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Writing A Business Plan – The First Step To Success
Regardless of what type of business you want to run be it a bakery, a funeral home or an online marketing empire the one thing that you will require is a business plan however, having never taken any business basics 101 classes what do you need to have and, what is required in your business plan?
That is what we will touch on in this brief article from the basics to the not-so-basics by using a few simple steps you can be sure your business plan will contain all the information you need to make it up the ladder of success.
Information Summary.
As the name suggest this is a simple summary of what you are hoping to achieve from the name of your business, the goals, the concept and your plans. This should actually be no longer than two pages so that you can fill the needed information out clearly and concisely.Business Details.
This will be the founding information of your business again you need to mention your business name, what type of business you will be running (Sole Trader, Partnership, Corporation, etc) in addition you will also need to include details of who the company owners are, whether it be yourself alone or a list of your business partners, this information will be invaluable to you at a later date you also need to include a brief history of the business whether you have been running it already for a number of days, weeks, month or, years.Products And Services.
Basically, you need to write what exactly it is you will be selling. Are you going to be selling baked goods, marketing services or custom solutions. Keep this section simple, if you need to go into depth then do so at the end of your business plan by way of an appendices. Once you have listed several of the products or services you will be selling you should also list the features and benefits (Marketing points) of the products and services in addition, why do you think your business idea will succeed, what do you offer your clients that no-one else currently does? In addition you also need to have a basic pricing structure planned out, this will assist you in the future as, from your initial plans you can see what, if anything needs to be changed.Marketing.
A business is more than just an idea. You need to have good pricing, affordable suppliers and a great marketing plan. This is what is also needed in your overall business plan. You should include details of your competitors products and how they compare to your own or, if applicable why your product will be a benefit to the market place should it not already be readily available. In addition the marketing section of your business plan should include a list of advantages as well as some of the pitfalls you are likely to see. You also need to include a section detailing your specific marketing strategies regarding your overall and individual products and services.Industry Economics.
This area should detail some of the more specific areas of the industry you are going to be working in for example, what type of industry are you entering, how does the future for this industry look and, more importantly, how many existing companies work this industry as well as how do you successfully launch yourself into the industry. Parts of this area you may have covered in the marketing and previous section non the less, go over them again here in more detail.Target Market.
We have detailed the business ideas and products and services but, what about your potential clients? What does your product offer then that they need which no other company does? What is your target client base? How will you reach your customers? All of this and more needs to be addressed in this area of your business plan.Competing Companies.
What do your competitors do and, more importantly, who are they? Make a list of your potential competitors and address their weaknesses and strengths ensure that you leave no stone unturned when getting this information together often, you will realize that there are things your competition is doing that you can do much better then they.Don’t forget to address their marketing, what are they doing right and, more importantly to you, what are they doing wrong? How can you capitalize on this and make their errors benefit your long term business plans.
Location, Location, Location.
Location is everything and, this is particularly true in business for example, will you be working from an office, from your home or even your garage, do you require any special permits to operate your business? Can your customers reach you easily? All of these items and more need to be considered when writing this area of your business plan. By addressing any and all of these items you will find yourself with a much clearer picture of what is needed of you and your business.Stock + Supplies.
Often overlooked in business plans the one thing you NEED to have is a list of potential suppliers and sub-contractors who can provide you with your products and services. What materials (if any) do you need? How much will these cost you? Where will you find your stock and supplies? By getting this information available now you will have a better idea once your business plan is laid out as to what you are able to offer easily and also it will enable you to lay your pricing structure out more concisely.Labor.
So you have this great business idea all laid out but, who will be running this for you? Do you need additional staff or are you going it alone? Do you need to setup accountants, lawyers, insurance companies, consultants, bank accounts etc etc? All of these aspects of your business need to be laid out here.Capital.
Money, as they say, makes the world go round. Your business is no different, how much financial outlay do you require to get your business off the ground? Do you need to ask for a loan from your banking facility to help you out? How much income are you planning on making within the next 6 to 12 months? How much of this income needs to be invested back into the business? All of these ‘financial’ question need to be answered in this area of your business plan only then will you begin to see the bigger picture of your business idea.Hopefully this article has given you some solid advice and information regarding planning for your new business and, once you have all of the above laid out you should be able to see whether you will succeed or fail in your new idea.
Also, by planning now for the future of your business you should hopefully be able to avoid any hidden costs which can often push a company to the edge.
Article written by Lee
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Becoming A Webmaster – Communication Home Truths
Ok, we are ALL guilty of the things that are going to be mentioned in this article in one way or another, this article isn’t going to be a ‘see I told you so’ session rather an explanation of how and why certain things happen from time to time in the adult industry and, how they can be overcome.
