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JavaScript – Redirecting Foreign Surfers
At some point or another we are no doubt going to have the need to redirect some or all of our surfers based on the language they speak, this snippet of JavaScript when placed on your page will enable you to do just that without the need for .php or other more complex scripting.
Here is the coding that you need to place between your <head> and </head> tags:
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE=”JavaScript1.2″>
<!– Begin
if (navigator.appName == ‘Netscape’)
var language = navigator.language;
else
var language = navigator.browserLanguage;if (language.indexOf(‘en’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘english.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘nl’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘dutch.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘fr’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘french.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘de’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘german.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘ja’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘japanese.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘it’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘italian.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘pt’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘portuguese.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘es’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘Spanish.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘sv’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘swedish.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘zh’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘chinese.shtml';
else
document.location.href = ‘english.shtml';
// End –>
</script>To add additional language redirects to this JavaScript all you need to do is duplicate the:
else if (language.indexOf(‘zh’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘chinese.shtml';
Section of the coding changing the (‘zh’) language code to that of the language you wish to redirect.
Article written by Lee
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Using Basic Server Side Includes (SSI)
Server side includes are what their name sounds like. A way to include the contents of another file into your current web page BEFORE the web page gets sent off to the surfer. Not only does this include contents of a static file but you can also include the results of a CGI program and on some web servers, you can even have it display the current date and time.
Now, many web hosts do not normally have server side includes turned on. You will have to ask your host if they have SSI turned on and if they do, what is the file name extension for SSI. By default, SSI files have an .shtml extension.
Sometimes, you can turn SSI on yourself. If you host doesn’t have SSI turned on for you already, you can try adding the following two lines to your .htaccess file. Then create a file with the .shtml extension, include a SSI command and see if it works.
AddType text/html .shtml
AddHandler server-parsed .shtmlWhen you use SSI commands, you place them exactly in the location within your web page where you want the output of the SSI command to appear when you finally browse the page. If you have SSI, then you can use the following command to include a file. When you include a file, you can either give it a path name to the file or you can give a URL to the file. I’ll list both here.
<!–#include file=”/some/path/above/my/web/to/my/header.html” –>
This is an example of how to include a file based on its path name. Now,
here’s the same file put included with its URL.<!–#include virtual=”/to/my/header.html” –>
And this is an example of how to use a URL. With a URL however, it cannot be a complete URL such as http://www.somesite.com/somefile.html. It has to be within your current website. You can also use the URL method to run a CGI script! Here’s an example of that:
<!–#include virtual=”/cgi-bin/somescript.cgi?myfirstarg=1amp;mysecondarg=2″
–>As you can see, we can even pass arguments to the CGI script just as if you typed it into your browser! There is also another way of running a CGI script but this is not as widely used any more and you should use the #include virtual method instead. Here is the same example so that you will know what it means when you see it.
<!-exec cgi=”/cgi-bin/somescript.cgi?myfirstarg=1amp;mysecondarg=2″ –>
As I mentioned earlier, you can use SSI to display the current time and date. Here’s how:
<!-echo “$DATE_LOCAL” –>
This will display the current date and time. SSI is usually used when you want to have a standard header or footer on each page. It’s also used for displaying rotating banners or page counters. As you see above, you can also use it to display the current date and time or the date when the page was last modified.
SSI has also been used for cloaking and some tracking software uses SSI to track each incoming hit to the web page. If you would like more information about SSI, go to
http://www.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_include.html. This is the definitive guide on SSI on the Apache web server.Most other web servers that use SSI also follow these conventions.
Article written by Lee
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Cross Selling – Offer Your Surfers An Alternative
As webmasters our primary goal is to make money from our surfers in order to be successful at business, however, in order to make money from our surfers we need to constantly change the way in which we sell products and services to them.
One such method of selling products to surfers is by using cross selling or, up selling as it is sometimes referred to in the industry. So what exactly is cross selling and, more importantly, what benefit does it give your business model? This is what we shall take a look at in this article.
