Mixing Business With Pleasure

Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: General | Response: 0

Regardless of your status in the world of web mastering there will come a time when you will want to attend one of the numerous webmaster seminars. However, what should you do to plan for the day you attend your first seminar, are there some things you should aim for and things you shouldn’t? Well in this article we will take a look at planning your conventions.

Before attending the convention of your choice there are a few things that you should prepare these are.

Exercise.

get out for half an hour each day at least two weeks before the day of your journey to the convention. You will be surprised at how much time you will spend walking around the convention floor and, by getting some basic exercise in before hand you wont feel the strain of being on your feet for hours at a time instead of being sat in front of your computer.

Contacts.

Make a list of people that you want to see and arrange with them in advance a time to meet up and have a chat. Most people who attend these conventions are busy for the entire course of the show. You may not get a chance to pop by their booth and talk tot hem if someone has already beaten you by booking a time to chat with the person you want to meet. It is also a good idea to trade hotel and cell phone information before leaving for the show, this way, if anything happens to make you miss a possible appointment you can call or leave a message informing them you will either be late or canceling.

Seminars / Parties.

Take a look at the events and seminars happening at the convention before you go, plan which ones you will want to attend make a list and take it with you. This will save you countless hours of wandering around aimlessly hoping to make all of the seminars and get to as many parties as you can in three days.

Booths.

Look at who is exhibiting at the convention, find out their booth number and make a note of it. List any specific details you may want to speak to the booth owners about. You can guarantee if you go unprepared you will miss out that important question or selling opportunity you wanted to make.

Baggage.

When packing your suitcase for the convention make sure you leave plenty of room for convention give a ways, You will be surprised at what you will be given for free at these shows, t-shirts, toys, books, flyers, you name it, you will be offered it.

So, you have done the pre check, what do you do when you actually arrive at the convention?

Food.

Eat at every opportunity you get. Most people will end up not eating for the entire length of the convention. perhaps even arrange to meet up with someone you want to talk to in a restaurant and grab a bite to eat whilst talking business.

Business Cards.

Take them and lots of them. Everyone and anyone will ask you for your contact details, if you have a bunch of business cards with you at all times, you can just hand them out. Make sure you include your full contact details, your name, nickname, email, icq and, aim contact details. The more ways you give someone to reach you, the more chance you have of them actually attempting to get in touch with you.

Clothing.

Wear comfortable, clothing and shoes. Think casual but, also think business, shorts and t-shirt may be good for comfort but, it doesn’t portray a good business image and, that’s the sole reason you are attending the convention, to do business.

Parties.

If you get offered an invite to a party, take it, plans change so quickly at the conventions, your friends may suddenly feel tired and you have nothing left to do, attend a party, then you have another opportunity to network some more.

Behavior.

Although the conventions are a fun atmosphere, don’t forget that they are in the first instance a place to do business, treat it as such, you may miss out on the ideal business opportunities if you are acting like a drunk ass hole. This will reflect badly on you long term.

You have taken in all the events you can handle, you have made your way back home what next? how exactly do you put this information and your new found contacts to use?

Business Cards.

Go through all the business cards you have been given and send your new found contacts a quick email thanking them for their time. This will be a good way for you to give them another reminder of what you spoke to them about and, I have personally gotten more business from the shows using this follow up method than if I had just waited for them to contact me.

Notes.

If you made any notes at the show, take a few minutes to re-write them, keep them safe in a notepad, you never know when one of these bits of information may come in handy.

Well, that’s pretty much it for the basics of the adult conventions, obviously there is more to it than this but, if you are attending your first convention you will have a bit of insight into the work involved.

Article written by Lee

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

Adult Employment Vacancies

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Employment | Response: 0

For some the prospect of being able to work for another company online is something that they may ultimately want to pursue however, just how do you go about finding work for one of the many adult companies and, more importantly, how can you ensure that you have a better chance of being hired for the job once you find the position you would like to have at the company?

Online Adult Employment – Job Types.

Working in the adult industry can take many forms however, the most commonly perceived adult industry job is that of a model but, what about other online job vacancies such as graphics designer, marketing manager, sales director, and webmaster support representative, just how do you find out what companies are hiring and more importantly, what adult employment vacancies they have.

Adult Employment Agencies.

For many webmasters the chances of finding employment in the adult industry at a ‘regular’ online employment agency such as monster.com may seem impossible however, that said, many of the larger companies have realized the value of the mainstream employment agencies and, as such are now advertising on these sites for their staff but where else can you look? Well there are actually several adult industry employment sites that adult webmasters can look at to find their ideal job for example Adult Staffing, Sexy Jobs and, Adult Help Wanted in addition to several smaller sites operated by companies such as Cybererotica.

