Anime Adult Content – Why Is It So Hard To Find?

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Content | Response: 0

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.

http://www.exclusivecontent.com

Building A Surfer Trap – Stage 2

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

In the last tutorial we hopefully got the foundations of our surfer trap laid and in this stage, we will start to put this thing together.

Ok the first step of stage two of building your surfer trap is to start linking each of the individual FPA’s to your Multi-Site FPA.

The easiest way that I have found to do this is to give each FPA its own sub directory on your server and have the html page named index for each of the single site FPA’s.

So for instance, if you have the site All Petite on your Multi-Site FPA you would link it to:

mydomain.com/all-petite/

Or whatever you called the sub directory for the All Petite single FPA.

Now, once you have linked these single FPA’s to your Multi-Site FPA we need to start ‘playing’ with them once again.

You should now have copy’s of your single site FPA’s and Multi-Site FPA on both your server and Hard Drive.

Take the copy’s you have on your hard drive and add a small NICHE pop up console to each of the single site FPA’s AND the Multi-Site FPA.

I would suggest making 6 NICHE consoles.

These consoles should be pure text and nothing else.

Each of the links on this small console should link to a different niche of your single site FPA’s I usually go with one link for each of the following niches…

Gay
Mature
Teen
Fetish
Hardcore
Asian

Plus, I usually add a link at the bottom of my console which goes to the POTD program.

Once you have these consoles built you should upload them to their OWN sub directory on your server, I would suggest calling this directory ‘consoles’ and calling each of the niche consoles the name of the NICHE they represent.

So, you should now have the following on your HD and on your server:

1 Multi-Site FPA
50 or so Single Site FPA’s (All Linked From The Multi-Site FPA)
6 Small Pop-Up Consoles (Popping Only One On The Multi-Site FPA and The Single Site FPA’s, each different niche Single Site FPA pops a different niche console however.)

You now have to check that your surfer trap is working so far.

Article written by Lee.

Golden Rules For Finding A New Domain Name

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

We all know by now that domain names are being registered at an unbelievable rate and, whilst the vast majority of ‘decent’ domain names have already been registered there are still some god domains to be registered and, this article will give you some insight into how you can choose an effective domain for your business purposes – regardless of what they are.

Avoid Play On Words.

Whilst sitting at a bar you come up with an idea for a domain www.4play.com and, at the time this might seem like a great domain name to buy however, before you head to your favorite register and purchase the domain stop to think about the long term implications.

Let me explain this a little more using the example www.4play.com lets think about this, every time you mention the domain in a conversation people are more likely to head across to www.foreplay.com or www.fourplay.com first as a type-in. This is also true of the other abbreviation styles of ‘internet slang’ remember the days of the ‘dot com’ registrations, you know domains such as www.dotsex.com looking back now, these seem ridiculous to have been registered however, at the time they were popular but they died their death years ago.

Think Investment.

A good ‘commercial’ domain must be able to distinguish itself from the competition, there are several ways to achieve this for example:

Consider Your Target Audience.

Aim your domain at a specific, yet broad market audience. use tools to narrow down what your customers (surfers) are looking for, narrow this list down to a select few domains and then, narrow the list down some more.

Follow Trends Or… Create Them.

If you are serious about picking a good domain name or two then be prepared to invest the time required to get a good domain name. Research the latest trends on the internet, see what products or services are ‘hot’ and will be around long term and also see which domains are just a flash in the pan.

A good example of ‘long term’ domains would be www.europeanwebmasters.com which i registered several years ago when, in all honesty, the foreign markets were not even thought about however, you cant go to any forum nowadays without someone asking about the international marketplace.

Act On A Whim.

In complete contrast to my opening statement in this article, if you think you have a solid business idea, act on it, the chances are someone else will also think of the same idea as you and, if you don’t get the domain name first, they will.

Alternative Buying.

So you have decided that you do want to buy www.4play.com before you make your purchase have a look at what other variants of this domain are available, for example, you might like to check registrations of www.4-play.com, www.for-play.com, www.forplay.com, etc etc.

If you have a great business idea, make sure you have all of your bases covered, just because you are starting a new craze, that doesn’t mean the domains will be available for registration tomorrow or next week.