Get ready, his may make you realize the way you have been managing your time this far has been completely and utterly wrong.
Message Boards.
A great tool to the webmaster, virtually every resource site owner and their friend has one but, there is one thing that you are not being told as often as you should about them, they ARE counter productive to YOUR work schedule. Think about it, how often do you access a discussion forum on a daily basis? Two, three, four times? maybe more? That time you could be using more effectively, coming up with new ideas, putting sites together, tweaking your traffic sources etc.I would whole heartily agree that there IS a need for forums but, at the same time, what would happen if every time we went to post a message we left it and posted a selection of them in some time put aside for doing so? Another thing regarding message boards, they are there to benefit the webmaster, we can let our sponsors know when we have issues, we let other webmasters know when we have issues with them and, we also ask for help and advice, as I say a great tool to the webmaster but also one that should IMHO be used with a little modicum.
Instant Messaging Clients.
Again, another great global communications tool for webmasters, we get in touch with our sponsors, our peers and our friends and family but, how many of us spend countless hours a day conversing back and forth about things that, quite frankly, are of little or no importance? Who can honestly say they have time set aside each day to purely log onto your messaging client to just communicate with people? I know I am guilty of keeping my client on 24/7 and answering messages almost instantly whilst also bugging my peers for idle chit chat.Email.
The Bain of every webmaster, speaking from personal experience, if I don’t check my email 50 times a day I check it 100, first thing I do in the morning, check my email, last thing I do before I go to bed? Check my email. I realize there is absolutely no need for me to do this but, non the less I do, its almost as if I have become addicted to checking my mail. I’m sorry to say it but, again, this is one thing that we probably couldn’t live without but, we can certainly cut down the time we check our email each day. If I never had to reply to an email again, I would be happy, as it is I get close to 200 business related emails on a daily basis and, lets be honest, I rarely reply to them the same week.Sponsor Statistics.
Again, another GREAT tool that we are kindly given by our sponsors but, again, even this simple tool can become a Bain to the webmasters workload. How many times do you check your stats on a daily basis? Hell, even I will admit to checking them 3 times a day and, yes, I know even this is to many times. Some sponsors now have stats by email, again, this is better than logging into your stats each day but, it also adds tot he problem with email checking above. Basically, there is only a need to check your stats once a day if that. I used to check them every hour then, for whatever reason, I checked them once a week, then I slowly got back into the phase of checking them morning, noon and, night. The stats are still there every time I look so why do I bother? I guess that’s one of the mysteries of life but, I know I spend far to much time checking them and waiting to see an additional sign up or two on top of what I already have.Anyway, I’m going to leave this article alone at this point, as, the above would seem to be the most popular methods of wasting time on a daily basis, we all know we waste our time and we all know that what we need to do is manage it better but, how and when, getting our time management sorted out takes time in itself.
Article written by Lee
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Gay Adult Marketing 101
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
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The Lost Traffic Source – Picture Posts
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
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Niche Marketing – What Is A Niche?
The first step as webmasters we must take to become successful is to discover what our niche specialty is however, many webmasters still do not realize exactly what a niche is.
In fact, from the webmasters I have spoken to it would seem that a ‘niche’ is just another word for the main topics of pornography, Teen, Asian, Fetish, Gay, Straight, the list goes on and, whilst this list is never ending they are all niches in themselves however, you need to look beyond the top level niche and start to develop a feel, a stance of your own as to what niche you will work on for example, Asian Midgets, you probably cant get more niche than that in this day and age however, realistically, the chances of you a) being able to find the content for this niche and b) Being able to find a sponsor are remarkably thin.
That said, if you can find a niche that you like personally, whether that be she-male, midgets, straight or, gay, this will give you a solid foundation to market your sites on especially if you build on your already vast knowledge of what turns you on.
Now, onto breaking down the niche you are comfortable working in..
Lets say for arguments sake that you have chosen to concentrate on the ‘Gay’ market,, within this market (as with any other) there is a remarkable amount of ‘sub-niches’ and, these are what you need to build your business around whether you want to or not, the ‘sub-niches’ of any given adult market is where the $$$ can be earned.
Now using the gay market as an example the first few niches that come to mind are:
Twink’s – Young looking hairless 18 – 20 year olds.
Bear’s – Hairy men over the age of 20.
Hunk’s – Muscular looking guys in the age group of 20 – 30 .