Improving Your Employment Chances.

So now you know where to look for adult employment opportunities what can you do to ensure you have a greater chance of being hired? Well as with the mainstream bricks and mortar job market having a good curriculum vitae (CV) can be a good start, ensure you keep your CV regularly updated and that it contains pertinent information for the type of job vacancy you are looking for in addition, often the first method of contact you will make with these potential employers will be via email or cover letter, make sure that you spend some time to write a letter that is not only noticeable but, interesting and, more importantly, grammatically correct. Demonstrate in this first stage of contact with your potential future adult employer that you take pride in your work and, you might just get bumped to the top of the ‘must see’ applicants.

Adult Jobs – Overview.

Many webmasters forget that there is more to the online adult industry than being able to party with the best of us and, whilst this does form a chunk of the industry overall it is not conducive of you further enhancing your online career, take the time to investigate all of the avenues available to you and, most importantly, make sure you choose a job that you not only want to do but one that you will enjoy, your reputation is the one thing that a potential adult employer will take into consideration, if you have had several previous jobs all lasting for short periods of time, it wont look as good to them as if you have only had a couple of jobs for a lengthier time frame. Most of all remember that whenever you contact a company looking for employers, make sure you are prepared and professional even if it is just sending them a quick email asking for further information.

Article written by Lee.

Adult Webmaster Conventions – Remember When?

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: General | Response: 0

Most webmasters who have been working in the adult industry for a year or two have attended an adult webmaster convention of some sort and, those of us who had the privilege of attending our first webmaster show three to four years ago will know one thing that many others don’t, there used to be a time when you could attend a webmaster show for example, the one held at Disney World (how many of you remember that?) when apart from being relaxing, you would also get a lot of business done alas, times have changed.

Fighting, Drug Taking, Getting Drunk, Rape Accusations, Theft and Criminal damage would be the headline in the national press should one of these reporters attend today’s webmaster convention, instead of a relaxing atmosphere in which you can get business done you find a slew of webmasters who, well, lets be honest here, are only attending these shows for one reason, to get drunk (for free) and to have a laugh.

Of late there seems to have been an influx of people (notice I used the word people and not ‘adult webmasters’) joining the adult industry who would appear to think that our business model is one of all night partying, sordid sex sessions and drug taking, whilst, I will be the first to admit this has gone on in the past it would certainly seem that the last 2-3 years has seen more than its fair share of the negative events happening at these conventions.

Take for example the recent Hollywood Internext Expo show, one incident that comes to mind was the fool who decided it would be a good idea to smash the mezzanine canopy above the hotel lobby, to my knowledge the culprit was never found however, I am sure there are those out there who knows who it was and well, lets be honest, they quite possibly you could be reading this article.

So what happened? How did these shows change so drastically? Quite simply I think it was the sudden onslaught of press coverage about how the adult industry makes so much money for everyone and, whilst there is a lot of money to be made in the industry, it takes a lot of work to achieve making the reported figures by the press.

To many people are entering the adult industry thinking that the ‘norm’ is that of what you can find on your average day of visiting GFY and whist, this is perhaps true for the circle of webmasters who do frequent boards such as GFY for the vast majority of hard working webmasters in the industry, the behavior of those webmasters couldn’t be further from the truth.

So where is all the business being done at the shows? It would appear that event after event the open invite list of parties are being cut down to be taken over by more intimate and sociable private parties in fact, as a company we our ourselves holding several smaller invite only parties for those people that we actually want to do business with on both a personal and a professional level.

So what does the future have in hold for the adult industry events, in all honesty I do not know however, one thing is for certain, if things continue on their current route, things are going to become a whole lot worse before they get any better.

Article written by Lee.

Converting Chinese Adult Traffic – The Niche Paysites That Work

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

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

Using SSI For Auto Updates

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

We all realize the benefits of being able to save time when building sites so, I got into thinking, how can I make my sites look as if they are continually updated without the need to go in and update them manually? Enter the world of SSI.

SSI is actually a nifty little tool, not only can you include files from a central location but, you can include them at specific times of the day, days of the week or even months of the year, very handy indeed if you are building any type of site that needs updating periodically.

Once the main burst of work has been completed you can pretty much use the same files over and over again to help you out.

So onto the auto updating SSI, the following SSI coding will enable you to update a page or pages based on which day of the month it is. It will check the day the page has been accessed and display the relevant information again, this is a handy thing to have should your sponsor be running a promotion over several days, all you need to do is update a selection of SSI files and all of your sites are updated instantly.

