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Networking – Not Just For Computers
Networking – Not Just For Computers.
“Networking” is a buzz word today. Everybody talks about it. Everybody hears about it. Everybody wants to do it more effectively. But why? Why do people network, and what do they hope to accomplish?Primarily, networking is the process of meeting new people, either through a contact that you initiate, or through an introduction by a third party.
Networking allows you to meet, and establish a relationship with, people who may not have heard of you and your business through any other method.
For most professionals, networking is done to increase revenues. Sometimes new clients are found, sometimes suppliers and, sometimes new ways of doing things that increase your bottom line are found through networking.
When networking you should work towards these common goals:
To exchange business ideas.
To get better service.
To develop your business skills.
To potentially increase your revenues.
To establish long term friendships.This means that networking is an essential part of building up strong business relationships. We need each other to buy from us, sell to us and, brainstorm with us in order to progress in our fields. In order for us to do these things we must give something back in return, its all about give and take.
we must be willing to hone our relationship building skills. We must be great listeners. We must be willing to give before we receive. We must get into networking mode in our own minds before we ask the same of others. This must be constant.
Through consistent contact with others, you will, instinctively start to put 2 and 2 together. When you begin speaking with someone your mind will automatically start searching the inner most recesses of your brain to remember people, places, even products, that will assist the person you are networking for and, at the same time, you will also be thinking of what they can do for you in return.
This Is Networking.
This is the state of mind you should be in whenever you are talking to someone in your industry, to get your mind in this state takes a while but, once you have focus and determination, you will immediately see how you can help others and, how they can benefit you in return whilst listening to them. this is the first step in getting them to help you.Networking, as its name would suggest is WORK, hard work, the process is also a learned skill, its not something that we are all born with or, can all do. It can often be frustrating when you have a goal in mind but, your networking functions are not achieving that goal. All in all, networking is the building block of many a business venture, it can make and it can break you. Take some time to consider this fact the next time you are posting on a board or go to one of the tradeshows, you might just come away with more than you hoped for.
Article Written By Lee
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Formatting HTML Text Using Tags
Formatting HTML Text Using Tags.
As we know there are many elements to a website from graphics to text. In this article we are going to have a closer look at text and, more importantly how we format the text to look like we want it to.The text of the HTML pages we create, as you already know goes inside the <body> tag of our HTML pages but, unless you are using a WYSIWYG editor you can not just click a button and make it appear bold or italic therefore we need to get to know some of the text property tags that can be used to enhance our HTML text. Lets take a look at some of these now.
<b> Any text inside these two tags will appear bold on our page</b>
<i> Any text inside these two tags will appear in italic on our page</i>
<u> Any text inside these two tags will appear to be underlined on our page</u>
<big> Any text inside these two tags will appear BIG on our page</big>
<small> Any text inside these two tags will appear small on our page</small>
<sub> Any text inside these two tags will appear subscript on our page</sub>
<sup> Any text inside these two tags will appear as superscript on our page</sup>There are also things called ‘heading tags’ these will work the same as the formatting tags mentioned above however there are only six of them and they look like this <hx> with the x being replaced by a number from 1-6 the lower this number is in the tag the LARGER our text will become so for example:
<h1> Will be the largest heading text</h1>
<h2> Will be the next smallest heading tag</h2>
<h3> Will be smaller again </h3>
<h4> Will be one size smaller again</h4>
<h5> Will be the second to smallest heading size</h5>
<h6> Is the smallest of the heading tags</h6>Also, you should remember that it *IS* possible to use more than one of the text tags in any single line of portion of text on our web page so for example, if i wanted to have bold underlined italic text my tags for the text would look like this:
<b><i><u>This text is bold, in italics, and underlined</u></i></b>
You will notice from the above example that the tags were opened and closed in the same order they were created this doesn’t have to be done like this but, in the long run, it is easier for you as a webmaster to code your pages this way.
Hopefully this article has given you a further understanding on how we can format out text and you will be bale to put this into practice on the next site you build.
Article written by Lee
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Search Engine Themes!
It’s safe to say that the ‘pay-per-inclusion’ model is rapidly catching on with today’s search engines and directories as they are forced to become profitable in a hurry. But there’s also another trend that’s come to the fore.
‘Theme indexing’ is a process used by search engines to determine an entire site’s primary theme. In other words, your complete set of Web pages is indexed as one, and defined as one.
