Becoming A Webmaster – Communication Home Truths

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: General | Response: 0

Ok, we are ALL guilty of the things that are going to be mentioned in this article in one way or another, this article isn’t going to be a ‘see I told you so’ session rather an explanation of how and why certain things happen from time to time in the adult industry and, how they can be overcome.

Get ready, his may make you realize the way you have been managing your time this far has been completely and utterly wrong.

Message Boards.

A great tool to the webmaster, virtually every resource site owner and their friend has one but, there is one thing that you are not being told as often as you should about them, they ARE counter productive to YOUR work schedule. Think about it, how often do you access a discussion forum on a daily basis? Two, three, four times? maybe more? That time you could be using more effectively, coming up with new ideas, putting sites together, tweaking your traffic sources etc.

I would whole heartily agree that there IS a need for forums but, at the same time, what would happen if every time we went to post a message we left it and posted a selection of them in some time put aside for doing so? Another thing regarding message boards, they are there to benefit the webmaster, we can let our sponsors know when we have issues, we let other webmasters know when we have issues with them and, we also ask for help and advice, as I say a great tool to the webmaster but also one that should IMHO be used with a little modicum.

Instant Messaging Clients.

Again, another great global communications tool for webmasters, we get in touch with our sponsors, our peers and our friends and family but, how many of us spend countless hours a day conversing back and forth about things that, quite frankly, are of little or no importance? Who can honestly say they have time set aside each day to purely log onto your messaging client to just communicate with people? I know I am guilty of keeping my client on 24/7 and answering messages almost instantly whilst also bugging my peers for idle chit chat.

Email.

The Bain of every webmaster, speaking from personal experience, if I don’t check my email 50 times a day I check it 100, first thing I do in the morning, check my email, last thing I do before I go to bed? Check my email. I realize there is absolutely no need for me to do this but, non the less I do, its almost as if I have become addicted to checking my mail. I’m sorry to say it but, again, this is one thing that we probably couldn’t live without but, we can certainly cut down the time we check our email each day. If I never had to reply to an email again, I would be happy, as it is I get close to 200 business related emails on a daily basis and, lets be honest, I rarely reply to them the same week.

Sponsor Statistics.

Again, another GREAT tool that we are kindly given by our sponsors but, again, even this simple tool can become a Bain to the webmasters workload. How many times do you check your stats on a daily basis? Hell, even I will admit to checking them 3 times a day and, yes, I know even this is to many times. Some sponsors now have stats by email, again, this is better than logging into your stats each day but, it also adds tot he problem with email checking above. Basically, there is only a need to check your stats once a day if that. I used to check them every hour then, for whatever reason, I checked them once a week, then I slowly got back into the phase of checking them morning, noon and, night. The stats are still there every time I look so why do I bother? I guess that’s one of the mysteries of life but, I know I spend far to much time checking them and waiting to see an additional sign up or two on top of what I already have.

Anyway, I’m going to leave this article alone at this point, as, the above would seem to be the most popular methods of wasting time on a daily basis, we all know we waste our time and we all know that what we need to do is manage it better but, how and when, getting our time management sorted out takes time in itself.

Article written by Lee

Using Full Page Ad’s

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Promotion, Traffic | Response: 0

Full page ad’s can be used for more than just ‘adverts’ in fact, there is a wide and varied range of uses for them, below I have detailed some of the uses that I have tried in the past and from my experience, they seem to work well enough.
Creating A ‘Hub’ Site – By interlinking FPA’s together in a range of niches and, offering your surfers a money bar linking to other FPA’s in different niches, you can actually get some good rankings in the SE’s and, if you utilize banner exchanges or counters on your FPA ‘hub’ site you can also ensure you get a fair amount of additional traffic. One thing I like to do with my FPA hub is use it as the ‘exit’ page when a surfer leaves one of my sites. This ensures that I am getting optimum traffic for my time spent a) building sites and B) building my hub.

A lot of people I have spoken to about ‘hub’ sites simply forget about them once they have been built, personally, I do not see the point in doing this, if you build something like this why not send your exit, top list, counter, banner exchange traffic to the first page of your ‘hub’?

Doorway Pages.

FPA’s also make exceptional SE doorway pages, by optimizing your image names, meta tags and text on the individual FPA’s you are not only ensuring they WILL get ranked by the SE’s but, if you ‘hub’ them together as explained above you will also get some premium listings from them.

Filter Pages.