Cross Selling – The Basics.
Cross selling is a method used by marketers to make the maximum amount of money out of a single sales lead at any given time regardless of whether you are working online or, in a bricks and mortar store cross selling is something that almost every sales person does from offering an extended warranty on a new television purchase to offering an affiliate product from inside your sites secure area.Cross Selling – How To.
One of the easiest ways to initiate the cross selling process is simple to provide your site visitors with a selection of links going to a multitude of individual products, this may be a dating site, a software package or, something else, either way, by placing a selection of links on your main selling pages you have already initiated the cross selling process and, by doing so, have already increased your chance at making a sale.Cross Selling – New Customers.
One method of cross selling that is becoming more and more prevalent on the internet is that of cross selling or, up-selling new customers immediately after they have made a purchase, this in itself is not a bad thing after all, you know they have money to spend so, why not use this fact to garner additional sales.One good way of offering cross sales to new customers is to give the an option on the actual shopping cart page immediately when they hit it, this may be for a site that complements the product they are making a purchase to already or, something completely different either way, by having this already on the order page waiting for your customer you might just make additional money from them.
Cross Selling – Old Customers.
So what happens when a customer leaves your site after making a purchase? Well there are two routes you can take with thee customers, one, is to leave them alone and hope that they return to buy from your site again whilst, the other, my personal preference, is to send these customers a regular follow up letter offering them a product they may be interested in based on their initial purchase after all, if they purchased a copy of Adobe Photoshop, the chances are they may also be interested in something such as Paint Shop Pro, why not give the surfer this as an option by placing a link in the follow up letter taking them to that specific area on your site.Cross Selling – Overview.
When all is said and done, cross selling whether you agree with it or not is a very powerful sales tool, not only can it increase the revenue potentials from new clients but, can also enable any business a method of gaining further incomes from older customers, the one thing that you should all be doing on a regular basis is ensuring that you have a good cross selling strategy in place, regardless of whether you actually are selling memberships to sites, warranties on televisions or, mouse pads for new pc owners.Article written by Lee
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Traffic Filtering – Country Specific Redirects
To some, actually marketing to foreign surfers is a waste of time rather than a business practice. Unfortunately, they are missing out on additional revenue. We are already beginning to see some of the major sponsors in the adult industry embracing these foreign markets and, not just by utilizing dialers.
However, filtering your traffic base is often the hardest part of this money making equation. That is where the following piece of PHP coding can come in handy.
PHP FILTERING CODE
<?
$user_lan = $HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE;if($user_lan==’de’) {
## German
$redir_url = “http://www.germanlanguagepageurl.com”;} elseif($user_lan==’fr’) {
## French
$redir_url = “http://www.frenchlanguagepageurl.com”;} elseif($user_lan==’it’) {
## Italian
$redir_url = “http://www.italianlanguagepageurl.com”;} elseif($user_lan==’es’) {
## Spain
$redir_url = “http://www.spanishlanguagepageurl.com”;## US traffic or Rest of world not defined above
} else {
$redir_url = “http://www.yourmainpageurl.com”;}
header(“Location: $redir_url”);
exit;?>
So, we know that the above piece of coding can redirect surfers based on their country of origin however, in order for you to maximize this to its full potential you will need to know the country specific codes (Also called ISO 639 codes) for each of the main browser languages. Some of these are as follows.
da | Danish
de | German
en | English
es | Spanish
fi | Finnish
fr | French
it | Italian
jp | JapaneseThe problem you now have is finding where to send your filtered country specific surfers to. Of course, there is always the dialer option however, this is not going to be as lucrative to your wallet as what most people will have you believe.
In fact, I very rarely use a dialer on my foreign traffic instead, I tend to send them to a language specific tour page from one of the big sponsors and, if they do not sign up to that sponsors site, this is the point where I throw a dialer at them and, if the dialer still doesn’t make any money off the surfer I then recycle the surfer for a fresh one through a toplist or banner exchange heavy page.