<!–#config timefmt=”%d”–>
<!–#include virtual=”/yourdirectory/$DATE_LOCAL.txt”–>

What you need to do is create 31 text files named 01.txt right the way through to 31.txt take the SSI call above and edit the location of the SSI files on your server, you may like to have a central folder named /SSI/ for this purpose so the location would be changed to /domain.com/SSI/$DATE_LOCAL.txt

I the 31 files you created you could have a table ad with eight of your sponsors links, an article in each one or even just a simple text link, anything that you may want to update can be included in these files.

As I mentioned above you can base the time, date and even month of rotation to whatever you like to alter how the files are rotated and ultimately viewed on the web you should change the %d in the timefmt field to one of the following:

%d : Day of the month requires 31 files named 01.txt to 31.txt
%w : Day of the week requires 7 files named 0.txt to 6.txt
%j : Day of the year requires 365 files named 001.txt to 365.txt
%u : The week of the year requires 52 files named 00.txt to 53.txt
%m : The month of the year requires 12 files named 01.txt to 12.txt
%H : Hour of the day requires 24 files named 00.txt to 23.txt
%M : Minute of the hour requires 60 files named 00.txt to 59.txt

As you can see from the above there really are no limitations to the uses of updating using SSI and, apart fro the relative ease of use and the time saved using them should one sponsor not be converting for you all you need to do to swap sponsors is alter your central set of SSI files and you have instantly changed sponsors over all of your sites.

Article written by Lee

Building A Surfer Trap – Stage 7

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

Here we go with Stage 7 in this Surfer Trap tutorial.

We should by now have a rather complex looking surfer trap, pop up consoles and blur consoles on all of the pages within it, all of these same pages interlinking each other indefinitely.

So, we are starting to get some traffic to this beauty from our existing sites and the counters we implemented but, how can we get some more traffic for FREE?

What I suggest we do next to this little baby is to add a banner exchange code to EACH of the FPA’s we have and also, onto the larger table console we created.

You should sign up for one banner exchange code for this trap, you might like to search around for a banner exchange that lets you have a decent ratio of impressions.

Once you have signed up for your banner exchange code, you now need to copy this coding into the BOTTOM of all of your FPA HTML pages including the Multi-Site FPA.

Now you have the banner exchange code on your site you are earning credits. Your account may not be activated for a day or so but, what this means is you are earning credits the entire time you are showing banners on your Surfer Trap.

Now we have the banner exchange code on our sites we only have one further step to take in order for this project to be completed.

Making sure it works how it is supposed too along with fine tuning this little beast.

If you have any further questions or comments please post on the forums here and one of us will be able to help you.

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

Cell Phone Porn – Closer Than We Think?

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: General | Response: 0

Cell Phone Porn – Closer Than We Think?

From dialup to broadband, from standard to reality, from multiple pages to single magazine style tours, one thing is for certain adult pornography is constantly evolving and adapting to the both the marketing savvy of the surfer and, more importantly the technological advances hitting the web and, with the sudden impact of PDA’s (Personal Digital Assistants) and Cell Phones able to connect to the web could cell phone porn be the next big thing? This is what we will take a brief look at in this article.

What Is Cell Phone Porn?

Cell phone porn is a method of displaying not only images but streaming video feeds to a surfers portable cellular phone many companies (specifically in Europe) at the present time are starting to roll out 3gsm network cell phones this means that the surfers we get to our sites may not only be using a computer or a PDA to visit our sites but, in all reality they may already be surfing our sites on their cell phones.

Building Cell Phone Porn Sites.

In order to profit from this newly evolving cell phone porn market we have to diversify the methods in which we build our sites for example, we need to use WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) on our sites in order for them to be readable easily by the 3G cell phones for starters and then, we need to ensure that not only do our pages flow but, they load quickly and further still, how easy is it for the surfer to fill out the required join forms in order for them to actually access the cell phone porn they are being offered?

Cell Phone Porn Statistics.

Currently, if you head across to http://www.google.com and type in ‘cell phone porn’ as your search query you will find a total of 173,000 pages listed in the search results, now, combine this number with the amount of cell phones currently in circulation across the globe that are able to use WAP, 743 Million, those 173,000 sites in Google have an advantage that you don’t, they are already most likely getting cell phone traffic.

Mobile Porn – An Overview.

Will cell phone porn become a thing of the past as quickly as it is emerging as a medium of the future? Quite possibly however, until you start attracting your share of cell phone porn surfers you will not realize the benefits to this new source of traffic, in fact, even 12 months ago when the PDA Porn was a huge thing, many webmasters neglected to cash in on the latest craze and were surprised at the figures others were reporting to them. There is one thing that will always remain constant in the adult industry, the latest fads and crazes change as quickly as the arrive and, webmasters have to be quick off the mark in order to cash in on these new crazes. Will cell Phone Porn be a craze that you cash in on?

Article written by Lee