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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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Marketing And Building For Women Sites
When marketing sites to the female surfer, just how different does the building process become, are there things that you should leave out or add in that you usually wouldn’t for the male adult arena? Hopefully this article will explain this in some more depth.
I have broken this article down into specific segments that should be considered when building your for women sites these are as follows:
Sub Niches
As with every other niche in the adult industry the For Women market has their own individual sub niches. These vary from young guys to older men, couples, stories, fantasy, bondage, cartoons and a whole plethora of other niches all of which are to many mention here. Your chosen niche should reflect in the content you will be using and, more importantly, the content of the pay site to where you are sending the surfer. This is the best time to get a feel for your content and, it alleviates some hardships later on when you realize you have built a site full of hairy guys, only to realize the only site you can send them to is a gay bear site, not the most appealing site for a female surfer to join.
Where Do You Want To Go With This Site?
Are you looking to create a free site for the sole reason of driving traffic to your surfer trap, are you going to make a free site in order to make a sale, are you building a site for an AVS system? These are all decisions that you need to make before you start the building process, planning at this stage will reap its benefits later on. You should also consider the sponsor that you will utilize on the site, are you going to use all pay sites, sex toy sponsors or, will you use a mix, you need to plan this well as you do not want to end up with a site where all of the sponsors you are using end up negating the values of each other.
What Type Of Female Are You Looking To Attract?
Do you want to attract female surfers looking for erotica or, do you want to attract female surfers who are after something else, take a look at some of the female traffic sites, see what each of the sites presented to you offer their female surfers, can your match or better what these sites offer and, more importantly, can you offer something that the female surfer is likely to want?
Content Is King.
As with every other niche you need to pre-select the content that you will use on this site, do you have something that can be used and, used in such a way it generates interest from the surfer, if you are using stories on your site are they appealing, how do the men in the images look? All of these need to be taken into consideration before you start to use your content, if you do not have any content you need to choose some from one of the for women content providers, keep in your budget, make sure the content is right for your needs, not to hardcore but, not to softcore, keep it simple and erotic.
Layout
When creating your galleries be creative, anyone can stick up a 10 pic gallery but it takes a true marketer to place creative text on the page, provide the female surfer with some additional information, make it up if you have to, tell them the model is called Brian, tell them his stats, let them know some more information about the model. This will be more likely to get the women who visit your galleries / sites interested in both the images and, more importantly, the erotic side of the model you are using, if the model is available inside your sponsor pay site, you will more than likely find that the female surfer will want to get more information about the model out of sheer interest alone if nothing else.
Choose Your Marketing Strategies.
Will you be using banners, text links or, other media to sell your for women sponsor? We all know the proliferation of banners on the internet have made them less ‘click-able’ than what they used to be. Use some ‘erotic’ text over banners or, even use text on its own.
Keywords And Relevancy
Keep your smack talk pleasant but to the point, the majority of female surfers would prefer to click on a link that said ‘Steve erotically caressed his penis against her cheeks’ than, ‘Steve shot his hot creamy load all over her face’ see the difference? one is sensual and erotic the other is pure porn, female surfer are mainly erotica driven not porn driven.Speak To Another Webmaster / Web Mistress.
The for women niche is still relatively untapped at the moment, the people who are catering for this niche know the niche, most of them are female themselves and, as such, will know what works and what does not. How would you speak to a woman you met in public? There is a difference between speaking to a ‘guy’ and speaking to a female. Let this difference also show in your site too. If you have no idea how to market to women, ask one, you can find a message board dedicated to female webmasters at http://www.femalewebmasters.com and i am sure one of the posters there would be happy to help you out.
Design And Practice.
You now have the basics set you should now move onto designing you layout, keep your design simple, keep it neat, don’t over do the ‘female’ aspect of the site, over use of pinks, pastels and similar colors can undo all the preparation work you have just done, be subtle, know you are designing a site for the female surfer but keep it generalize, soft tones in color are not always the best way to use colors. Pink is not always for girls, blue is not always for boys, shades of pastel blue has just as much of a feminine effect as pinks and reds. Choose your color scheme wisely and this will pay off big time.
