Why Go Adult?

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Hosting | Response: 0

When choosing a hosting company why choose an adult host over a mainstream one?

Simple, They provide above other things, a better quality of service, affordability and, most importantly, reliability.

Adult hosts face a variety of technical and support issues, this coupled with the points mentioned above makes them a far superior choice to standard mainstream hosting providers. This is one of the main factors why more and more mainstream internet based companies are now turning to the adult business forum to provide their hosting solutions.

Mainstream going adult? Yes that’s right, more and more mainstream companies are turning to our industries hosting providers for the fast speeds, security and, reliable infrastructures they can offer after all, adult sites are amongst the most prolific on the internet on average gaining more daily hits to their sites than mainstream websites so, they need to be cost efficient, not only to the hosting companies but, also to their clients, the webmaster.

Our industry strives on the use of heavy graphics, coupled with streaming media files to secure sales and longevity, this is why the adult hosting companies need to be able to provide not just a single, heavily laden server but tens of them, sometimes even hundreds all producing gigabytes of traffic on a daily basis.

Adult hosting companies are constantly upgrading their equipment in order to improve not just their servers, connectivity but also the smaller things that are often overlooked by webmasters, hubs, routers, switches and the likes along side the not so technical aspects of running a host, The staff.

Along with all of this technical equipment they also need to maintain a high level of technical knowledge, after all, not just anyone can install operating systems capable of running multi-million dollar industries. They need the knowledge to maintain, upgrade, repair and sell their services to the best of their capabilities.

What does this mean to you? Well, we all want to make money and, through the use of faster servers, e-commerce solutions and the technical support your hosting provider can give you, you will be fattening your wallet on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.

Adult hosting, quite simply, is the crème de la crème of the hosting world, they offer solid, solutions whether you are starting in the adult industry or, operate a mainstream e-commerce site.

So how do you choose a host that is right for you?

You need to ask some basic questions of the host and, do your homework. Not only should you find out what hosting solutions they can offer you but, you need to find out what their support service is like, how affordable they are in comparison to other companies who can offer similar or the same service. Whilst on the subject of hosting support, before you sign on the dotted line, give your host a call out of office hours, if they answer, then you can almost be certain they are a good hosting provider.

Of course, not all hosts will have 24 hour phone support, however, that said, some offer 24 hour icq support, email support and more.

Another sure fire way to find out if a hosting company is any good is to ask on the heavily traveled webmaster message boards, after all, you are not the only webmaster out there who will have tried this company, if they are no good, someone will know about it and point you in the direction of a reputable host like http://www.webair.com.

Hopefully, this article will have given you some insight into the world of adult hosting companies and, will assist you in making the right choice of host for your site, whatever type of website you might be hosting.

Article Written By Lee

Converting Chinese Adult Traffic – The Niche Paysites That Work

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

Building A Surfer Trap – Stage 2

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

In the last tutorial we hopefully got the foundations of our surfer trap laid and in this stage, we will start to put this thing together.

Ok the first step of stage two of building your surfer trap is to start linking each of the individual FPA’s to your Multi-Site FPA.

The easiest way that I have found to do this is to give each FPA its own sub directory on your server and have the html page named index for each of the single site FPA’s.

So for instance, if you have the site All Petite on your Multi-Site FPA you would link it to:

mydomain.com/all-petite/

Or whatever you called the sub directory for the All Petite single FPA.

Now, once you have linked these single FPA’s to your Multi-Site FPA we need to start ‘playing’ with them once again.

You should now have copy’s of your single site FPA’s and Multi-Site FPA on both your server and Hard Drive.

Take the copy’s you have on your hard drive and add a small NICHE pop up console to each of the single site FPA’s AND the Multi-Site FPA.

I would suggest making 6 NICHE consoles.

These consoles should be pure text and nothing else.

Each of the links on this small console should link to a different niche of your single site FPA’s I usually go with one link for each of the following niches…

Gay
Mature
Teen
Fetish
Hardcore
Asian

Plus, I usually add a link at the bottom of my console which goes to the POTD program.

