• Gay Adult Marketing 101

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

    There is a myth out there that gay traffic is hard to convert because a gay surfer is reluctant to buy. This isn’t so. Conversions come down to two things:

    • The gay surfer is discriminating; a membership to a site that has exactly what we want
    • The gay surfer is loyal; I, believe, this comes from our experience as a community. When a Gay surfer decides to purchase a membership, it’s typically for a longer period of time.

    This is evident with the better Gay Pay Sites; conversions may be lower than a straight hardcore site however, membership tend to be longer than the industry average. The gay surfer is discriminating; we look for a long-term membership with a site that has we want whether it’s teens, bears, amateurs, etc.

    With that idea, I always advocate that age-old niche free site philosophy use a variety of sponsor programs on your sites. Typically, my free sites will have one main sponsor (I use Quality Males) then I’ll break my other banner slots down one Teen site, a Twink site and maybe a product like Viagra. But this will vary depending on the “flavor” or “personality” of your site – if you have a gay leather site, my main sponsor will be a Leather sponsor or product, with a variety of other sponsors (one mega site, a teen site, and maybe an adult toy store).

    One marketing option, I tend to see working well is the full-page ad vs. only banners. I, honestly, do not know whether it’s a quality issue, a larger ad or the surfer’s disgust with banner ads, but it works well in our market.

    One thing that experience has proven to me, it makes no difference whether you’re a webmaster to gay or straight traffic, you need to analyze your traffic. If you’re sending traffic out to sponsors and your not seeing the conversions, maybe you need to really look who your surfers are. If you’re lucky enough to know who your surfers are, then look for a specialty sponsor (whether partnership or click-thru program). It’s all a matter of finding the right sponsor programs and tweaking your site (and we all know how that can be). Don’t be afraid to experiment. It’s the long term that we need to be looking at. Remember that this isn’t “Who wants to be a Millionaire is 30 days or less”.

    Gay traffic isn’t difficult to manage as many people think. It’s a matter of patience and understanding your market. And the best way to understand that market, is to ask a successful webmaster in the gay adult market..

    Article written by Gary-Alan

  • SMS Marketing To MMS Marketing – WAP Billing Solutions

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Billing Solutions | Response: 0

    MMS Billing (Multimedia Message Billing) is going to be one of the next huge leaps forward for the online industry’s, with more and more surfers firing up their cell phones to visit our sites and properties we need to start looking at the ways in which we can ultimately bill these types of customer and this is where MMS Billing comes into play.

    MMS Billing – What Is It?

    MMS Billing is a method of charging surfers using cell phones for access to your sites and services. Much like how the SMS Billing model works however, rather than solely billing for text or images, you can utilize MMS Billing on a wide range of rich media applications including movies, sound and, flash applications.

    MMS Billing – What Are The Costs?

    The costs for MMS Billing can vary greatly depending on your MMS Billing provider however, as a rough guideline, you can expect to pay anywhere between $0.10 and $0.50 per purchase through the MMS Billing method.

    MMS Billing – An Overview.

    MMS Billing is still in its infancy across the internet however, with more and more sites becoming WAP enabled and, more and more surfers turning their cell phones on to browse our websites this billing model will soon grow to what the current SMS Billing model is today.

    Article written by Lee

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

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

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

    A Little Visa History Lesson.

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

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

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

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

    As The Waves Settled – The Next Blow.

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

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

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

    These requirements were that.

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

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

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

    One Last Blow To The AVS Webmasters.

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

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

    Adult Entertainment Networks – What’s Next?

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

    Article written by Lee

  • Protecting The Kids – Europe’s Role

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: 2257 | Response: 0

    As adult webmasters we have certain obligations we must fulfill daily whether these be, legal or moral.

    One issue that is constantly cropping up in our industry is that of minors (Children) accessing adult websites and, more importantly, the ease of which they can do.

    Recent figures released by one of Europe’s top internet analysis companies show that children in Europe and, specifically within the United Kingdom are more likely to visit a website and that, ‘showing that around one in five Internet kids (290,000) check out the sex sites’.

    These figures are certainly alarming to say the least, bearing in mind they are specifically talking about the United Kingdom, that leaves a vast majority of Europe, as yet, un-analyzed.

    We should all adapt to new methods in order to protect minors from accessing our site whether that includes placing your sites behind AVS systems which, in my opinion is one of the best ways and, most profitable of protecting minors or, utilizing ‘web safe’ software packages that are available to block access to adult sites completely we all need to adopt these practices.

    The fact of the matter remains that, in this day and age, no matter what precautions we take in order to prevent access there will, undoubtedly, be a majority of children who can and will, get access to adult sites.

