-
AVS Changes – Is The Proverbial Sky Falling?
With the announcement yesterday from several of the large AVS systems, Free Age Card, Sex Key and, Gay Passport (also speculation on and off the forums state that Mass Pass were aware of this happening) that they will no longer allow webmasters to use the terms; AVS, Adult Verification Service, AGE Verification Service and, Access to thousands of other sites what does this hold in store long term for AVS webmasters?
Quite simply, it looks at first glance as if these changes have something to do with the speculation surrounding VISA and AVS systems from a few months ago.
In fact, these changes have been on the horizon for some time now however, until yesterday webmasters seemed to be unsure as to what, if anything will be changing. Even though the speculation has been circulating for some time, one of the first AVS systems to envoke these new rules, Sex key, came out with the following statement; ‘While we knew changes were coming, we just now found out what we believe are the new requirements. With this new information, we are trying to comply as quickly as humanly possible.’ quickly followed by; ‘We felt it was better to give people a chance to modify their sites this weekend rather than to not be in compliance Monday.’- Craig Tant.
One thing is certain, come Monday, there WILL be a lot of unhappy webmasters
So apart from the added workload for webmasters what other issues is this likely to bring up in the immediate future, well, again, based on the rumors and, i should stress that is all they are up to this point in time, from a few months ago we could expect one or more of the following items to happen to the AVS model as we know it.
1) Visa starts to charge the AVS companies the $750 fee just to process memberships.
2) Visa starts to charge individual webmasters the $750 fee to use an AVS service.
3) AVS Systems cease to exist.So, lets break each of the above items down and see how it will have a long term effect on both AVS webmasters and, the adult industry as a whole.
AVS Companies Charged $750 Visa Fee’s.
In itself this isn’t a big issue that we should be immediately worried about, after all the AVS company will be the one footing this bill and, with the amount of traffic and sales that these programs get $750 is a relatively small pebble at the foot of a mountain. That said however, some of the smaller AVS systems might end up having to close because they cant afford the fees in much the same way that some Amateur paysite owners had to close their aff programs.Webmasters Charged $750 Visa Fee’s.
This is the option that i am most concerned with, after all, with thousands of AVS sites being built each day and being submitted to literally hundreds of AVS companies the potential cost of this could run into thousands for individual webmasters.Of course, with this expense there also comes some benefits. The immediate benefit that comes to mind is that a lot of the dishonest webmasters will refuse to or, be unable to pay this fee that in itself will lighten the strain for the rest of the industry.
There is also the possibility that webmaster may need to pay this fee for each and every AVS that they submit to which, in itself will not only harm the individual webmasters but, it will also see the rise and, dare i say it, fall of some of the smaller or less profitable (from a webmasters point of view) AVS companies. No doubt if this did ever happen the likes of Cyberage, UGAS, Global Male Pass et al will be unaffected as, they have enough of a webmaster following and traffic base to ride this potential storm out.
AVS Systems Cease To Exist.
This is potentially the worst case scenario and, whilst i will be the first to admit that this is VERY unlikely to happen, the possibility needs to be looked at.What happens to all of your sites you have in the AVS systems? What happens to all of your potential rebills? What happens to all of that AVS traffic?
Well i would say for the most part, changing your sites from AVS to the free model wont be such a big deal for webmasters however, the financial losses to individual webmasters and companies could run into hundreds of thousands a month. With these financial losses will more webmasters leave the industry or, will more of the AVS webmasters start running TGP’s and dilute the traffic quality even further?
Speaking of traffic, we all know by now that AVS traffic is qualified potent traffic but, what will happen when this traffic, should the AVS be closed down, hit the adult web again? Quite simply long term the effects of such a force could have positive and negative effects ranging from paysite memberships sales rising to the onslaught and proliferation of free porn being searched for again – good news for TGP owners.
As you can see from the above, all of the speculation, rumors and, facts speak for themselves in so much as, if you are an AVS webmaster, you NEED to start diversifying your business model to ensure that even if the worst doesn’t happen, you are still able to be profitable online.
Article written by Lee
-
Adult Webmaster Conventions
Networking Overload
Adult Webmaster Conventions – Networking Overload.