Once you have these consoles built you should upload them to their OWN sub directory on your server, I would suggest calling this directory ‘consoles’ and calling each of the niche consoles the name of the NICHE they represent.

So, you should now have the following on your HD and on your server:

1 Multi-Site FPA
50 or so Single Site FPA’s (All Linked From The Multi-Site FPA)
6 Small Pop-Up Consoles (Popping Only One On The Multi-Site FPA and The Single Site FPA’s, each different niche Single Site FPA pops a different niche console however.)

You now have to check that your surfer trap is working so far.

Article written by Lee.

Getting Webmaster Traffic To Your Design Site

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

Just starting in the design biz? Well you’re going to need some traffic to your design work. You need to get your name out to as many people as humanly possible. If you don’t have the contacts, then you don’t have the work. Network, communicate, and setup your portfolio. These are the 3 most important steps when starting your design company, preceding these three steps are advertising and demonstrating.

When I first started designing, I had no clue what I was doing except for designing websites. I knew I needed clients, but had no idea where to start. I met up with a ouple of other webmasters one night. I told them I had just started and was looking for some work. They took me in and taught me the trade. They showed me a few tricks in how to design things much quicker, and also subconsciously taught me to make sure as many people as possible see my work, and that they know who its from.

I worked with my friends for a few months when things started to get slow, so I took it upon myself to start my own company. I still got outsourced work from them, but now was taking on my own clients, but I had forgotten one important step. Advertising, the biggest step to forget. So I started posting on message boards to get my name in the dirt. I received a few clients, but nothing large. Then one day out of the blue a man came to me and wanted 4 pay sites designed. Wow, a real client at last. He said he saw my posts on a resource forum and decided to use me for his work.

I worked for this client for about 2 months, and more and more people were coming to me. I had been doing something good, but work started to slow and finally I realized I had been working for the same few clients and had not been getting anyone else in the door. Maybe board posting wasn’t enough? Exactly, its not, I asked around to see what I could do I had gotten a few suggestions like banner trades, recip’s, work for advertising. So I did them all. And soon enough I had more clients than I could shake a stick at.

Network.

Talk to people, people that are in the biz. Webmasters and designers. Talk to anyone you possibly can that could further spread your name of even bring work to you. If you do not network, then don’t plan on anything coming your way.

Communicate.

Get on boards, ICQ, AIM, MSN, whatever. Just make sure that people see you and know you are there. Send them emails with different offers, not spam, but personal emails. Take it upon yourself to try and get your name into the field.

Portfolio.

If you do not have one of these, then you might as well try to sell a spider to an arachnophobe. Design some fakes sites if you don’t have anything to show. Do some banners, tours, anything that shows the potential of your work. Make sure you present it as efficiently as possible. People do not want to root around not knowing what they are looking at.

Advertise.

Make banners, buttons, links, ads, and anything that you can stick your name on. Get listed on any and all Webmaster resource sites, and design sites. This will help you establish a name base and let people know you are around.

Demonstrate.

Write articles for resource sites, create different tutorials also, this will let people know you know what your doing. The more people that like your ideas, the more they will like you. Therefore the more likely you will get work.

Follow these steps as I did and you will be on your way to having clients beating down your door. Also, make sure you really have something to offer before trying to sell your work. Be unique in what you design and how you present it. Clients love it when their sites are different from others, obviously.

Article written by John

The Web Safe Color Palette

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

The “Web Safe” palette is a bit controversial. It is a set of 216 colors that are, supposedly, guaranteed to appear as intended on all graphical displays when used in HTML, CSS, and images embedded in Web pages. Many Web developers believe that sticking to these colors is one of the holiest commandments in the Web design scripture.

This was mostly a concern when most computers had 8-bit color displays; these days, most people run at 16-bit or 24-bit color. Although these bit-depths render the Web Safe palette pointless, dithering and quantification bugs in browsers and operating systems still cause problems in 16-bit displays (16-bit display, also known as “High Color” mode or “Thousands of Colors,” is generally problematic). Extensive testing has led to a new palette, called “Really Safe,” whose colors are guaranteed to appear correctly on all displays and all browsers.

