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Viral Marketing – Catching The Marketing Bug
The term viral marketing is offensive. Call yourself a viral marketer and, people will often take two steps back. I know I would do. It is a sinister thing, the simple virus is fraught with doom, not quite dead yet not fully alive, it exists in that nether region somewhere between horror movies and disaster films.
That said however, you have to admire the skills of the viral marketer. They have a way of winning by sheer weight of numbers alone. They piggy back on everyone else and use their resources to grow their own. In the right circumstances the viral marketer can grow exponentially. A virus doesn’t have to mate, it just replicates itself again and, again and, again increasing its power, doubling its effect with each replication.
I
I I
I I I I
I I I I I I
I I I I I I I IIn a few short generations, a viral marketing population can boom as seen in the diagram above.
Viral marketing defined.
What does a virus have to do with viral marketing? Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for mass growth in the messages exposure and influence.
Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to hundreds, even thousands in a relatively short period of time.
Before the advent of the internet viral marketing was often referred to as ‘word of mouth’. However, for better or for worse, the term viral marketing has infected.
One classic example of this marketing technique is Hotmail.com one of the first free web based email services. Their strategy was simple.
Give away free email addresses and services.
Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out.
Watch people email their friends, colleagues and family.
Watch these same friends colleagues and family join up to their service.
See the message propelled to an ever increasing audience, all for free.In closing viral marketing is like watching the tiny ripples of a single pebble dropped pond, one small splash can create ever increasing circles which in turn could create ever increasing revenues.
Article Written By Lee
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Golden Rules For Finding A New Domain Name
We all know by now that domain names are being registered at an unbelievable rate and, whilst the vast majority of ‘decent’ domain names have already been registered there are still some god domains to be registered and, this article will give you some insight into how you can choose an effective domain for your business purposes – regardless of what they are.
Avoid Play On Words.
Whilst sitting at a bar you come up with an idea for a domain www.4play.com and, at the time this might seem like a great domain name to buy however, before you head to your favorite register and purchase the domain stop to think about the long term implications.Let me explain this a little more using the example www.4play.com lets think about this, every time you mention the domain in a conversation people are more likely to head across to www.foreplay.com or www.fourplay.com first as a type-in. This is also true of the other abbreviation styles of ‘internet slang’ remember the days of the ‘dot com’ registrations, you know domains such as www.dotsex.com looking back now, these seem ridiculous to have been registered however, at the time they were popular but they died their death years ago.
Think Investment.
A good ‘commercial’ domain must be able to distinguish itself from the competition, there are several ways to achieve this for example:Consider Your Target Audience.
Aim your domain at a specific, yet broad market audience. use tools to narrow down what your customers (surfers) are looking for, narrow this list down to a select few domains and then, narrow the list down some more.Follow Trends Or… Create Them.
If you are serious about picking a good domain name or two then be prepared to invest the time required to get a good domain name. Research the latest trends on the internet, see what products or services are ‘hot’ and will be around long term and also see which domains are just a flash in the pan.A good example of ‘long term’ domains would be www.europeanwebmasters.com which i registered several years ago when, in all honesty, the foreign markets were not even thought about however, you cant go to any forum nowadays without someone asking about the international marketplace.
Act On A Whim.
In complete contrast to my opening statement in this article, if you think you have a solid business idea, act on it, the chances are someone else will also think of the same idea as you and, if you don’t get the domain name first, they will.Alternative Buying.
So you have decided that you do want to buy www.4play.com before you make your purchase have a look at what other variants of this domain are available, for example, you might like to check registrations of www.4-play.com, www.for-play.com, www.forplay.com, etc etc.If you have a great business idea, make sure you have all of your bases covered, just because you are starting a new craze, that doesn’t mean the domains will be available for registration tomorrow or next week.
By purchasing all the variants of the high quality domain you have thought of you are, in effect, eliminating all of the competition you could face long term.
Don’t Cyber-Squat.
If you are a serious domain buyer, avoid tailgating on other peoples domain names unless of course, it has enormous potential for example, if someone has registered a generic domain such as www.123456.com but failed to register www.123-456.com why not register the available domain? You are not impeding on anyone’s property rights and, you might benefit from some mis-typed traffic at the same time. As with any type of mis-typed domain, before you register it, seek legal advice, a few dollars spent before registering the domain could save you thousands afterwards.Fools Rush In.
