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Fonts – Everything You Wanted To Know
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
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Search Engine Optimization, Is It Worth It?
One of the trendiest takes on Internet marketing these days seems to be the notion that securing top search engine rankings “no longer works.” Where it started, I have no idea.
But rarely does a week go by when I don’t see one or more Internet marketing “experts” claiming that search engine positioning is largely a waste of time and should not be a primary focus of Website owners.
Well, as the saying goes, “there are two sides to every story.”
But let’s not make this article about my side, or your side, or anyone else’s side. Let’s forget about my opinion and other “expert’s” opinions and stick to the indisputable facts, as reported by highly credible third party sources:
According to a Forrester Research Media Field Study, getting a loyal audience in the first place is best done by Search Engine Placement.
According to a GVU Users Survey, 84.8% of Internet users use Search Engines to find Websites.
In a study released by ActivMedia Research in September 1999, Search Engine Positioning was ranked as the #1 Website promotional method used by eCommerce sites.
And look what I just found in the April 2000 issue of Target Marketing Magazine.
“Top Ways Websites are Discovered”Banner ads: 1%
Targeted email: 1.2%
TV spots: 1.4%
“By accident”: 2.1%
Magazine ads: 4.4%
Word-of-mouth: 20%
Random Surfing: 20%
Search Engines: 46%
You’ve now seen the numbers and know that search engine promotion is very much alive and kicking. But let’s take this a step further. Let’s talk about the *quality* of prospects coming to your Website through search engines as opposed to other advertising mediums.
Every time your potential customers use the search engines, they qualify themselves as *hot prospects* by conducting searches on keywords that are directly related to your product or service. Their choice of keywords is proof that they have a genuine interest in what you offer. These people spend their valuable time exploring the search engines for your type of product or service.
Think About That.
They didn’t stumble upon one of your ads, or wander past a hyperlink to your site. And they didn’t get a banner ad thrown in their face. They made the *decision* to actively search the keywords that brought them to YOUR Website. And when they get there, they are ready and willing to do business with you. At the very least, they’re seriously considering it and, that’s the most powerful sales tool you can have!But merely getting your Website “indexed” or listed in the search engines is not enough. In order to get any significant traffic from the search engines, your Website must be listed within the top 30 search results (preferably the top 20).
Very rarely will anyone look beyond the first 30 results returned from a search. This makes perfect sense because the most relevant sites are always listed at the top. So if your prospect doesn’t find what they want within the first 20 to 30 listings, they’ll simply do a new search.
If your site falls anywhere below the 30th listing, you don’t stand a chance against anyone in the TOP-20. Hence, it should be your goal to achieve Top 20 positions.
How Do You Get Your Website Listed In The Top 20?
1) You can attempt to gain these Top 20 rankings yourself. However, this can easily become a full time job. (I think this is why so many marketers advise against focusing on search engine positioning.)2) You can hire a reputable company who can achieve AND maintain your Top 20 rankings for you (be sure they guarantee their service and have several verifiable clients that currently have multiple Top 20 rankings).
3) You can do nothing at all. But as you’ve seen from the third party statistics referenced above, search engine positioning is something you can’t afford to ignore.
Whatever choice you make, I hope that your eyes have been opened to the tremendous profit potential that exists with top search engine placement.
Article written by Lee
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What’s A CHMOD?
CHMOD is another name for setting the permissions of files on your server.
All UNIX based web servers understand the concept of permissions. these are broken down into three distinct areas.
Permissions for the person who OWNS the file.
Permissions for the group (all users are members of one or more groups).
Permissions for everyone else.Permissions are listed one of two ways either using numbers such as 755 or, using letters such as rwx-xr-x however they both mean the same thing.
The first number or first group of three letters stands for the permissions of the owner (IE 7 or rwx).
The second number or second group of letters stands for the permissions of the group (IE 5 or xr).