If you use different colors than these, you might see images and backgrounds of the same color appear at a slightly different tint, so that a “box” will be visible around them if the background extends beyond the image’s edges.

Below is the table of ‘Web Safe’ and ‘Really Safe’ colors, you will see some of the color hex codes are in red, these are ‘Really Safe’ colors.

Hopefully, you will find a use for the two different color palettes that are now available and, you can begin designing for your surfers, regardless of which browser they use.

Article written by Lee

Newbie Basics – The HTML Layout

Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

In this article we will look at some HTML tags that you will be using in every HTML document that you create. They are the base for every web page and are the essential pieces of HTML coding to ensure that your pages display correctly.

The Structure Tags.

Here is a look at the main structure tags. You will have to get used to these since you will be using them for all your pages.

We would suggest that you start by copy and pasting the structure into your document then creating my page once they’re in place.

Make it a habit to ensure that all surfers (regardless of their browsers) will be able to identify your creations. Each of these HTML tags are used in pairs with a start and ending tag in the same way as we mentioned in the previous chapter.

<HTML> </HTML>

The HTML tag tells the browser that your page is a valid HTML page.

The first and last tag on all your HTML documents will be this tag.

The complete HTML coding for the remainder of your document will be placed between these two HTML tags.

<HEAD> </HEAD>

This tag is used to reference your document.

<TITLE> </TITLE>

This tag enables you to give your HTML document a title.

It’s best to insert descriptive text about your page between these tags we will go into this in more detail in the later chapters.

This will also be the name that is displayed in a web browser’s system tray when someone bookmarks or adds your HTML document to their favorites list.

<BODY> </BODY>

The entire coding for your page goes in between these two tags.

Basically, they mark the beginning and end of your web page’s body. They are the essence of your HTML.

All your HTML tags in your document will be resting in between these two HTML tags.

Putting It All Together.

Now that the main tags have been outlined, it’s time to put them all together. Here is an example of what your HTML documents should look like.

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>The Title Of Your Html Document Goes Here</TITLE>
</HEAD>

<BODY>

All your other HTML tags and text goes here.
This Is the main body of your HTML document.
At the end of this text you will also see where the closing Body and HTML tags go.

</BODY>

</HTML>

This is the basic structure for any HTML document. Once these tags are in place, the rest is down to you. These Tags are not case sensitive. In other words, you don’t have to use all capital letters like we have in our Chapters. It won’t make a difference to the overall outcome of your tags. However we would recommend using Caps for your tags. It makes them a lot easier to distinguish from all the other sections of your HTML document coding, as you can see in the example above.

Article written by Lee

Fonts – Everything You Wanted To Know

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

All web browsers use standard fonts. Mostly two types, one for proportional, one for mono spaced fonts. Proportional (or variable width) characters adapt in width, an “m” uses more space than an “i”. Mono spaced (or fixed width) characters are all equal in width, typewriter style.

Most browsers use “Times” for proportional fonts. This font was originally developed by the London Times news paper. “Courier” is used for mono spaced. This was a very popular font used for mechanical typewriters. Both are normally set to 12 points (1/72nd of an inch).

Serif And Sans Serif.

Both these fonts are so called serif fonts. The French word serif indicates the little strokes at the outer ends of the characters. They are very old, you see them in old gothic handwriting, or Greek and Roman buildings. Partly used for ornamental reasons, partly because the characters are easier distinguished.
It’s a little odd they are used on computer screens. These are by nature quite coarse, which makes serif characters quite grainy and ugly. Sans serif characters generally display a lot better on screens. Sans serif literally translates to “without stroke”. Probably the most popular sans serif font is Helvetica or derivatives like Windows’ Arial.

<FONT FACE=”Arial”>…</FONT>

The FONT Tag.