Don’t automatically buy the first domain name you think of, think on it some more, sleep on it if you have to, ask your family and friends on their opinions. Although the really good domain names have virtually almost all gone, its better to carefully think out each and every domain name purchase you make and save yourself some money long term than to rush in and buy a domain that wont be any use and have to register a new domain to take the place of the first.In addition to the above don’t sit on a really good domain name idea forever because, forever comes a lot sooner than you may think.
Hopefully this article has given you some useful information in respect of registering new domain names and you can put this information to good practice when buying domains. Article written by Lee
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Moving To A New Hosting Company
Moving to a new hosting provider does not have to be a frustrating task if done properly.
Adult webmasters usually have to upgrade their hosting services once their respective Web sites become popular, usually because their current host cannot provide an effective level of scalability or technical support or, perhaps even the cost of bandwidth becomes to high.
In order to transfer service efficiently, in the event that it becomes necessary, webmasters should ensure that all their content, including Web pages, databases and scripts, are properly archived.
You should always back up your data at regular intervals in case of unexpected data loss or hardware failure. Ensure that all data is archived recursively. This will ensure that all your data is archived and compressed in its original directories, which is very important if you want to retain the full working integrity of your Web sites.
You may also find that your new hosting company may be able to transfer the files directly from your old server to the new one you are getting with them, ask before hand if this is something that they can do for you as it is generally a lot quicker for them to do it than for you to upload the files yourself for instance, Web Air will do this work for you.Once you have recursively archived your site, make arrangements to purchase your new hosting services. Make sure that any new solution you select includes basic services that approximate and excel the service that you where obtaining with your previous hosting provider. It makes no sense to replace your present hosting service with another Web hosting solution that equally cannot fulfill your technical or financial requirements.
The best resource to use to find a better hosting firm specific to the adult hosting industry is Adult Hosting Companies, the largest adult Web hosting resource directory with currently over 250 hosts listed.
Once your new solution is activated, upload your archived Web pages, database and scripts to the new host. You will be allocated an IP number from the new hosting company. Take time to debug and test the new site from the individual IP number, not forgetting things like your cgi scripts may need altering.
Once your site is entirely debugged and you verify that all site functionality is operative, then transfer your domain name service (DNS) servers over from your old server to your new server.
During this DNS transition period, which is referred to as the “propagation period,” your Web site will be resolved by both your new and old host, as the new DNS information about your Web site filters through the Internet globally. It typically takes about 10 days for the transfer to fully propagate around the Internet; so keep your old site running in case you get visitors whose ISP’s have cached your site on the old server.
It is important however that you retain both your old and new hosting services during your propagation period of 10 days. You will need to check your e-mail from both hosting providers since different regions of the Internet will remit e-mail to your original host while other regions will remit mail to the new server during this time.
Once a week or two have elapsed, cancel the account with the previous hosting company. Only cancel your old account when e-mail stops arriving from your old hosting provider.
If you follow these steps carefully, then your host change should be easy and stress free.
Article written by Lee
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Thumbnail Preview TGPs And The Gay Market Place
One of the latest crazes to hit the gay adult market from a webmasters point of view is that of the thumbnail preview TGP and, more surprisingly than this is the fact that this new breed of gay adult TGP seems to attract more traffic than the standard format TGP ever did so, what is a thumbnail preview TGP and just how do you go about making one of your own? This is what we will investigate in this article.
Thumbnail Preview TGP Basics.
A thumbnail preview TGP is just as the name suggests, a standard TGP with one main difference, the TGP itself doesn’t list gallery descriptions rather a small preview image of the content placed on each of the galleries submitted. This thumbnail preview is usually size between 100×100 pixels and 60×60 pixels in dimension however, the thumbnail preview size can be determined by the webmaster owning the TGP.
How Do I Start My Own Thumbnail Preview TGP?
In order to start your own thumbnail preview TGP you will need a couple of things, first and foremost, a domain name to run it on, the current trend in the gay marketplace is to name your TGP something short, memorable and, well, brand able so, the domain name you choose for your TGP should take all of these aspects into consideration. The next thing you will need in order to run your own gay thumbnail preview TGP will be the script which you use to manage the TGP itself, for this purpose I would highly recommend Autogallery MySQL from http://www.jmbsoft.com it is affordable and, easy to maintain which is a must if you are wanting to run a sizable TGP. One other thing that you may also like to consider investing in for your thumbnail preview TGP is a design, in fact, most of the ‘good’ thumbnail preview TGPs whether they are focused in the straight or gay market, have a clean, almost pay site quality design aspect to them. Of course, you do not need to keep up with the joneses however, if it works for other people, then why not see if it will work for you also?
