The Ins and Outs of European Domain Name Registration

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Domain Names | Response: 0

A domain name is more than just your online adult business address; it’s a crucial aspect of your online adult business. It is closely linked to the way a surfer thinks of and, more importantly, remembers your site. In many European countries, domain names that end with a country code carry more weight with the Internet-surfing public than dot.com domain names. So, if you want to have of a chance of selling to a foreign adult surfer in a European country you might consider registering a European country code top-level domain name (ccTLD) for your site.

Obtaining a ccTLD could potentially:

• Increase your chance of getting listed on a national search engine. Many national search engines require a company to be local, however that may be defined, to be listed with them.
• Get you a higher ranking with a local search engine.
• Make your business more accessible to customers and vendors in a specific country.
• Make your business seem more local and thus help overcome any fear local customers might have of buying from a non-European outfit.

What Is a ccTLD, Anyway?

Generic top-level domains (TLDs) are not linked to any geographic area. They include the well-known and familiar .com, .org, and .net domain names. In contrast to these generic TLDs, there are ccTLDs: Each country and territory in the world has its own TLD. They include, for example, .at for Austria, .be for Belgium, and so on.

Essentially the domain name policies regulate who can register what type of a domain. In principle, nearly anyone can register a generic TLD.

It is important to keep in mind that you might lose a domain name you recently registered in Europe if another company can prove in court that the name is rightfully theirs. If the court decides that the plaintiff has a right to it, you will lose that domain name however, I am assuming that nobody reading this is going to be considering registering ccTLD’s for the purpose of cyber squatting.

Each country or region has its own rules, policies, and regulations about who can register a ccTLD, and how. Common restrictions include the requirement to be a local registered company or to have registered the company and/or company name as a national trademark in a specific country. However, some countries are less strict about who can register. As always, it depends on the country and its particular rules.

The table below is meant to give you easy access to the information you will need when you are ready to register a European domain name for your site.

Here is an explanation of the categories used in the domain registration table:

• Country: Name of the country you might want to obtain a domain name for your business in.
• Name of domain: The ccTLD (a two-letter abbreviation).
• Must be local: This can mean that your business presence, your company’s physical presence, or your trademarks must be local.
• More domains possible: Some countries limit the number of domains that you can register.
• Same name as owner: Some countries require that the registered name be the same name as the owner’s company name or trademark.
• Signed contract: Some domain name registration agencies demand a written, signed declaration or contract to be sent in. If in doubt, read up on specific rules relative to the specific domain name registrars you will be using.

Now you can see the possibilities available in respect of registering more than just dot.com addresses perhaps you might like to find a country you would want to gain some extra traffic from and see about registering a ccTLD and developing it.

Also, you could improve your chances of gaining additional traffic to your new ccTLD domain by having some country specific language on that domain, again, how your site comes across to the surfer is just as important than the domain and, there are plenty of Adult Site Translation companies out there who can assist you with this part of the ccTLD development.

There are, of course, other ways to gain additional foreign surfers other than just registering a ccTLD for example, on European Webmasters we have a domain name registration section that will allow you to translate specific text in order to gain type in foreign traffic on dot.com TLDs perhaps, if you don’t want to or, cant register a ccTLD in the country of your choice you might like to take this approach at gaining additional foreign traffic to your sites.

I hope this article has given you a little insight into the varieties of domain names available in and around Europe and that you might just register a domain and see for yourself how profitable the European markets are.

Article written by Lee

SMS Marketing To MMS Marketing – WAP Billing Solutions

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

MMS Billing (Multimedia Message Billing) is going to be one of the next huge leaps forward for the online industry’s, with more and more surfers firing up their cell phones to visit our sites and properties we need to start looking at the ways in which we can ultimately bill these types of customer and this is where MMS Billing comes into play.

MMS Billing – What Is It?

MMS Billing is a method of charging surfers using cell phones for access to your sites and services. Much like how the SMS Billing model works however, rather than solely billing for text or images, you can utilize MMS Billing on a wide range of rich media applications including movies, sound and, flash applications.

MMS Billing – What Are The Costs?

The costs for MMS Billing can vary greatly depending on your MMS Billing provider however, as a rough guideline, you can expect to pay anywhere between $0.10 and $0.50 per purchase through the MMS Billing method.

MMS Billing – An Overview.

MMS Billing is still in its infancy across the internet however, with more and more sites becoming WAP enabled and, more and more surfers turning their cell phones on to browse our websites this billing model will soon grow to what the current SMS Billing model is today.