As the industry changes more and more another thing that has been overdone to the extreme in recent times is that of the webmaster convention, there used to be two or three of these webmaster conventions a year with the biggest being the Internext Expo – Las Vegas. Now however it seems there isn’t a month that goes by without a new webmaster convention being announced.Webmaster Networking.
Adult Webmaster Conventions however offer all types of webmaster (for the most part) something useful, interaction with other webmasters in a relaxing and friendly atmosphere however, with so many of these conventions to choose from how do you judge which of the monthly shows you should attend and, which of the shows you should not?Webmaster Shows – The Top Three.
In all honesty and, remember these are my own feelings based on attendance at a variety of shows over the last four years I would say if you stick to the main shows then you cant really go wrong, so the must attend shows list from me would include the following.Internext Expo – Las Vegas – January.
Phoenix Forum – Arizona – April.
Internext Expo – Florida – August.By attending all three of these shows you will get the opportunity to not only meet the people and companies you have been doing business with but, also get to meet new webmasters to further develop your business from a range of levels including new webmasters right up to the industry old timers.
Webmaster Conventions Advice.
When you consider attending your first adult webmaster convention you should keep one thing in mind, the shows themselves can often be costly so far as airfares and hotel accommodations so, you should book early to enable you to plan your budget for the shows and, also to ensure that you get the best deals available.Many of the larger shows are held in hotels such as The Venetian in Las Vegas which is directly next door to the convention center itself as is the Doubletree La Posada at the Phoenix Forum and the Westin Diplomat at the Florida show however, don’t be afraid of booking a hotel down the block from the one where the show is actually being held, often you will find people staying at hotels outside of the convention location and this means you can often relax with them away from the hustle and bustle of the show itself.
Webmaster Conventions Overview.
With so many webmaster conventions being held each year one thing is for certain, webmaster want to network at new places and often, these conventions can yield more business by themselves than a simple phone call or email however, be careful of the conventions or parties you choose to attend, just because a lot of people appear to be going to a specific party, it dos not mean you will get any business done there, choose your webmaster show attendance wisely and more importantly, make sure you have a set list of goals to achieve once you actually get to the convention itself.Article written by Lee.
-
Newsletter Know How – A Guide To Writing Newsletters
Email newsletters are a great way to make contact with existing clients and, prospective clients which makes them a great marketing tool. The biggest bonus however, over Email newsletters rather than print ones is that you have virtually no cost involved with writing and, ultimately, mailing them out.
There is a wide variety of online newsletter on the internet. however, probably the simplest form for most webmasters is the email newsletter. Email provides you with a quick way to keep your name out there, build trust with you readers and, hopefully attract a few sales. If you archive your newsletter also this is a great way to get additional pages into the search engines and, as such, it then becomes a good traffic driver to your website regardless of the amount of subscribers you have. However one of the most important benefits of having an email newsletter sent on a regular basis is that it build brand recognition of your website or business.
Your newsletter should provide information, not just of an advertising nature but that, should also be informative to your subscribers. In doing this you are offering information of value and, ultimately, ensuring that your subscribers remain. However, remember newsletters are for promoting your area of expertise not just a vehicle for revenue generation.
One of the first things you should consider when deciding to do a newsletter is the amount of commitment you will have to put towards the project. Whether you start a monthly, weekly or, daily newsletter a great deal of commitment must be made to both the newsletter and, more importantly, your subscribers. For example, We generally spend a good 3 days researching the articles that have been submitted and trying to ensure that the details contained within them are relevant at the time of sending the email, this is not an easy task especially when the adult internet is constantly developing. If you don’t have the time to research and maintain consistency in your newsletter, then don’t even consider doing one, it isn’t for you at the present time.
Now you have decided you can make the commitment required to run a successful email newsletter what do you do next? Collect email addresses. Probably one of the easiest ways to get email subscribers to join your list is to go through your current mail clients contact list and manually add those email addresses or, further still, you may even have an opt in collection program that you have been using for a while but have never really had the time to commit to writing a newsletter worthy of sending out. Remember though, an email list is only as good as the addresses contained within it. You want to run an OPT-IN email list, any other type of list will be considered Spam and, that will do you more damage than good. Of course, if you haven’t already got an email collection program you can find one online there are literally hundreds of them floating around that you can get for free from sites like http://www.hotscripts.com.