However you decide to develop your site you should ensure that it melts together nicely, use contrasting colors for your banners, background and text, make sure the content is not too gay looking and that the female surfer knows the site was built specifically for her but, also ensure you have the links visible in case you get surfers from other niches at your site, don’t do yourself out of money just because this is a for women site this is probably the only element that crosses over between niches be they straight, gay or in fact, for women.
Article written by Lee.
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Domain Name Registrars – Saving Your Business
The one thing that all webmasters rely on to make their money is something that all of us have, a domain name however, what would or should happen to your domain names when and if, your registrar files for bankruptcy or just disappears, surprisingly enough i do not recall this ever happening in the industry to date however, being prepared for the worst case scenario is always a good thing.
Prevention Is Better Than A Cure.
As the age old adage goes.The first thing that you should do before even registering a domain name is to check out the background of the company you are considering using, you need to ask yourself a variety of questions about this company including the following:
1) Is the registrar ICANN accredited?
ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is a non profit corporation which was formed to assume the responsibility over the IP and entire domain name structure as we know it. This in essence means that if your registrar is ICANN accredited then you at least know your domain name registration will be handled professionally and, should be reasonably secure so far as your registrar going out of business.
2) What are you paying for?
Many of the domain name registration companies packages vary greatly, with some companies you register a domain yourself, some companies register it on your behalf and, others will register your domain including some form of hosting etc, check with the company you are using to see what added services and support features they offer.
3) What is their transfer policy?
Some domain name registration companies have specific policies so far as transferring domains to other companies, registrars and, individuals go. Check with your registrar before you buy your domain to see what this process involves and, as always, check with one of the other registrars to see which registration company offers the best ‘bang for your buck’.
Saving Your Name – Help And Advice.
First and foremost, if you discover your domain name registrar has closed its doors you should immediately send an email to them and ensure you keep a copy of this email for your own records, ask them what is happening and, more importantly, what controls / access you still have available (if any) to manage your currently registered domains.Usually, you will receive some form of communication within a few days from your registration company letting you know what is happening and how you can continue to use your domain name.
In most cases, when a domain name registrar company closes what you will find is that they will already be in the process of transferring the management of your domain to another registration company.
If however, you are still able to control the domain yourself then you should immediately seek out a new registrar with whom you can manage the domain / domains that you own. At this point you should contact them and ask if they have any fast track solution to transferring your domain to their company.
If All Else Fails.
If after everything else you are still at a loss as to how your domain name transfer or registration is being handled then you should contact ICANN ( http://www.icann.org ) directly. Ultimately it is their responsibility to ensure that once you have registered a domain name, you are able to access it as you would like, in most cases however, contacting ICANN is always the last move you should make and, only use this form of information should you exhaust all other methods mentioned above.Article written by Lee
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International Billing Alternatives – Premium Phone Billing
In the last article i wrote in respect of international billing options we took a closer look at the SMS Billing method and its pitfalls and benefits when charging our surfers for access to our sites. In this article we will take a look at another option we can offer our international surfer base – Phone Billing.
Phone Billing – What Is It?
Phone billing, as the name would suggest is a method of applying a ‘charge’ to a surfers normal land-line telephone. This charge is often around the cost of $35 (US).Once the surfer has called the premium rate number displayed on your websites join page, they are given a code to enter into a form, again, this form could be on your join page or on a separate site.
Phone Billing – What Are The Costs.
To be perfectly honest with you this is all dependant on to many variable factors to give you a good solid answer. However, as mentioned above the standard cost would seem to be in the region of $35 (US) but, this can often vary depending on factors such as the country in which the surfer is calling the premium rate line from, How much the surfers telephone company charges for a call, How much the paysite charges for access, How much the premium rate phone line provider charges, etc etc.Generally speaking however, the cost to the surfer is almost always made into profit in your pocket, if a call costs $35(US) you will almost certainly make $35(US) from that surfer minus a small percentage (depending on the provider) again however, this figure may vary slightly.