Article written by Lee

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

Choosing The Right Sponsor For Your Site

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Sponsors | Response: 0

Affiliate programs (also frequently called referral or associate programs) have grown today to become one of the most popular ways for you to earn an income from your web site’s traffic. Most affiliate programs are designed to allow you to simply set up and begin earning commissions on visitors and sales you refer. However, the quality of the programs, and the results you will see, very greatly from program to program, making it important to choose wisely which are best for you and your site. It is the purpose of this article to help sort through many of the programs, and offer assistance in determining what to look for.

My personal experience with affiliate programs goes back over a year and a half, pretty long in Internet terms. Over this period, I researched many of the affiliate programs available on the Internet and, tried to best determine what works best. From my experiences, here are several of the top factors you should take into consideration:

1- Stability of the company and program

What I found to be the one of highest priorities for most webmasters is the stability of the affiliate program, and the company. This should be one of your top considerations when evaluating programs. Is the company stable and financially sound? Do they offer assistance with promoting the opportunity? And, do they pay in a timely fashion? Often, webmasters have been lured in by offers of high commissions, only to find out they will never see a paycheck, despite referring hundreds, or even hundreds of thousands, of visitors.

2- Synergies with your site

I am a big proponent of this. All too often, I see sites sign up for every affiliate program they can, figuring if they make a few bucks on each, that they will be profitable. For a select few, this may very well work. However, for most sites it will not, and many cases you will turn off your audience because of the ‘over-commercialization’ of your site. As you are considering the various affiliate programs available, be sure to consider what exactly your audience, your visitors, might be interested in clicking on, and eventually buying.

For example, if your site caters to a general audience, then perhaps general affiliate programs such as Adult Revenue Service, will be effective. Or perhaps Evidence Eliminator, which allows you to sell privacy / security software. If your site only caters to a specific niche, programs such as Adult Revenue Service should be excellent money-makers as they have a wide and varied selection of adult sites which you may promote. The key is to not just think of the affiliate program as a way for you to make some easy money, but rather an extension of your web site, a service you offer your visitors to help them find the products or services they are interested in, at good prices, and with a company they can trust.

3- Commission Tracking

An important aspect to consider is whether or not the affiliate program offers some way for you to track your sales, and even the number of visitors you refer. There are several ways this can be accomplished, such as real-time, online reports showing you sales and your commissions. Or perhaps sales can be tracked through a simple email each time you receive a new customer. This can be very important for allowing you to test and evaluate the effectiveness of the program, make comparisons with other programs or advertising opportunities, and give you piece of mind that you are receiving what is fairly do.

4- Opportunity for Repeat Sales

As any business person knows, a business can not generally survive on one-time purchases. Instead you have to find ways to not only attract new customers, but also keep the ones you have. This is also very true with affiliate programs. One of the largest complaints many webmasters have had with sponsors is that they refer a customer once, see their $35 commission, but in the process the customer bookmarked the Sponsors tour page. The next time the surfer is interested in buying a membership, they return to the sponsors site through the bookmark, and the webmaster never sees another penny.

Several programs have tried to alleviate this. Programs such as Adult Revenue Service avoid this problem by offering services (Daily Updated Pictures, Email Newsletter) which customers, once signed up for, use month after month. This allows them to pay residual commissions for as long as the surfer maintains their free membership to the site or, alternately, keeps returning to the page. This helps turn average programs into exceptional opportunities, because you can earn for months, perhaps even years, on referrals you made in your first, and subsequent months.

Other Factors

In summary, it is important to look at all of these main factors and several others, including the commission rates they pay (I didn’t discuss this because they are generally easily comparable), the frequency of payment checks (they generally range from weekly to quarterly), and/or the minimum dollar value you must accumulate before receiving a check (they range from nothing to $50). A couple of other important factors: be VERY wary of any program the requires a payment or ‘membership fee’ for you to join or act as an affiliate. And, be sure to check what method they use to track sales themselves. Programs that require the visitor to remember your name, or your site’s name, and enter it in when ordering, will result in many lost commissions.

Article written by Lee.