So, you now have your emails, onto writing your newsletter. I think the greatest part of email is that it is somewhat less formal than writing for print copy. Email in fact tends to be very informal in comparison. The best way at approaching writing for an email newsletter is to write how you talk, it is more enjoyable for the reader and gives your newsletter a personality that no one else can emulate. Content wise, that depends on what you do, what would YOU like to see if you subscribed to an email list of the type you are going to be running and, more importantly, what would ensure you stay subscribed to the newsletter? Ask your friends, colleagues and, peers what they would like to see in an email newsletter, often they have been looking for information that is not readily available, this is an area where you then start to provide a service that no one else does.
So you are at the point where you are starting to realize that running a newsletter is a lot of work correct? Well, it is. However, the effort, work and, time spent in putting your newsletter together will help you build a relationship with people whom, in all actuality, you may probably not ever meet in a face to face situation and, more importantly, it can become a great income generator over time.
Article written by Lee
-
Adult Search Engine Optimization
Gone are the days when adult webmasters could Spam the search engines and get highly trafficked sites within a month of the search engines updating many of the search engines caught onto the adult industry very early on and started changing the way in which they indexed sites they went from meta tag optimized listings to theme indexing to almost every type of search engine optimization method in between.
Search Engine Optimization Techniques.
It would seem with the changing times of search engine optimization that there is no longer a single solitary way to get your adult sites listed highly in the search engines but rather a mixture of different adult seo methods being used on a single site ranging from increasing your pagerank, including relevant meta tags and page content to standard adult search engine optimization methods such as getting other popular websites linking to yours but with this comes a new challenge of its own webmasters need to get back to the basics to figure out what worked then and, what will work now so far as adult search engine optimization goes.Adult Search Engine Optimization Companies.
There are many companies currently online that can offer adult webmasters their search engine optimization services however, how do you choose an SEO company that will not only work for you but, is cost effective for your needs, the simple answer is to ask around, there are sites online presently that offer monthly memberships to gain access to their adult seo techniques in the form of articles and tutorials just as their are sites that offer no information whatsoever or, information that, while it worked three years ago, it no longer works in today’s adult seo marketplace. You need to ask for advice from customers who have used adult optimization companies in the past and see how their results improved as well as making sure that what you are actually purchasing is a service that doesn’t just guarantee you improved site rankings but actually guarantees you will see a profit from the money you spent on the optimization services.Adult SEO Breakdown.
Adult search engine optimization companies have only really become apparent in the adult industry over the last 6-12 months however, many well known and respected webmasters have been working on optimizing their adult sites for years and, whilst doing so, they have also achieved a vast knowledge base on how to optimize your adult sites for the search engines, again, ask around on the message forums to find the solution that will best suit your needs and budget and you wont go far wrong, the adult search engine optimization business model is one that in all actuality should change on a regular basis however, as mentioned above some companies are still using the same optimization methods they used three or four years ago, make sure you do your background checks before parting with any money and, most importantly, use the search engines to find their sites in search terms where, if they were any good at all, they would already have first page listings.Article written by Lee.
-
Seasons Greetings For The Adult Surfer
How do the national and, international holidays affect our sponsors sales? More than you would think especially if you can offer your surfers something ‘seasonal’ when they hit your site. However, that said, when should you start planning for these holidays and, more importantly, how can you ensure that once you have implemented your seasonal marketing campaigns that they actually work?
Seasonal Marketing – The Basics.
Seasonal marketing is, in effect a method of changing your marketing approach around different times of the year to affect both the volume of sales you make and, more importantly, the uniqueness of the product you are offering your surfers. A good example of this is at Christmas time, many of the sponsors will provide their webmasters with banner with a holiday feel to them, perhaps using scantily clad men in Santa outfits or half naked women in elves costumes. By offering a seasonal marketing approach to your site surfers you actually increase the chances of making a sale.Holiday Porn.
