Building Your Brand – Business Basics

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Branding | Response: 0

Many online businesses have a good solid brand name attached to them already for example, ARS (http://www.adultrevenueservice.com), Webair (http://www.webair.com) and, WEG (http://www.wegcash.com). These companies have worked long and hard to build up their own brand name on the internet and, specifically, in the adult industry where, it almost seems that everyone is out to make a name for themselves so, how do you as a small business owner get a piece of this branding pie?

Branding Basics.

The word ‘Brand’ or ‘Branding’ can refer to several items when used as a noun to describe a company name, product, service or, trademark. Branding started centuries ago when cattle ranch owners used to place their unique insignia on their cattle so that surrounding ranch owners knew who the cattle belonged to and, so that the owners of the brand knew if their cattle were being stolen by others.

Starting The Branding Process.

From the very first site you build you should start working on your own inimitable brand name or logo, perhaps it will consist of a small logo on top of every page you build or even a simple text link for your sites domains, either way, the one thing that is important in recognizing a brand is being able to place it to a product instantly.

Building Your Brand Name.

Now that you have started the branding process how can you continue to grow your businesses brand name or product even further? This is what we will take a look at next.

Domain Name Registration.

Buy the domain name that is representative of your ‘brand name’ if your brand is going to be 123pornosex then go and register 123pornosex.com be cautious though, just because you think of a brand name, you should ensure the domain is available to register BEFORE you start using that brand in detail.

Getting The Word Out.

This may seem like the hardest of tasks at first but, once you make a start in branding your site or, yourself this is relatively easy to keep up on an ongoing basis.

Visit the boards, use your tagline as often as possible and, either mention your brand name in the tagline or, link to your brand names website. This is especially easy to do if you run a TGP or some other site that needs to attract webmaster traffic in order for it to succeed.

Start your own newsletter, this may seem an odd way to build your brand up but, if you name your newsletter the same as your brand name for example you might have a text link saying:

Join the BRANDNAME Newsletter.

This keeps the branding process alive and well. The next step you should take it to ensure that the sender address of the email is something like [email protected] again, even though you have collected the email addresses by sending out mailings from an address like the one above you have more of a chance of your brand name actually staying in the mind of the newsletter recipient.

In addition to a newsletter, you might also like to consider having a designer make you a logo or button you can use on your site/s this will come in handy for several uses for example, if you own a traffic site you can use this logo as a reciprocal link, you can use it in your signature on message forums and, you can even include it on sites you build.

You might also like to consider writing articles for other sites to use, usually the sites that publish your articles will place a link or a small bio to you or your site, this is another way to increase the ‘exposure’ of your brand.

Branding Overview.

All in all, building a brand name for yourself or your business need not be a hard and tedious task in fact, if you start off almost immediately building up name recognition for you and your sites. Regardless of what type of product, service or site you operate getting your brand name recognized by both webmasters and surfers can lead to a lot of money long term, start now and reap the benefits later in your career.

Article written by Lee.

Why Have More Than One Index Page?

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Search Engine Optimization | Response: 0

The first thing you should do when you start designing a web site is to create an index page. You would think that this is a basic knowledge in web design, but I still encounter web sites that are lacking in this.

If there’s no index page, and if the web host server has not set a directory access limitation, any visitor will see a directory listing of all the images, html pages, CGI-scripts, and other files in the directory. Everything will then be accessible for reading and downloading, and the CGI-scripts will also be executable!

So, for a basic security it is most important to have an index page in all your directories, whether they contain only pictures or garbage. In the directories that are private or containing things other then HTML pages, the index pages need only to print out a text like “access forbidden” or something in that spirit. In the directories containing one or more HTML pages, one of the pages must be named “index.html,” whether it is a page with real content or for security reason.

If you have a directory specifically for CGI-scripts, it will run a higher security risk, because most of the times these directories are called CGI-bin, or a variant of that, and anyone who is after your scripts is undoubtedly familiar with this and can access the directory by typing the directory name in the targeted site’s URL, if it’s not properly protected by an index page. Imagine the horror when someone uses your mailing list program to Spam all your subscribers or decides to sell your email list. It’s quite a big business in selling email lists. A large email list is worth thousands of US dollars nowadays.

I could have done all these things if I had any bad intentions when I accidentally bumped into an unprotected site. Actually, I bumped into two unprotected, huge subscribers lists in the last two months, which prompted me to write this article. But of course, I did the proper thing and emailed the web sites’ webmasters about their oversight. You would think that these professional looking and operating web sites with email lists of respectively 8,000 and 15,000 subscribers would know better.