Thumbnail TGP Structure.
So you now have a domain and have purchased the script and / or design that you want to use on your thumbnail preview TGP what next? Well first things are first, you should take a look at some of the other sites that currently exist and see how they do things, find out what things you feel they are doing wrong and, capitalize on that.
You should also make some decisions now as to the look and feel you want your thumbnail preview TGP to have, how many galleries are you going to list on the front page each day? Will you be utilizing the archives feature of your TGP script? What limitations do you want to put on submissions from other webmasters? These are all aspects of running a TGP that you need to think of prior to opening your site up for general submissions.
In general however, you will find that most thumbnail preview TGP sites will have roughly 100 thumbnail images on their front page of the site with any additional galleries being listed in their archives section again, you should decide on how you want to maintain your own site.
Getting Traffic To Your Thumbnail Preview TGP.
Now you have hopefully set your thumbnail preview TGP live you need to do one final step in making the TGP itself a huge success, get the traffic flowing, one of the best ways to do this, as with any other type of site is to ask your friends and associates to trade traffic with your site however, should this not be an option then you should use more conventional methods such as submitting galleries to other TGP sites ensuring that you use a recip to your TGP on each gallery as well as utilizing other forms of traffic such as cheap brokered traffic, top lists, web rings and, even counters, within a month or so you will soon start to see a steady flow of new webmaster gallery submissions and, with each new submission comes more traffic and ultimately, more income from your site.
Article written by Lee
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Search Engine Themes!
It’s safe to say that the ‘pay-per-inclusion’ model is rapidly catching on with today’s search engines and directories as they are forced to become profitable in a hurry. But there’s also another trend that’s come to the fore.
‘Theme indexing’ is a process used by search engines to determine an entire site’s primary theme. In other words, your complete set of Web pages is indexed as one, and defined as one.
This is why sites with multiple product lines and subject content often get poor rankings today. To learn how to combat this, let’s first look at the theme indexing process from the search engine’s point of view.
According to Search Engine World, the theme indexing search engine follows this basic 5-step progression as it ‘weighs’ what a particular site is about:
1. Page Titles
2. Meta Tags
3. Page Headings
4. Page Content
5. LinksThis is a general overview of the approach – each search engine is unique, and no one has the ultimate read on every search site. But to date this has proven to be true of AltaVista, Google, Excite, Lycos and WebCrawler.
All of these belong on the ‘Who’s Who’ list of major search sites today. If it’s important that your Web business be found among them, today you must write your site with theme indexing in mind. Here’s how:
The concept itself is simple. Focus your entire site like a laser beam on a single, potent theme.
The process is ruthless. Get rid of the deadwood. Set up additional sites as needed for each individual product and service ‘family’.
In the same way that you must now invest to get indexed on Yahoo, LookSmart, Inktomi and other top directories, you need to invest in separating your activities by theme into multiple Web sites. Kick out unrelated content, links and affiliate programs that don’t relate to your market niche. Build new sites as needed, with each focusing on its own unique selling proposition. This is the first step to take in the optimization copywriting process.
Having done this, here’s how to write each site to get the best possible positioning on theme indexing search engines.
Focus Your Key Phrase.
Determine what key phrase your entire site is about – a key phrase people use often on the search engines. To pick heavily searched, popular key phrases, try Word Tracker: http://www.wordtracker.com/.Write Your Copy. Throughout your site play variations on your key phrase theme. Every element counts: page titles, meta tags, page headings, page content, links. Remember to write for people first. Search engines are robotic, but people always want to know what’s in your site for them. Tell them what qualifies you to help, and what you have to offer. Balance using your key phrase with the benefits you deliver.
Once you’ve written your copy, search your text for generic phrases like ‘our product’ and substitute your key phrase. Use long copy where you can. Not only does it outsell shorter copy – it also makes it easier for you to write keyword-rich text.
Format Your Text.
Use key phrase bullets. They break up text copy and serve you as mini headlines with an entirely different look and feel.Use multiple headlines to create immediate context when a visitor explores your site. Make these headlines specific by using your key phrase. Tag headlines in your source code – <H1>, <H2> or <H3> – to highlight your theme.
