletters are a great way to make contact with existing clients and, prospective clients which makes them a great marketing tool. The biggest bonus however, over Email newsletters rather than print ones is that you have virtually no cost involved with writing and, ultimately, mailing them out.

There is a wide variety of online newsletter on the internet. however, probably the simplest form for most webmasters is the email newsletter. Email provides you with a quick way to keep your name out there, build trust with you readers and, hopefully attract a few sales. If you archive your newsletter also this is a great way to get additional pages into the search engines and, as such, it then becomes a good traffic driver to your website regardless of the amount of subscribers you have. However one of the most important benefits of having an email newsletter sent on a regular basis is that it build brand recognition of your website or business.

Your newsletter should provide information, not just of an advertising nature but that, should also be informative to your subscribers. In doing this you are offering information of value and, ultimately, ensuring that your subscribers remain. However, remember newsletters are for promoting your area of expertise not just a vehicle for revenue generation.

One of the first things you should consider when deciding to do a newsletter is the amount of commitment you will have to put towards the project. Whether you start a monthly, weekly or, daily newsletter a great deal of commitment must be made to both the newsletter and, more importantly, your subscribers. For example, We generally spend a good 3 days researching the articles that have been submitted and trying to ensure that the details contained within them are relevant at the time of sending the email, this is not an easy task especially when the adult internet is constantly developing. If you don’t have the time to research and maintain consistency in your newsletter, then don’t even consider doing one, it isn’t for you at the present time.

Now you have decided you can make the commitment required to run a successful email newsletter what do you do next? Collect email addresses. Probably one of the easiest ways to get email subscribers to join your list is to go through your current mail clients contact list and manually add those email addresses or, further still, you may even have an opt in collection program that you have been using for a while but have never really had the time to commit to writing a newsletter worthy of sending out. Remember though, an email list is only as good as the addresses contained within it. You want to run an OPT-IN email list, any other type of list will be considered Spam and, that will do you more damage than good. Of course, if you haven’t already got an email collection program you can find one online there are literally hundreds of them floating around that you can get for free from sites like http://www.hotscripts.com.

So, you now have your emails, onto writing your newsletter. I think the greatest part of email is that it is somewhat less formal than writing for print copy. Email in fact tends to be very informal in comparison. The best way at approaching writing for an email newsletter is to write how you talk, it is more enjoyable for the reader and gives your newsletter a personality that no one else can emulate. Content wise, that depends on what you do, what would YOU like to see if you subscribed to an email list of the type you are going to be running and, more importantly, what would ensure you stay subscribed to the newsletter? Ask your friends, colleagues and, peers what they would like to see in an email newsletter, often they have been looking for information that is not readily available, this is an area where you then start to provide a service that no one else does.

So you are at the point where you are starting to realize that running a newsletter is a lot of work correct? Well, it is. However, the effort, work and, time spent in putting your newsletter together will help you build a relationship with people whom, in all actuality, you may probably not ever meet in a face to face situation and, more importantly, it can become a great income generator over time.

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

Billing Solutions For International Surfers

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Billing Solutions | Response: 0

We all know the lifeblood of the webmaster is to be able to accept credit cards for site access however, with the global markets emerging more and more, many webmasters still do not realize that they can accept credit cards from international countries at little or no extra cost to themselves or, their business.

Presuming you already have your sites translated into a selection of global formats you need to make sure you can process foreign transactions and, these should be handled differently than regular US based credit card users however. This is what we will approach upon in this article.

The main reason we own our businesses is to turn a profit and, from a profit making point of view is just how the details below will enable you to benefit your long term global business.

The first step you need to take in order to correctly ‘charge’ your international customers is to ensure that you are sending them to the right language, after all, over 70% of internet users can not speak English, let alone read it. This is where having some geo-scripting comes in handy on your join page, the second the surfer hits this page he (or she) will be directed to a localized version of your join page.

Now that you have the surfer on your join page you also need to ensure they have a variety of options available to them to actually finalize the purchase however, you should also ensure that, if they want to view your join page in another language, that they have this as an option too.

Some alternate payment methods for your international customs could include one or more of the following, PayPal, JCB, Mastercard, Discover, Maestro, EuroDebit, Checks and, of course, a dialer.

I would however use the dialer as a last minute option should their chosen method of payment not be accepted.

Even though you may run a ‘recurring’ based site, you might not want to have your foreign surfers recur and risk having their card declined when it comes to authorizing your charge next, for this reason you may like to add the option of a 3 month membership or perhaps a 6 month membership however, make sure you lower the cost of this membership in relation to buying a monthly membership, this might just be the clincher you need to close the international sale.

