• Typography Know How

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Writing | Response: 0

    Our web sites are nothing without content, and most content is comprised of simple text. Many web designers neglect to pay attention to their typography, and it shows. Proper typography varies based on where the text is and what purpose it serves. Although there are no rules etched in stone, there are a few general techniques that should be followed. Although some of these tips may seem elementary, many of them are not followed.

    Headings.

    Clearly, headings should be larger, by 1 or 2 font sizes, than your body text. You may consider bold, but be cognizant of the letter width. Arial Black, for example, may create letters too fat for your taste. When using colors, be sure the colors contrast well with the background color of your site. Black and dark gray do not contrast well, while black and white (or light gray) work quite well. Sometimes, even a simple color change can create useful headings.

    Also be sure to cascade your headings. A main heading, for example, would be larger than subheadings. This effect creates a sense of emphasis and flow to the information.

    Do not italicize your headings. Italics are meant to underscore particular content, but since the text is a heading and of larger size anyway, italics are redundant and often make the text difficult to read.

    Fonts.

    The default is Times New Roman, which works fine, but many think it is boring. I have experimented with Arial, Georgia and Verdana, and have found Verdana the most readable font face available. This is a personal preference, but fonts should be restricted to the above four to ensure compatibility between all users of your web site. If your user’s browser does not support your font choice, their browser will revert to its default. Since browsers have increased support for CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, whenever possible, use CSS to define your fonts, rather than HTML’s <font> tag. Also, be sure to keep your font sizes large enough for visitors of all ages and eyesight’s.

    Stress Styles.

    Avoid using all capital letters within your text, as it makes it difficult to read and implies you are shouting at the reader.

    To stress words within your body text, decide on a format and stick with it. Some choose bold, while others choose italics or underline. My personal favorite is italics, but any of these can work well. Be careful when using underline, however, as it can be mistaken for a link. In addition, do not overuse these stress styles.

    Entire body text should not be bold. Bold, like italics, is used to emphasis words, and usually an entire body of copy should speak for itself in regularly styled text. I like to use CSS to space my body text out a little to increase readability.

    Article written by Lee

  • Mirroring Adult Sites – Stage One.

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

    In this next series of tutorials I will be exploring the benefits of utilizing your existing content to build more sites in the least amount of time possible, in fact, after you have completed the steps in this tutorial series you should be able to build over 20 types of site within 5 minutes using a single set of 50 pictures.

    So, onto the start of our tutorial.

    Stage one in this tutorial is something we have ALL done before, so what you need to do is this…

    Build a 50 pic free site, this is using a lot more content than a ‘standard’ free site however, what we are actually going to be making is a set of AVS sites and several TGP galleries, along with some SE pages and also some links list mirrored pages using this set of 50 images by building just ONE site! Sounds impossible? It isn’t… read on….

    Your site should have the following on it:

    1) Warning Page (index.html)
    2) Menu Page (menu.html)
    3) Gallery Pages (5 galleries of ten pictures called gallery1.html, gallery2.html etc)
    4) HTML Large image pages x 50 (picpage1.html, picpage2.html, etc.)
    5) Multi Site FPA (fpa.html)

    Now lets break these individual pages down into sets of instructions for each:

    Warning Page.

    This should have your standard warning text placed on it, along with an enter AND an exit link. The ‘enter’ link should link to your Multi Site FPA and the ‘exit’ link should go to a program such as the ARS Discreet Browser tour page.

    Menu Page.

    This should be a page containing an odd sized banner, links to your 5 gallery pages, plus text links at the bottom of the page ideally, these text links should be in the same style as the niche tables we created for the surfer trap except they should only contain 4 cells instead of 8. These links should go to a different ‘niche’ as the one you are building your current site for and, link to the existing FPA’s of your surfer trap.

    Gallery Pages.

    On your gallery pages, ALL of the thumbnails should be linked to the relevant HTML page with a text link at the top and at the bottom of the HTML page (No Banners are to be used on the gallery pages!) Also, the file names of the images should be pic1.jpg, pic2.jpg, etc for the full sized images and, thumb1.jpg, thumb2.jpg etc for the thumb nailed images. your images MUST be named this way!!