This is why sites with multiple product lines and subject content often get poor rankings today. To learn how to combat this, let’s first look at the theme indexing process from the search engine’s point of view.
According to Search Engine World, the theme indexing search engine follows this basic 5-step progression as it ‘weighs’ what a particular site is about:
1. Page Titles
2. Meta Tags
3. Page Headings
4. Page Content
5. LinksThis is a general overview of the approach – each search engine is unique, and no one has the ultimate read on every search site. But to date this has proven to be true of AltaVista, Google, Excite, Lycos and WebCrawler.
All of these belong on the ‘Who’s Who’ list of major search sites today. If it’s important that your Web business be found among them, today you must write your site with theme indexing in mind. Here’s how:
The concept itself is simple. Focus your entire site like a laser beam on a single, potent theme.
The process is ruthless. Get rid of the deadwood. Set up additional sites as needed for each individual product and service ‘family’.
In the same way that you must now invest to get indexed on Yahoo, LookSmart, Inktomi and other top directories, you need to invest in separating your activities by theme into multiple Web sites. Kick out unrelated content, links and affiliate programs that don’t relate to your market niche. Build new sites as needed, with each focusing on its own unique selling proposition. This is the first step to take in the optimization copywriting process.
Having done this, here’s how to write each site to get the best possible positioning on theme indexing search engines.
Focus Your Key Phrase.
Determine what key phrase your entire site is about – a key phrase people use often on the search engines. To pick heavily searched, popular key phrases, try Word Tracker: http://www.wordtracker.com/.Write Your Copy. Throughout your site play variations on your key phrase theme. Every element counts: page titles, meta tags, page headings, page content, links. Remember to write for people first. Search engines are robotic, but people always want to know what’s in your site for them. Tell them what qualifies you to help, and what you have to offer. Balance using your key phrase with the benefits you deliver.
Once you’ve written your copy, search your text for generic phrases like ‘our product’ and substitute your key phrase. Use long copy where you can. Not only does it outsell shorter copy – it also makes it easier for you to write keyword-rich text.
Format Your Text.
Use key phrase bullets. They break up text copy and serve you as mini headlines with an entirely different look and feel.Use multiple headlines to create immediate context when a visitor explores your site. Make these headlines specific by using your key phrase. Tag headlines in your source code – <H1>, <H2> or <H3> – to highlight your theme.
Write your links as mini-headlines. Often people scan pages by jumping from one link to another. Link words look very much like headlines, or highlighted words, and should deliver your primary message and key phrase.
Measure and Test.
Conventional wisdom tells us that the ideal keyword density is somewhere between 3-7%. To check this before you submit, try the free Keyword Density Analyzer: http://www.keyworddensity.com/. For a more accurate read on individual search engines, do a search under your key phrase, then take the top 3 returns, enter their URLs and try to match their percentages before you submit. Track your placement and adjust accordingly.This is the initial approach to optimization copywriting for theme indexing search engines. Keep it simple: start here.
Article written by Lee
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Using SSI For Auto Updates
We all realize the benefits of being able to save time when building sites so, I got into thinking, how can I make my sites look as if they are continually updated without the need to go in and update them manually? Enter the world of SSI.
SSI is actually a nifty little tool, not only can you include files from a central location but, you can include them at specific times of the day, days of the week or even months of the year, very handy indeed if you are building any type of site that needs updating periodically.
Once the main burst of work has been completed you can pretty much use the same files over and over again to help you out.
So onto the auto updating SSI, the following SSI coding will enable you to update a page or pages based on which day of the month it is. It will check the day the page has been accessed and display the relevant information again, this is a handy thing to have should your sponsor be running a promotion over several days, all you need to do is update a selection of SSI files and all of your sites are updated instantly.
<!–#config timefmt=”%d”–>
<!–#include virtual=”/yourdirectory/$DATE_LOCAL.txt”–>What you need to do is create 31 text files named 01.txt right the way through to 31.txt take the SSI call above and edit the location of the SSI files on your server, you may like to have a central folder named /SSI/ for this purpose so the location would be changed to /domain.com/SSI/$DATE_LOCAL.txt
I the 31 files you created you could have a table ad with eight of your sponsors links, an article in each one or even just a simple text link, anything that you may want to update can be included in these files.
