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Everybody’s Going Gay
The past few months in the online adult industry have seen some rather dramatic changes happen from Visa charging additional fees to accept their credit cards online, Paypal no longer processing adult and, several large companies going out of business. However, one thing that also seems to be changing for the better is the amount of webmasters looking at new niches to promote. Surprisingly, the one niche that many webmasters are looking at is that of the gay niche.
Where The Money’s At.
For years, the adult webmaster community has been split amongst themselves, those that are only focused on straight niches and, those that focus on gay niches however. As of late, more and more of those webmasters from the first group are looking to make additional income from the gay niche. With this inevitable surge in gay adult sites coming online, there are bound to be some knock-on effects, and those webmasters just starting to look at the gay niche, will return to what they know. However, for most, i think this is going to be a fruitful encounter with one of the industry less socially accepted markets. Many of the webmasters who have been concentrating solely on the straight market for their income are going to realize just how much money they have been losing out on for all these years. And with this realization, comes its own set of problems for the industry as a whole.The Gay Market.
Whether you are a straight webmaster or a gay webmaster the one thing that will become apparent is that your sites are going to reflect you in both, how they look and, the marketing techniques you use. More importantly, the attitude you have towards your gay surfers will in fact show through. Many of the straight webmasters whom, perhaps are not as tolerant towards this niche will, almost certainly fail before they can really get going. Marketing gay adult sites is far different than marketing straight adult sites. You have to know the surfer, understand what they want and, more importantly, know the terminology in the gay market. Many times a post can be seen on various message boards belittling those webmasters who are openly gay – often accompanied by terms such as ‘fag’, ‘queer’, ‘homo’, etc along with with images being posted that, quite frankly, would turn most people’s stomach.The gay niche is much more than just a single online market, it is a whole lifestyle unto itself. While this lifestyle is affluent (having an abundance of readily available money to spend) it will take a lot of work and perseverance to ensure you get your share of this market.
Starting Points.
As I mentioned above, the main thing many webmasters are going to have to learn are the terms of the gay market, what is a twink? A bear? A cub? What products work well on gay sites? Despite what most people think, you cant just throw up some banners with naked men on them and turn a profit. Match your content to a niche and then, match your advertising to your content, what use is it having bears on a site if, the paysite you are promoting features Teens ‘n’ Twinks?Similarly, your text links, ‘Click Here For Hot Gay Action’ might get you a few clicks but, by targeting your surfers even more, you will see how some of the gay niches can really turn a profit. The trick is this, get the surfer to your site and actually give them something that you think will suit their desires. This may mean making a 10% commission on a sex toy sale as oppose to a $35 commission on a pay site membership. And so be it. Those 10%’ers start to add up after a few sales.
In Summary.
To summarize, the gay niche will make you money however, to make money you will need to invest something that, perhaps isn’t for everyone – a lot of time and understanding. Marketing the gay niche isn’t for everyone, we have seen this too many times. However for those who are, spending time adding a gay market portfolio to there straight, with a little time increase your overall income significantly.Article written by Le
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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.
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Building A Surfer Trap – Stage 7
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.
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What On Earth Is CGI?
Let’s unlock a little bit of the mystery about something called CGI. If it helps any, CGI means Common Gateway Interface.
This is a method which is used to swap data between the server (the hardware and software that actually allows you to get to your web site) and a web client (your browser). CGI is actually a set of standards where a program or script (a series of commands) can send data back to the web server where it can be processed.
Typically, you use standard HTML tags to get data from a person, then pass that data to a CGI routine. The CGI routine then performs some action with the data.
Some of the more common uses of CGI include:
Guest books – The CGI routine is responsible for accepting the data, ensuring it is valid, sending an email acknowledgement back to the writer, perhaps sending an email to the webmaster, and creating the guest book entry itself.
Email Forms – A simple CGI forms routine just formats the data into an email and sends it back to the webmaster. More complicated routines can maintain a database, send an acknowledgement and validate data.