    Multi Site FPA.

    This should link to the individual FPA’s that you should already have on your server if you followed the surfer trap tutorial series (If you did not create this surfer trap the tutorials can be found at this link) as well as linking to the Single Site FPA’s this should also have a ‘no thank you’ link which goes to your Menu Page.

    Images.

    You need to have 50 images, you also need to have 50 thumbnails for the content you will be using on this site. I usually select my content by the niche I am building for, rename the images using The Rename then, once renamed I use Thumbnailer from Smaller Animal to create the thumbnails for each of the renamed images. This will give you 50 full sized pictures with 50 thumbnails named respectively for the larger image.

    They are the basics, now onto the good stuff…

    Once you have created these pages you need to create some folders on your Hard Drive which will be the SAME structure you will have on your server. This folder structure should look somewhat like this once you have saved each of the pages we have just created into their respective sub folders:

    FreeSite/index.html
    FreeSite/AVS/
    FreeSite/FPA/fpa.html
    FreeSite/Galleries/gallery1.html, gallery2.html, gallery3.html, etc, etc.
    FreeSite/Images/pic1.jpg, etc.
    FreeSite/Images/Thumbs/thumb1.jpg, etc.
    FreeSite/LinkList/
    FreeSite/Menu/menu.html
    FreeSite/PicPage/picpage1.html, picpage2.html, etc.
    FreeSite/Recips/
    FreeSite/Engine/
    FreeSite/TGP/

    This will give you 5 folders with HTML pages in them, one folder with the full sized images, one with thumbnails in it and five empty folders.

    At this point we will end the first stage in this tutorial as this should take you a couple of hours to complete.

    Article written by Le

  • Converting Chinese Adult Traffic – The Niche Paysites That Work

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

    Converting Chinese Adult Traffic – The Niche Paysites That Work.

    To date we have looked at most of the types of country specific traffic available to webmasters every day and, more importantly, which niches they convert on. In this article we will finish up our look at the foreign traffic and how profitable it can be with the final main country on the net – China.

    Chinese Adult Surfers – Quick Analysis.

    As with Japanese traffic, most webmasters seem to think that Chinese speaking adult surfers are pretty worthless when it comes to buying porn memberships and this is true – If you do not know what niches to offer your Chinese surfers that said, we found some interesting results given the three (3) month test we had on our Chinese traffic and, the results we observed might just make you change your mind about sending the Chinese surfers you get to your sites off to traffic trades.

    Chinese Porn Surfers – The Niches.

    Because we knew relatively little about the Chinese traffic we had on our sites we decided that, rather send it to a specific language hub site we would send it to our main hub page and, allow the Chinese surfers to filter themselves through to the sites that interested them on their own, to our surprise, only 40% of the traffic we knew was Chinese chose to filter itself to a Chinese specific language hub site, the remainder, choosing to go through our main English hub site.

    Fetish.

    Across all of the niches we offered the surfers, the Fetish niche was the one that converted most consistently month after month and, more than converted, actually retained members once they had signed up to the paysites.

    Gay.

    Unlike the traffic we had that was Japanese a lot of the Chinese traffic that hit our site decided to visit the Gay niche paysites we had to offer them and, there was less than 10% difference between the Fetish and Gay signups we observed month after month. Quite a difference when compared to surfers from Japan and, a pleasant one at that.

    Amateur.

    Specifically teen amateur niche sites or, at least sites that had amateur looking teen modes on the tours also did well on our Chinese traffic however, the conversion ratios for the recurring programs didn’t do as well as what we had expected with most memberships being cancelled within 2 months. Non the less, the Chinese surfers did join and most of them re-billed in excess of 1 month before leaving the site.

    Teen.

    As mentioned above, it would appear that Chinese porn surfers are looking for teen niches again though, the teen paysites we used featured amateur looking teens prominently on the pages so whether this was a choice on the surfers part to join the teen sites or, because we only offered amateur looking teen paysites isn’t known.

    Asian.

    Unlike Japanese surfers, Chinese surfers also joined the Asian niches that were offered up to them and, surprisingly enough, we noticed more signups to English Asian sites than localized Chinese pay sites.