    Does that mean we should compromise on the quality of our sites? No
    Does that mean we need to think harder about how we develop our sites? Yes

    It takes very little effort to subscribe to the services to block access and, you can get a single line of code to place within your html from ICRA which will at least, deter underage surfers from accessing your sites.

    In addition to the above mentioned service, you can also place a link on your warning page/s to the following services for parents to block access from children to our sites, SAFESURF, CYBERPATROL, NETNANNY and, SURFWATCH amongst others. Its not just about utilizing software and ratings on our sites though, we can go much further than that and, for instance, using nothing but softcore content on our sites will protect to some extent the materials available to children but, in addition you will also notice your conversion ratios will go up! I have and, I’m sure you have, heard it time and time again.. Make them ‘Pay for pink’ and, by using softcore images on your sites that’s exactly what you are doing.

    I for one certainly hope that you take heed at this article, protecting our children is paramount if, we are to succeed in the business, it is getting harder and harder to control who accesses our site but, we can at least take a step in the right direction.

    Article written by Lee

  • Pay Per Click Or Search Engine Optimization

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Paid Traffic, Search Engine Optimization | Response: 0

    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

  • Everything You Need To Know About Meta Tags And More!

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Search Engine Optimization, WebDesign | Response: 0

    Everything You Need To Know About Meta Tags And More!

    There’s a plethora of different META Tags that you can make use of on your site. Because there are so many, it’s impossible for me to cover all of them in this article. However, I will describe the most common ones. But let’s start from the beginning, shall we?

    What Are META Tags?

    META tags are similar to standard HTML tags. However, there is one big difference: You have to insert all META tags between the <head> </head> tags on your page(s). META tags are used primarily to include information about a document. The META tags will be invisible to your site’s visitors, but will be seen by browsers and search engines.

    For The Search Engines.

    Several of the major search engines make use of the META Keyword tag, and virtually all of them make use of the Description tag. These tags help the search engine spider determine the content of your web site so that it can be indexed properly.

    This is what they look like:

    <META name=”keywords” content=”Webmaster Resource Site”>
    <META name=”description” content=”Online Webmaster Resource Site”>

    You can also instruct the search engine robot/spider how to index your site using the robots META Tag. This is what it looks like:

    <META name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”>

    What the tag above does is tell the spider not to index the page that it appears on, and not to follow the links on that page. Here’s a complete list of attributes for the robots tag:

    index – the default, the page is added to the search engine database

    noindex – the page is not added to the search engine database

    nofollow – the spider doesn’t follow the links on that page

    none – same as “noindex, no follow”

    To use any of these attributes simply replace the “noindex,nofollow” text in the example above with whatever you want to use. If you need to use more than one attribute, separate them with a comma.

    Client Pull.

    Have you ever seen a page that automatically refreshes to another URL after a few seconds? Did you ever wondered how it was done? I’ll tell you. The page made use of one of the http-equiv META Tags to automatically “pull” you to a different page after a few seconds. Here’s what the code looks like:

    <META http-equiv=”refresh” content=”1; url=newpage.htm”>

    The value of content denotes how many seconds will pass before the new page is called for. If you want it to happen as soon as a person hits that page, then set the value to “0”.

    Prevent Caching.

    If you want to prevent a page being saved in your visitor’s cache you can do so by inserting the following three tags:

    <META HTTP-EQUIV=”expires” CONTENT=”0″>
    <META HTTP-EQUIV=”Pragma” CONTENT=”no-cache”>
    <META HTTP-EQUIV=”Cache-Control” CONTENT=”no-cache”>

    Why would you want a page not to be cached? If your site is updated frequently and you always want your visitors to see the newest content/changes, or if you want to ensure that a new banner is loaded each time from your server when a page is accessed, you’ll want to use the tags above.

    A quick note here on banner caching: In addition to using the tags above, you’ll want to append random numbers at the end of the tag calling the image.

    Rating Your Content.

    By using the rating META tag on your site, you can specify the appropriateness of your web site for kids. The tag looks like this:

    <META name=”rating” content=”general”>
    In addition to the general rating, you can use three others. They are:

    mature

    restricted

    14 years

    Misc. Tags

    Below I’ve listed several other popular tags that you may have seen around the web.

    The generator META tag is used to specify what program was used to create your web site. Many HTML editing tools automatically insert this so that a company can gauge their market penetration. The tag looks like this:

    <META name=”generator” content=”program name and version”>

    The author tag is used to identify the author of a page. Simply replace “author’s name” with your name or email address.

    <META name=”author” content=”author’s name”>
    The copyright tag identifies the individual or company that holds the copyright to a particular page. This is what it looks like:

    <META name=”copyright” content=”This page and all its contents are copyright 2003 by Lee Windsor. All Rights Reserved.”>

    I hope this article gave you some insight into the usage of Meta Tags and how they can benefit your day to day business.