By purchasing all the variants of the high quality domain you have thought of you are, in effect, eliminating all of the competition you could face long term.

Don’t Cyber-Squat.

If you are a serious domain buyer, avoid tailgating on other peoples domain names unless of course, it has enormous potential for example, if someone has registered a generic domain such as www.123456.com but failed to register www.123-456.com why not register the available domain? You are not impeding on anyone’s property rights and, you might benefit from some mis-typed traffic at the same time. As with any type of mis-typed domain, before you register it, seek legal advice, a few dollars spent before registering the domain could save you thousands afterwards.

Fools Rush In.

Don’t automatically buy the first domain name you think of, think on it some more, sleep on it if you have to, ask your family and friends on their opinions. Although the really good domain names have virtually almost all gone, its better to carefully think out each and every domain name purchase you make and save yourself some money long term than to rush in and buy a domain that wont be any use and have to register a new domain to take the place of the first.

In addition to the above don’t sit on a really good domain name idea forever because, forever comes a lot sooner than you may think.

Hopefully this article has given you some useful information in respect of registering new domain names and you can put this information to good practice when buying domains. Article written by Lee

Turning Opt In Mailings Into Pure Spam

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Opt-in Mail | Response: 0

Spam is frowned upon net wide and even more so than usual in the online adult industry especially unsolicited email Spam however, many webmasters do not seem to grasp the essential basics about what Spam is and more importantly, the point in which they themselves become Spammers, this is what we will take a look at in this brief article.

Double And Single Opt In Mailings.

By themselves single and double opt-in mailing lists can be a very effective method of promoting your or, your sponsors sites however, many webmasters forget the one fundamental rule when mailing their opt in subscribers, send them what they actually opted in for otherwise, you are spamming the list and ultimately, the recipients.

The line between opt in mailings and Spam is a very finely drawn one at best however in the adult industry it seems the edges of this line are more blurred than almost anywhere else. Quite often you see webmasters on a variety of message boards selling their ‘opt in mailing list’ to one or two other webmasters however, when does the opt in to Spam equation fit in? This is what we will look at next.

Turning Opt-In Mailings In To Spam Emails.

So you have collected opt in email addresses diligently for the last god knows how long and, you have successfully emailed those lists numerous times with some good results to show for it and you want to let others profit from your lists whilst making some money for yourself at the same time. Time to sell the emails you have collected. This is your first mistake, the email addresses which you have collected for your subscriber mail outs have been opted into YOUR list not another webmasters and well, the second that another webmaster buys this list from you the list itself becomes pure unadulterated Spam, nothing more, nothing less.

Of course, you don’t have to sell the list, you could offer the list up for trades however, the same thing applies, the second your mailing list changes hands that list not only becomes worthless to the person who has purchased it but, in effect, the list has now become worthless to you.

Adult Opt In Email Lists.

To make a long term profit from your opt in mailing lists the one thing that you should ensure is that the list you have remains clean and, more importantly than that, remains private, if you have spent several years collecting these email addresses why would you turn the revenue potential of them in to nothing less than worthless overnight? Keep the lists as clean and as private as possible, the next time a sponsor opens a paysite that is on the same topic as your mailing list you can send your opt in mailer to your database and profit from the unexposed site.

Adult Opt In Mailing Lists Overview.

When all is said and done, as mentioned above opt in adult mailing lists are a very hard to find commodity and, if you have a list for a specific niche or market the list becomes even harder to find, keep your list as clean as possible and ensure that you and only you use the opt in mailing list. By keeping the email addresses you have collected out of the grasp of other webmasters you have the potential to make revenue from that list for as long as you maintain it however, all of your hard work can be undone overnight if you sell the list to the wrong webmaster. In short, if someone opts in to a mailing list owned by you, make sure you are the only person who mails them from that list otherwise, you have indirectly spammed that email address.

Article written by Lee

Doorway Pages

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Article written by Lee

The Death Of The AVS – The Birth Of The AEN (Adult Entertainment Network)

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: General, Promotion, Sponsors, WebDesign | Response: 0

Well after a long and tedious few months of speculation, rumors and facts being presented to those of us in the adult industry working on AEN sites (Formerly known as AVS sites) it seems that Visa has put a strain on AEN companies to start re-working and, renaming their sites to fall under the ‘Adult Entertainment Network’ name. What does this mean to us as webmasters and, more importantly to the industry as a whole? This is what we shall address in this article.