One of the best ways to offer your surfers a fresh marketing angle is to ensure that you plan for all of the major holidays throughout the year in advance so for example, as mentioned above, Christmas is a big holiday as are, New Years, Easter, Thanksgiving (US), Independence Day (US) and, Halloween. By building sites specifically for these holidays you are increasing the chances not only of building your sales but, of gaining additional traffic that you might otherwise lose out on. It has been said certainly over the last four years i have worked in the adult industry that many webmasters experience an increase in search engine traffic searching on keywords such as ‘Christmas Porn’ and, ‘Ghost Porn’ around the various holidays, build now for next year and, when the holiday season arrives, you will be one step ahead of your competition.Seasonal Marketing Overview.
As already mentioned the holiday season especially Christmas time, can be a great way to gain additional traffic, not only from those surfers specifically looking for Christmas Porn but, also the newbie adult surfers who have perhaps only just got their first computer on Christmas day, by adding to your collection of seasonal porn sites year after year you will not only learn a lot about the way the various holidays and seasons affect your sales but, you will also be able to profit from your surfers in a way that not many other webmasters do.Article written by Lee
-
Undeveloped Domains – Put Them To Use
Often when searching for new domain names, i come across what should, in theory be a golden opportunity only to find, the domain itself has already been registered and, whilst this in itself is annoying, what is even more annoying is that the domain 404’s when typed into the browser window.
The mere fact that someone else, a webmaster no less, has thought about purchasing the same domain as what you may have means there is already value in that domain and, more importantly, you have potentially lost a sale.
So how can we capitalize on this potential lost traffic from the off-set? That is what we will look at in this brief article.
The first thing we need to do in order to start making some additional potential profit from our domain is to create a ‘generic’ holding page until such time that we have the time or, funding, to develop the site we had intended to place on our new domain name.
This holding page can take many forms depending on the type of traffic you are hoping to target with the domain itself. Ideally, you will want to have as much choice for the surfer (or webmaster) on this holding page as you can so, you need to assess the nest types of sites to use, the best use of the traffic no matter how small it could be and, more importantly, the best way to maximize your sales potential.
One good way of doing this is to split the page into three sections, two equal sized sections at the top portion of the page and, one smaller portion towards the very base of the page designed, almost like a footer.
In the two top portions you should equally distribute both surfer orientated and, webmaster orientated links both of which need to be clearly separated.
For example, the left side of the page take all of your top converting paysites and list them by niche, they don’t have to have fancy or heavy graphics, text links will suffice for now as this is only a ‘temporary’ page.
On the right hand side of the page place some of your webmaster referral linking codes with a brief description, remembering that not only surfers could hit this page but webmasters themselves.
On the ‘footer’ portion of the page, the most important section, you should put your contact details, ideally an email address and, if the domain warrants, details of how you can be reached by instant messenger. The reason for the email and instant messenger details is a simple one, if a webmaster REALLY wants the domain that you have, he, or she, might just make you an offer on it and, if they have no way to get in touch with you then, you have just lost an offer on a domain that you might not get around to using for months.
of course, in addition to utilizing the traffic you have on the domain you can also use this holding page to generate more traffic, for example, placing a banner or button exchange code on the site or, perhaps a counter. The possibilities to generate traffic to these pages are limitless depending on how you use the holding page itself.
Well, that’s the basics of domain holding pages explained and, hopefully you will have realized that no matter what you plan on doing with your new domains, after your host has added them to your server, the next thing you should do is to create a generic holding page that you can upload into the rot of the domain name and, who knows, you might end up making some money a little sooner from that unused domain name.
Article written by Lee
-
Adult Industry Standards – What Are They Exactly?
For some, the term ‘industry standards’ might seem like an oxymoron and, in such a wide spread global industry this might just be the case, the adult industry is not regulated in any way shape or form however, this term is thrown around with the best of them.
In this article we will take a quick look at some of the ‘standards’ which have been set and, for the most part, seem to be accepted across the online adult industry as a whole.
Industry Standards – The Basics.