Even if your site is made by a web design company, make sure all your directories are protected. In fact, one of the two unfortunate web sites I uncovered is a web design company. So, check out your site for this unnecessary security gap, right now.

Article written by Lee

Adult Exit Traffic

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

How Do You Use It?

I honestly do not think there is a webmaster working in the adult industry to date who has not seen a warning page for a free or avs site with both an enter and an exit link, the enter link goes to the main body of the site in question whilst the exit link goes to some other link, normally disney.com or google.com or some other url where the webmaster in question is quite literally throwing their traffic and money away.

Instead of wasting your exit link traffic to a site that doesn’t make you a cent why not utilize this traffic to feed additional revenue streams, for example, most of the larger adult sponsors now have penis pill programs or dating sites, you could include your affiliate id in the exit link and send your traffic there, after all, the surfer you have on your site isn’t looking for porn so, offer them an alternative which, can still add to your bank balance.

So What Are The Alternatives?

The alternative types of sponsors you should be using on your exit links can vary widely however, the best type of site to send them to would be a sponsor offering products and services such as penis enlargement programs, online pharmacies, history eraser type products or, even a link to a site like amazon.com if the program you use allows for that.

Basically you should try to maximize all the traffic you get to your site whether that be by using exit consoles or links, make sure that for each and every surfer you send to the front page (warning) of your site that if they decide to back out or click on a link to leave that you send them somewhere to give them the option of spending money and ultimately earning you revenue.

Article written by Lee.

Filtering Adult Traffic For More Sales

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

When webmasters build sites there seems to be the train of thought that just because they use one of the top converting sponsors site they will make sales regardless of what type of traffic they are sending.

Unfortunately, this is often not true.

One of the first steps that we should take as webmasters when it comes to creating a new site, whether it be a free, avs or a TGP site is to learn the art of targeting our sponsors tour with the content and, more importantly, the traffic we are going to use.

taking it to the simplistic levels, a straight teen sponsors wont convert on a site that gets mostly mature traffic, the niches, although complementary, are so far apart its unrealistic.

That said, lets take a look at some options we can all implement on our sites to better target and filter our traffic to ensure optimum conversions.

One of the simplest ways to target and filter your traffic is to build yourself a hub or a surfer trap. Of course, we also have to take into consideration the type of traffic we are currently receiving to our site and, that we ‘could’ receive in the future.

Just because we receive 10,000 hits to our teen TGP doesn’t mean that ALL of that traffic IS looking for a teen site, this is where our surfer trap or hub site can come into play.

Even if your main focus is the teen niche, you should make sure that the first thing the surfer see’s when visiting any type of site you build is a multi-site FPA (Full Page Ad) where applicable.

This then starts your filtering process. If they know that they can find other niches than teen on your TGP then chances are, they will go to them either because that is what their niche is or, they are curious about that niche.

Another thing we can do as webmasters is to ensure we use the headers and footers of our pages in the proper fashion, offer our surfers a choice of the main niches, Asian, Gay, Ebony, Teen, Ect using only text links and, you will probably find that by lining these text links to your hub or surfer trap that you actually have a diverse range of traffic available to you.

In addition, rather than sending our surfers directly to our sponsors, send them via a filter page whether this is an FPA, or a page full of text links you made yourself detailing the benefits of the sponsor you are going to send them to, again, you will let the surfer know where they are going and, give them a choice as to whether they want to continue to that site or, choose an alternative.

Overall, webmasters who target their surfers by niche can, for the most part have some excellent sales with a variety of sponsors that otherwise they would not be able to see.

Target, Filter, Micro-Niche, however you do it, make sure your traffic is not wasted and, more importantly, make sure your sponsor is able to offer your surfer what you are telling them is inside the site.

Article written by Lee

Source Code – Eliminating HTML Margins

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

Since the inception of the very first HTML document, margins existed that surrounded the document, like in the case with this document.

The margins are there to act as a cushion between the edges of the browser and the contents of the page, so it’s easier to read the content.

As good as margins are, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to eliminate them in some cases, where the design of the page calls for their termination? While most webmasters think it is not possible to “flush out” the default margins of a HTML document, it actually is, although only possible in IE 3+, and NS 4+. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how.

Eliminating The Document Margin In IE 3+

To get rid of the document margin in IE 3 and above, so content presses right against the edges of the browser, use the IE exclusive “leftmargin” and “topmargin” attributes:

<body leftmargin=”0″ topmargin=”0″>

It’s as simple as that!