A Little Visa History Lesson.

This whole mess started in October of 2002 when, jointly, CCBill, Epoch and, iBill issued a new set of operating guidelines that had been passed onto them by Visa. In effect, this meant that 3rd party credit card processors had to be re-classified as an ‘IPSP’ or ‘Internet Payment Service Provider’ this also in turn meant that webmasters needed to start paying ‘fees’ to Visa (via their IPSP) in order to continue charging their surfers for access to products and services by using Visa issued credit and / or debit cards.

In addition to the initial $750 however, there is also a need to pay an ongoing fee of $375, two thirds of this fee goes directly to Visa and, the remaining balance goes to issuing banks and IPSP’s for administrative charges.

Shortly after this announcement was made the industry then got dealt another blow by the processing companies, this time, in the form of Paypal announcing they would no longer accept any adult orientated payment through their system. This went into effect on May 12th 2003 and, after initial speculations as to what could and could not be charged to Paypal accounts, it seemed to be the final nail in the coffin for some of the smaller webmasters.

However, the adult industry is strong and rallied together getting as much information as possible about alternates to both of the above situations and companies such as Stormpay and off-shore IPSP’s started to see an increase in revenues from adult payments.

As The Waves Settled – The Next Blow.

Given all of the financial troubles of the previous 10 months in respect of online adult payments the industry as a whole started to settle itself again, of course there was the usual posting on forums, conversion ratio and shaving discussions happening on the main forums as there always was but, in addition to these conversations more rumors started, this time, regarding the AVS business model.

Almost as quickly as these rumors started however, they seemed to have fizzled out into nothing but a distant memory but, two months later after the first round of initial conversations on the adult industry message forums, the same AVS business model was dealt another devastating blow.

It seems Visa has its sights set on AVS (Age Verification Service / Systems) with a press release being issued first by Sex Key, then by Free Age Card, which was followed by similar announcements from Global Male Pass and Gay Passport informing adult webmasters that they had 2 days to make their current AVS sites conform to the new requirements set down by Visa.

These requirements were that.

1) Adult webmasters can no longer use the term ‘AVS’ on their sites.
2) Adult webmasters can no longer use the term ‘Adult Verification Service’ or ‘Age Verification Service’ on their sites.
3) Adult webmasters can no longer state that surfers joining up to their AVS will have ‘Access to thousands of other AVS protected sites’.

As usual Adult Webmasters started to question the reasons behind this sudden and apparent change of AVS rules on almost every forum and, whilst most questions went unanswered the one thing that was answered (honestly) was that these new rules had been set down by current AVS IPSP’s who, had had these rules issued tot hem by Visa.

So, webmasters started to change out their tour page text to conform to these new rules and, for the most part, it seemed like that was all that was needed to be ‘safe’ working the AVS business model. Little did they know…

One Last Blow To The AVS Webmasters.

Several days after the initial press releases from some of the top AEN (Formerly AVS) companies was made it seems that in between all of the posting ont he boards yet another issues comes to light – That Visa is aiming to have AVS webmasters now pay a $750 fee for the benefit of being able to keep using this business model as stated by Craig Tant (Sex Key) ‘we believe is that every site will have to be registered and pay the $750.’

This beleif, although somewhat vague tends to draw conclusions that, through no fault of their own, the AVS / AEN business model in the adult industry as we currently know it is changing and, changing for the worse. If webmasters are forced to pay Visa a $750 registeration fee per AEN system or per AEN site then a lot of todays industry leaders are going to come unstuck, especially those that focus solely on the AVS / AEN model for the primary source of income.

Adult Entertainment Networks – What’s Next?

This is the question that is currently being asked by many webmasters and, the truth of the matter is simply that nobody knows – Except for Visa, the next few days, weeks and months are going to be telling on the industry as a whole from what happens to current sites inside the AVS / AEN companies websites to what happens when surfers start to propagate back onto the adult internet looking for their fix of high quality porn, two things however are definitive throughout all of this, Visa is homing in on the adult industry and, every webmaster needs to be concerned about what will happen next.