    Chinese Adult Surfers – The Results.

    Overall we were very impressed with how the Chinese traffic we had flowing through our sites both acted and, converted on the sites that we offered them to join, especially since the Japanese traffic we had didn’t seem to like the gay niche sites yet Chinese traffic worked wonderfully on exactly the same gay niche pay sites.

    Across the board I think a revisit of Chinese traffic is needed with more options on our part when it comes to the teen and amateur niches especially just to see if the results we experienced thus far were unique or, are truly indicative of how the Chinese surfer navigates and joins pay sites.

    Article written by Lee

  • Hard Hitting – In Your Face – This Is Reality

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: General | Response: 0

    It started on terrestrial television some 5 years ago with the first episode of Big Brother, then it went from a house of captive stars to talent scouts looking to create a new pop sensation. From there we saw a variety of television series with ‘reality’ as the main focus.

    It only follows suit that this popular marketing machine should hit the adult internet; and, it hit in a major way. And now, almost every major adult sponsor has one common type of site in their portfolio – a reality site.

    However, one thing that many in the adult industry are not aware of is that the ‘reality’ type adult sites have been around for longer than what most realize. Before the live sex up-sells and chat rooms, Brandon Marley, a gay website owner, has had a site catering towards the gay reality niche – the premise of his site, as a gay male on the prowl, he goes to the street looking for straight guys to use as content; once he has them in the studio, he lets them work their magic and, inevitably, gets down to business, sometimes persuading the guys to have sex, sometimes, grossing them out whilst they up and flee the studio, all of this is caught on tape and published online.

    Next is the web cam phenomenon. Reality at it’s utmost, watching live guys talk, strip, jerk off and discuss the most intimate desires in a chat room. The gay market flocks to reality like a moth to a flame. And surprisingly, much of the focus of ‘reality’ has been pointed to the straight adult audience, with a limited amount of gay orientated reality sites being launched.

    That is until now, more and more programs and providers are coming up with reality to the gay market. The key to the on going success and growth of these sites is the, always allusive, original idea.

    From M.I.L.F To D.I.L.F.

    One of the popular types of reality site we saw explode was MILF (Moms I Like To Fuck). Spurred not only by the popular teenage movie American Pie, this type of reality hits a spot of desire within some surfers to days gone by where they had a secret crush on someone’s mom. Well if it’s possible that a straight man could have a crush on a mom, what about the young gay man having a crush on a dad?

    “Well, if the straight markets can have MILF, why can’t the gay arena have DILF?’ asks Gary-Alan, owner of the new gay reality site DILF.com from http://www.studmoney.com.

    The gay markets have been yelling they are looking for something different to sell. So rather than taking DILF to the straight adult reality markets DILF takes it’s unique flavor and gears it toward to gay market.

    ‘Reality sells! It is one of the freshest and highest converting niches yet. We see this from great sites like Chi Chi La Rue and Brandon Marley – two of my most favorite sites. I have been listening to webmaster for years. They are looking for something different not just in a reality sense but something that features older guys, not your typical young buff stud. I think when the idea to finally launch StudMoney came up, the first thing that was mentioned was DILF. So we’ve brought the two aspects together and given the gay market webmasters the opportunity to promote a reality site that will convert and, convert well on their traffic.” Alan tells us.

    So What Are Reality Sites?

    Reality sites cater to a specific target audience, those people who don’t want to see the usual porn stars that are found on almost every other site on the web. Instead, these sites offer exclusive real-life models that could next door neighbor’s sister, mother or, in the case of DILF, their father. Reality opens your site offerings, giving you the opportunity to retain surfers with frequent updates and story lines that will peak their interests. You get to set the standard of your entire site to promote not only the content but a familiarity with your core performers.

    Starting Reality Site.

    So how do you go about setting up a reality niche pay site? In all honesty, there is more involved than putting up a cookie-cutter site online.

    First you need a concept. With as many niches available today you need something fresh. Mind you there are ideas to mimic but new sells. Once the ideas are down then you need to find content. This isn’t as easy as buying a standard CD, it has to be fresh and new so finding a good photographer to shoot exclusive custom content. Even if you decide you will shoot your own content, you will need to be sure to schedule fresh new shoots frequently. This is important with any type of site, but none more than reality.