Write your links as mini-headlines. Often people scan pages by jumping from one link to another. Link words look very much like headlines, or highlighted words, and should deliver your primary message and key phrase.
Measure and Test.
Conventional wisdom tells us that the ideal keyword density is somewhere between 3-7%. To check this before you submit, try the free Keyword Density Analyzer: http://www.keyworddensity.com/. For a more accurate read on individual search engines, do a search under your key phrase, then take the top 3 returns, enter their URLs and try to match their percentages before you submit. Track your placement and adjust accordingly.This is the initial approach to optimization copywriting for theme indexing search engines. Keep it simple: start here.
Article written by Lee
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Billing Solutions For International Surfers
We all know the lifeblood of the webmaster is to be able to accept credit cards for site access however, with the global markets emerging more and more, many webmasters still do not realize that they can accept credit cards from international countries at little or no extra cost to themselves or, their business.
Presuming you already have your sites translated into a selection of global formats you need to make sure you can process foreign transactions and, these should be handled differently than regular US based credit card users however. This is what we will approach upon in this article.
The main reason we own our businesses is to turn a profit and, from a profit making point of view is just how the details below will enable you to benefit your long term global business.
The first step you need to take in order to correctly ‘charge’ your international customers is to ensure that you are sending them to the right language, after all, over 70% of internet users can not speak English, let alone read it. This is where having some geo-scripting comes in handy on your join page, the second the surfer hits this page he (or she) will be directed to a localized version of your join page.
Now that you have the surfer on your join page you also need to ensure they have a variety of options available to them to actually finalize the purchase however, you should also ensure that, if they want to view your join page in another language, that they have this as an option too.
Some alternate payment methods for your international customs could include one or more of the following, PayPal, JCB, Mastercard, Discover, Maestro, EuroDebit, Checks and, of course, a dialer.
I would however use the dialer as a last minute option should their chosen method of payment not be accepted.
Even though you may run a ‘recurring’ based site, you might not want to have your foreign surfers recur and risk having their card declined when it comes to authorizing your charge next, for this reason you may like to add the option of a 3 month membership or perhaps a 6 month membership however, make sure you lower the cost of this membership in relation to buying a monthly membership, this might just be the clincher you need to close the international sale.
As with any purchase the after sales support is also needed, especially if you are wanting your international customer to rebill for several months and, trust me, they WILL rebill, often for in excess of 6 months. They pulled their credit or debit card out for a reason and, they will stay if you can give them more reason too.
With any type of sale a follow up is always good, many sponsors and processors send out an email automatically upon sign up, however, how many of these emails are written in the surfers native tongue?
In conclusion, when dealing with international customers you should cater to them NOT make them cater to YOU by doing this you will ensure the longevity of your international business.
Finally, if you have any type of online business you should carefully consider the global market place as it is growing a rapid rate with millions of new international surfers coming online each year this would be a bad business choice on your part if you were not to cater for them.
Article written by Lee.
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Online Billing Alternatives – Token Payment Systems
In this article we will continue our look at the various payment solutions that are available to webmasters for use on a global scale and, this time we will look at the ‘Token’ system of generating income to our sites.
Token Payments – What Are They?
Token payments, as they name suggests is a way by which your surfers can access your members area by using pre-purchased tokens as a cash alternative. These tokens are available in a variety of values ranging from US$1 to US$5 and above.Token Payments – What Are The Costs?
The cost to the surfer (as mentioned above) can vary from solution to solution however, on average the tokens which are redeemed for payment are bought in amounts ranging from US$1 to US$5 and above, these tokens then grant the surfer access to any of the sites that uses the specific token system the surfer purchased ‘credits’ for.Token Payments – Price Comparisons.
Okay so based on our previous articles we will again say that access to your members area costs an average of US$30 for a months access, now, using the token payment method, you are now able to set certain ‘restrictions’ immediately on the level of ‘access’ your new member can have although, the reality of it is, these restrictions are set by the token provider themselves.Lets say a surfer has gained access to your site using a US$5 token, what can they get actually have access too – not a lot. Your surfer only has access to as much of the content in your site that his ‘credits’ or ‘tokens’ will allow him to, in fact, the token system itself is much like the current pay-per-view model only, IMHO, not as satisfying to the surfer.
back to the issue at hand, how much will you make from this surfer with the US$5 token who has just accessed your site, well, if your members area is good and you have enough content to keep the surfer there until their tokens run out of credit, then, you will make upto 95% of the initial US$5 token purchase.