What I learnt to do early on is rather than send my surfers directly to the sponsors using the ‘standard’ linking codes is to send them first to an FPA with a money bar (or table ad) on it, this way, if they click the link in error and not realize that they are going to a pay site, you can give them an option, not only to use their ‘back’ button but also, to go to a different niche or, to continue into the sponsors tour. Now that you can link directly to a specific tour page on ARS sites, this method is a good way to give your surfers a ‘fresh’ tour front page.

PPC Listings.

An FPA is an ideal way to get sites listed in the PPC engines, not only do you show the surfers EXACTLY what is in the site they have just clicked on but, you also have the added option of being able to utilize blur consoles and exit consoles on them.

One other thing that I will mention, is that often, you will find that FPA’s that you have made yourself, no matter how ‘amateur’ looking they are will work better than the ‘pretty’ sponsor built FPA’s.

Hopefully, this article has given you some ideas on how you can better utilize FPA’s and not just use them in the same manner as every other adult site on the internet. If you have some good results from using FPA’s in this manner feel free to post about it on the ARSR Support forums and likewise, if you can think of any additional uses that have not been mentioned here let us know on the forums.

Article written by Lee

Direct Debit Payment Explained

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

Something that is very rarely spoken about as a means of payment is Direct Debit, this is a popular payment method across Europe and, especially in the United Kingdom. Direct Debit can offer your surfers a cost effective, easy way to pay for products and services from your site especially, if they have a ‘recurring’ cost associated with them.

Direct Debit – What Is It?

Direct Debit is quite possibly one of the simplest ways to collect funds from your surfers basically, a form is filled out by the surfer, where they enter their bank payment details, account number, name, sort code. Then, the form is signed either electronically or, in person by the customer, in this case, electronically by the surfer.

Once you have the direct form filled in by your surfer, you may continue to deduct funds from the bank account on the Direct Debit form until such a time whereas the surfer cancels the Direct Debit agreement.

At the present time, around 45% of the population in the UK currently choose to pay their utility bills online by Direct Debit and, around 75% of the total population in the UK have used Direct Debit at least once in addition Direct Debit is also an alternative method of payment in the vast majority of European countries and, it is also used (although not as much) in Australia.

Direct Debit – What Are The Cost?

Direct Debit payments cost around $0.5 for you as a merchant to process, however, this charge, rather than happening on the processors side of the transaction, happens when the Direct Debit request hits your banking account.

This in itself is god news after all, you now ensure that if a membership or product costs $35 per month, you will get virtually the full cost of that membership until such a time when the surfer cancels the direct debit at their bank.

Direct Debit – An Overview.

All in all, Direct Debit is probably one of the only payment solutions that allow you to collect the full price from your surfer at the point of sale and, furthermore, because the Direct Debit method of payment is trusted, this offers your surfers something that no other form of payment can – Peace of mind. There is however one major drawback to this method of payment, it is very hard to find processors that will allow you to utilize Direct Debit on your sites in fact, to date, the main use for the Direct Debit payment method has been payments of utility bills, Gas, Electricity, Water Supply, etc however, many financial institutes will let you pay for goods and services using Direct Debit on ‘credit’ terms which can vary from 1 day to a year interest free or, not as the case so often is.

I strongly feel that within the next 12 months this method of payment could become advantageous to the adult webmaster however, the current online payment processors need to be pushed in order for this to become as widespread as credit and debit card processing is. That said, there are a few online adult companies already accepting Direct Debit as a form of payment so, at least the ‘DD’ revolution has already started.

Article written by Lee

Making Money From Adult Webmaster Referrals

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: General | Response: 0

One method of income generation that is very rarely talked about in the industry is that of the webmaster, from the new webmasters to the adult industry right up to those who have been in the biz some time.

One of the easiest ways to generate ‘long term’ income is by referring webmasters to programs using your own linking (referral) codes.

However, this is for some a huge step out of their everyday site building even though it shouldn’t be.

This is what we will investigate in this article.

By now we should at least have a fair few sites online and getting surfer traffic but, how many of us get traffic from other webmasters and don’t even know about it?

The chances are, if you submit a site to ANYWHERE you will at least get one webmaster hit to it regardless of whether it is a webmaster of a TGP, Links List, Dmoz Editor etc these are all potential money makers for you.

One of the easiest ways to make money from other webmasters is to simply have a link on each and every site you build in text that says ‘webmasters’ this should be linked to a single page on your domain with a listing of various affiliate programs you use or can recommend.

Often placing a button or a banner on this page for each of the referral programs will work much better for you as the webmaster can actually see a little more information about the sponsor you are trying to make them join.