As I mentioned above you can base the time, date and even month of rotation to whatever you like to alter how the files are rotated and ultimately viewed on the web you should change the %d in the timefmt field to one of the following:
%d : Day of the month requires 31 files named 01.txt to 31.txt
%w : Day of the week requires 7 files named 0.txt to 6.txt
%j : Day of the year requires 365 files named 001.txt to 365.txt
%u : The week of the year requires 52 files named 00.txt to 53.txt
%m : The month of the year requires 12 files named 01.txt to 12.txt
%H : Hour of the day requires 24 files named 00.txt to 23.txt
%M : Minute of the hour requires 60 files named 00.txt to 59.txtAs you can see from the above there really are no limitations to the uses of updating using SSI and, apart fro the relative ease of use and the time saved using them should one sponsor not be converting for you all you need to do to swap sponsors is alter your central set of SSI files and you have instantly changed sponsors over all of your sites.
Article written by Lee
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Adult Search Engine Optimization
Gone are the days when adult webmasters could Spam the search engines and get highly trafficked sites within a month of the search engines updating many of the search engines caught onto the adult industry very early on and started changing the way in which they indexed sites they went from meta tag optimized listings to theme indexing to almost every type of search engine optimization method in between.
Search Engine Optimization Techniques.
It would seem with the changing times of search engine optimization that there is no longer a single solitary way to get your adult sites listed highly in the search engines but rather a mixture of different adult seo methods being used on a single site ranging from increasing your pagerank, including relevant meta tags and page content to standard adult search engine optimization methods such as getting other popular websites linking to yours but with this comes a new challenge of its own webmasters need to get back to the basics to figure out what worked then and, what will work now so far as adult search engine optimization goes.Adult Search Engine Optimization Companies.
There are many companies currently online that can offer adult webmasters their search engine optimization services however, how do you choose an SEO company that will not only work for you but, is cost effective for your needs, the simple answer is to ask around, there are sites online presently that offer monthly memberships to gain access to their adult seo techniques in the form of articles and tutorials just as their are sites that offer no information whatsoever or, information that, while it worked three years ago, it no longer works in today’s adult seo marketplace. You need to ask for advice from customers who have used adult optimization companies in the past and see how their results improved as well as making sure that what you are actually purchasing is a service that doesn’t just guarantee you improved site rankings but actually guarantees you will see a profit from the money you spent on the optimization services.Adult SEO Breakdown.
Adult search engine optimization companies have only really become apparent in the adult industry over the last 6-12 months however, many well known and respected webmasters have been working on optimizing their adult sites for years and, whilst doing so, they have also achieved a vast knowledge base on how to optimize your adult sites for the search engines, again, ask around on the message forums to find the solution that will best suit your needs and budget and you wont go far wrong, the adult search engine optimization business model is one that in all actuality should change on a regular basis however, as mentioned above some companies are still using the same optimization methods they used three or four years ago, make sure you do your background checks before parting with any money and, most importantly, use the search engines to find their sites in search terms where, if they were any good at all, they would already have first page listings.Article written by Lee.
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Adding Images To Your Web Pages
The Basics
Adding Images To Your Web Pages – The Basics.
So you have just got into the online adult business but don’t know your ass from your elbow, you have the simplistic stuff relating to HTML down but, you want to find out how you can start adding banners and images to your pages here is a quick guide to help you on your way.
What Is An Image?
The answer, is, believe it or not simple, An image is a picture on a page of your website. There are however, many way to display images on your site from the size of it to the overall effect you want the image to have on your HTML page and from borders around the image and many other things.
However, I don’t want to blind you with information at the moment considering you need to actually know the basics of adding images before you can start using fancy styles and the likes.
Adding A Basic Image.
The HTML code to add an image on any HTML based page is a straight forward one however, before you can use this HTML tag you need to know where on your page you want the image to appear.Now that you have decided where you want your image to display you need to use the image tag, the HTML coding to place an image on your page should be IMG. Also, you will need to tell your page where you want the image to come from or, in other words, you need to tell it the source of the image you want to use the HTML tag to do this is SRC.
For example, lets say you have an image called porn.gif (you need to include the extension in your SRC coding) you would display this image on your page using the following code:
<IMG SRC=”porn.gif”>
Simple huh?
Well, actually, maybe not, for example, what do you put if the images you are linking to is NOT in the same location as the page you want it to appear on? That’s not a problem, all you need to do is use the FULL location of the image in your IMG HTML tag like this:
<IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif”>
You should now be able to include images on your pages without any problems.