Phone Billing – Overview.
As with SMS Billing, Premium Rate Phone Billing offers a good alternative for your international surfers to access a paysite however, this doesn’t come without its drawbacks. Unless your members area is updated regularly and is of high quality you are going to make $35(US) approximately of each surfer unless, that is, they decide to call the premium rate number again for access to your site for another month.That said, if you do not want to offer your foreign surfers the option of having credit card or debit card access to your sites Premium Phone Billing would almost certainly be my second choice to make money from them at the present time.
Article written by Lee
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Pay Per Click Or Search Engine Optimization
What would you choose to run your business? Well each has their own benefits and drawbacks over one another.
PPC or SEO The Breakdown.
Pay Per Click or, PPC as it is most often referred to looks to the novice to be the better option for ‘immediate’ traffic results, you enter your desired keywords, place your minimum / maximum bid amount and you are set for top PPC engine listings for as long as you can maintain the balance in your engine account.Search Engine Optimization or, SEO on the other hand, is the more traditional way of attaining high ranking search engine pages. Either you or an SEO expert optimizes your websites pages and random other elements of your website and hopefully within a month or two, you achieve high rankings in the major search engines.
So Which One? PPC or SEO?
Generally speaking, SEO work is most commonly more cost effective to your business than utilizing PPC results to gain your traffic, you could pay an SEO expert anywhere from $500 plus to optimize your site and get high rankings indefinitely or, you could put that $500 into a PPC engine account and get high rankings until such time as your account balance runs dry.But lets look at this in terms of actual traffic…
Say you get 1000 visitors to your SEO based website which you paid $500 for, each visitor has cost you $0.50c now lets say your site remains at the top of the engines for a few months perhaps even years each month you receive another 1000 visitors to your site, you have basically cut the cost of each surfer hitting your site down to less than a penny per hit (not taking into account bandwidth costs obviously).
Now, on the other hand, you want to attract 1000 visitors from your chosen keywords via the PPC engines, most Pay Per Click search engines have a minimum bid amount of $0.05c per hit so right away in your first month, you could receive a potential 10k hits however, as most of you who have already tried your hand at the PPC engines will know, getting 10k hits for one or more keyword at a cost of $0.05 is hard to do, in fact, some would say almost impossible. Non the less let us keep going with this minimum bid amount for the time being.
Immediately, you can see that you are already restricted to the actual amount of traffic you can receive from the PPC results to 10k hits however, this isn’t the case with the SEO traffic, you could potentially hit your top chosen keyword and stay there until another site out-optimizes you or, your site needs to be optimized again.
Ultimately, the reasons you will choose over one or the other will be for either ease of traffic generation, PPC will allow you to gain almost instantaneous targeted traffic form the second you open your PPC account up until the point when your account funds empty whilst, SEO work will give you long term targeted traffic over time and, in most instances, this SEO traffic can last for years making the cost of the initial SEO work minimal.
In Closing..
Search Engine Optimization can last you years and years whilst Pay Per Click results can diminish in a relatively short amount of time depending on the amount of bid needed to achieve top listings.However lets look at a third option, using both PPC results and SEO results in conjunction with each other to minimize the traffic you lose from your SEO work and, to minimize the traffic you lose from your PPC results this will afford you the time to see what works with your Search Engine Optimized sites whilst being able to play with the targeting of keywords on your PPC traffic, once you have both types of search engine figured out, you can put them both together and use them to increase the traffic to your site for years to come.
Article written by Lee
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Think Fresh – Work Smarter
We have all experienced it at some point in our webmaster career, more often than not though, we hear about it all the time. What is it? Wanting to give in when we hit that proverbial brick wall.
Hopefully this article can offer you some help and advice when it comes to getting your sales back on track or, even getting them started at all.
Ask For Help.