We all know of some of the big sponsors like ARS, Topbucks, Sic Cash etc etc but, what about the smaller programs that, perhaps not many webmasters know about, these would be the ideal types of sponsor to use on your webmaster page.

However, in addition to the affiliate programs you could also recommend hosting companies, content providers etc etc for example, the following companies have referral programs that you could use on this page:

Content Providers:

http://content.xphotography.com
http://matrixcontent.com
http://pixmasters.com

Hosting Providers:

http://webair.com

Message Forums:

http://arsresources.com/forum/
http://xnations.com

Traffic Generation:

http://adultbuttonexchange.com
http://pornclient.com

As you can see from the small list above, you could have more than one way for webmasters to make you some additional profits in the form of either, cold hard cash or, from some of the places, additional traffic to your sites.

Hopefully list brief article will have given you some ideas as to how you can make some additional money from webmasters visiting your site and, don’t forget, once you have the page linked on your site, it will, inevitably get into the search engines, so keyword the page up and you might start generating more webmaster traffic than you could imagine.

Article written by Lee.

What Is The Golden Ratio?

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Sponsors | Response: 0

Its a little known marketing technique that say that, as long as the longest side on any oblong is 1.6 times the length of the shortest side of the same oblong people will be more likely to prefer that shape over any other shape.

Why do they prefer this size? Because it occurs naturally and, subconsciously EVERY LIVING PERSON is attracted to this trait.

An example of this is as follows:

1) Stand Up
2) Measure the distance from your head to your feet and write this measurement down
3) Measure the distance from your Navel write this figure down.

The length of your ENTIRE body is 1.6 times longer than from your Navel to your feet!!

The same is also true for the length of your arm from shoulder to finger tip, then from elbow to finger tip.

The same is true for credit cards, the longest side is 1.6 times longer than than the shorter side!

Think about this for a second, banner ads, what shape are they? Oblong except, they don’t employ the ‘golden ratio’ what if, just what if, you used some banner ads that employed this ‘golden ratio’ who says banners have to be 468×60 in size?

Why not try making some ‘basic’ banners in paint or a decent graphics program utilizing the 1.6 rule and see if your click thru’s increase, personally, I will bet my earnings last month that they will.

On the same way of thinking towards marketing, table ads, money bars, etc, why not incorporate this idea into them also? It cant hurt and who knows it may just work.

the math to work this ‘golden ratio’ out is as follows for Image a above:

shortest side (60) x 1.6 = (90) Longest side

You don’t even need to be a genius to make your own ads using this method as the people at Microsoft supplied you with a calculator.

Article written by Lee

Barter For Business – Cost Free Trading

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: General | Response: 0

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.

Using Mainstream Sponsors On Adult Sites

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Sponsors | Response: 0

With the adult industry moving more and more into the mainstream web every week that passes as late i thought it would be an idea to show you guys how it is possible to use mainstream sponsor programs on your adult sites to build up a steady commission check even when a surfer going to your adult site doesnt actually buy anything from your adult sponsor.

Mainstream Sponsor Programs – The Choices.

The first thing that you need to do is to choose a mainstream sponsor that offers you a good choice of products / services to market to your surfers mainstream affiliate programs such as Click Bank, Commission Junction and, Amazon.com are all good places to find a selection of mainstream products and services you can offer your surfers in addition to the adult sponsors you currently use.

Mainstream Affiliate Programs – Setting Up.

The first thing that you need to do however in order to offer the mainstream affiliate program products to your surfers is to register a generic, non-adult domain name and, instantly get this domain setup on your current web server.

This will be the domain name you use for all correspondence between the mainstream affiliate networks and yourself in addition, this will also be the ONLY domain that you utilize the mainstream linking codes on.

Using Mainstream Sponsors – Getting Started.

The first thing that you need to do now you have your domain and mainstream affiliate networks sorted out is to build a couple of specific ‘doorway pages’ on your new generic domain name. This could include something like an article or product review or perhaps something as simple as an image of the product and a short description which you can use to lead the surfer into the mainstream affiliate programs site, either way, the idea is to have the root of the domain 100% free of adult content and utilize specific doorway pages which you can link to from your adult sites.

Generating Mainstream Traffic.

Onto the really easy part, your current free sites all have an enter and exit link correct? If so then you are already half way finished, all you now need to do is to ensure that EVERY SINGLE exit link goes to your mainstream doorway page for a specific product or group of products. Make sure that you do not link to the root of your generic domain at any time but only to specific doorways and, that each of these doorways has a link to the root domain.