Image Sizes.
Ok we can now include an image on our pages but, what if we want to make this image fit the feel of the rest of our page / site, how do you manipulate the graphic to ‘look’ right?There are a number of ways images can be manipulated for example, if you want the image to be 100 pixels wide by 100 pixels high you can add the WIDTH and the HEIGHT tag to your HTML coding like this:
<IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif” WIDTH=”100″ HEIGHT=”100″>
That will now resize your image into a square that is 100 pixels wide and high.
Now we have the image on our page in the right size we require what else can we do with it? Read on..
Borders + Colors.
In addition to placing the image and resizing the image on our pages we can also add a border and, a border color to the mage to make it stand out if needed for example:<IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif” WIDTH=”100″ HEIGHT=”100″ BORDER=”2″ BORDERCOLOR=”FF0000″>
As you can see we have now added the two tags ‘BORDER’ and ‘BORDERCOLOR’. The first ‘BORDER’ tag tells your HTML what size of border you want around your image and, this can be any size you want to make the image stand out on your page. The second ‘BORDERCOLOR’ tag tells your HTML code what color you want the border to be again, this can be any color you like to match the rest of your sites pages.
Linking An Image.
In addition to resizing, adding borders and colors we can also link our image to a specific URL (the most common form of this is with banner advertising) and, if you want to link your image to a URL you would use the following coding:<A HREF=”http://www.sponsorsurl.com”><IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif” BORDER=”2″ WIDTH=”100″ HEIGHT=”100″ BORDERCOLOR=”FF0000″>
This will create an image that is 100×100 pixels in size, with a border size of 2 pixels in the color FF0000 that is linked to http://www.sponsorsurl.com
Also, the order of the HTML tags we use is not important however, you should try to get used to arranging them in a certain way to make your work easier if it ever comes to editing your images.
Hopefully this has been of use to you and you can now see that adding banners and images to your sites isn’t as daunting as you first thought.
Article written by Lee.
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Building A Surfer Trap – Stage 5
So we hit stage 5 in this surfer trap tutorial.
It was brought to my attention this morning that we never added any ALT tags to our single FPA link so, in a change to the planned tutorial I am going to touch on this stage as, once the search engines get to our surfer traps this is going to be a crucial aspect on how highly we get ranked.
So what’s next?
Ok, now what you have to do is go back to manually editing the FPA’s (All of them!)
What you need to do is this…
Take the Multi-Site FPA first then, on ALL of the links that lead to the single site FPA’s you need to add the ALT tag. Again, in the same way as we did originally however, instead of using this tag on the images we will use this on the actual TEXT of the link so, for example the link which may be:
‘Voyeur Porn’ leading to the FPA you have for the Voyeur niche in the HTML coding will already look like this:
<a href=”mydomain.com”>Voyeur Porn</a>
Will get turned into:
<a href=”mydomain.com” ALT=”More Niche Related Keywords”>Voyeur Porn</a>
The reason we are going back over these links now and not earlier on is because you should hopefully have started to get a small amount of traffic from your counter impressions. These counters are virtually ALWAYS being crawled by the search engines due to the amount of people linking to them so, by optimizing our site at this stage, it makes it less work in getting into the search engines.
One other thing that we can now start to do (as we did a couple of stages back) is to create some more HTML pages with some tables on them, however, these will be HTML pages on their own with no images on them. Again however, you should make them 4 columns across and two rows high.
What you want to add into these tables are NICHE links so for example, taking the TEEN niche we would make eight links like:
Teen Sex
College Girls
Erotic Teens
Teen Porn
Etc
Etc
Etc
Etc…You should do this for each of the MAIN niches so you would have a table for Teen, Gay, Mature, Asian, Ebony, Fetish and one for General and again, these should link to the NICHE FPA’s that you already have created.
These tables will be used for another console on our surfer trap however, before we implement this console we are going to have some fun with them.
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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Viral Marketing – Catching The Marketing Bug
The term viral marketing is offensive. Call yourself a viral marketer and, people will often take two steps back. I know I would do. It is a sinister thing, the simple virus is fraught with doom, not quite dead yet not fully alive, it exists in that nether region somewhere between horror movies and disaster films.