The one thing that amazes me about this industry is that despite the fact we are all business competitors we are all (mostly) willing to help other webmasters out for little or nothing in return. if you hit that brick wall then imply ask for some help.As webmasters we have a barrage of free tools readily available to us for asking the advice of others whether it is in email from your sponsors support reps, icq or even on the many industry related chat boards, by actually spending sometime to help yourself by asking others you can often see things from a new perspective and, get advice as to why thing that should be working are not.
Start Over.
So you have been doing this webmaster job for the last few months submitting to the TGP’s, building free and AVS sites but you still haven’t made a dime, something is wrong somewhere but how do you pinpoint the error? By far the easiest way to find out what is wrong is to start afresh. Head over to one of the webmaster resource sites and see what others are doing ask for advice and feedback on your sites and learn from the experiences they tell you about. Just because you might have heard the same information before doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask about it, often one webmaster will be able to tell you an alternate way of doing something that another webmaster is. One of the best ways to get a grasp on this learning curve is to read articles and tutorials, there are thousands of them on the net from HTML to Programming and everything in-between emulate the information contained in these articles and adjust that same information to suit your needs.Don’t Stagnate.
If you are not having success at the AVS side of the business try something else, you already have a good base for building free sites and even TGP’s just because you have never tried using these sources of traffic and income doesn’t mean you wont be any good at them.If traffic is your problem as mentioned above, ask others where they get their traffic from and how they built it up, learn to start small and grow instead of running head first into millions of hits a month that are being wasted.
Research The Industry.
If you are thinking of quitting, before you do spend a day or two just doing a little background research in the industry, its no secret that webmasters who join the online industry today have to work two or three times harder than our peers who joined several years ago, this is and always has been true in any business. By researching the industry you should be able to find out how others that joined before you failed and, more importantly, WHY they failed, learn from those experiences.Finally.
No matter how hard and meaningless you find the work stick at it, just because you are not making any sales it doesn’t mean you wont make any sales tomorrow or even next week / month / year. Keep turning those sites out and, soon enough, when you least expect it you’ll make a sale and, you know what… the euphoric feeling you will get will be more than enough to make you realize that you HAVE been doing something right all along.Article written by Lee
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Time Management – Organizing Your Content Purchases
From time to time it is inevitable that as adult webmasters there will be two things that will happen:
1) You will buy some licensed content.
2) You will use this content for a gallery.
However, unless your content is organized you can end up spending to much time to make a 10 pic gallery page. This article is going to offer you some sound advice on how to organize your content from the second you take delivery of it which, will save you a lot of time long term.
So we have taken delivery of our adult content either by download or, on cdrom what next, we could just file it away on cdrom but, by taking a little extra time to organize your content from the start you will end up not only building sites MUCH quicker but also saving time all round.
Here are some helpful hints to get you on the way to content organization.
1) Unzip all your content sets and, if applicable, separate them into model and niche sets.
2) Create folders for each model and, each set of 10 images within the main model sets.
3) Rename all your images in the 10 pic sets starting from pic1.jpg through to pic10.jpg.
4) Crop, compress and thumbnail each image within each set of 10 that you have.
5) create a html page that calls your thumbnails and main pics using relative urls i.e. /set1/gallery1/image1.jpg for the larger image and /set1/gallery1/thumb1.jpg for the thumbnail image.
6) Inside each of your 10 pic/thumbnail folders place this HTML page you have just created.
7) Burn each of the gallery folders to cdrom.
Lets now look at what an hour spent has enabled us to do.
Instant Galleries.
Say we want to build a 10 pic gallery to add into a free site or an AVS site that we are building, we know we have all the galleries already made, its just a case of finding the correct gallery and uploading it to our server.Image Swapping.
What happens if we need to swap an image from one of our pages to a more appropriate one for the niche we are marketing to, simple, you go to the image set you want, look for the image name and simply change the image without having to upload it as, you will now know the EXACT location on your server of the image you are changing to e.g., /set6/gallery8/image9.jpg would change to set24/gallery2/image2.jpg.