In doing this I find it is often more productive than ‘regular’ English speaking traffic as, if you give the surfer something they are looking for, they will be more inclined to buy.
Hopefully this article has given you some insight into filtering and using your foreign traffic as oppose to just sending them off to a dialer program.
Article written by Lee
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Robots.txt – Control The Robots That Crawl Your Sites
By writing a structured text file you can indicate to robots that certain parts of your server are off-limits to some or all robots. It is best explained with an example:
# robots.txt file for general use on web servers.
User-agent: webcrawler
Disallow:User-agent: googlebot
Disallow: /User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /logs
The first line, starting with ‘#’, specifies a comment.The first paragraph specifies that the robot called ‘webcrawler’ has nothing disallowed: it may go anywhere.
The second paragraph indicates that the robot called ‘googlebot’ has all relative URLs starting with ‘/’ disallowed. Because all relative URL’s on a server start with ‘/’, this means the entire site is closed off.
The third paragraph indicates that all other robots should not visit URLs starting with /cgi-bin or /log. Note the ‘*’ is a special token, meaning “any other User-agent”; you cannot use wildcard patterns or regular expressions in either User-agent or Disallow lines.
Two common errors:
Wildcards are not supported: instead of ‘Disallow: /tmp/*’ just say ‘Disallow: /tmp’.
You shouldn’t put more than one path on a Disallow line (this may change in a future version of the spec)
Ultimately, without the use of robots.txt files on your servers/domains, you are risking a variety of potential problems including, unauthorized access to your cgi directory, unauthorized viewing of your site stats, possible spamming of the search engines by accidental crawling of doorway pages.One distinct advantage however of having a robots.txt file on your server is that, quite simply, you will be able to tell when and where your site has been indexed or potentially indexed as, all robots will automatically call for the robots.txt file BEFORE any other page on your server so, as long as you keep an eye open for any calls of this file, you can see who is knocking at your site for indexing purposes.
Below is a robots.txt example that you can copy and paste into a text document to use on your own server:
<!–Start Copy Below This Line–>
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /logs<!–End Copy Above This Line–>
The above will allow all spiders to crawl all of your site except the subdirectory’s ‘cgi-bin’ and ‘logs’ which, may be altered to suit any subdirectory’s you do not wish the spiders to crawl on your server.
Article written by Lee
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How To Choose A Legal Content Provider
How To Choose A Legal Content Provider.
If you spend anytime in this business no matter in what capacity, you are going to hear about how important using legal content is. Legal content is content that you have specific permission or license to use on your sites. Permission can come from your sponsor who offers you free content to promote their site, as long as certain criteria is followed. It can come from the producer of the images if he/she is a friend of yours, though I would still advise you obtain a license from them anyway. And the third way of course is to purchase content from one of the myriad of content providers out there. It is the third way I am going to discuss in this article.
Being the intelligent Webmaster you are, you have decided to purchase some legal, fresh content for your sites. Makes no difference what type of site(s) you run, free sites, TGP’s, pay sites etc. fresh, unique content is always a plus. So you begin your search for the content you are in need of. You are going to find that in most all cases you are going to find a LOT of content providers that offer what you are after. You can go to any resource board and get a list of providers that covers page after page, some more detailed in information than others. Some names you will have heard of before and some you will have never heard of, so how do you choose? Here are some of the basic questions you should ask yourself:
Do they carry the type of content I need. Seems simple enough, but if you are looking for Asian lesbian images, no sense wasting your time on a provider that specializes in Gay content. The provider’s site should be laid out that you can easily assess what they offer with the first 2 pages of their site.
What am I using the content for? This becomes very important when selecting what image packages you buy. If you are going to use the content for free sites or TGP’s where the main goal is to get them off your site and on to your sponsor, then quality is not going to be as important as price. If you plan to utilize them in a pay situation, such as AVS or members site, quality should be your first consideration.