Article written by Lee

Why Go Adult?

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Hosting | Response: 0

When choosing a hosting company why choose an adult host over a mainstream one?

Simple, They provide above other things, a better quality of service, affordability and, most importantly, reliability.

Adult hosts face a variety of technical and support issues, this coupled with the points mentioned above makes them a far superior choice to standard mainstream hosting providers. This is one of the main factors why more and more mainstream internet based companies are now turning to the adult business forum to provide their hosting solutions.

Mainstream going adult? Yes that’s right, more and more mainstream companies are turning to our industries hosting providers for the fast speeds, security and, reliable infrastructures they can offer after all, adult sites are amongst the most prolific on the internet on average gaining more daily hits to their sites than mainstream websites so, they need to be cost efficient, not only to the hosting companies but, also to their clients, the webmaster.

Our industry strives on the use of heavy graphics, coupled with streaming media files to secure sales and longevity, this is why the adult hosting companies need to be able to provide not just a single, heavily laden server but tens of them, sometimes even hundreds all producing gigabytes of traffic on a daily basis.

Adult hosting companies are constantly upgrading their equipment in order to improve not just their servers, connectivity but also the smaller things that are often overlooked by webmasters, hubs, routers, switches and the likes along side the not so technical aspects of running a host, The staff.

Along with all of this technical equipment they also need to maintain a high level of technical knowledge, after all, not just anyone can install operating systems capable of running multi-million dollar industries. They need the knowledge to maintain, upgrade, repair and sell their services to the best of their capabilities.

What does this mean to you? Well, we all want to make money and, through the use of faster servers, e-commerce solutions and the technical support your hosting provider can give you, you will be fattening your wallet on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.

Adult hosting, quite simply, is the crème de la crème of the hosting world, they offer solid, solutions whether you are starting in the adult industry or, operate a mainstream e-commerce site.

So how do you choose a host that is right for you?

You need to ask some basic questions of the host and, do your homework. Not only should you find out what hosting solutions they can offer you but, you need to find out what their support service is like, how affordable they are in comparison to other companies who can offer similar or the same service. Whilst on the subject of hosting support, before you sign on the dotted line, give your host a call out of office hours, if they answer, then you can almost be certain they are a good hosting provider.

Of course, not all hosts will have 24 hour phone support, however, that said, some offer 24 hour icq support, email support and more.

Another sure fire way to find out if a hosting company is any good is to ask on the heavily traveled webmaster message boards, after all, you are not the only webmaster out there who will have tried this company, if they are no good, someone will know about it and point you in the direction of a reputable host like http://www.webair.com.

Hopefully, this article will have given you some insight into the world of adult hosting companies and, will assist you in making the right choice of host for your site, whatever type of website you might be hosting.

Article Written By Lee

What Is The Golden Ratio?

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Sponsors | Response: 0

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

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

An example of this is as follows:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Article written by Lee

Search Engine Optimization, Is It Worth It?

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Search Engine Optimization | Response: 0

One of the trendiest takes on Internet marketing these days seems to be the notion that securing top search engine rankings “no longer works.” Where it started, I have no idea.

But rarely does a week go by when I don’t see one or more Internet marketing “experts” claiming that search engine positioning is largely a waste of time and should not be a primary focus of Website owners.

Well, as the saying goes, “there are two sides to every story.”

But let’s not make this article about my side, or your side, or anyone else’s side. Let’s forget about my opinion and other “expert’s” opinions and stick to the indisputable facts, as reported by highly credible third party sources:

According to a Forrester Research Media Field Study, getting a loyal audience in the first place is best done by Search Engine Placement.

According to a GVU Users Survey, 84.8% of Internet users use Search Engines to find Websites.

In a study released by ActivMedia Research in September 1999, Search Engine Positioning was ranked as the #1 Website promotional method used by eCommerce sites.

And look what I just found in the April 2000 issue of Target Marketing Magazine.
“Top Ways Websites are Discovered”

Banner ads: 1%

Targeted email: 1.2%

TV spots: 1.4%

“By accident”: 2.1%

Magazine ads: 4.4%

Word-of-mouth: 20%

Random Surfing: 20%

Search Engines: 46%

You’ve now seen the numbers and know that search engine promotion is very much alive and kicking. But let’s take this a step further. Let’s talk about the *quality* of prospects coming to your Website through search engines as opposed to other advertising mediums.