As with any purchase the after sales support is also needed, especially if you are wanting your international customer to rebill for several months and, trust me, they WILL rebill, often for in excess of 6 months. They pulled their credit or debit card out for a reason and, they will stay if you can give them more reason too.

With any type of sale a follow up is always good, many sponsors and processors send out an email automatically upon sign up, however, how many of these emails are written in the surfers native tongue?

In conclusion, when dealing with international customers you should cater to them NOT make them cater to YOU by doing this you will ensure the longevity of your international business.

Finally, if you have any type of online business you should carefully consider the global market place as it is growing a rapid rate with millions of new international surfers coming online each year this would be a bad business choice on your part if you were not to cater for them.

Article written by Lee.

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

Converting Chinese Adult Traffic – The Niche Paysites That Work

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

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

Redirecting To A Different Page Using JavaScrip

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Scripts | Response: 0

There are times when a simple JavaScript redirection from one page to another can come in handy and, the following JavaScripting will enable you to do this.

When a page contains this javascript, it will be redirected to another page that you specify in the “window.location=”. You can change the number of refresh seconds by changing the “move()’,1000 to the number of seconds you’d like.

Example:

1000 = 1 second
2000 = 2 seconds
3000 = 3 seconds

Place this JavaScript code between the <head> and </head> tags

<script language=”JavaScript”>
<!–hide from old browsers
var time = null
function move() {
window.location = ‘http://www.yourdomain.com’
}
//–>
</script>

Place this JavaScript code in your <body> tag

<body onload=”timer=setTimeout(‘move()’,1000)”>

You should now have a page that will redirect to a new url when it loads in the surfers browser window.

Article written by Lee

Mirroring Adult Sites – Stage Three

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

So we hit stage three of our tutorial in this stage we are going to make some pages for our top 5 AVS systems. However, as we did in the last tutorial with the new TGP galleries we created we are going to use the same content and same pages that we have already built. On with the tutorial…

Anyone who build AVS sites will know that you need to have a standard site layout. This usually consists of an entry page (or a warning page), a navigational page (or in our case our menu.html page) and some gallery pages.

So the first thing we need to do is open up the warning page. Once this page has been opened we now need to do some editing of the page, what I would suggest is moving the warning text to the lower half of the page and at the top making some ‘juicy’ sales text, depending on the niche you are targeting with this site you may also like to add a couple of the original thumbnail images at the VERY top of your page however, these should NOT be linked to the full size image.

Once you have edited your page to a reasonable standard for the AVS you now need to save this page in the /FreeSite/AVS/ folder that you originally created on your HD. I would suggest saving the page as something like avs1.html or the name of the AVS you will be using this page for.

Once you have done this you now need to duplicate this page but save it as a different name in again, in the /FreeSite/AVS/ folder so you will end up with avs1.html, avs2.html, etc.

At the moment these AVS pages have no AVS script on them so, we need to visit the AVS system we are going to be using and fill out the details to have the AVS generate an AVS signup page script for us. Once we have the coding that the AVS provides we now have to place this on our avs1.html page. You should repeat this for each of the AVS’s you wish to use and save each instance of the generated AVS script to a separate AVS*.html page.

be aware, that when you are putting your information into the AVS to generate the script, you should enter the ‘members area url’ as the page we created for our navigation so, the AVS script location will be /FreeSite/AVS/avs1.html and, the members area page will be, /FreeSite/Menu/menu.html.

Once you have placed the script on our avs.html pages you should now have the following sites ready:

1) 50 Pic Free Site With Pics On HTML Pages.
2) 5 TGP Galleries With Pics On HTML Pages.
3) 5 AVS Entry Pages.

Now we are starting to see how using one set of content can amount to a mass of sites all of which can be sending traffic to our sponsors and, to our surfer trap.

This is where stage three of our tutorial ends however, in our next tutorial we will continue to make some more sites and in an effort to get some traffic we start to play with the ones we have currently created.

Article written by Lee

International Billing Alternatives – Online Check Payments

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

In my previous article i discussed the value involved with Premium Rate Phone billing as an option for your adult surfers and, staying on the topic of payment processing this article will take a closer look at the Online Check payment method or, ACH as it is commonly referred to.

ACH (Online Check Payments) – What Is It?

An online check payment is a method of allowing your customers to pay for their goods using their check’s online, in order for your customer to pay via a check they need to have available certain items these are, a current checking account, a valid routing number (found on the check) and, an account number. Funds paid via online checks are automatically debited from the customers bank account.