The html tag for fonts is a somewhat crude instrument. Most word processors let you use any font you like, as long as it’s on your system. And that’s the first big problem in web browsers. You have no control over other systems’ fonts. So you will have to choose a font which is likely to be on any system out there.

<FONT FACE=”Arial,Helvetica,Sansserif”>…</FONT>

Typeface.

The font tag accommodates this by letting you specify several fonts in the FACE attribute. If the first one is not available, the second is used, and so on. The set above is often used. Arial is on all Windows systems, Helvetica on Macintosh, Sans serif on UNIX. The same is true for mono spaced fonts in the line below.

<FONT FACE=”Courier New,Courier,Mono”>…</FONT>

Size.

Word processors let you specify font sizes in points exactly. No such luck in web browsers. There are seven sizes to choose from, denoted 1 (smallest) through 7 (largest). If this SIZE attribute is not used it defaults to 3. I think the default 12 point size is a bit big, so I use 2 for size, which gives you about a 10 point character. Some browsers let you set the overall font size smaller or larger. Which makes this issue even more awkward.

<FONT SIZE=”2″>…</FONT>

There is a nasty bug in some browsers. When using a block of text with size 1, the last line skips a line. This bug can be squashed by putting a <BR> tag immediately after the block of text. If your browser has this bug it will show in the second text below.

There is a nasty bug in some browsers. When using a block of text with size 1, the last line skips a line. This bug can be squashed by putting a <BR> tag immediately after the block of text (with break).

Color.

Fonts can have any color you like, much like the colors in the body tag. Keep readability always in mind, avoid clashing colors and little contrast. You can create nice shading effects. But don’t make a Christmas tree out of your page by using too many colors.

<FONT COLOR=”red”>…</FONT>

Style Sheets.

There is a chance all this soon will be replaced by style sheets. They do let you specify exact point sizes, even use downloadable fonts. But for now I would advise against that, since not all current browsers understand them. You could however use a combination of both, should you want to.

Article written by Lee

Converting Italian Adult Traffic – The Niche Paysites That Work

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

Continuing with our article series of country specific traffic and which niches work for the various global markets in this article we will take a look at some of the most complicated traffic to ‘work’ Italian Adult Surfers. The reason I say most complicated is for the simple reason that, to date there are very few Italian paysites this makes it harder for us as webmasters to tap into these markets especially if we ourselves, do not know what the Italian surfer is after. That said, lets get on with the article.

Italian Traffic – Quick Analysis.

As already mentioned surfers from Italy are hard to pre-qualify given that there are very few sites catering to this European market at the present time, this means that there are no sources of background information to look at or, statistical analysis’s available from other paysites.

Italian Adult Surfers – The Niches.

For one of the most affluent international markets going it comes as a surprise to see that there are almost no localized pay sites for the Italian market this made our initial filtering of the Italian traffic much harder opting for translated free sites over paysite tour pages to send the traffic to itself then, once they hit the free sites either choosing to send them back into our central hub or, to the US version pay site of the niche free site they were visiting. That said here are the results from the previous 3 (three) months of traffic that we observed.

Ebony.

The Ebony niche would appear to be the most consistent converting niche on Italian traffic however, given that almost all of the niches we used on the Italian surfers were quite evenly spread for sales (Ebony was only 5 sales in front) this, I am sure is not a good indicator and, likewise with the Japanese and Chinese traffic, this is an area of international adult marketing that should ideally be re-visited at a later day.

For Women.

Even more surprising than the fact there are very few localized paysites for Italy was the fact that the ‘For Women’ niche converted just as well as the other niches we used for our Italian traffic, of course, this at first would seem to indicate that the vast majority of surfers we had on our sites from Italy were female however, as we all know, the Straight male niche is big in gay so, there is a chance the sales we got from our Italian traffic to the For Women niche paysites we used were equally male and female.

Softcore General.