Eliminating The Document Margin In NS 4+

To get rid of the document margin in NS 4 and above, use the NS 4 exclusive “marginwidth” and “marginheight” attributes instead:

<body marginwidth=”0″ marginheight=”0″>

Putting It All Together.

By putting the two techniques together, we can create a document that flushes out its’ margins in both IE 3+ and NS 4+:

<body leftmargin=”0″ topmargin=”0″ marginwidth=”0″ marginheight=”0″>

Try out the above coding on your page, and you’ll see what I mean.

Article written by Lee

Using Email Auto Responders To Build Traffic And Sales

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

Auto responder programs are just that, they are set up to respond automatically with a pre determined email when a blank email is sent to a specific email address.

For example, have you ever seen something along the lines of:

‘For A Free Guide To ** Whatever** send a blank email to [email protected]’

The email address in that address belongs to an auto responder script and when someone sends an email to the script, they receive a pre written email back within seconds that has information pertaining to a specific topic or selection of topics.

Basically, autoresponder programs are email on demand scripts which makes any information you want available to your surfers 24/7 and, furthermore, not only can they drastically increase your traffic but, they WILL also benefit your sales income.

Email Auto Responders are extremely important tools when you need to automate your marketing. You can easily manage in excess of 10k email requests on a daily basis without ANY effort on your part at all.

Auto responders are used primarily for three main purposes these are:

Sales Letters.

Suppose you post to a selection of forums and newsgroups on a daily basis, you could offer free information about a specific topic and, in the same email, you can also promote your site and, better still, you didn’t have to do a thing.

Customer Support.

The use of auto responders for customer support is beneficial to sites that have a lot of queries from its visitors, autoresponders allow you to set up predefined answers to the most likely questions and, this can cut your service requirements by upto 50% in some cases. For example, most hosts will have some form of autoresponder set up to answer your basic questions or tell you about a support issue you have mailed them about even if its just to let you know that your email arrived and has been placed in the queue for completion. This saves the host a lot of time enabling them to work on things that actually need to be done and not spend countless hours each day sending emails to hundreds / thousands of webmasters on a personal basis.

Email Gathering.

This is by far the best feature of an autoresponder, everyone who sends you an email to the auto respond address will have their email address stored in a database, which, in turn, will enable you to follow up with the interest they have in your site and, some auto responders can even be configured to send out emails on a weekly basis to the email addresses in this database from again, pre determined messages that you have already set up.

Autoresponders are truly amazing programs, not only will they enable you to be more productive with your time but, they will assist you in helping your site visitors and, furthermore should increase both your sites traffic and sales figures.

Article written by Lee

Geo Targeting – What Exactly Is It?

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: General, Promotion | Response: 0

As the adult industry reaches further and further across the online global community we are beginning to realize the importance of our foreign surfers, gone are the days of shifting them off to a dialer site instead, we find more and more companies actually using geo-targeting techniques to filter and monetize this profitable traffic more but, how does geotargeting work and, more importantly, is it any good? They are the questions we will look at in this article.

GEO::IP – The Basics.

The Geo::ip module is a relatively simplistic database of IP addresses and, the matching country to which the IP address belongs. This means that the GEO::IP module can be used for a variety of purposes including automatically selecting the language and countries of your visitors, for credit card fraud detection, and for software export controls.

Geo Targeting – The Basics.

As described above, the GEO::IP module is what drives any and all forms of geographical location targeting system (geo targeting). Geo targeting is the method most commonly used in the adult industry to either send a surfer to a localized version of a paysite or, send them off to a dialer in an attempt to monetize them it works by checking either the surfers browser language, country ip address or, both of these.

Putting Geo Targeting To Work.

Despite what most webmasters may think about the complexities of geo targeting and the GEO::IP Module for Perl they are easy to use and implement and, furthermore, there are cost free and highly effective ways of using geo targeting on your sites to monetize your international traffic. Lets look at two easy free solutions for webmasters to geo target their traffic.

JavaScript.

Using JavaScript you could add the following code between your HTML <head> and </head> tags to redirect international traffic to a specific url on your server:

<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>

Php.

Using .php you can add the following to your sites pages to redirect traffic based on their browser language.

<?
$user_lan = $HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE;

if($user_lan==’de’) {
## German
$redir_url = “http://www.germanlanguagepageurl.com”;

} elseif($user_lan==’fr’) {
## French
$redir_url = “http://www.frenchlanguagepageurl.com”;

} elseif($user_lan==’it’) {
## Italian
$redir_url = “http://www.italianlanguagepageurl.com”;

} elseif($user_lan==’es’) {
## Spain
$redir_url = “http://www.spanishlanguagepageurl.com”;

## US traffic or Rest of world not defined above
} else {
$redir_url = “http://www.yourmainpageurl.com”;

}

header(“Location: $redir_url”);
exit;

?>

As you can see from the above two examples, monetizing your international foreign traffic is a relatively easy step and, with the right sponsors to send this traffic to you will be able to reap the profits of countries that other webmasters are not targeting yet.