What price am I willing to pay? By knowing what you are using the images for, you have a fair idea of what they are worth to you. Do not be fooled into thinking that buying a MEGA disc for .10 an image is a killer deal. It could be, but if the image CD only contains 100 images that you can utilize and the rest are trash, what is the point? Much better to pay a higher price per image to get exactly the kind and quality you want. Shop around of course; per image prices can vary greatly per provider.
How do I know these guys are legit? Excellent question! J More than ever these days you cannot swing a cat and not hit 100 content providers. Every college guy and his brother with a digital camera and a girlfriend think they can make a quick buck in the Adult market. I could very easily list over a dozen so called content providers right now, that have come on with incredible deals only to be gone in less than 3 months. Then the Webmaster finds out the license he has for the images are not worth the paper they printed them on. This is one of the easiest areas for a Webmaster to get ripped off in. So what to do? Research my friends, research!
a. Ask the provider for copies of the 2257’s they are required by law to have on premises. Any reputable provider will supply these to you; many include them with the license even if you don’t ask for them. Any provider that bulks at doing so upon request should be taken off your shopping list.
b. Read over the license agreement very carefully, before you buy. Not every license is the same, some allow you a certain percent of images for promotional use, such as creating banners etc. some prohibit it. How many sites and domains you can use the images on vary, as does the price they charge to add or transfer a domain or license. Remember the license is a legal document and should be treated as such.
c. Ask around! Reputation is so very important in this business and the good providers know it. Don’t be shy about asking the provider directly for references, emailing fellow Webmaster’s and even posting for comments on the boards. Make sure you get a good cross span of answers from all sources, so you can quickly weed out anyone that is deliberately trying to make a provider look bad. This could be their competition or a Webmaster that tried to use the content illegally and got busted. So make sure you ask people your respect and trust. Find out not only about how they’re prices stack up, but also about their customer service after the deal is done. And NEVER assume just because a provider is listed on your favorite resource board that they are legit. Though most resources will try and screen people they list, there is no guarantee. There is no substitute for researching it for yourself.
Following these simple guidelines will save you a lot of grief in the long run. It may take a day or two for you to get the feedback you need, but it could save you from taking down hundreds of galleries later on. Or worse, paying for a product you never receive. And trust me, that happens.
Article written by Bestat.
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New European V.A.T Laws – Are You Prepared?
Under a new law that has been passed in the EU from July 1st 2003 any internet based company selling services or goods to customers inside the EU will have to pay the member state of their customer/client the equivalent V.A.T (Value Added Tax) Rate.
This in itself is not a big problem, online business have been paying taxes for many years, the problems start to occur when you take a look at the current state of the V.A.T system in the EU state members on an individual basis.
The following list shows the percentage of V.A.T that you will need to add to your clients bills if they are located inside a member state of the EU:
Austria – 20% VAT
Belgium – 21% VAT
Denmark – 25% VAT
Finland – 22% VAT
France – 19.6% VAT
Germany – 16% VAT
Greece – 18% VAT
Ireland – 21% VAT
Italy – 20% VAT
Luxembourg – 15% VAT
Netherlands – 19% VAT
Portugal – 17% VAT
Spain – 16% VAT
Sweden – 25% VAT
United Kingdom – 17.5% VATThis will pose several problems for the adult industry namely, how will our billing processors be able to handle transactions from European Union citizens? After all, with so many different VAT rates across the EU their billing systems need to be able to correctly calculate the correct amount of VAT to the surfers final order.
Several accounting firms have set up new divisions to handle this for the mainstream side of the internet industry however, until just recently, the adult internet was unaware this was happening.
It would seem that although the international market place is a wholly viable one for adult webmasters to break into, it brings with it more complications that simply breaking the language barrier.
This new law will be a good test of the adult industry processors to see how they can handle the economic changes of the global market place and, more importantly, how they handle the new frontiers of international marketing on a global scale.
Article written by Lee
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The Web Safe Color Palette
The “Web Safe” palette is a bit controversial. It is a set of 216 colors that are, supposedly, guaranteed to appear as intended on all graphical displays when used in HTML, CSS, and images embedded in Web pages. Many Web developers believe that sticking to these colors is one of the holiest commandments in the Web design scripture.