The good thing about this payment solution from a webmasters perspective however, is that YOU can actually set how much time each token will last on your site. Therefore, the reality of it is, you could have a surfer join your site with a US$5 token and only see one movie file whereas, a surfer who joined with a Credit card for 30 days access, could in effect strip your site of its content and move onto the next paysite.
Token Payments – Overview.
All in all, i strongly feel that there is a place in todays adult industry for the token payment solution after all, webmasters have to limit access to the amount of content surfers are able to see for free (or cheaply) and start to ‘educate’ todays sufer that they need to spend some money in order to access ‘the good stuff’.By allowing webmasters to control the content and value of the token payments on their sites this payment solution could, somewhat start this education process for the surfers. Whether this will be a good or, a bad thing however, will depend entirely on the amount of use these relatively new payment solutions get from both webmasters and, ultimately, surfers.
Article written by Lee
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What Is The Golden Ratio?
Its a little known marketing technique that say that, as long as the longest side on any oblong is 1.6 times the length of the shortest side of the same oblong people will be more likely to prefer that shape over any other shape.
Why do they prefer this size? Because it occurs naturally and, subconsciously EVERY LIVING PERSON is attracted to this trait.
An example of this is as follows:
1) Stand Up
2) Measure the distance from your head to your feet and write this measurement down
3) Measure the distance from your Navel write this figure down.The length of your ENTIRE body is 1.6 times longer than from your Navel to your feet!!
The same is also true for the length of your arm from shoulder to finger tip, then from elbow to finger tip.
The same is true for credit cards, the longest side is 1.6 times longer than than the shorter side!
Think about this for a second, banner ads, what shape are they? Oblong except, they don’t employ the ‘golden ratio’ what if, just what if, you used some banner ads that employed this ‘golden ratio’ who says banners have to be 468×60 in size?
Why not try making some ‘basic’ banners in paint or a decent graphics program utilizing the 1.6 rule and see if your click thru’s increase, personally, I will bet my earnings last month that they will.
On the same way of thinking towards marketing, table ads, money bars, etc, why not incorporate this idea into them also? It cant hurt and who knows it may just work.
the math to work this ‘golden ratio’ out is as follows for Image a above:
shortest side (60) x 1.6 = (90) Longest side
You don’t even need to be a genius to make your own ads using this method as the people at Microsoft supplied you with a calculator.
Article written by Lee
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Building A Surfer Trap – Stage 5
So we hit stage 5 in this surfer trap tutorial.
It was brought to my attention this morning that we never added any ALT tags to our single FPA link so, in a change to the planned tutorial I am going to touch on this stage as, once the search engines get to our surfer traps this is going to be a crucial aspect on how highly we get ranked.
So what’s next?
Ok, now what you have to do is go back to manually editing the FPA’s (All of them!)
What you need to do is this…
Take the Multi-Site FPA first then, on ALL of the links that lead to the single site FPA’s you need to add the ALT tag. Again, in the same way as we did originally however, instead of using this tag on the images we will use this on the actual TEXT of the link so, for example the link which may be:
‘Voyeur Porn’ leading to the FPA you have for the Voyeur niche in the HTML coding will already look like this:
<a href=”mydomain.com”>Voyeur Porn</a>
Will get turned into:
<a href=”mydomain.com” ALT=”More Niche Related Keywords”>Voyeur Porn</a>
The reason we are going back over these links now and not earlier on is because you should hopefully have started to get a small amount of traffic from your counter impressions. These counters are virtually ALWAYS being crawled by the search engines due to the amount of people linking to them so, by optimizing our site at this stage, it makes it less work in getting into the search engines.
One other thing that we can now start to do (as we did a couple of stages back) is to create some more HTML pages with some tables on them, however, these will be HTML pages on their own with no images on them. Again however, you should make them 4 columns across and two rows high.
What you want to add into these tables are NICHE links so for example, taking the TEEN niche we would make eight links like:
Teen Sex
College Girls
Erotic Teens
Teen Porn
Etc
Etc
Etc
Etc…You should do this for each of the MAIN niches so you would have a table for Teen, Gay, Mature, Asian, Ebony, Fetish and one for General and again, these should link to the NICHE FPA’s that you already have created.
These tables will be used for another console on our surfer trap however, before we implement this console we are going to have some fun with them.
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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