The third number or third group of letters stands for the permissions of everyone else (IE 5 or x).The way the system works is as follows:
1 = x = you are able to execute (run) this program.
2 = w = you are able to write to this file.
4 = r = you are able to read the contents of this file.so if you add it up rwx = 7.
So, in the example given above (755 or rwx-xr-x) the owner is allowed to read and write the file AND execute it.
The group is allowed to execute and write to the file.
Everyone else can execute the file.We hope this gives you a little more insight to how CHMOD’ing or, setting the permissions on your server can affect how files act.
Article written by Lee
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Building A Surfer Trap – Stage 2
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
AsianPlus, 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.
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10 Killer Advertising Sentences
10 Killer Advertising Sentences.
Tell your readers what they are probably thinking, feeling or doing as they read your ad copy. This strategy will usually trigger their own subconscious mind to bring out these feelings or actions.You can add these sentences into any ad copy. You may have to change one or two words so it relates more to the product or service you’re selling.
1. As you keep reading this ad copy, you are feeling more and more compelled to experience all the benefits of our product.
2. The more you understand just how valuable our product could be to your life, the less you think about delaying this important purchase.
3. After you read this short ad you will feel like your problems are almost completely solved, all you will have to do is order.
4. As you’re skimming through this, you’re beginning to think you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by trying out our product.
5. As you’re scanning over this ad copy, you are beginning to imagine using our product and enjoying all the benefits it brings.
6. The more you keep reading our ad the more you feel it would be a waste to let this opportunity slip by.
7. The more you review our ad the more you begin to find yourself getting very excited about our product and starting to feel the urge to buy now.
8. You don’t know it yet but, at the conclusion of this ad, you will feel driven to order and experience all the benefits of our product.
9. You don’t realize it yet but, in a few short minutes you’ll realize that you can’t put off this vital purchase and then you’ll be yanking out your credit card.
10. As every word you read travels from this ad to your brain, you start to understand just how much our product could benefit your life.
I hope this article has given you some insight as to how we, as webmasters, can actually ‘manipulate’ the surfer into doing what we want them to and, ultimately, into making us money.
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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Barter For Business – Cost Free Trading
Whether you are a designer, traffic broker, content provider or, web host the one thing that will connect your business in some form is that other webmasters at some point, will want the services and products that you offer. With this in mind, you are instantly at an advantage the reason for this advantage will become apparent in this brief article.
Bartering Goods And Services.
Bartering is a business practice that is as old as mankind itself, from the stone age right up to the present day individuals have been trading their goods and services for other goods and services of like value. This is where your advantage comes into play. Perhaps you are a web hosting company in need of design work or, perhaps you are a designer in need of traffic, either way, there will always be other webmaster who want the services you offer and, in return they will offer services that you require. This is the absolute fundamental basis of the barter system, trade one product or service for another in order to improve the way in which you do things.Finding A Company To Barter With.
The problem that so often arises when bartering is involved however is finding a vehicle for you to start the bartering process. More often than not you can find someone on a message forum that will be willing to barter your services however, this is not always the case and so, you should turn to email to instigate the initial contact.Asking For A Barter – How To.
First and foremost, before sending an email or making a post asking to barter your services or products you should compile a list of items that you need, this could be content, advertising, graphics work or even web hosting, either way, by having a clear concise list of what you are in need of and, more importantly, what you can offer in return prior to sending an email will help you out immensely.Now that you have your list of services you require and what you can offer in return it comes to the initial contact, the first thing you should do is explain what it is you are proposing as clearly as possible, explain why a barter with you will become a win/win situation for the both of you as well as making sure you drop a compliment or two about their company in the email. Also, you should prove why offering your services in exchange for theirs will be a fair trade, by doing all of this at the first point of contact you stand a much better chance of them accepting your trade proposal.
Bartering – Recap.