Straight Guys – Yes, that’s right, gay men get off on looking at straight guys.As you can see from the above four examples we can now start targeting our market audience a lot better.
The next thing we need to do now that we have found the niche and the sub-niche we will be working is to look for a sponsor that complements the niche of our choice, this is the hard part. Many webmasters will go directly to the highest paying sponsor and throw links up to their ‘sub-niche’ pay site not even looking at the sites tour or members area. This is a huge mistake, the first thing you NEED to do is to look over the sponsors paysites and, more importantly, the sponsors site tour AND members area. What point is there sending your surfers who are after Twink’s if, your sponsors tour has images of a load of guys over the Twink age bracket?
From this point on and, after you have chosen a suitable tour to send your traffic to you need to build up a flow of ‘niche’ traffic the chances are, if you submit your TGP gallery to an ‘all gay’ TGP that you will receive a substantial amount of unfiltered traffic making your hard work in choosing your sponsors tour worthless.
So how do you choose a traffic source that is right for you? Simple, you need to experiment, start of with your niche TGP’s, Top Lists, Links Lists etc and see what happens, how much traffic are you being sent from your chosen traffic source and, more importantly, how much of this traffic is actually clicking through to your sponsors tour. Once you can get an idea of what traffic you are being sent from what traffic source you have won more than half of the battle already.
Record EVERY possible detail about your traffic sources that you can, how much traffic they send a day, how many visits your sponsor gets, how many sales you made, what content you were using etc, etc.
Once you have a working list of data to use you can start to abuse and filter your traffic like you would have not thought imaginable, if one of your sponsors has a higher payout on Bear traffic, then you instantly know what traffic source gives you traffic for that niche and, you can utilize that information to your benefit.
The most important thing to remember however when marketing a niche is that you need to have patience, you need to use a process of trial and error and, more importantly, you need to experiment, just because TGP A sends you 100,000 hits of Twink traffic one day, it doesn’t mean you will get the same quantity of niche traffic the next.
Article written by Le
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The Successful Marketing Approach
In today’s volatile and competitive marketplace, the strategic manager must possess a sophisticated perspective regarding creating and maintaining the overall image of the organization.
In order to accomplish this goal, marketing must play a key role, regardless of the company’s size.
To be truly effective, a company must be up-to-date with it’s marketing ‘psyche’. In bygone times, companies concentrated on items it was able to produce, not on customer needs and wants. This type of outdated thinking will most likely lead to a rather short lifespan.
Today, marketing is a holistic approach that is often more complex than first thought.
What Is Marketing?
It is a process through which an organization identifies a need and then provides a means of filling or satisfying that need.
Customers are more informed and savvy than in the past and they expect more – in the quality of both products and service. Today’s customer is not willing to merely sit passively by and consume – he wants a voice and relationship with the companies with whom he chooses to conduct business.
Marketing is not deciding where and how to advertise. This is only one component of the process. Effective managers make sure they have a well-defined and mapped out strategy that deals with the entire lifecycle of the process. The most successful companies have a keenly honed customer-centric marketing model.
This model outlines a process that allows the company to determine the needs and wants of a “target market” and deliver this while instilling in the customer the belief their company’s ‘satisfaction solution’ is better value than the competition’s.
The first step in a marketing strategy involves the identification of unmet needs within a market and delivering/developing products and/or services to meet those needs.
Define Your Market First.
Is it a business-to-consumer company, a business-to-business company, or both? Regardless of the target(s) a company must be able to clearly identify a common need amongst a large portion of this market, as well as that portions propensity and ability to buy that product or service.
Once the target market has been identified it is time to do some analysis. The depth, complexity and related cost should remain proportionate to the ratio of overall business this product or service is anticipated to generate.
Analyze Internally.
What will be involved in creating this product or service? Is there access to all of the necessary components? How much volume can be handled? Are their efficient distribution channels? What will it cost to make or provide this? The next phase is an external analysis that looks at specific trends within the target market. With this information in hand, a company is then able to make an informed decision as to whether or not it is feasible to proceed. Now that the target market has been identified and the operational side has been flushed out, a strategy can be addressed. How a company decides to communicate its message should be in correlation to its overall marketing strategy. Whether the most effective method of conveying you message to the target audience is through traditional advertising channels, the Internet or more innovative activities, it should be apparent from the prior analysis. The final phase of a marketing strategy should examine the component of customer relationship management: What processes are in place to service our customers? How do we ensure a positive resolution of customer complaints? What performance measurements will be used to determine how well clients are being serviced? And, most importantly: How will customer relationships be maintained so they will do business with us again and again? By developing a comprehensive strategy that spans the entire lifecycle of new to repeat client, a company will find it is able to effectively address the present needs and wants of it’s target markets, as well as being able to incorporate new areas as they develop. Article written by Lee
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Adult Employment Vacancies
For some the prospect of being able to work for another company online is something that they may ultimately want to pursue however, just how do you go about finding work for one of the many adult companies and, more importantly, how can you ensure that you have a better chance of being hired for the job once you find the position you would like to have at the company?