There are of course other ways this can benefit you for example, you can plug in your galleries to any site you own if you have them all uploaded to a central content location domain.
The benefits of organizing your content from the instant you take delivery are endless, the above is just a sample of how I have successfully saved time and effort by becoming more organized, the only limitations you have with your organizational skills are those that you impose on yourself.
Article written by Lee
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The Gay Adult Market – Gay Subcultures
I thought I would take a break from writing about online adult marketing for a change and instead, give many of the straight webmasters looking to break into the gay market a bit of an insight into what makes a gay man ‘tick’ and, whilst this is going to be different from guy to guy, the one thing that will remain constant throughout is that this article is based on the gay lifestyle and subculture in both society and, the internet.
What Is A Subculture?
Lets start at the beginning shall we? To understand this article you are first of all going to need to understand what a subculture is well, a subculture as defined by http://www.dictionary.com is, ‘A cultural subgroup differentiated by status, ethnic background, residence, religion, or other factors that functionally unify the group and act collectively on each member.’In layman’s terms, that means, that a subculture is a group of people (or individual) that have something different about them than other people.
In the instance of this article we are going to be looking at the gay subculture and specifically, how this culture is broken down into its own set of subcultures.
The Gay Subculture – Lets Define The Gay Culture.
Gay culture is the heritage of culture, knowledge, and references to which gay people fall heir by the fact of their sexual orientation.Some individuals argue that there are to many gay people who do not participate in ‘gay culture’ for the concept to be meaningful or that gay culture in itself is placing labels on the stereotype most people think of when they thing about gay people however with this said, there are also those who argue the flip side of the coin. One thing is for sure however, gay culture certainly does exist and, within this culture itself there are many complex facets ranging from sexual preferences through to the types of vacation people take.
Gay Subcultures – The Facets.
Whether we choose to think about the different subcultures within the gay community or not one thing is for certain, the subcultures in our community are wide and far reaching from your local gay bar to Soho in a city thousands of miles away most of the gay subcultures can be found almost anywhere in the world and, from this aspect, it makes gay individual no different than other person. For example, the BDSM lifestyle is large in the straight culture however, it is also hugely popular in the gay culture to often with groups of individuals who devote their whole way of life to this. In essence however, many of the gay subcultures are no different to that of their straight counterparts the only difference being, the individuals who practice them, are gay.Gay Subcultures – An Overview.
For many webmasters who currently work in the straight market their first attempt and even their second attempt at marketing to the gay lifestyle may fail however, many do not realize the simplest of rules when it comes to marketing products and services to gay individuals online, you need to be as, if not more, detailed and direct to gay surfers than straight, give them something they can find anywhere at anytime and the chances are they will not buy however, give them something that suits their tastes perfectly and you have a customer for life.Article written by Lee
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The Adult Internet – More Than Just Porn
So you have several adult websites up and running and, if you are one of the lucky few in this day and age you have already started to make money from your adult sponsor programs however, there are so many other ways that webmasters can make money in the adult industry in addition to their regular ‘porn site’ sponsors yet, many webmasters do not realize there are vast opportunities awaiting them.
Lets spend a few moments to look at the alternative sources of income that we can use in the adult industry and also take a look at the basics of each type of affiliate system.
Email Collection.
Opt in email is big business, there is no denying this fact so why not jump on the opt in email collecting bandwagon? Most email collection sponsors will offer you anywhere from $0.50 per email collected to $2.00 per email collected and, better still, to start making money from your existing traffic base all you need to do is include a small email collection box.Software Programs.
Many of the larger adult affiliate programs now offer their webmasters a range of software products to generate additional income, many of these products are good for use not only in adult but, also in mainstream. For instance, Anonymous browsing software, history deletion software, IE Toolbars and even submission programs are all good ways to generate additional income either on a per download or, per sale basis. Best of all, you only need to add a new banner to the sites you currently have in order to get a share of this lucrative market.Herbal Products.