That said however, you have to admire the skills of the viral marketer. They have a way of winning by sheer weight of numbers alone. They piggy back on everyone else and use their resources to grow their own. In the right circumstances the viral marketer can grow exponentially. A virus doesn’t have to mate, it just replicates itself again and, again and, again increasing its power, doubling its effect with each replication.
I
I I
I I I I
I I I I I I
I I I I I I I IIn a few short generations, a viral marketing population can boom as seen in the diagram above.
Viral marketing defined.
What does a virus have to do with viral marketing? Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for mass growth in the messages exposure and influence.
Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to hundreds, even thousands in a relatively short period of time.
Before the advent of the internet viral marketing was often referred to as ‘word of mouth’. However, for better or for worse, the term viral marketing has infected.
One classic example of this marketing technique is Hotmail.com one of the first free web based email services. Their strategy was simple.
Give away free email addresses and services.
Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out.
Watch people email their friends, colleagues and family.
Watch these same friends colleagues and family join up to their service.
See the message propelled to an ever increasing audience, all for free.In closing viral marketing is like watching the tiny ripples of a single pebble dropped pond, one small splash can create ever increasing circles which in turn could create ever increasing revenues.
Article Written By Lee
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Gay Online Dating – Offering Your Surfers An Alternative
Whilst adult websites remain the most highly concentrated method of making money for affiliate programs we have slowly started to see a trend over the past few months of affiliate programs adding a new kind of site to their regular lineup, online dating sites however, as webmasters working in the adult industry how can we successfully market these sites on our existing traffic base? This is what we are going to look at in this article.
Gay Online Dating – Some Facts And Figures.
As mentioned above many affiliate programs now offer some form of online dating site whether it is for gay men and women or for their straight counterparts there is very little mentioned about the target audience these types of site attract so, with that said lets look at some figures from a recent Nielsen report in respect of online dating sites.The online dating market is expected to grow to become an estimated $642 Million dollar industry by 2008.
On average, a user on a dating site will spend 1hour 45 minutes on the dating network itself.
The highest ranked age group (27.64%) for online dating sites is between the ages of 35 and 44 years old.
Men are more likely to a) Browse online dating profiles, b) Post a profile on a dating site, c) Respond to a dating profile and, d) Pay for access to a dating site than women.
So what does this mean for us marketing our sites to gay men and women well, straight off the bat you can see that there is going to be a considerable boom in the online dating world and, with that boom will come a rather satisfying chunk of change also, the age group that spends most time on a dating site as mentioned above is also within the demographical group for the ages of gay online surfers. In addition, males as mentioned, are also more likely to respond to, post, browse or, more importantly here, pay for access to an online dating site making this an ideal opportunity for those of us who actively promote a gay site lineup to start supplementing our income by offering our surfers access to dating sites too.
Gay Adult Dating – Affiliate Programs.
So now we have the figures where do we go to find a gay adult dating affiliate program? Well, there are a couple of options for us, there is the highly recognized outpersonals.com as well as the gay.com dating area however, surprisingly enough, the more ‘mainstream’ dating sites such as date.com, match.com and even adultfriendfinder.com all have sections within their sites for gay men and women as well as gay specific tour pages and promotional materials.Gay Online Dating – Where To Market Our Sponsor.
As with any type of new affiliate program the best way to start marketing them is to place a link on a less prominent page of your site so as to not send your high converting traffic off to a sponsor that may not work for you however, if you have a good network of sites then you might like to try adding your newly found dating affiliate program on your sites ‘exit’ links or even create a TGP gallery specifically for your dating sponsor utilizing softcore content. Also, one thing that I have personally found is that using text links always garners more clicks thru to the dating site than a regular button or banner so again, this may be something you would like to try. In essence though, first test your gay dating sponsor on a minimal traffic source to see what effect it has on your overall site then, once you have ran a test period you can adjust your marketing efforts appropriately.Gay Adult Dating – Recap.
As we have seen above the marketplace for online dating is going to grow to a multimillion dollar industry and, whilst we already know that gay surfers are more affluent and willing to spend money if we can match our sponsors to the type of site they are looking for, why not also offer them an alternative to porn? Many webmasters often overlook the basic principles of marketing that is to say, don’t just give a potential buyer one option but rather, give them several options, by utilizing dating affiliate programs on our sites we are not only giving the surfer an option but, are also giving us a potential opportunity to make more money.Article written by Le
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