Online Adult Employment – Job Types.
Working in the adult industry can take many forms however, the most commonly perceived adult industry job is that of a model but, what about other online job vacancies such as graphics designer, marketing manager, sales director, and webmaster support representative, just how do you find out what companies are hiring and more importantly, what adult employment vacancies they have.Adult Employment Agencies.
For many webmasters the chances of finding employment in the adult industry at a ‘regular’ online employment agency such as monster.com may seem impossible however, that said, many of the larger companies have realized the value of the mainstream employment agencies and, as such are now advertising on these sites for their staff but where else can you look? Well there are actually several adult industry employment sites that adult webmasters can look at to find their ideal job for example Adult Staffing, Sexy Jobs and, Adult Help Wanted in addition to several smaller sites operated by companies such as Cybererotica.Improving Your Employment Chances.
So now you know where to look for adult employment opportunities what can you do to ensure you have a greater chance of being hired? Well as with the mainstream bricks and mortar job market having a good curriculum vitae (CV) can be a good start, ensure you keep your CV regularly updated and that it contains pertinent information for the type of job vacancy you are looking for in addition, often the first method of contact you will make with these potential employers will be via email or cover letter, make sure that you spend some time to write a letter that is not only noticeable but, interesting and, more importantly, grammatically correct. Demonstrate in this first stage of contact with your potential future adult employer that you take pride in your work and, you might just get bumped to the top of the ‘must see’ applicants.Adult Jobs – Overview.
Many webmasters forget that there is more to the online adult industry than being able to party with the best of us and, whilst this does form a chunk of the industry overall it is not conducive of you further enhancing your online career, take the time to investigate all of the avenues available to you and, most importantly, make sure you choose a job that you not only want to do but one that you will enjoy, your reputation is the one thing that a potential adult employer will take into consideration, if you have had several previous jobs all lasting for short periods of time, it wont look as good to them as if you have only had a couple of jobs for a lengthier time frame. Most of all remember that whenever you contact a company looking for employers, make sure you are prepared and professional even if it is just sending them a quick email asking for further information.Article written by Lee.
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Marketing Campaigns – Testing Your Variables
Irrespective of the medium, an online advertising campaign needs to be tested and optimized constantly in order to provide you with the optimum results. This is where advertising testing can play an important role in your marketing strategy. Despite the advantages to testing your online marketing campaigns, relatively few companies actually go out of their way to see what what works, what doesn’t and, more importantly, why.
Steps To Testing Your Ad Campaign.
1) Set expectations as to how you envisage your campaign to perform. This in itself will guide you’re optimization methods. An example of this is, if you expect your ad medium to get a 15% click thru rate or a, 10% conversion rate, you have justification in making adjustments to your campaign if the creative you are using does not perform to your level of expectation.2) Don’t get tied into a campaign, If you are going to be purchasing an advertising campaign on a resource site, ensure you have an ‘out clause’. This out clause will enable you to terminate the campaign as long as it has run for a set amount of time, usually, many resources will be happy to give you an out clause especially, if after testing your marketing materials, the results you were hoping for have still not shown themselves.
3) Consider the variables in your ad campaign, usually, webmasters only think of the one variable in their advertising campaign – Price. However, there are many more variables to be looked at for example, if you are doing a mail drop, the subject line of the email, format and, copy text of the email body itself, all of these things can have a drastic effect on any given advertising campaign, at any given time and often, these can, and most probably will, fluctuate from site to site where you are purchasing ad space.
4) Stats tracking, tracking your campaign makes it easier to test and review how your advertising medium is working for you, many sites offer live stats for your ad campaigns however, some still do not, where this isn’t a problem in itself as, most companies you choose to advertise with will be more than happy to provide you with statistics as and when you need them after all, you are paying for their services and support.
5) Pull the plug on campaigns that are not performing, however, ensure you have changed your creative several times before doing so, often, you will find a simple change such as a new creative can drastically increase your marketing efforts. Also, do not just pull advertising as you feel like it, if your campaign has only been active for a week, don’t expect hundred / thousands of hits instantly, often it takes webmasters a while to realize there are new ad mediums running on the sites they visit so often.