Doorway Pages

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Traffic, WebDesign | Response: 0

A doorway page is built to rank high for a particular keyword or search phrase. When your doorway page is visited by the searcher it simply has a “click me” button which links to your web site. The major search engines accept these pages as long as the end result does provide what the searcher is looking for. If you are discovered to be using doorway pages for irrelevant keywords you can expect to have your entire domain unlisted. For instance, one of our doorway pages is built to rank high for the search term -Adult Content—which is quite acceptable because when the searcher gets here he can find links to adult content providers from our site. If however, he couldn’t find links to adult content then we would risk the wrath of the all powerful search engines.

Once you have selected your keywords and phrases (about 50 would be the normal) you need to build a doorway page for each keyword and ideally, for each major search engine. All the major engines look for different keyword density in the text, title and description so you need to do some research by doing a search using your chosen phrase or keyword and studying the top 10 results at each engine (if you can spot them, study high ranking doorway pages).

Make notes of how many times the phrase or keyword is used in the title, description and body text. Is it used in header text etc? Once you have built a picture of what your doorway page should look like you can build it using your favorite html editor. Once you have done one for a particular engine the other 50 or so pages can be done by simply replacing keywords for keywords. After you have done a page for each keyword move on to the next search engine. Remember that your body text is not important but make each page unique or it may be considered spamming. It is your keyword or phrase density that you are attempting to get right. The page, when visited by a person, will be recognized for what it is, simply a link to the real content so don’t worry too much about what it looks like. When a search engine spider visits the page it is only interested in counting the keyword density in your body text.

As you have probably worked out there is quite a lot of work involved. 50 phrases or keywords=50 pages X the top 8 search engines= 400 pages. In reality though, you are only creating 8 doorways, 1 page for each search engine. For all the other pages you simply have to substitute the keyword for the next and alter the text around so as not to finish with 50 identical pages. OK, nearly finished but the next step is crucial if your doorways are to work.

Put all your pages in a folder on your server e.g. Mydomain/doorways/. Then create 2 more pages that have a link and a small description to each of your doorways (200 on each) and to each other. These are called corridor pages because the spider travels down them, visiting each page linked off them. Call these 2 pages index and home and place them in the folder with your doorway pages. Then place links to these two pages from your main index page so that a spider will be able to find them and list all your doorways. Submit only your index page and your 2 corridor pages. Do not submit your doorways to the engines.

Ideally, and if you can afford it, you should set up a new domain and host for your doorways. This isn’t essential but it does have benefits. These are: If you do get over zealous with your doorways and an engine does ban you for spamdexing at least your real site will be safe. Engines rank sites higher if they have lots of links to them from other domains. You can put your most important keywords in your new domain name, which will increase the ranking of the doorway pages containing those keywords.

Now all you have to do is wait for the engines to update their databases. We have had the best results with Google.

Article written by Lee

What’s In A Niche?

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: General | Response: 0

Many webmasters realize what the different ‘fetishes’ the surfers have are but, how many of us realize these are actually niches and, how many of realize that these niches can be broken down into smaller sub niches of the particular fetish the surfer is looking for?

Lets take an example of say, the ‘lesbian’ niche.

Of course we all know what the lesbian niche entails, two women getting naked with each other right? Wrong.

There is much more to it than that, for example, obviously lesbian sites appeal to, well, they appeal to guys who want to fantasize about getting it on with two women but, what about the female surfers? Sure, some women probably join lesbian paysites too.

That’s one ‘sub-niche’ of lesbian right there, this can be broken down even further though for examples, Ebony Lesbians, Teenage Lesbians, Mature Lesbians, the list goes on and on and on.

So how do we choose a niche to market in adult?

The first and foremost thing you should try when choosing ‘your’ niche is to try something that either excites you or, appeals to you in a non sexual manner, if you are into Lesbian Midgets getting it on, then start off with that for your niche.

Likewise, if guys getting down and dirty is the thing that floats your boat, choose that as your niche, you should already know enough about the niche you choose primarily to be able to sell something to the surfer. If it excites you, it will more than likely excite a surfer and result in a sale.

Of course, the above statement isn’t always true, I know plenty of straight webmasters who market the gay niche VERY successfully, they have found a method that works for them and developed their business from there it probably wasn’t easy at the start but, nothing easy will make you the ‘real’ money that there is in adult.

You need to experiment, constantly adapt and change the way you do business, if you try something and it doesn’t work, ask yourself why, what could you have changed that might have made a difference and, instead of changing it on the first site you built, change it on your next one, that way, even though it may not work at this moment in time, you will no doubt find it will work at a later date just as you will find that something that works well for you now may not work at all later on in your business career.