Bartering is a strong tool that can help you build your business from the very second you start it however, with this strong tool also comes the opportunity for it to become a strong negative when running your business. To much time concentrating on bartering services can take away from running your business to its fullest, rather than trying to barter services all the time, ensure you build a good capital up so you are able to invest in services to build your business. Either way, whether you choose to barter or not, this method has been proven in success for thousands of years, why not try it out for yourself?Article written by Lee.
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Organizing Your Hard Drive And Server
We have probably all done it at some point, we get in such a hurry to upload our new site that we have just spent the last 20 minutes building that we don’t think about maintaining the site at a future date or, worse still, we need to change a site we built 6-8 months ago and can not remember where we uploaded it to.
By organizing your server from day one of your steps into becoming a webmaster you will, inevitably, save yourselves a lot of time in the long term future of our business model.
Lets take a look at how we can accomplish this ‘organization’ though.
On your hard drive you need to have a ‘central’ location for all of your online files and folders, what better place to keep this than in a folder named ‘Online’ of course, this is just an example but it will son become apparent to you that this is probably the most logical folder name to use.
Now, within this folder you are also going to need to have a few sub folders, i would suggest using a folder for each of the domains that you own so for example, for your first domain, you would name it myfirstdomain.com, your second would be named myseconddomain.com etc.
Within these domain folders you will also need to have a selection of sub folders again, I would suggest names for these folders such as /html/, /scripts/, /articles/, you are now well on the way to organizing your server.
In addition to these sub folders you will also need to create sub folders for your images that you will be using on your sites, I would suggest using the names /banners/ and of course, /images/ for these two folders, you now know that the /banners/ folder contains all of the buttons and banners you will use on your sites and the /images/ folder contains all of the .jpg and .gifs you will use. Inside the /images/ folder, it might also be advisable to create a sub folder called /thumbnails/ which, you can store your thumb nailed pictures in if required.
One other advantage to organizing your folders and sites in this manner is that over time, it will assist you when it comes to dealing with hot linkers. Instead of having to find the paths to all of your individual image directory, you know instantly where you put them, without the need of logging onto your server.
Ok so you now have a semi-organized folder structure on your HD, so far we hopefully have a folder structure that looks somewhat like this:
C:/online/myfirstdomain.com/
C:/online/myfirstdomain.com/html/
C:/online/myfirstdomain.com/scripts/
C:/online/myfirstdomain.com/articles/C:/online/myfirstdomain.com/html/Banners/
C:/online/myfirstdomain.com/html/Images/
C:/online/myfirstdomain.com/scripts/Banners/
C:/online/myfirstdomain.com/scripts/Images/
C:/online/myfirstdomain.com/articles/Banners/
C:/online/myfirstdomain.com/articles/Images/So, hypothetically, if you created a article called ‘Article One’ you would find this in the following place on your HD:
C:/online/myfirstdomain.com/articles/articleone.html
See how easy that was to find on your hard drive?
Of course, on your server the folder structure will be no different so, your structure will be mirrored EXACTLY from your HD to your SERVER I.E.:
/usr/www/sites/myfirstdomain.com/articles/articleone.html
Not only will you make your server layout a lot easier to navigate but, it should, in theory, save you time when submitting your sites to the search engines, free for all’s etc as, in your head, you will already know the location to any single page.
Try this as an example…
You have created an article site called ‘Online Marketing’ on your third domain, where is it located?
That’s right, you will find it at http://www.mythirddomain.com/articles/onlinemarketing.html
How much time would you have usually spent logging into your server trying to find this page?
One other MAJOR advantage to keeping your server and HD structure the same is backing up your data now becomes easy as pie. you simply have to download your folders into the /online/ directory on your HD, then simply burn that entire directory to Cdrom.
Hopefully this article has given you some insight into how proper organization can be of use to you on your HD and on your server. If you are just starting out in the adult industry hopefully you will see that spending a little time to make a structuring system such as this can save you a lot of time long term.
One last question for you however, where would you find your article called ‘Marketing Shoes’ on your 56th domain name?