By linking to your generic site in this way, you are enabling the surfer to choose whether they first of all, want to look at your adult site or, they want to leave the site and go to your mainstream affiliate network sponsor in the process giving you the potential of making a sale at the mainstream affiliate program.

Mainstream Sponsor Programs – An Overview.

By utilizing mainstream affiliate programs in this way you are not only potentially increasing your bottom lines but, you are also utilizing every single click that you get both to and from your site, to often webmasters send their exit links to places like disney.com or google.com and in doing so, they lose out on potential incomes, hopefully when you start marketing your exit links in the manner explained above you will begin to see the benefit of how both adult and, mainstream sponsors can be used in conjunction with each other in order to increase your bottom line profits.

Article written by Lee

Cascading Style Sheet Basics

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) have been around for a while now, and act as a complement to plain old HTML files.

Style sheets allow a developer to separate HTML code from formatting rules and styles. It seems like many HTML beginners’ under-estimate the power and flexibility of the style sheet. In this article, I’m going to describe what cascading style sheets are, their benefits, and two ways to implement them.

Cascading What’s?

They’re what chalk is to cheese, what ice-cream is to Jell-O they complement HTML and allow us to define the style (look and feel) for our entire site in just one file!

They get their name from the fact that each different style declaration can be “cascaded” under the one above it, forming a parent-child relationship between the styles.

They were quickly standardized, and both Internet Explorer and Netscape built their latest browser releases to match the CSS standard (or, to match it as closely as they could).

So, you’re still wondering what a style sheet is? A style sheet is a free-flowing document that can either be referenced by, or included into a HTML document (Kind of like using SSI to call a file but not, if that makes sense). Style sheets use blocks of formatted code to define styles for existing HTML elements, or new styles, called ‘classes’.

Style sheets can be used to change the height of some text, to change the background color of a page, to set the default border color of a table the list goes on and on. Put simply though, style sheets are used to set the formatting, color scheme and style of an HTML page.

Style sheets should really be used instead of the standard , < b >, < i > and < u > tags because:

One style sheet can be referenced from many pages, meaning that each file is kept to a minimum size and only requires only extra line to load the external style sheet file

If you ever need to change any part of your sites look/feel, it can be done quickly and only needs to be done in one place: the style sheet and furthermore, it is done globally.

With cascading style sheets, there are many page attributes that simply cannot be set without them: individual tags can have different background colors, borders, indents, shadows, etc.

Style sheets can either be inline (included as part of a HTML document), or, referenced externally (Contained in a separate file and referenced from the HTML document). Inline style sheets are contained wholly within a HTML document and will only change the look and layout of that HTML file.

Open your favorite text editor and enter the following code. Save the file as styles.html and open it in your browser:

Cascading Style Sheet Example.

h1
{
color: #636594;
font-family: Verdana;
size: 18pt;
}

This is one big H1 tag!

When you fire up your browser, you should see the text “This is one big H1 tag!” in a large, blue Verdana font face.

Let’s step through the style code step by step. Firstly, we have a pretty standard HTML header. The page starts with the tag followed by the tag. Next, we use a standard tag to set the title of the page we are working with.

Notice, though, that before the tag is closed, we have our tag, its contents, and then the closing tag.

h1
{
color: #636594;
font-family: Verdana;
size: 18pt;
}

When you add the style sheet code inline (as part of the HTML document), it must be bound by and tags respectively. Our example is working with the tag. We are changing three attributes of the ’s style: the text color (color), the font that any tags on the page will be displayed in (font-family), and lastly, the size of the font (size).

The code between the { and } are known as the attributes. Our sample code has three. Try changing the hexadecimal value of the color attribute to #A00808 and then save and refresh the page. You should see the same text, just colored red instead of blue.

An Example Of An External Style Sheet.

External style sheets are similar to internal style sheets, however, they are stripped of the and tags, and need to be referenced from another HTML file to be used.

Create a new file called “whatever.css” and enter the following code into it:

h1
{
color: #a00808;
font-family: Verdana;
size: 18pt
}

Next, create a HTML file and name it test.html. Enter the following code into test.html:

External Style Sheet Reference Example.

This is one big H1 tag!

As mentioned above, you can see that the actual code in whatever.css is exactly the same as it was in the inline example. In our HTML file, we simply place a tag in the section of our page. The rel=”stylesheet” attribute tells the browser that the link to the external file is a style sheet. The type=”text/css” attribute tells the browser that whatever.css is a text file containing CSS (cascading style sheet) declarations. Lastly, the href=”whatever.css” attribute tells the browser that the actual file we want to load is whatever.css.