    Once you have the content aspect figured out, you need to work on designing your site. You may think that’s easy, but the regular cookie-cutter designs, that are so often seen across multiple sites, simply do not cut it. You should seriously give your site design as much consideration as you do you concept for the site itself. A unique approach to the overall layout and design the site and it the member’s area has an equal impact on your members retention rates as having unique content.

    Reality Niche – Overview.

    What it all comes down to is reality is here, and here to stay. From market to market, niche to niche the one thing we have seen on and offline is that audiences around the world are looking to satisfy the voyeur, the deviant or the simple curiosity that lurks just beneath the skin. So the next time your driving past the mini-mart or peak inside the dressing room at the department store, remember you’re not only in public places – you are probably walking through the next set for an upcoming reality site.

    Article written by Lee

  • What Happens Your Current Processor Bails?

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Billing Solutions | Response: 0

    Whilst this is perhaps one of the hardest challenges that a webmaster of a paysite can face in the industry it isn’t as bad as they may seem at first after all, there are literally hundreds of processors to choose from ranging from credit card processors, dialer option, micro-sms billing and a wide range of other systems.

    The first and foremost thing you should do however when confronted with this challenge is to try and contact your existing processor and find out what will happen to funds that you are owed, will you be paid (in most cases you will).

    The next thing you should do is to evaluate your business billing methods are you offering multiple processors already? If so, simply switch to your backup processor and find a new processor to use as a backup.

    However, what happens if you only have a single processor on your site what can you do then?

    First things first, you need to make sure you choose a reliable payment processor to start off with companies such as iBill, CCBill, CCBill EU, Netbilling and Jettis are all good processors used by a multitude of sponsors and content providers amongst the other companies.

    You will most likely find that these companies are more than happy to work with you in the integration of their system onto your site.

    Whilst you are awaiting your setup of your new processor to ensure you do not lose any sales it may be an idea to divert your join page off to a dialer or, perhaps have some form of ‘internal’ billing mechanism set up so that, when you do change over processors you can seamlessly transition your member base across.

    Now, presuming that you already have an existing member base what do you do then? How easy or hard is it going to be to transfer them across to your new processor? Well based on the situation some were confronted with when Visa introduced the new fees to process adult payments this can vary from webmaster to webmaster again, as before, the easiest solution for you would be to contact the company you will be using as your primary processor and see what they can suggest.

    Hopefully, you will have access to a database of your existing members email addresses this will also come in handy to ensure you can keep recurring those members. Send out an email stating that you will be changing your processor and, ask that, if they would like to remain a member of your site that they update their billing information, it might also be prudent to offer them some sort of recompense for having them change processors perhaps something along the lines of 2 weeks low cost or even free access tot he site, this is sure to mean that most of, if not all of your existing members will input their billing information again enabling you to rebill them until they cancel their membership at our new processor.

    Of course nothing is infallible so the best advice i can offer you is to work closely with your new found processor and make sure that the transition period happens as quickly and, as smoothly as possible.

    Hopefully this article will be of some use to those who do get affected by their processors going out of business and, will also serve as a warning to have multiple processors in place for those who have not or will not have the need to change your billing company.

    Article written by Lee

  • How To Claim Back European V.A.T

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Billing Solutions, General | Response: 0

    With the recent legislations requiring US businesses to charge Value Added Tax to EU Member state customers for purchases of digital product / image downloads there are many new questions going around enquiring how companies and small business owners can claim the VAT back this is what we will look at in this brief article – The basics of claiming back your VAT from Europe.

    What Is V.A.T?

    Value Added Tax (VAT) is a consumption tax levied on goods and services in many countries across the globe. Over the last decade, legislation in the tax systems of Europe, Canada, Japan and South Korea allow for a refund for the majority of non resident entities, worldwide to a refund of VAT in most instances however, especially in the business world, registration must be achieved prior to claiming back your VAT and, preferably before the purchase of Vat able goods takes place.

    Who Is Entitled To A VAT Refund?