Article written by Lee
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Building A Surfer Trap – Stage 4
Building A Surfer Trap – Stage 4.
Here we go with stage 4 in our surfer trap.
We should now have a pretty basic surfer trap set up with consoles on all of the FPA’s all of the links on all of the FPA’s (Excluding the FPA graphics) should go to either another FPA or, the a POTD Program.
As mentioned in the last stage we are going to start building up some traffic to our surfer trap even though, we are not finished yet.
The first place where you can get some good free traffic would be from a toplist counter.
A good counter that I would recommend would be one of the following:
Outster http://www.outster.com (A Gay Specific Counter)
SexTracker http://www.sextracker.com (A General Adult Counter)You need to sign up to ONE of the above counters and only ONE.
Usually a counter will ask you for some details when signing up for them these will usually include:
Email Address.
Site Url
NameFor the email address, enter a REAL email.
For Your Name, Enter a name you wish to be known by to the counter owners.However, for the URL (The one to SEND traffic to FROM the counter) you should enter the index.html page of your surfer trap (The Multi-Site FPA).
You will now be given some coding once you complete the counter sign up process. This counter code you now need to place on EVERY page of your surfer trap.
Place the counter towards the bottom of your FPA’s (Including the Multi-Site FPA) this way, they will load after the rest of the graphics or at least, they should in theory.
Basically what you are doing by implementing this counter is as follows:
For each time the counter is displayed or clicked on your site (Depending on the counter you choose) you will earn one credit on the respective counters toplist.
Each credit you earn on the toplist will move you higher up the list.
Now, the higher up the list you get, the more visitors to the counter site that you are going to get visiting your surfer trap by clicking your link on the toplist.
In return, by clicking on your surfer trap link from the toplist, they are ‘registering’ another impression of your counter hence, getting you one more ‘credit’ on the counter toplist hence, moving you higher in the listings.
See where we are going with this?
The more clicks you get from the counter to your hub, the higher you will get on the toplist in the process earning you more and more traffic to filter through your surfer trap.
Adding these counter codes to your FPA’s as they stand at present should take you an hour or so to do so, for now this is where I will leave the traffic generation section of this tutorial.
Article written by Lee
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Do You Keep The Surfers Attention?
A new discovery says that people are born to respond to information a certain way. It also indicates that when we use our in-born or natural style to process information, we relax and feel good. The same research also indicates that 92% of thousands tested have changed that style to one they think works better. The change causes stress. So 92% of the viewers of your site are stressed. Because people often visit your site and click off almost instantly, you face the problem of getting their attention and keeping it long enough to persuade them to buy.
The fact is that people today have shortened attention spans. If you don’t get them in the first few seconds, you lose them! You can either build a terrific web site — or just end up with “click thrus.” Many site owners think it enhances a site to add animation or cool sounds. But the answer is to make your site appeal to the individual. Great sites of the future will know how to “individualize” their message.
Even though we all have to learn how to use a computer, high tech has not made people think the same way. You are not battling high technology; you are fighting to keep the attention of three (3) basic in-born styles. This may sound overwhelming, but it is really a simple matter of anticipating a viewer’s response before he or she gets to your site. Anticipation of responses makes or breaks your site.
So how do you anticipate how a viewer responds before it happens? It is really simple. You start by learning how you personally respond to information. Why is this the beginning place? It is because you and the way you react when receiving or giving out information influences everything about your site. Next you learn about the other ways people respond to information. It is easy to begin anticipating reactions as you get a whole new perspective on how people are born to process information. Things start to make sense to you and people are no longer such a mystery.
These conclusions are drawn after over 20 years of research. The research verifies that it is possible to appeal to most views rather than 2 – 4 in a thousand. So, when someone tells you how to write killer copy, or make your site jazzy with new technology, you are hearing from only one of the basic in-born styles. Take everything with a grain of salt until you evaluate it according to the simple guide that lets you appeal to ALL styles rather than only one.
Article written by Lee
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