Mailing List Maintenance – These routines allow visitors to subscribe and unsubscribe from a mailing list. In this case, the CGI routine maintains a database of email addresses, and the better ones send acknowledgements back to the visitor and webmaster.
A CGI routine can be anything which understands the CGI standard. A popular CGI language is called PERL, which is simple to understand and use (well, compared to other languages). PERL is a scripting language, which means each time a PERL routine is executed the web server must examine the PERL commands to determine what to do. In contrast, a compiled language such as C++ or Visual Basic can be directly executed, which is faster and more efficient.
Okay, in a nutshell (and greatly simplified), here’s how it works:
1) You (the webmaster) specify a form tag which includes the name of the CGI routine.
2) You create HTML tags which retrieves data from your visitors.
3) Each of the input tags includes a variable name. The data which is retrieved from the visitor (or directly set if the tag includes the “hidden” qualifier) is placed in the variable name.
4) When the visitor presses the “submit” button, the CGI routine which was specified in the form tag is executed. At this time, the CGI routine “takes control”, meaning the browser essentially is waiting for it to complete.
5) This CGI routine can get data from variable names. It retrieves the data and does whatever action is required.
6) When the CGI routine finishes, it returns control back to the browser.
Some important things to remember about CGI routines:
You can install CGI routines on your own site if your host allows it http://www.webair.com is an example of a web host which allows for CGI routines. Some web hosts do not allow you to install your own routines but do provide some pre-written ones to you. If these are not sufficient for your needs, you can find a remote hosting service to provide the necessary functions.
Generally, if you install your own routines they must be installed in the cgi-bin directory of your site. This is a special location which allows scripts and programs to be executed.
CGI routines work best on Apache-style servers. Windows NT and Windows 2000 does support CGI, but it tends to be slow and problematic.
If you use a remote hosting service, you must remember that although they appear to be giving you this for free, you are actually paying a price. Usually they want to display advertisements, although some of them actually take visitors away from your site.
When you write a CGI routine, you have the choice of a scripting language like PERL or a compiled language such as C++ or Visual Basic. Anything which can execute on the web server is acceptable.
I hope this short introduction to CGI has cleared up some of the mystery.
Article written by Lee
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Over The Rainbow
So why is the gay community over the rainbow? As promised today I’ll finish up on the symbols that are prevalent in the gay community. Last week I mention the Pink Triangle and it’s political emergence. And technically, the rainbow flag has a similar political beginning.
I always love answering a question with another question (it is one of those annoying habits I have). So, when I am asked the “what does the rainbow flag stand for?” I look forward to the response when I ask, in turn, “what do YOU think it means?” Here are my top three favorite answers:
1 – “It’s colorful and gay people like colors.”
2 – “It’s a dance party thing”
3 – “Judy Garland sang Over the Rainbow you guys loved her a lot.” (This has to be my all time favorite.)
Well like any political symbol, it is a way to distinguish ourselves. But this time we look not to a place in history but we look at the world in general. No matter where you are, whether it is on 8th street in NYC or Rue du Champe in Paris, there will be a gay person somewhere. Now, some may argue that not all cultures and societies will have homosexual present. And I say, “BULL”. They are just in the closet somewhere.
So in essence, gay men and women cross every racial and religious culture around the world. We come in all shapes, sizes and colors. So what better symbol to show that with than a rainbow, all colors coming together as one – as one community. No matter how culturally diverse our world is, the gay community is made up from a piece of each.
The rainbow flag and the uses of the rainbow, in the gay community, are diverse. If you see it flying outside on a restaurant wall, and it means it is a gay or gay friendly establishment. See a set of rainbow rings around a friend’s neck, it’s gay fashion accessories. And see a political march with rainbows on posters and flags, it’s a gay assembly.
Last week I insinuated that the pink triangle was not a symbol to over use in design. Well, in my opinion, the opposite is true with the rainbow and the rainbow flag. I am NOT saying run out and re do all your sites with rainbow backgrounds. No! But, I am saying that the nature of this political symbol is somewhat more flexible. We ourselves took the rainbow and made jewelry, publications, tee shirts and such. And just as the pink triangle, the rainbow will say that it’s ok to be here, you have friends inside or you have nothing to worry about here – be yourself, this place is for you.