‘Industry Standards’ are, in effect a set of guidelines or rules by which any person operating a business in a specific sector operate by. These may range fro charging a standard price for a product, operating in a certain way or something else. Most industries have their own set of specific ‘standards’ which are usually upheld regardless of whether they are actually written in law, as regulations, rules or, unwritten, unspoken standards.Adult Industry Standards – The List.
This is a list of the 4 most common ‘Adult Industry Standards’ that webmasters would seem to operate their businesses towards, these are not ‘official’ industry standards more general operational guideline which are accepted as the ‘norm’ in our industry.1) Adult Webmasters should use ‘legal’ content.
2) Adult Webmasters should abide by the rules of the sponsors they use.
3) Adult Webmasters should not promote ‘child pornography’ or imply the promotion of the same.
4) Adult Webmasters should operate their business within the scope of the law.Taking the above four items into account, there of course, other standards by which webmasters already self-regulate to some extent for example, you shouldn’t steal other webmasters work, content, bandwidth (through hotlinking), etc. However, other than the four primary ‘unwritten rules’ above there doesn’t appear to be any special ‘code of practice’ to which webmasters should or even, can adhere to.
Taking the above information one step further, lets take a quick look at the adult industry sponsors, almost all of them have a different variation of their Terms and Conditions however, implied or otherwise, most of them tend to stick within the confines of the details already mentioned above. This in itself can lead webmasters into some troubles for example, promotion of sites, most sponsors have unwritten rules about what webmasters can and cant do to promote sites, no spamming paysites, no misleading links but, again, there are no ‘set’ rules that any two sponsors seem to say in the exact same manner.
Adult Industry Standards – Self Regulation.
We all know by now (at least those of us whom have been doing this for a few months) that the adult industry is pretty much self regulated and, whilst this is almost certainly a good thing it can also lead to complications. For example, ‘Webmaster A’ does something to promote a site that they got permission to do whilst, ‘Webmaster B’ does the same thing without having permission. in this instance, more often than not ‘Webmaster B’ will the one who gets their name blackened in the industry. it would also seem that, whilst those webmasters who have a long standing in the industry are capable of getting away with certain things, others, who perhaps have seen things done, when they try the same they get ridiculed.Adult Industry Standards – Overview.
As ‘Adult Webmasters’ and, i would like to stress the ‘Adult’ part of that job title we have a lot of information thrown at us from the very first day of joining this industry, how we choose to use that information is up to us on an individual basis. That said, until the ‘standards’ are set on a level playing field i cant help wondering what effect, negative or positive our own style of self regulation is having on our associates and peers, does it help that we can go to message forums and call sponsors, hosts, other webmasters cheats? or, does this hinder our industry on a much wider scale?One thing is for certain, if i were a journalist writing a report on the adult industry as a whole, i don’t even think i could write about the actual ‘business’ side of things after all, we all run our businesses as we see fit and, at the same time, read the rule book that would at least, for the time being, suit us as individual business owners.
Article written by Lee.
-
So That’s What It Means!
Often you will hear other webmaster talking about things such as unique hits, banner exchanges and, AVS systems. The article below is a simplified glossary of those and many other terms that you will begin to hear day in and day out of your working life as an adult webmaster.