    Article written by Lee

  • Displaying Special Characters On Your HTML Pag

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

    In order to display certain characters within your HTML pages, you must use a special code. The codes below display the HTML code and the character when displayed on your web page. To use any of the characters displayed within the chart, copy & paste the HTML code to the left of the character you would like to use.

    HTML Code Browser View HTML Code Browser View HTML Code Browser View HTML Code Browser View
    &copy; © &#33; ! &#95; _ &#157; 
    &reg; ® &#34; &#96; ` &#158; ž
    &nbsp; &#35; ` &#97; a &#159; Ÿ
    &quot; &#36; $ &#98; b &#160;
    &amp; & &#37; % &#99; c &#161; ¡
    &lt; < &#38; & &#100; d &#162; ¢
    &gt; > &#39; &#101; e &#163; £
    &Agrave; À &#40; ( &#102; f &#164; ¤
    &Aacute; Á &#41; ) &#103; g &#165; ¥
    &Acirc; Â &#42; * &#104; h &#166; ¦
    &Atilde; Ã &#43; + &#105; i &#167; §
    &Auml; Ä &#44; , &#106; j &#168; ¨
    &Aring; Å &#45; &#107; k &#169; ©
    &AElig; Æ &#46; . &#108; l &#170; ª
    &Ccedil; Ç &#47; / &#109; m &#171; «
    &Egrave; È &#48; 0 &#110; n &#172; ¬
    &Eacute; É &#49; 1 &#111; o &#173; ­
    &Ecirc; Ê &#50; 2 &#112; p &#174; ®
    &Euml; Ë &#51; 3 &#113; q &#175; ¯
    &Igrave; Ì &#52; 4 &#114; r &#176; °
    &Iacute; Í &#53; 5 &#115; s &#177; ±
    &Icirc; Î &#54; 6 &#116; t &#178; ²
    &Iuml; Ï &#55; 7 &#117; u &#179; ³
    &ETH; Ð &#56; 8 &#118; v &#180; ´
    &Ntilde; Ñ &#57; 9 &#119; w &#181; µ
    &Otilde; Õ &#58; : &#120; x &#182;
    &Ouml; Ö &#59; ; &#121; y &#183; ·
    &Oslash; Ø &#60; < &#122; z &#184; ¸
    &Ugrave; Ù &#61; = &#123; { &#185; ¹
    &Uacute; Ú &#62; > &#124; | &#186; º
    &Ucirc; Û &#63; ? &#125; } &#187; »
    &Uuml; Ü &#64; @ &#126; ~ &#188; ¼
    &Yacute; Ý &#65; A &#127; ? &#189; ½
    &THORN; Þ &#66; B &#128; &#190; ¾
    &szlig; ß &#67; C &#129;  &#191; ¿
    &agrave; à &#68; D &#130; &#192; À
    &aacute; á &#69; E &#131; ƒ &#193; Á
    &aring; å &#70; F &#132; &#194; Â
    &aelig; æ &#71; G &#133; &#195; Ã
    &ccedil; ç &#72; H &#134; &#196; Ä
    &egrave; è &#73; I &#135; &#197; Å
    &eacute; é &#74; J &#136; ˆ &#198; Æ
    &ecirc; ê &#75; K &#137; &#199; Ç
    &euml; ë &#76; L &#138; Š &#200; È
    &igrave; ì &#77; M &#139; &#201; É
    &iacute; í &#78; N &#140; Œ &#202; ?
    &icirc; î &#79; O &#141;  &#203; Ë
    &iuml; ï &#80; P &#142; Ž &#204; Ì
    &eth; ð &#81; Q &#143;  &#205; Í
    &ntilde; ñ &#82; R &#144;  &#206; Î
    &ograve; ò &#83; S &#145; &#207; Ï
    &oacute; ó &#84; T &#146; &#208; Ð
    &ocirc; ô &#85; U &#147; &#209; Ñ
    &otilde; õ &#86; V &#148; &#210; Ò
    &ouml; ö &#87; W &#149; &#211; Ó
    &oslash; ø &#88; X &#150; &#212; Ô
    &ugrave; ù &#89; Y &#151; &#213; Õ
    &uacute; ú &#90; Z &#152; ˜ &#214; Ö
    &ucirc; û &#91; [ &#153; &#215; ×
    &yacute; ý &#92; \ &#154; š &#216; Ø
    &thorn; þ &#93; ] &#155; &#217; Ù
    &yuml; ÿ &#94; ^ &#156; œ &#218; Ú

    Whilst the above list is by no means complete, it should contain the most useful characters and codes for you to build your sites using the special characters with ease.