Geo Targeting – Overview.

When all is said and done geo targeting can be a cost effective way to increase your bottom line profits, whether using a free method as described above or, using one of the many filtering services available on the net you should start to monetize your global surfers. One thing you should also consider however is that far from sending your international traffic to a dialer you should search around and find a good mix of adult affiliate programs with a variety of localized paysites, this in itself will enable you to see just how much traffic you have been wasting by using dialers in the past and, it will also allow you to realize the full potential of your new found geo targeted adult traffic.

Article written by Lee

Using Basic Server Side Includes (SSI)

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

Server side includes are what their name sounds like.  A way to include the contents of another file into your current web page BEFORE the web page gets sent off to the surfer.  Not only does this include contents of a static file but you can also include the results of a CGI program and on some web servers, you can even have it display the current date and time.

Now, many web hosts do not normally have server side includes turned on. You will have to ask your host if they have SSI turned on and if they do, what is the file name extension for SSI.  By default, SSI files have an .shtml extension.

Sometimes, you can turn SSI on yourself.  If you host doesn’t have SSI turned on for you already, you can try adding the following two lines to your .htaccess file.  Then create a file with the .shtml extension, include a SSI command and see if it works.

AddType text/html .shtml
AddHandler server-parsed .shtml

When you use SSI commands, you place them exactly in the location within your web page where you want the output of the SSI command to appear when you finally browse the page.  If you have SSI, then you can use the following command to include a file.  When you include a file, you can either give it a path name to the file or you can give a URL to the file. I’ll list both here.

<!–#include file=”/some/path/above/my/web/to/my/header.html” –>

This is an example of how to include a file based on its path name.  Now,
here’s the same file put included with its URL.

<!–#include virtual=”/to/my/header.html” –>

And this is an example of how to use a URL.  With a URL however, it cannot be a complete URL such as http://www.somesite.com/somefile.html.  It has to be within your current website.  You can also use the URL method to run a CGI script!  Here’s an example of that:

<!–#include virtual=”/cgi-bin/somescript.cgi?myfirstarg=1amp;mysecondarg=2″
–>

As you can see, we can even pass arguments to the CGI script just as if you typed it into your browser!  There is also another way of running a CGI script but this is not as widely used any more and you should use the #include virtual method instead.  Here is the same example so that you will know what it means when you see it.

<!-exec cgi=”/cgi-bin/somescript.cgi?myfirstarg=1amp;mysecondarg=2″ –>

As I mentioned earlier, you can use SSI to display the current time and date. Here’s how:

<!-echo “$DATE_LOCAL” –>

This will display the current date and time. SSI is usually used when you  want to have a standard header or footer on each page.  It’s also used for displaying rotating banners or page counters. As you see above, you can also  use it to display the current date and time or the date when the page was  last modified.

SSI has also been used for cloaking and some tracking  software uses SSI to track each incoming hit to the web page.  If you would  like more information about SSI, go to
http://www.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_include.html.  This is the definitive guide on SSI on the Apache web server.

Most other web servers that use SSI also follow these conventions.

Article written by Lee

Choosing The Right Sponsor For Your Site

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Sponsors | Response: 0

Affiliate programs (also frequently called referral or associate programs) have grown today to become one of the most popular ways for you to earn an income from your web site’s traffic. Most affiliate programs are designed to allow you to simply set up and begin earning commissions on visitors and sales you refer. However, the quality of the programs, and the results you will see, very greatly from program to program, making it important to choose wisely which are best for you and your site. It is the purpose of this article to help sort through many of the programs, and offer assistance in determining what to look for.

My personal experience with affiliate programs goes back over a year and a half, pretty long in Internet terms. Over this period, I researched many of the affiliate programs available on the Internet and, tried to best determine what works best. From my experiences, here are several of the top factors you should take into consideration:

1- Stability of the company and program

What I found to be the one of highest priorities for most webmasters is the stability of the affiliate program, and the company. This should be one of your top considerations when evaluating programs. Is the company stable and financially sound? Do they offer assistance with promoting the opportunity? And, do they pay in a timely fashion? Often, webmasters have been lured in by offers of high commissions, only to find out they will never see a paycheck, despite referring hundreds, or even hundreds of thousands, of visitors.