Every time your potential customers use the search engines, they qualify themselves as *hot prospects* by conducting searches on keywords that are directly related to your product or service. Their choice of keywords is proof that they have a genuine interest in what you offer. These people spend their valuable time exploring the search engines for your type of product or service.

Think About That.

They didn’t stumble upon one of your ads, or wander past a hyperlink to your site. And they didn’t get a banner ad thrown in their face. They made the *decision* to actively search the keywords that brought them to YOUR Website. And when they get there, they are ready and willing to do business with you. At the very least, they’re seriously considering it and, that’s the most powerful sales tool you can have!

But merely getting your Website “indexed” or listed in the search engines is not enough. In order to get any significant traffic from the search engines, your Website must be listed within the top 30 search results (preferably the top 20).

Very rarely will anyone look beyond the first 30 results returned from a search. This makes perfect sense because the most relevant sites are always listed at the top. So if your prospect doesn’t find what they want within the first 20 to 30 listings, they’ll simply do a new search.

If your site falls anywhere below the 30th listing, you don’t stand a chance against anyone in the TOP-20. Hence, it should be your goal to achieve Top 20 positions.

How Do You Get Your Website Listed In The Top 20?

1) You can attempt to gain these Top 20 rankings yourself. However, this can easily become a full time job. (I think this is why so many marketers advise against focusing on search engine positioning.)

2) You can hire a reputable company who can achieve AND maintain your Top 20 rankings for you (be sure they guarantee their service and have several verifiable clients that currently have multiple Top 20 rankings).

3) You can do nothing at all. But as you’ve seen from the third party statistics referenced above, search engine positioning is something you can’t afford to ignore.

Whatever choice you make, I hope that your eyes have been opened to the tremendous profit potential that exists with top search engine placement.

Article written by Lee

Cascading Billing – Using Multiple Payment Processors For More Profit

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Billing Solutions | Response: 0

‘Cascading Billing’ has been somewhat of a buzz word of late in the online industry however, there seems to be some confusion as to what this billing process actually involves or even does other than ‘process payments’ this is what we will take a look at in this brief article.

Cascading Billing – The Basics.

Simply put, Cascading Billing is a method to enable your surfers to buy membership to your site or, products utilizing multiple third party credit card processors and, other payment options. The process used, as its name suggests, is that of a ‘cascading’ feature meaning that, if you have multiple processors set up on your site and a surfers credit card is declined on your primary processor, the details will then be passed onto a secondary credit card processor where, they will either be accepted or declined and, if declined, the details can then be passed onto yet another credit card processor or, some alternate payment solution.

Cascading Billing – The Benefits.

From the initial reaction this new payment process has received in the online community it would appear that this new solution actually does work and, work well. Many companies who are adopting the ‘Cascading Billing’ process are reporting an increase in sales, some reporting upto a 20% increase over the normal procedures they used. This increase in sales also enables affiliate programs to pass the new found benefits onto the webmasters themselves through raised payouts and better sign-up ratios.

Cascading Billing – The Options.

As with any type of online payment processor or, payment system, you need to evaluate what your individual needs are and, using a cascading billing program is no different. With many solutions currently available and in development stages the choices for webmasters and program owners are growing and growing.

However, that said, first and foremost you need to choose which processors or, billing solutions you will use to begin your cascading billing. In an ideal world, you should choose two of the more reputable third party payment processors as your primary and secondary processor in addition to a tertiary payment option or, perhaps even a custom dialer solution. Generally speaking, this will give you the best way to monetize your own and, your webmasters traffic.

Cascading Payment Solutions – Overview.

When all is said and done, cascading billing offers webmasters and online e-business owners ample opportunity to increase their profits through minimal outlay either by renting the scripting that will allow you to utilize the cascading billing option (costs from $300 a month) or, having such a solution custom coded which, you can have done from as little as US$5000. Either way i am certain we will start to see many more of the top online companies offering this type of payment solution in the near future and, with some of the larger online companies already adopting this method, it is sure to start happening soon.

Article written by Lee