AVS (Adult Verification System)
The protection system that was designed to prevent minors from accessing adult sites. AVS services usually also have a large network of sites that adult surfers can access with one password. You can find a list of Age Verification Systems at Adult Sponsor ProgramsAVS Site
A site that uses an AVS system.Banner Exchange
A program that enables an exchange of traffic between a whole variety of adult sites. They provide you with some coding which you put in your HTML in order to get additional visitors to your adult site. You can visit: Porn Client for a highly respected Banner Exchange System.Blind Links
When you place a misleading link on a site that will encourage the surfer to click on it. They will be sent to a new site that has nothing to do with what they expected to see. For example, if you had a text link saying ‘Free Porn’ and they get sent to a paysite when they click on the link.Browser
A program that displays and navigates web pages you are using a browser now to view this page.Chargeback
A chargeback is what happens when a surfer changes their mind or decides they don’t like the site or service they signed up for and tells their credit card company they will not pay the fee for your sponsor or paysite charges. Chargebacks are bad for everyone concerned because do you not only lose income for the sale, penalties are applied and sometimes they are applied to you.Click-Thru Program
A sponsorship program that pays you an amount of money for each and every single visitor you send to their site. You can also find a list of per click sponsors at Adult Sponsor Programs.Content Provider
A company that offer adults pictures, video clips for sale or lease. For a complete list of the best content providers head over to http://www.adult-content-providers.com.Dead Or Broken Link
A link that is no longer valid or isn’t working. When you click on the link you get a page not found error.E-Zine
An E-Zine is in simplified terms and online magazine.FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
You need to upload (FTP) your web pages from your computer on to the web for everyone to see. One of the most well known FTP clients is Cute FTP.Hits
Number of times your page was viewed over a specific period of time.Hit Counter
Tool used to track the number of surfers that click onto your adult site. A good hit counter can be found at: http://www.sextracker.comHot-Linking
When someone links to an image on your server to display it on their site instead of linking to the image on their own server. You can prevent Hot-Linking by having a .htaccess file on your server.HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
This is the language used to write web pages. This page is written in HTML.ISP
Your internet service provider. AOL is a well known ISP.Java
A programming language used by programmers to build and create programs. Not to be confused with JavaScript (see below).JavaScript
A scripting language you can directly insert into HTML documents. They only work with surfers that have Java enabled on their browser.Legal Content
Adult content for which you have rights to display on your site.Model Release
Document that a model signs at the time the photographs of them are taken.Message Board
A message board is a place where you can ask and offer advice about the industry or just generally chat with other adult webmasters for example the message board at: http://www.europeanwebmasters.com.Newbie
A new adult webmaster.Partnership, Sponsor or, Affiliate Program
A revenue program that pays you a percentage or fixed price for every member you send to your sponsor’s site.Pay Site
An adult website where surfers have to pay a fee for access.Pic Post
A site where you can submit a picture and your ad on a daily basis.Plug In
A plug in is a ready-made type of web “CONTENT”. Many plug in providers will even host the content on their servers and allow you to change colors, Fonts and, add a logo graphic, so the plug in matches your site. Plug In content is generally more expensive than image content.Ratio
A ratio like this refers to click throughs and actual sales made from them. When a webmaster says they got a 1:250 ratio, they mean that out of 250 people who clicked on his sponsor banner, one of the surfers paid for memberships.Signup Ratio
The amount of surfers that paid to view your adult site (See the example above headed RATIO).Spamming
Promoting a site or service to newsgroups or e-mail addresses that have not given you permission to do so. Spamming can also mean posting your referral codes on message boards constantly inn order to get other webmasters to sign up beneath you.TGP (Thumbnail Gallery Post)
A site where you can submit your gallery pages. They in return put up your gallery and send you additional traffic.Thumbnail
A smaller version of an image used to link to a larger version of the same image.Turnkey Site
An adult site that is already designed and finished with logos, content, billing solutions and, hosting. All you have to do is maintain the site. Newbies often make the mistake of buying a turnkey site before they properly know how to market them.Traffic
The term used to refer to the amount of visitors to your adult website over a specific period of time.Uniques
Number of visitors to your site. If 10 surfers visit your site on any given day and 2 of them click onto your site 3 times the same day, it will be referred to as 8 unique visitors for that day.URL
A web address. Actual address to a page would be a URL. For example: http://www.adultwebmasternewsletter.com is the URL to our Adult Webmaster Newsletter Site.Warning or Entry Page
The page before a surfer sees the main content of your site.Web Host
A company that will provide you with a hosting account so that you may upload your website on their server so that surfers may see your site. For a reputable host you might like to try http://www.webair.com.Article written by Lee
-
Anime Adult Content – Why Is It So Hard To Find?
I have been asked by many people to explain the Anime/Toon niche, why the content is so hard to find, and why it is more expensive than other content. So to that end, I am writing this article in hopes that it will answer those questions and perhaps others.