Once you have mastered a general niche you should then think about trying some of the sub niches that are available to you, there is more to teen than than just cute teenage girls lying naked on a bed and getting screwed rotten by some guy. just as you saw there was more to the lesbian niche above.

Take your sponsors tour for ideas, often you will notice things that spark some though and, once you have that spark, you should ensure it develops into a flame.

Even something as simple as a tattoo on a model or a piercing can be the tart of a whole new niche, look at the things that other webmasters may not be, just because there isn’t a proliferation of teenage pierced lesbian sites, doesn’t mean that someone doesn’t want to join one and, who knows, that weird sexual fetish you build a site for now may become popular in 6 months time.

Basically, what I am trying to say is that as adult webmasters we need to investigate all aspects of the niche we want to or, currently do market, just because a surfer comes to the front page of a lesbian site, doesn’t mean that they wont also be interested in an ebony site, its all down to how we market our sponsors paysites as webmasters.

Article written by Lee

Displaying Special Characters On Your HTML Pag

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

In order to display certain characters within your HTML pages, you must use a special code. The codes below display the HTML code and the character when displayed on your web page. To use any of the characters displayed within the chart, copy & paste the HTML code to the left of the character you would like to use.

Whilst the above list is by no means complete, it should contain the most useful characters and codes for you to build your sites using the special characters with ease.

Article written by Lee

Converting Chinese Adult Traffic – The Niche Paysites That Work

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

The Lost Traffic Source – Picture Posts

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Pic Posts | Response: 0

Back in the day, pic posts were all the rage, taking less time for webmasters to build for and, less time maintaining however, in recent times we seldom hear of these traffic sources as more and more webmasters turn to the TGP’s in an effort to get traffic ‘quantity’ over ‘quality’ my personal feelings are that the pic posts of the past will soon start to make a comeback.

The Basics.

So, we know the history behind the Pic Post but what about the dynamics? How exactly do they work? That’s easy, you take an image, give it a HTML page and add the recip to the PP (Pic Post) you are submitting the page / image too along with a banner leading to your site. At this time, it would be prudent to add that, if you will be submitting to PP’s on a regular basis, you might also like to add the url to your main domain on the image in the lower right or left hand corner.

One other thing to take into consideration when using PP’s is that softcore is often better. With the readily available hardcore content on TGP’s the chances are, that the surfer has decided to visit the PP because there is not as much widely available hardcore content.

Cost Balance.

In addition to the relatively minimal amount of work required to create pages for the PP’s there are several other factors that make them much better then TGP’s and Free Sites the main one is that bandwidth usage is relatively low for a start, not to mention the fact that you can knock out hundreds / thousands of PP pages a day compared to the tens / hundreds of TGP and Free Sites.

Also, when looking at cost, the one factor people often forget is the submission time and, unlike the TGP model of traffic the vast majority of PP’s will actually encourage or, in some instances, prefer automated submissions, this means that you can target hundreds of PP’s in less time than it takes to submit a TGP or Free Site.

Marketing Basics.

Of course, as with any type of site that we build as webmasters, the main reason that surfers will visit our sponsors is the marketing ‘spin’ we give them, this is where the use of Alt Tags and Text can become extremely useful, bearing in mind, the surfer can already see the ‘larger picture’ on your PP page by utilizing Alt Tags and other SEO methods you can actually entice the surfer to click through to your sponsor and, get some very good rankings in the search engines at the same time.

Housekeeping.

Now you have started to use Picture Posts, as with any form of traffic you need to ensure you keep ‘accurate’ records of who is and who isn’t accepting your pages along with details stats on the amount of traffic each PP sends you and, you ultimately send off to your sponsors site.

Adjust everything you can. trial and error plays a MAJOR part in using PP’s just because you use softcore images one day and get 1000 hits to the page you created, that doesn’t mean that by using hardcore images the next day you will receive more or, less traffic, also being niche specific, unlike with the TGP game can have its disadvantages, use images that appear at first glance, to be ‘generalized’ then, over time adjust your advertising methods to reflect the niche of surfer you are targeting.

In addition to keeping records of the pages you create for the picture posts, you should also be sure to keep a record of where else you have used them, just because you are using them for the PP’s specifically, this doesn’t mean that you can not interlink these pages together and get some traffic of your own to them, does it?

Hopefully this article has given you some more insight into the world of the Picture Post and, if you try an experiment with this little known source of quality traffic, I feel certain you will be pleasantly surprised with the results you see.

Article written by Lee

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