Online Check Billing – How It Works.

Online check payments are processed in real-time, surfers are automatically accepted and authenticated via their current billing address, social security or, driving license number, once they have been authenticated their payment details are then sent to the ACH (Automated Clearing House) system where this information is automatically accepted as long as the details provided are verified as correct.

Online Check Payments – What Are The Costs?

Utilizing the online check method of billing your customers is actually just as, if not more, cost effective as using online credit or debit cards, in effect, you are guaranteed the funds of the check once they clear as, in all reality, the surfer will not have such an easy time declaring the purchase as a ‘charge back’ because the information needed to pay via an online check is information that in reality, only they have access too.

So, as with our previous articles, lets say your paysite membership fee for one month is US$35, a surfer signs up to your site using an online check, you make, approximately, US$33 from this membership for each and every month the customer (or surfer) chooses to renew their membership.

The one main advantage with online checks however is that, surfers will often feel more ‘secure’ in using them to pay for 3 or 6 month memberships and, as long as their check clears your account, you are almost certainly guaranteed the funds.

Online Check Billing – The Main Benefits.

As mentioned above already, the primary benefit of the ACH payment method is that the customer will almost certainly have funds available in their online checking account to be able to meet the cost of the paysite membership, after all, they wouldn’t give out their banking details if they were not sure the payment would go through. In addition to this advantage there are also several other advantages to using Online Checks as a payment method for example:

Increased Sales.
Reduced Order + Billing Costs.
Faster Payment.
Reduced Credit Card Charge Backs.

ACH Check Payments – Overview.

Whilst ACH check payments are a good alternative for US surfers the one major drawback is that, in today’s global market place they are not a method of payment for international surfers unfortunately, at this time, there are no companies who can offer this service to my knowledge to the ever growing global population.

That said, there is a place in the industry for check processing for adult payments and, with Visa breathing down our collective necks more and more, now would be an ideal time to take an in-depth look at this processing method.

I hope this article has provided you with some useful information regarding the online check payment method.

Article written by Lee

Content – Keeping your members coming back for more

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Content | Response: 0

We know that the first battle for pay site owners is getting the traffic and the signups. But, sometimes this becomes such a focus that we forget the other battle: keeping members interested once you have them. When people pay for a membership to a site they are expecting to get their money’s worth. In return for their monthly fee they are looking for a site that encompasses quality, variety and originality.

As the web grows, so does the online entertainment industry. Four or five years ago there was only a handful of pay sites around compared to the thousands and thousands that are on the net today. Back then, you could literally put any kind of content on your sites and you would have membership, there just was not much choice out there for the connoisseur of porn. Now, potential members are more informed, they know what is out there, they know what they like, and they know what they want to see.

What has to be done to cater to these more discriminating porn shoppers? You have to give them what they want. Here are some useful tips for choosing a content provider and/or content for your pay sites that will keep the members coming back for more:

Go for the exclusive content.

You want to be able to provide your members with something that is fairly fresh and that is not pasted on every pay site on the Internet. The last thing a potential buyer wants to see is a site that is a carbon copy of half the sites out there.

Choose leased content.

Choosing leased content over buying CD’s is a good way to keep your site fresh. Most leased content providers will update their content on a bi-monthly or monthly basis. As well, with leased content, it is just a matter of adding the feed into your site. This alleviates the need for extensive extra graphic design work.

Have a wide variety of content.

Make sure that your site has a little bit of everything a potential member could want: pictures, videos, live feeds, etc. The more you have the better. Many content providers have great package deals available that will include all of these things all set up and ready to put on a site.

Choose a reputable content provider.

You want to make sure that when you choose a content provider that you do not just go for the best deal out there. You want to also look at things like: how much bandwidth they provide, what their technical support is like and last but not least, do they have good customer service.

These are just but a few helpful suggestions to follow when choosing content for your pay site. There are certainly many ways to achieve a high rate of member retention. One thing that many of our customers tell us is that they find that having a least one voyeur feed on their site great for keeping the members coming back for more. Laura’s Condo, one of our voyeur feeds, has one of the best member retention rates around. Visitors get attached to the girls, develop a rapport with them and they do not want to lose that. Hence, they will keep renewing to be able to keep their relationship going with their favorite girl.

The number one thing that pay site owners must remember is that members equal money and in order to keep the cash flow rolling in they must keep the members interested and give them what they want. By spending a little extra money to get high quality exclusive content, you will actually be putting more money in recurring memberships back in your pocket at the end of the day.

Article written by Meredith Murray