So what have we learned? What some people think as silly symbols that gay people use, actually have an origin – and, a potent origin at that. I still ask, for your own good, that you use them wisely and not over do it. The more you throw symbols around willy-nilly, the more people will think you do not know what you are doing. And the more that the surfers thinks that, the less likely you are to make the sale and get your business to grow.
Article written by Gary-Alan
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Doorway Pages
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
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JavaScript – Redirecting Foreign Surfers
At some point or another we are no doubt going to have the need to redirect some or all of our surfers based on the language they speak, this snippet of JavaScript when placed on your page will enable you to do just that without the need for .php or other more complex scripting.
Here is the coding that you need to place between your <head> and </head> tags:
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE=”JavaScript1.2″>
<!– Begin
if (navigator.appName == ‘Netscape’)
var language = navigator.language;
else
var language = navigator.browserLanguage;if (language.indexOf(‘en’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘english.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘nl’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘dutch.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘fr’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘french.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘de’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘german.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘ja’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘japanese.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘it’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘italian.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘pt’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘portuguese.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘es’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘Spanish.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘sv’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘swedish.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘zh’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘chinese.shtml';
else
document.location.href = ‘english.shtml';
// End –>
</script>To add additional language redirects to this JavaScript all you need to do is duplicate the:
else if (language.indexOf(‘zh’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘chinese.shtml';
Section of the coding changing the (‘zh’) language code to that of the language you wish to redirect.
Article written by Lee
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Building A Surfer Trap – Stage 8 – Final Stage
Ok people we have hit the final stage in our surfer trap, Stage 8.
All we are really going to do in this stage is a brief recap over what we have done so far along with checking that our trap is working properly.
In order for us to check our trap is working properly we need to upload it to our server if we haven’t already done so, therefore, you should do this now.
Once the surfer trap has been uploaded we now need to go to the first page, the Multi-Site FPA.
Depending on how you set up your Multi-Site FPA you should either get a pop up or not.
You should also have a counter AND a banner exchange code loading at the bottom of the page below your ‘no thanks’ link.
If this works how you want it to then this stage is working ok.
The next thing we need to check is that ALL of the links off this Multi-Site FPA are working so expect to get a lot of pop-ups while we check this.
You should click on each of the Single-Site FPA’s in turn ensuring that for every one you have a pop-up console appear.
In addition to checking the Single-Site FPA links you should now click on the ‘no thanks’ link along with the counter code and the banner exchange code on your Multi-Site and Single-Site FPA’s.
If these all load fine then this stage of the checking is complete.
Next, we need to close down any and all of the FPA’s we may have open including the Multi-Site FPA.
You should now be left with a couple of consoles, again, follow the links on your consoles including any to the counter you chose along with any banner exchange code you utilized on your consoles.
Again if these work how you expected them to, this section of the checking process is now complete.
For the next step, you need to log into your counter AND banner exchange account, you want to make sure that you have gained additional impressions and rankings from your banner and counter impressions and clicks.
Be aware however, that some counters and banner exchanges will not count multiple views and click from the same IP address so you may only show one or two additional clicks, impressions, or rankings. This is perfectly normal.
If your accounts have gained additional ranks, impressions, and clicks then this stage is completed.
Close down your consoles, you should now get the blur consoles that you created (if you used them) again, as before, check that all of the links from this consoles work.
If they do then you now have a fully complete Surfer Trap to use.
So, what next? Well there are a couple of options, you can mirror this surfer trap to experiment with your sponsors different tour pages, link your first mirror to the second tour page, your third to console free tour pages, etc.
Another good thing that you can do is to create additional Multi-Site FPA’s however, this time, create them by niche so where we have a general Multi-Site FPA at the moment you could use this same method for a Gay, Asian, Teen, etc Multi-Site FPA using the same methods we did when we created this trap.