Penis Pills, Breast Enlargement, Vitamin Supplements, you name it you can sell it on adult traffic. Whether you run a TGP, Link List or your own collection of free sites, these herbal products can often sell much better than ‘porn sites’ and, for the most part, the payout levels are the same, if not higher than what your regular ‘porn site’ trial will make you. Again to get started with this type of sales all you need to do is add a text link or banner to your existing sites.Casino Sites.
Gambling makes BIG money, just look at Vegas for the example, millions of people a year visit Nevada to gamble and millions more simply can’t get there for a range of reasons however, almost every home in the United States has a computer and internet connection so why not start using this to your advantage? Many of the larger casino affiliate programs will pay based on the amount of funds credited to a new users account and, to get started making money from casino sites it is quite literally as easy as adding a banner or text link to your existing sites again.Pre Paid Services.
Such as Credit Cards and the likes, selling these types of products to your adult surfers not only offers then ‘anonymity’ on the web when they do make online purchases but at the same time when your surfers sign up or one of these pre-paid credit cards you will be making some money in the process. Often however you will find that these types of affiliate program do not payout as much ‘long term’ as they are pretty much a first time deal as far as, once the surfer spends money to initially ‘charge’ their pre paid card with funds, that is when you will make money and not again. Still, even if you can make $50 by selling one of these cards, its still an additional $50 you wouldn’t have made otherwise.Adding To Your Profits.
As you can see from the above, there are a wide range of products and services you can offer your surfers and, as we all know, the more things we can offer our ‘customers’ the more chance we have at one of them buying something. Of course, as with anything, the more effort we put into marketing these products and services the more chance e have at making a sale however, unless we try to sell the surfer something other than porn, how will we know whether they will buy or not?Article written by Lee
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Pop Up Consoles Work – To A Point
As webmasters we are constantly thinking up new ways to generate sales to our sponsors however, the one medium to generating sales that has been and most likely will remain to be popular is the method of using consoles on our sites. Whether these are exit consoles, blur consoles or, on entry consoles one thing holds true, the more consoles you use, the more you annoy your surfer.
Marketing Console Numbers.
Through some research of my own i have noticed that a trend appears when the use of consoles on our sites takes effect this trend is that anything after the first console you use actually cuts your chances of making a sale in half, thus, the maximum amount of pop up consoles we should use on our sites, in my humble opinion should be two or three at the very most.Console Sales Figures.
Okay lets take a look at some average (signups per month divided by days in the month) sales figures based on a three month period (sending roughly 10,000 hits per month).Average signups to sponsor (A) = 113
Sales From Console (1) to sponsor (A) = 11
Sales From Console (2) to sponsor (A) = 2The setup above uses pop up consoles in the following manner, on entering the site you get a Blur Console which hides itself behind the current page you are viewing, once you close the current page you see the blur console, once you close the blur console you see a smaller console, once you close the smaller console, the browser window closes altogether.
Evaluating The Figures.
From the above figures we can see an immediate pattern, namely that console (1) makes up roughly 10% of our total sales and also that console (2) makes up roughly 20% of console (1) sales. Putting these figures into practice across further consoles will show you that by utilizing any more than 3 consoles on your sites really does not amount to any significant raise in sales unless you send a higher amount of traffic to your sites in the first instance.Console Sales – Recap.
We have now seen that from a steady flow of traffic over a monthly period we can influence the potency of specific consoles within our exit chains and, by analyzing the figures we get from these consoles we can almost certain figure out firstly, the correct (or comfortable) amount of consoles we use on our sites and secondly, that the more consoles we add to our sites, the lower the potential sales figures will be from each subsequent console.I will be the first person to admit that overall pop up consoles are an excellent marketing tool however, the figures above show that the more consoles we use, the less chance we have of making a sale further down the chain, use consoles wisely and they will benefit you however, abuse the use of pop up consoles on your sites and not only will be wasting bandwidth, youll be wasting a surfer too.
Article written by Lee
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