Online Advertising – Review.
By constantly assessing and testing your advertising campaigns you can pull some interesting figures which can help you long term however, don’t rush into pulling campaigns that you have only just started. Give it a few days, change your copy text and creatives and, if that doesn’t work talk to the company, they will be able to offer you advice and help on improving your sales from your advertising medium after all, they want to keep your business.Article written by Lee
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Making Money From Adult Webmaster Referrals
One method of income generation that is very rarely talked about in the industry is that of the webmaster, from the new webmasters to the adult industry right up to those who have been in the biz some time.
One of the easiest ways to generate ‘long term’ income is by referring webmasters to programs using your own linking (referral) codes.
However, this is for some a huge step out of their everyday site building even though it shouldn’t be.
This is what we will investigate in this article.
By now we should at least have a fair few sites online and getting surfer traffic but, how many of us get traffic from other webmasters and don’t even know about it?
The chances are, if you submit a site to ANYWHERE you will at least get one webmaster hit to it regardless of whether it is a webmaster of a TGP, Links List, Dmoz Editor etc these are all potential money makers for you.
One of the easiest ways to make money from other webmasters is to simply have a link on each and every site you build in text that says ‘webmasters’ this should be linked to a single page on your domain with a listing of various affiliate programs you use or can recommend.
Often placing a button or a banner on this page for each of the referral programs will work much better for you as the webmaster can actually see a little more information about the sponsor you are trying to make them join.
We all know of some of the big sponsors like ARS, Topbucks, Sic Cash etc etc but, what about the smaller programs that, perhaps not many webmasters know about, these would be the ideal types of sponsor to use on your webmaster page.
However, in addition to the affiliate programs you could also recommend hosting companies, content providers etc etc for example, the following companies have referral programs that you could use on this page:
Content Providers:
http://content.xphotography.com
http://matrixcontent.com
http://pixmasters.comHosting Providers:
http://webair.comMessage Forums:
http://arsresources.com/forum/
http://xnations.comTraffic Generation:
http://adultbuttonexchange.com
http://pornclient.comAs you can see from the small list above, you could have more than one way for webmasters to make you some additional profits in the form of either, cold hard cash or, from some of the places, additional traffic to your sites.
Hopefully list brief article will have given you some ideas as to how you can make some additional money from webmasters visiting your site and, don’t forget, once you have the page linked on your site, it will, inevitably get into the search engines, so keyword the page up and you might start generating more webmaster traffic than you could imagine.
Article written by Lee.
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Protecting The Kids – Europe’s Role
As adult webmasters we have certain obligations we must fulfill daily whether these be, legal or moral.
One issue that is constantly cropping up in our industry is that of minors (Children) accessing adult websites and, more importantly, the ease of which they can do.
Recent figures released by one of Europe’s top internet analysis companies show that children in Europe and, specifically within the United Kingdom are more likely to visit a website and that, ‘showing that around one in five Internet kids (290,000) check out the sex sites’.
These figures are certainly alarming to say the least, bearing in mind they are specifically talking about the United Kingdom, that leaves a vast majority of Europe, as yet, un-analyzed.
We should all adapt to new methods in order to protect minors from accessing our site whether that includes placing your sites behind AVS systems which, in my opinion is one of the best ways and, most profitable of protecting minors or, utilizing ‘web safe’ software packages that are available to block access to adult sites completely we all need to adopt these practices.
The fact of the matter remains that, in this day and age, no matter what precautions we take in order to prevent access there will, undoubtedly, be a majority of children who can and will, get access to adult sites.
Does that mean we should compromise on the quality of our sites? No
Does that mean we need to think harder about how we develop our sites? YesIt takes very little effort to subscribe to the services to block access and, you can get a single line of code to place within your html from ICRA which will at least, deter underage surfers from accessing your sites.
In addition to the above mentioned service, you can also place a link on your warning page/s to the following services for parents to block access from children to our sites, SAFESURF, CYBERPATROL, NETNANNY and, SURFWATCH amongst others. Its not just about utilizing software and ratings on our sites though, we can go much further than that and, for instance, using nothing but softcore content on our sites will protect to some extent the materials available to children but, in addition you will also notice your conversion ratios will go up! I have and, I’m sure you have, heard it time and time again.. Make them ‘Pay for pink’ and, by using softcore images on your sites that’s exactly what you are doing.
I for one certainly hope that you take heed at this article, protecting our children is paramount if, we are to succeed in the business, it is getting harder and harder to control who accesses our site but, we can at least take a step in the right direction.
Article written by Lee
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