You should always sign up for a new counter and banner exchange code for each variation of your surfer trap. This way, you get to see performance based on a new working model enabling you to decide which version of the trap works best for you.
I hope this tutorial has given you some insight into how we can generate, filter and trade traffic whilst marketing our sites effectively and, that it has given you some ideas on how you can implement even the simplest item provided to you by your sponsor to generate sales.
For those of you who have been following this tutorial I would like to thank you and wish you all the best with your new found marketing skills.
If you have any questions as always, feel free to post on the forums and we will endeavor to help you out.
Article written by Lee.
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Building A Surfer Trap – Stage 1
The last 2 weeks I have had a LOT of webmasters email and ICQ me regarding traffic and, not getting any sales.
So, I thought it would be a good idea to make a step by step tutorial on building your own surfer trap.
Now these are some of the arguments I have heard why people haven’t already built one over the last few weeks…
* To complicated to follow.
* I want surfers returning to my site.
* Don’t have the time.The first two however seem to be the ones that I hear over and over again.
First of all, a surfer trap IS NOT complicated, in fact, it is probably one of, if not THE easiest type of site to build.
Secondly, Why get a surfer visiting your site over and over again if they are not paying for trial memberships? All you are doing is wasting your bandwidth.
Thirdly, A surfer trap can be built over a period of time, my very first trap was built within 1 hour my next was built in a day and my next one was built in a week.
So onto the start of building our surfer trap…
The first thing that I want you to do is to look at the Multi-Site FPA’s that ARS in the marketing section and choose ONE of them.
Download it, optimize the keywords on the FPA, make sure you add meta tags, titles descriptions and Alt tags on all images.
Once you have done this, you now need to search through ALL of the single site FPA’s and download and optimize one for each of the ARS sites that you have on your Multi-Site FPA. (Even the gay sites!)
This should take you 2-5 minutes for EACH FPA, any longer than that and you are doing TOO much work!
Once you have all of the single FPA’s downloaded, optimized and uploaded onto your server that is the first stage completed.
Article written by Lee
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Cleaning Up The Myths On Scrubbing
Time and time again on message boards I see the same old topics regarding scrubbing usually preceded by some company being accused of scrubbing their webmasters surfers to much and the webmasters sales being lower because of the sponsor ‘scrubbing’ their surfers however, the reality of this is, it isn’t the sponsors who control how much or how little the surfers credit card transactions are ‘scrubbed’.
The E-Commerce Dilemma.
Irrespective of whether you are an online bookmaker, bakery or adult pay site owner the fact of the matter remains that only credit card fraud is on the increase and, in addition to the rise of online credit card fraud the methods in which the perpetrators of these crimes carry them out is also changing often combating the methods put in place by the online transaction processors to stop this happening luckily however, this is where ‘scrubbing’ comes into effect.So What Is Scrubbing?
Scrubbing is a method used by the credit card processor that the companies who’s site you are sending a surfer to uses. Scrubbing is in effect, a method of calculating the probability that any single transaction (or group of transactions) could be fraudulent. That is to say, is being carried out by someone other than the true owner of the credit or debit card.Scrubbing is probably the single most useful tool provided to our sponsors by the credit card processors to ensure that every transaction that gets sent to them is credible and, once the transaction is allowed (or not) a part of the information contained with the transaction is sent to a central database to help other clients of that processor guard against receiving unlawful transaction purchases.
How Does Scrubbing Affect Me?
As a webmaster, believe it or not, scrubbing is actually a good thing for you. You know that each transaction processed is first of all a legitimate one and, secondly, you know that the sponsor who you are using is not going to go bankrupt due to excessive illegal transaction. This means that the sponsor can improve the services they offer YOU as a webmaster to assist you in making more money.In essence, the scrubbing of credit card transactions at a sponsors level increases the amount of money you make long term not only with that individual sponsor but, with every other sponsors who uses the same transaction processor.
Article written by Lee.
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