    Most businesses will be entitled to receive a VAT refund however, as the laws vary from country to country, the best way for you as a business owner to find out the laws as they affect you is to contact your company accountant who, should be knowledgable enough to inform you of what you need to claim back from each of the EU member states where V.A.T has been charged.

    What Products Can I Claim V.A.T Refunds For?

    Most typically value added tax recoverable expenses can take form as one or more of the following items:

    Business Property Expenses.
    Transportation Costs.
    Inter-company Billing.
    Marketing + Promotional Services.
    Exhibitions, Conferences + Business Meetings.
    Importation V.A.T.
    Digital Downloads (Business Related).

    How Do I Register For V.A.T?

    When a company inside the domestic US conducts transactions in the EU countries where value added tax registrations may be required the registration for the VAT refund should be done prior to the transaction taking place however, on occasions which vary from individual EU member states this registration process may be done retroactively. By becoming registered to claim your VAT back the company is legally required to d the following:

    1) Register for the VAT in the EU country where the transaction takes place.
    2) Account for VAT on all invoices or receipts issued to your European customers.
    3) Deduct the V.A.T incurred from your European suppliers of goods or services.

    Value Added Tax – An Overview.

    When all is said and done, other than the obvious need to increase your pricing structure for certain global markets registering for and, charging value added tax actually has a great deal of benefits. You now get to claim addition refunds from any expenses that you incur from the day to day running of your business, your promotional activities become vat’able so you can now increase the level of global marketing you do and, claim full value back from the EU member states (where applicable). basically, registering in the EU member state will enable your business to grow on a global scale and, at the same time, afford you the luxury of being able to market your goods and services to a greater client base at virtually no cost to yourself this is a good thing especially when you take a look at the growth that international internet usage is making each month.

    Article written by Lee

  • Penis Enlargement Pills

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Sponsors | Response: 0

    Well if you’re a guy who had to shower after gym class, or woman with a boring husband or a gay man looking for Mr. Right we all know SIZE Matters!

    Do I a have your attention? Good! Now, let’s get on with it!

    Like many people, I have always experimented with secondary or even tertiary sponsors for my free sites. In my case most of them do not only pertain to a site membership. I have found success with things like, Viagra online; security programs to remove you net affairs; sex toys and videos; and, today’s’ latest a greatest is penis enlargement remedies.

    I’m finding some astonishing success with these herbal penis enlargement products. I’m SELLING it not USING it! LOL. Some of us don’t need it <wink>. But I’m finding lots of my surfers do need it, or at least want it.

    A couple of months ago after seeing an influx of email to Gay Wide Webmasters for hints on selling penis enlargement medications, I decided it would only benefit my member and myself to experiment. I used a sponsor on Gay Wide Webmasters, Albion Medical who boasted great returns and high payouts. Well what I was in store for was BETTER than I expected. By the way, here’s a little secret; I do sign up for my own sponsors but under my real name, so unless they really look hard, they do not know it’s me. I don’t go boasting with out proper backup = )

    Amid my salesmanship attempts for surfers to “Sign Up!” I sprinkled my secondary ads for Penis Growth among the pics with lines like “Become Mr. Right – turn your dick into a DONG” or “Make your manhood massive… Even straight guys will look!” And to my surprise, it worked wonders. I know there is an attitude in the gay male community to seek perfection physical most of all. And it definitely came clearer to me with the number of sales.

    It’s funny how many different ways you can approach selling things that will enhance a person. To me, telling me I need something to make me better pisses me off. Don’t try selling something to me by TELLING ME I’m not right. Or what I have is wrong. I’m definitely a person who marches to the beat of his own drum. And then there are people who NEED to be told they are not everything society expects them to be. That they are doing or have something wrong but it can be fix and you have the solution.

    Like the examples above, “Become Mr. Right…” I took the effect that I was letting the surfer make up his own mind. Does he have an issue? It was entirely up to him to decide. Let me tell you, it works well on gay traffic. Let the gay surfer decide yes or no.