First of all, it might be good to review the terms used for this niche. Some of these you may be familiar with, others may be new. In Japan, the term used to discuss or describe “pretty young girls” is “bishoujo” (pronounced “bee-shoh-jo”) This term can be seen (or heard) in any advertisement or publication that covers such works. This literally means “pretty young girl” or “pretty girl” – or, if you like, we might also translate this as
“fair lady”. In Japanese, “bi-” means “beauty” or “beautiful” and “shoujo” means “girl” or “young girl” (note the long “o” sound… the short “o” word, “shojo”, means “maiden” or “virgin”, so it has a different meaning altogether.) With respect to terms such as “ecchi”, “hentai” or “sukebe”, the meanings tend to be a matter of degrees. The first term is the most commonly used – we’d say “naughty” or something similar, meaning naughty in a sexual sense of being naughty. “Hentai” or “sukebe”, on the other hand, are extremely rude terms to use – they do not mean just “adult” as some people think, and they do not even only mean “perverted” or “perverted in a sexual sense”. They imply “sexual pervert” in an extremely negative connotation – the type of thing we might scream “LECHER!” or “RAPIST!” or “STALKER!” about, for example. Since Japan places great importance on levels of politeness, speaking out loud about “hentai” or “sukebe” is not something that is normally done – it’s perhaps equivalent to walking down a street or sidewalk in America and swearing out loud like a trooper. In Japanese popular culture works such as anime, manga, and games, the terms tend to be used as exclamations of insult or disgust to elicit a comedic response from the audience – we do the same in some of our mature comedies that contain comments or situations that would never truly happen in real life. The common misuse of the term “hentai” is somewhat similar to the formerly common misuse of the term “Japanimation”. It took a lot of work over many years to get the general public to learn the simple term “anime” and get stores to replace signage to read “anime” rather than “Japanimation” – to this day, there are still various dealers or stores or sites that use “Japanimation” and do not understand the term “anime”. Manga refers to “comic books” or illustrated erotic stories; most manga that is created in Japan is done in the traditional black and white, or pen and ink style.Now here in the United States we commonly use Anime or Hentai to describe all art that is done in the Japanese style, and use the word cartoon to describe what we traditionally think of as American animation, such as Disney, Batman, Tom & Jerry, or my favorite The Road Runner. J In the Adult business however, “toons” basically covers anything other than Anime. It is difficult to change the traditional mindset since it is so embedded in our vocabulary, so much so that I even list content under hentai on my site, simply because no one knows to look or ask for ecchi or bishoujo. But webmasters are learning through research and articles such as this, to market the products by their proper names more and more, which will make it easier to break into markets other than North America.
Now on the subject of why the content is so rare and hard to find with legal web license. Japanese artists and companies are very hesitant to strike deals outside of their country when it comes to their artworks. The reason for this has a lot to do with the enormous amount of piracy on the web of these images. In Japan, single images which we think of as normal content for galleries, is extremely rare. Most images that can be seen throughout the net and the newsgroups come from Japanese Animated movies and video games. These images or stills are lifted directly from the movie or game and are traded freely among fansites and newsgroups with total disregard to the artists or developers. Unfortunately, there are also places out there that sell or lease these images as well, so know your provider! Now of course, this is not a phenomena that plagues only this niche as we know, but the Japanese are very sensitive about it, and that is why they hesitate to license out their single image artwork. There are a few content companies out there that have such images available, but the number is limited. Of course there are hopes and plans to expand their availability soon. J
Because such content is not readily available in large amounts from Japan, other content has to be created to fill a need for legal content in the adult industry. And the creation of that content is what makes it more expensive than your normal picture content. For anime or cartoon content, an artist must create an original image from his or her imagination, they must sketch the image, and color and shade the image, then scan the image and ready it for display on the net. With the obvious exception of what is known as CGI (computer generated images) each image is hand drawn and colored and can take an artist anywhere from several hours to days to complete. He or she can not just click a button on a camera and walk away with 200 or so images for a days work. So when you are buying anime or toon content, you are truly paying for a piece of art (with web license!). If you spent all day designing, building and painting a birdhouse for example, would you sell it for less than you put into it? Remember to, that the return on an investment in high quality anime/toon content can much higher than average photo content, simply because the niche is so hot and members are very loyal when they find what they like. It only takes one per sign up sale at any of the big sponsors out there to pay for a set of 25 images, and there are a lot of sponsors to choose from now too! The past year has seen a huge addition of Anime and Toon pay sites; because the sponsors know there is money in this niche!