This was mostly a concern when most computers had 8-bit color displays; these days, most people run at 16-bit or 24-bit color. Although these bit-depths render the Web Safe palette pointless, dithering and quantification bugs in browsers and operating systems still cause problems in 16-bit displays (16-bit display, also known as “High Color” mode or “Thousands of Colors,” is generally problematic). Extensive testing has led to a new palette, called “Really Safe,” whose colors are guaranteed to appear correctly on all displays and all browsers.
If you use different colors than these, you might see images and backgrounds of the same color appear at a slightly different tint, so that a “box” will be visible around them if the background extends beyond the image’s edges.
Below is the table of ‘Web Safe’ and ‘Really Safe’ colors, you will see some of the color hex codes are in red, these are ‘Really Safe’ colors.
Code Color Code Color Code Color Code Color Code Color Code Color 000000 000033 000066 000099 0000cc 0000FF 003300 003333 003366 003399 0033cc 0033ff 006600 006633 006666 006699 0066cc 0066ff 009900 009933 009966 009999 0099cc 0099ff 00cc00 00cc33 00cc66 00cc99 00cccc 00ccff 00FF00 00ff33 00FF66 00ff99 00FFCC 00FFFF 330000 330033 330066 330099 3300cc 3300ff 333300 333333 333366 333399 3333cc 3333ff 336600 336633 336666 336699 3366cc 3366ff 339900 339933 339966 339999 3399cc 3399ff 33cc00 33cc33 33cc66 33cc99 33cccc 33ccff 33ff00 33FF33 33FF66 33ff99 33FFCC 33FFFF 660000 660033 660066 660099 6600cc 6600ff 663300 663333 663366 663399 6633cc 6633ff 666600 666633 666666 666699 6666cc 6666ff 669900 669933 669966 669999 6699cc 6699ff 66cc00 66cc33 66cc66 66cc99 66cccc 66ccff 66FF00 66FF33 66ff66 66ff99 66ffcc 66FFFF 990000 990033 990066 990099 9900cc 9900ff 993300 993333 993366 993399 9933cc 9933ff 996600 996633 996666 996699 9966cc 9966ff 999900 999933 999966 999999 9999cc 9999ff 99cc00 99cc33 99cc66 99cc99 99cccc 99ccff 99ff00 99ff33 99ff66 99ff99 99ffcc 99ffff cc0000 cc0033 cc0066 cc0099 cc00cc cc00ff cc3300 cc3333 cc3366 cc3399 cc33cc cc33ff cc6600 cc6633 cc6666 cc6699 cc66cc cc66ff cc9900 cc9933 cc9966 cc9999 cc99cc cc99ff cccc00 cccc33 cccc66 cccc99 cccccc ccccff ccff00 ccff33 CCFF66 ccff99 ccffcc ccffff FF0000 FF0033 ff0066 ff0099 ff00cc FF00FF ff3300 ff3333 ff3366 ff3399 ff33cc ff33ff ff6600 ff6633 ff6666 ff6699 ff66cc ff66ff ff9900 ff9933 ff9966 ff9999 ff99cc ff99ff ffcc00 ffcc33 ffcc66 ffcc99 ffcccc ffccff FFFF00 FFFF33 FFFF66 ffff99 ffffcc FFFFFF Hopefully, you will find a use for the two different color palettes that are now available and, you can begin designing for your surfers, regardless of which browser they use.
Article written by Lee
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The Curse Of The Broken Image
At one time or another we have all done it, uploaded a new site only to find out that when we view the page in our browser one of the images are broken because we either didn’t link it properly or the filename wasn’t named correctly on our server.
We may think that this is a bad thing however, recent experimentation on my part has found quite the opposite.
We all search for new ways of getting the surfer to visit our sponsors in order to have them buy a membership and earn us a nice little slice of $$$ in the process but, what methods could we use that quite simply are overlooked?