(Softcore Adult Tours) The other strange thing we noticed was that paysites we offered to our Italian surfers that were Hardcore in nature didn’t convert as well as the paysites that had softcore tours, this would lend itself to the fact that Italian porn surfers are not looking for hardcore – quite different to most other country traffic sources.

Tranny.

The transsexual niche paysites that we offered to the Italian surfers also had some good results again, this is strange given that almost every other countries surfer we sent to a tranny site didn’t convert. One other thing that comes up with this and, given the fact that the for women niche paysites we used had good results would be that perhaps the Italian surfers are interested in the more obscure niches available on the adult internet.

Italian Adult Traffic – An Overview.

All in all, as stated at the beginning of this article the Italian surfers would certainly appear at first glance to be more varied and obscure in their sexual preferences than other countries whom appear to have clear cut, well defined ‘types’ of site that interest them.

I think as mentioned above Italian traffic needs to be looked at in more depth in a future article as, to my surprise the traffic didn’t work on the niches that previously converted well for the same amounts and quality of traffic.

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.

The Lost Traffic Source – Picture Posts

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Pic Posts | Response: 0

Back in the day, pic posts were all the rage, taking less time for webmasters to build for and, less time maintaining however, in recent times we seldom hear of these traffic sources as more and more webmasters turn to the TGP’s in an effort to get traffic ‘quantity’ over ‘quality’ my personal feelings are that the pic posts of the past will soon start to make a comeback.

The Basics.

So, we know the history behind the Pic Post but what about the dynamics? How exactly do they work? That’s easy, you take an image, give it a HTML page and add the recip to the PP (Pic Post) you are submitting the page / image too along with a banner leading to your site. At this time, it would be prudent to add that, if you will be submitting to PP’s on a regular basis, you might also like to add the url to your main domain on the image in the lower right or left hand corner.

One other thing to take into consideration when using PP’s is that softcore is often better. With the readily available hardcore content on TGP’s the chances are, that the surfer has decided to visit the PP because there is not as much widely available hardcore content.

Cost Balance.

In addition to the relatively minimal amount of work required to create pages for the PP’s there are several other factors that make them much better then TGP’s and Free Sites the main one is that bandwidth usage is relatively low for a start, not to mention the fact that you can knock out hundreds / thousands of PP pages a day compared to the tens / hundreds of TGP and Free Sites.

Also, when looking at cost, the one factor people often forget is the submission time and, unlike the TGP model of traffic the vast majority of PP’s will actually encourage or, in some instances, prefer automated submissions, this means that you can target hundreds of PP’s in less time than it takes to submit a TGP or Free Site.

Marketing Basics.

Of course, as with any type of site that we build as webmasters, the main reason that surfers will visit our sponsors is the marketing ‘spin’ we give them, this is where the use of Alt Tags and Text can become extremely useful, bearing in mind, the surfer can already see the ‘larger picture’ on your PP page by utilizing Alt Tags and other SEO methods you can actually entice the surfer to click through to your sponsor and, get some very good rankings in the search engines at the same time.

Housekeeping.

Now you have started to use Picture Posts, as with any form of traffic you need to ensure you keep ‘accurate’ records of who is and who isn’t accepting your pages along with details stats on the amount of traffic each PP sends you and, you ultimately send off to your sponsors site.

Adjust everything you can. trial and error plays a MAJOR part in using PP’s just because you use softcore images one day and get 1000 hits to the page you created, that doesn’t mean that by using hardcore images the next day you will receive more or, less traffic, also being niche specific, unlike with the TGP game can have its disadvantages, use images that appear at first glance, to be ‘generalized’ then, over time adjust your advertising methods to reflect the niche of surfer you are targeting.

In addition to keeping records of the pages you create for the picture posts, you should also be sure to keep a record of where else you have used them, just because you are using them for the PP’s specifically, this doesn’t mean that you can not interlink these pages together and get some traffic of your own to them, does it?

Hopefully this article has given you some more insight into the world of the Picture Post and, if you try an experiment with this little known source of quality traffic, I feel certain you will be pleasantly surprised with the results you see.

Article written by Lee