    NOW, I tried a different approach and gauged the success/failure. I popped in text links like “Aren’t you upset by how small your penis is?” “Remember the guys making fun of you in the showers after gym?” or “Are you sick that you don’t fill up you the front of your briefs?” Well let me tell you the number of Emails I rec’d was “enlarged”! For the most part I was getting mail from men who felt I was exploiting them, even making fun of them. I made them feel inadequate and they lost their hard-on. My site was meant to entertain not disdain them. All I could say was WOW! I didn’t expect that kind of response. I will tell you that I was very happy that I didn’t do it across all of my sites and only a few. So I moved everything back to my “Let him decide” campaigns.

    The affect of the sales on the “insulting ads” was evident. According to my traffic program it was apparent that these ads were NOT getting clicks. Instead the surfers clicked on my email link to voice their disgust.

    The bottom line of all this? With the proper motivation, the right marketing approach, surfers enjoy the seclusion of buying penis enlargement aids online. It is a great addition to your web site income among other avenues.

    Article written by Gary-Alan

  • Redirecting To A Different Page Using JavaScrip

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Scripts | Response: 0

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

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

    Example:

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

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

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

    Place this JavaScript code in your <body> tag

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

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

    Article written by Lee

  • Building A Surfer Trap – Stage 4

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

    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
    Name

    For 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

  • Records Keeping Compliance Checklist for European Content Providers

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: 2257 | Response: 0

    More and more European Content Producers are choosing to do business with American. webmasters. While citizens of foreign countries cannot be compelled to comply with United States’ restrictions on the creation of adult material, business realities are forcing foreign content producers to consider voluntary compliance. American webmasters, painfully cognizant of the increasing need to focus on legal compliance, consistently reject foreign content that is not produced in compliance with 18 U.S.C. §2257.  Non-compliant content not only increases the risk that an underage model could slip through, but failure to strictly comply is itself a federal felony, exposing those involved to a 2-year prison term.  Given the substantial compliance motivations involved, foreign content producers are expected to adopt the U.S. requirements as the global standard for creation of sexually explicit imagery.  The following constitutes a bare minimum checklist for compliance with the requirements of Section 2257:

    1) Assume that all erotic images require Section 2257 compliance:  While the law only applies to actual “sexually explicit activity,” it is ill-advised for the content producer or the webmaster to attempt to guess which images require compliance, and which can be safely distributed without compliance. Since child pornography does not require the depiction of sexual activity to meet the federal definition, such distinctions can be risky business. And, in any event, a release given by a minor normally is not enforceable.

    2) Obtain a signed compliance form created by a competent attorney:  Section 2257 requires that certain records be created containing certain information. The right form is the best place to start.

    3) Obtain, at a minimum, the following information from each model:

    a.     Date Of Birth

    b.     Legal Name

    c.     All other names, aliases, nick names, stage names, and maiden names

    d.     Social Security Number

    e.     Copy of Government-Issued Identification containing a picture; preferably 2 pieces of identification. Note the requirement that the producer actually examine the identification document, not just the copies.

    f.       Address, phone and other contact information

    g.      The model’s signature

    4) Require the model to execute a binding model release prepared by a competent attorney.  The images are only as legal as the model release backing them up.  If all relevant rights have not been transferred and released by a valid model release, both the webmaster and the content producer are subject to claims once the content is displayed on a Web site.

    5) Maintain the records so that they are cross-indexed by the models’ legal names and stage names and by web page. Alternatively, provide copies of all records to the webmaster if the webmaster will act as Records Custodian. You need to discuss the particulars of this with an attorney, because each circumstance may be unique.

    6) The Records Custodian should maintain an off-site backup copy of the records: What happens if there is a fire or a government seizure?

    7) Include a conspicuous records custodian disclosure on all CD’s / DVD’s containing erotic imagery, including the full legal name of the custodian and physical address where the records are kept.  The disclosure should also certify that all models are over the age of 18, and include the date when the content was first created, published or republished.  Placement of the disclosure on the product should be reviewed by an attorney.

    Only through strict compliance with the mandates of Section 2257 will American webmasters fully embrace content produced overseas.  The right compliance procedure will open profitable markets for foreign content producers, and result in a wider variety of adult content for both webmasters and consumers.

    Article written by Lawrence Walters

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