Another great source of revenue from this niche is the very games and movies of which I wrote earlier. RPG Adult Anime games are hugely popular as are the large libraries of animated films imported from Japan. Translated into English and affordably priced, up sales on these items are great way to add income to the traffic you already have! For more information on this, just drop me an email.
I hope this has helped you understand this niche a bit better, and helps you appreciate the work that goes into it. I love this particular niche, and not only because I sell the content, but because of its uniqueness and beauty.
Article written by Bestat.
-
Fonts – Everything You Wanted To Know
All web browsers use standard fonts. Mostly two types, one for proportional, one for mono spaced fonts. Proportional (or variable width) characters adapt in width, an “m” uses more space than an “i”. Mono spaced (or fixed width) characters are all equal in width, typewriter style.
Most browsers use “Times” for proportional fonts. This font was originally developed by the London Times news paper. “Courier” is used for mono spaced. This was a very popular font used for mechanical typewriters. Both are normally set to 12 points (1/72nd of an inch).
Serif And Sans Serif.
Both these fonts are so called serif fonts. The French word serif indicates the little strokes at the outer ends of the characters. They are very old, you see them in old gothic handwriting, or Greek and Roman buildings. Partly used for ornamental reasons, partly because the characters are easier distinguished.
It’s a little odd they are used on computer screens. These are by nature quite coarse, which makes serif characters quite grainy and ugly. Sans serif characters generally display a lot better on screens. Sans serif literally translates to “without stroke”. Probably the most popular sans serif font is Helvetica or derivatives like Windows’ Arial.<FONT FACE=”Arial”>…</FONT>
The FONT Tag.
The html tag for fonts is a somewhat crude instrument. Most word processors let you use any font you like, as long as it’s on your system. And that’s the first big problem in web browsers. You have no control over other systems’ fonts. So you will have to choose a font which is likely to be on any system out there.<FONT FACE=”Arial,Helvetica,Sansserif”>…</FONT>
Typeface.
The font tag accommodates this by letting you specify several fonts in the FACE attribute. If the first one is not available, the second is used, and so on. The set above is often used. Arial is on all Windows systems, Helvetica on Macintosh, Sans serif on UNIX. The same is true for mono spaced fonts in the line below.<FONT FACE=”Courier New,Courier,Mono”>…</FONT>
Size.
Word processors let you specify font sizes in points exactly. No such luck in web browsers. There are seven sizes to choose from, denoted 1 (smallest) through 7 (largest). If this SIZE attribute is not used it defaults to 3. I think the default 12 point size is a bit big, so I use 2 for size, which gives you about a 10 point character. Some browsers let you set the overall font size smaller or larger. Which makes this issue even more awkward.<FONT SIZE=”2″>…</FONT>
There is a nasty bug in some browsers. When using a block of text with size 1, the last line skips a line. This bug can be squashed by putting a <BR> tag immediately after the block of text. If your browser has this bug it will show in the second text below.
There is a nasty bug in some browsers. When using a block of text with size 1, the last line skips a line. This bug can be squashed by putting a <BR> tag immediately after the block of text (with break).
Color.
Fonts can have any color you like, much like the colors in the body tag. Keep readability always in mind, avoid clashing colors and little contrast. You can create nice shading effects. But don’t make a Christmas tree out of your page by using too many colors.<FONT COLOR=”red”>…</FONT>
Style Sheets.
There is a chance all this soon will be replaced by style sheets. They do let you specify exact point sizes, even use downloadable fonts. But for now I would advise against that, since not all current browsers understand them. You could however use a combination of both, should you want to.Article written by Lee
Premium Sponsors
Categories
- 2257
- Billing Solutions
- Blogging
- Branding
- Content
- Domain Names
- Employment
- Forms & Contracts
- General
- Hosting
- Link Lists
- Opt-in Mail
- Paid Traffic
- Pic Posts
- Promotion
- Scripts
- Search Engine Optimization
- Sponsors
- TGP
- Traffic
- Tutorials
- Viral Marketing
- WebDesign
- Writing