2- Synergies with your site

I am a big proponent of this. All too often, I see sites sign up for every affiliate program they can, figuring if they make a few bucks on each, that they will be profitable. For a select few, this may very well work. However, for most sites it will not, and many cases you will turn off your audience because of the ‘over-commercialization’ of your site. As you are considering the various affiliate programs available, be sure to consider what exactly your audience, your visitors, might be interested in clicking on, and eventually buying.

For example, if your site caters to a general audience, then perhaps general affiliate programs such as Adult Revenue Service, will be effective. Or perhaps Evidence Eliminator, which allows you to sell privacy / security software. If your site only caters to a specific niche, programs such as Adult Revenue Service should be excellent money-makers as they have a wide and varied selection of adult sites which you may promote. The key is to not just think of the affiliate program as a way for you to make some easy money, but rather an extension of your web site, a service you offer your visitors to help them find the products or services they are interested in, at good prices, and with a company they can trust.

3- Commission Tracking

An important aspect to consider is whether or not the affiliate program offers some way for you to track your sales, and even the number of visitors you refer. There are several ways this can be accomplished, such as real-time, online reports showing you sales and your commissions. Or perhaps sales can be tracked through a simple email each time you receive a new customer. This can be very important for allowing you to test and evaluate the effectiveness of the program, make comparisons with other programs or advertising opportunities, and give you piece of mind that you are receiving what is fairly do.

4- Opportunity for Repeat Sales

As any business person knows, a business can not generally survive on one-time purchases. Instead you have to find ways to not only attract new customers, but also keep the ones you have. This is also very true with affiliate programs. One of the largest complaints many webmasters have had with sponsors is that they refer a customer once, see their $35 commission, but in the process the customer bookmarked the Sponsors tour page. The next time the surfer is interested in buying a membership, they return to the sponsors site through the bookmark, and the webmaster never sees another penny.

Several programs have tried to alleviate this. Programs such as Adult Revenue Service avoid this problem by offering services (Daily Updated Pictures, Email Newsletter) which customers, once signed up for, use month after month. This allows them to pay residual commissions for as long as the surfer maintains their free membership to the site or, alternately, keeps returning to the page. This helps turn average programs into exceptional opportunities, because you can earn for months, perhaps even years, on referrals you made in your first, and subsequent months.

Other Factors

In summary, it is important to look at all of these main factors and several others, including the commission rates they pay (I didn’t discuss this because they are generally easily comparable), the frequency of payment checks (they generally range from weekly to quarterly), and/or the minimum dollar value you must accumulate before receiving a check (they range from nothing to $50). A couple of other important factors: be VERY wary of any program the requires a payment or ‘membership fee’ for you to join or act as an affiliate. And, be sure to check what method they use to track sales themselves. Programs that require the visitor to remember your name, or your site’s name, and enter it in when ordering, will result in many lost commissions.

Article written by Lee.

Domain Name Renewals – The Basics

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

As an adult webmaster there is one thing that we all own which we build our businesses on, a domain name and, with this comes the responsibility to ensure that as long as we are running our business from any given domain that we ensure they are constantly under our control this is where domain name renewsl come into play.

Domain Name Registration Periods.

Almost all reputable domain name registrars will allow you to purchase a domain for anywhere between one and ten year periods. Many webmasters however only choose to register their domains for one year at a time and this, is where many webmaster can run into problems with their domains. More often than not webmasters will either forget to renew their domain names completely or, are not aware that they are even coming up for renewal. For this reason it is usually best to ensure that you register your domains for a minimum period of two years, this gives you a good time frame to start using the domain as well as ensuring you have enough funds available by the time the domain name comes due for renewal.

How To Stay On Top Of Your Renewals.

The simplest way to ensure that you keep on top of the domain names you own and when they are due for renewal is to keep a written document detailing as much information as possible about your domains, this document should include information such as the domain name itself, the registrar you used to register your domain name, the cost of the domain name and, most importantly, where the domain is pointing to, the period of registration and, the date when the domain needs to be renewed. By having this information readily available and, by keeping this document up to date with each new domain name purchase you should be able to ensure that no matter when your domain/s become due for renewal that you are on the ball with paying the domain name renewal fees.

Domain Name Renewals Overview.

Regardless of when you register a domain name the one way you can be sure to be the owner of the domain for years to come is to ensure that you keep accurate, detailed records of each domain name purchase, whether you keep this written on a calendar, on a piece of paper or, somewhere else, you should make part of your monthly routine checking this document and making sure that the domains you own are all fully working and, more importantly, are fully paid up.

Article written by Lee