One such method is that of utilizing broken images, lets be honest here, no-one wants broken image son their site, it makes the site look unprofessional but, lets think about this, on a page full of banners and graphics all nested together neatly on an FPA (Full Page Ad) what’s more likely to grab the surfers attention, a completely loaded heavy bandwidth graphic or a single solitary broken image placed in a such a spot the surfer actually notices it?
Makes you think doesn’t it. Our recent testing of this method has actually shown that our CTR (Click Through Ratio) rose slightly on a couple of sponsors we used this method on all of the sites in question had nice looking text and banners with corresponding thumbnails leading tot he full size image but, upon deliberately leaving an image off the server thus resulting in the ‘appearance’ of an erroneous broken graphic the spot where that image should have been was were a great deal of our click throughs came from.
I am not saying you should immediately go and delete all graphics from you pages but, a single, well placed broken image on a free site can work wonders in getting traffic off your site and to your sponsors pay site tour which ultimately, is what we want to happen at the EARLIEST possible time.
Article written by Lee
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Pay Per Click Or Search Engine Optimization
What would you choose to run your business? Well each has their own benefits and drawbacks over one another.
PPC or SEO The Breakdown.
Pay Per Click or, PPC as it is most often referred to looks to the novice to be the better option for ‘immediate’ traffic results, you enter your desired keywords, place your minimum / maximum bid amount and you are set for top PPC engine listings for as long as you can maintain the balance in your engine account.Search Engine Optimization or, SEO on the other hand, is the more traditional way of attaining high ranking search engine pages. Either you or an SEO expert optimizes your websites pages and random other elements of your website and hopefully within a month or two, you achieve high rankings in the major search engines.
So Which One? PPC or SEO?
Generally speaking, SEO work is most commonly more cost effective to your business than utilizing PPC results to gain your traffic, you could pay an SEO expert anywhere from $500 plus to optimize your site and get high rankings indefinitely or, you could put that $500 into a PPC engine account and get high rankings until such time as your account balance runs dry.But lets look at this in terms of actual traffic…
Say you get 1000 visitors to your SEO based website which you paid $500 for, each visitor has cost you $0.50c now lets say your site remains at the top of the engines for a few months perhaps even years each month you receive another 1000 visitors to your site, you have basically cut the cost of each surfer hitting your site down to less than a penny per hit (not taking into account bandwidth costs obviously).
Now, on the other hand, you want to attract 1000 visitors from your chosen keywords via the PPC engines, most Pay Per Click search engines have a minimum bid amount of $0.05c per hit so right away in your first month, you could receive a potential 10k hits however, as most of you who have already tried your hand at the PPC engines will know, getting 10k hits for one or more keyword at a cost of $0.05 is hard to do, in fact, some would say almost impossible. Non the less let us keep going with this minimum bid amount for the time being.
Immediately, you can see that you are already restricted to the actual amount of traffic you can receive from the PPC results to 10k hits however, this isn’t the case with the SEO traffic, you could potentially hit your top chosen keyword and stay there until another site out-optimizes you or, your site needs to be optimized again.
Ultimately, the reasons you will choose over one or the other will be for either ease of traffic generation, PPC will allow you to gain almost instantaneous targeted traffic form the second you open your PPC account up until the point when your account funds empty whilst, SEO work will give you long term targeted traffic over time and, in most instances, this SEO traffic can last for years making the cost of the initial SEO work minimal.
In Closing..
Search Engine Optimization can last you years and years whilst Pay Per Click results can diminish in a relatively short amount of time depending on the amount of bid needed to achieve top listings.However lets look at a third option, using both PPC results and SEO results in conjunction with each other to minimize the traffic you lose from your SEO work and, to minimize the traffic you lose from your PPC results this will afford you the time to see what works with your Search Engine Optimized sites whilst being able to play with the targeting of keywords on your PPC traffic, once you have both types of search engine figured out, you can put them both together and use them to increase the traffic to your site for years to come.
Article written by Lee
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