Conclusion.

Well, there you have it, a quick look at style sheets and how to implement both an inline and external version. Checkout the links below if you’ve never worked with cascading style sheets before. You will be surprised at some of the things you can do with them!

Article written by Lee.

Newbie Webmasters – What Is A Newbie?

Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: General | Response: 0

Newbie Adult Webmasters are something that is good for the adult industry as a whole. As more Newbie Webmasters join the adult industry the way in which things are done change and, more importantly, the way in which the newbies themselves get taught changes however, just what is a ‘Newbie’ when it comes to the adult industry? This is what we will take a look at in this brief article.

Adult Webmaster Newbie – The Differences.

Irrespective of what anyone tells you, everyone in the adult industry is a newbie its just a matter of figuring out what they are a newbie at. For example, personally i have just taken to learning PHP as a programming tool, i have never coded anything before so, i am officially a php newbie. Likewise there are webmasters who have never built a TGP gallery, they are TGP newbies, in fact, every facet of the adult industry has its own newbies some of them have been around for days whilst others have been around for many years. Going by the ‘true’ meaning of the word however, a newbie is someone who knows very little about very little.

Message Board Newbies.

At some point or other every webmaster will want to start posting on some of the industry’s message forums, whether this is to make friends or ask advice you will instantly be branded a newbie from your first post, if this isn’t the case, make sure that you give a brief history about what you do in the adult industry and, more importantly, how long you have been doing it, don’t go overboard however, just give enough information to let others know what it is you are doing on the message forum.

Newbie Adult Webmasters – Overview.

The perception of newbie webmasters is that many of them do not know what they are doing however, just because someone hasn’t heard the name before on a specific message forum this doesn’t mean the webmaster is in fact a true ‘newbie’ we all need to ensure that when using the term newbie we don’t make ourselves look like newbies in the process.

Article written by Lee

Promoting Safe Sex In The Adult Industry

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: General | Response: 0

To most webmasters, the only thing that needs to be considered when building and marketing our websites is the layout of the site, the sponsors that they will be using and ultimately, the amount of money they will make from the site however, there is another side of the adult industry that we should also be considering, the moral side.

Safe Sex – Morally Speaking.

We all have our own morals and work ethics however, I think that sometimes most of us push these to the back lines a little when it comes to making a buck which is understandable however, we are in a position of power somewhat over a lot of things that many of us do not even think about, we know that for the vast amount of industry webmasters there are more than 90% of them will actively report child porn sites when they find them however, how much further does this reach and, how much harm could you potentially be doing long term?

Promoting Safe Sex – The Issues At Hand.

Step out of your webmaster persona for a short while now while you read this next paragraph and actually think about what is being said, all of us in our communities realize that sexually transmitted diseases and especially HIV/Aids is on the increase although maybe not reported as much the one thing that you can be certain about whether you go to a gym, a bar or a doctors is that we are constantly shown images promoting safe sex, ask yourself how you feel about that and, furthermore, ask yourself if you would have unprotected sex with someone if the answer to this question is yes then the rest of this article will be of no consequence to you however, if the answer is no, then you may like to read on.

Safe Sex Online.

Now we have ascertained how you feel about safe sex, why do you not promote this more often on your sites and galleries? We are giving surfers a product that will, in all likelihood fulfill their fantasy and, quite possibly, be mimicked by them at some point in the future. With this in mind I would suggest the following to you if I may. When purchasing content, try to purchase photosets where the models are practicing safe sex, if a surfer see’s a famous porn star using a condom then, ultimately, they themselves may use a condom when they next have sex. When building a site or gallery why not promote a condom affiliate program on the site, either through the use of a text link or a button or banner, not only are you being responsible but, you are also still going to make money should your surfer buy something from your condom sponsor. A good sponsor for Condoms is http://www.condomexpress.com.

Promoting Safe Sex – The Bigger Picture.

As mentioned in the opening paragraph of this article, more often than not, webmasters choose to go with bottom line profits over their morals however, thankfully this isn’t always the case. Whether you decide to start promoting safe sex as a method to promote condom sales or, whether you choose to promote safe sex as it is a moral that you believe in, one thing alone will stand true, by showing the surfer that sex can be safe and fun, we are definitely doing our part towards making sure that not every webmaster is seen as morel-less.

Article written by Lee