    Article written by Lee

  • The Ins and Outs of European Domain Name Registration

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

    A domain name is more than just your online adult business address; it’s a crucial aspect of your online adult business. It is closely linked to the way a surfer thinks of and, more importantly, remembers your site. In many European countries, domain names that end with a country code carry more weight with the Internet-surfing public than dot.com domain names. So, if you want to have of a chance of selling to a foreign adult surfer in a European country you might consider registering a European country code top-level domain name (ccTLD) for your site.

    Obtaining a ccTLD could potentially:

    • Increase your chance of getting listed on a national search engine. Many national search engines require a company to be local, however that may be defined, to be listed with them.
    • Get you a higher ranking with a local search engine.
    • Make your business more accessible to customers and vendors in a specific country.
    • Make your business seem more local and thus help overcome any fear local customers might have of buying from a non-European outfit.

    What Is a ccTLD, Anyway?

    Generic top-level domains (TLDs) are not linked to any geographic area. They include the well-known and familiar .com, .org, and .net domain names. In contrast to these generic TLDs, there are ccTLDs: Each country and territory in the world has its own TLD. They include, for example, .at for Austria, .be for Belgium, and so on.

    Essentially the domain name policies regulate who can register what type of a domain. In principle, nearly anyone can register a generic TLD.

    It is important to keep in mind that you might lose a domain name you recently registered in Europe if another company can prove in court that the name is rightfully theirs. If the court decides that the plaintiff has a right to it, you will lose that domain name however, I am assuming that nobody reading this is going to be considering registering ccTLD’s for the purpose of cyber squatting.

    Each country or region has its own rules, policies, and regulations about who can register a ccTLD, and how. Common restrictions include the requirement to be a local registered company or to have registered the company and/or company name as a national trademark in a specific country. However, some countries are less strict about who can register. As always, it depends on the country and its particular rules.

    The table below is meant to give you easy access to the information you will need when you are ready to register a European domain name for your site.

    Here is an explanation of the categories used in the domain registration table:

    • Country: Name of the country you might want to obtain a domain name for your business in.
    • Name of domain: The ccTLD (a two-letter abbreviation).
    • Must be local: This can mean that your business presence, your company’s physical presence, or your trademarks must be local.
    • More domains possible: Some countries limit the number of domains that you can register.
    • Same name as owner: Some countries require that the registered name be the same name as the owner’s company name or trademark.
    • Signed contract: Some domain name registration agencies demand a written, signed declaration or contract to be sent in. If in doubt, read up on specific rules relative to the specific domain name registrars you will be using.
    Country Name of Domain Must be local More domains possible Same name as owner Signed contract
    Austria .at No Yes No No
    Belgium .be Yes Yes No Yes
    Denmark .dk No Yes No No
    Finland .fi Yes No Yes No
    France .fr Yes Yes No No
    Germany .de Yes Yes Yes No
    Greece .gr Yes No No No
    Iceland .is Yes No Yes Yes
    Ireland .ie No Yes No No
    Italy .it No Yes No Yes
    Luxembourg .lu No Yes No No
    Netherlands .nl Yes Yes No Yes
    Norway .no Yes No Yes Yes
    Portugal .pt Yes Yes No No
    Spain .es Yes No No No
    Sweden .se Yes No Yes Yes
    United Kingdom .uk No Yes No No

    Now you can see the possibilities available in respect of registering more than just dot.com addresses perhaps you might like to find a country you would want to gain some extra traffic from and see about registering a ccTLD and developing it.

    Also, you could improve your chances of gaining additional traffic to your new ccTLD domain by having some country specific language on that domain, again, how your site comes across to the surfer is just as important than the domain and, there are plenty of Adult Site Translation companies out there who can assist you with this part of the ccTLD development.

    There are, of course, other ways to gain additional foreign surfers other than just registering a ccTLD for example, on European Webmasters we have a domain name registration section that will allow you to translate specific text in order to gain type in foreign traffic on dot.com TLDs perhaps, if you don’t want to or, cant register a ccTLD in the country of your choice you might like to take this approach at gaining additional foreign traffic to your sites.

    I hope this article has given you a little insight into the varieties of domain names available in and around Europe and that you might just register a domain and see for yourself how profitable the European markets are.

    Article written by Lee

  • Doorway Pages

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Article written by Lee

  • Newsletter Know How – A Guide To Writing Newsletters

    Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: Promotion, Writing | Response: 0

    Email newsletters are a great way to make contact with existing clients and, prospective clients which makes them a great marketing tool. The biggest bonus however, over Email newsletters rather than print ones is that you have virtually no cost involved with writing and, ultimately, mailing them out.

    There is a wide variety of online newsletter on the internet. however, probably the simplest form for most webmasters is the email newsletter. Email provides you with a quick way to keep your name out there, build trust with you readers and, hopefully attract a few sales. If you archive your newsletter also this is a great way to get additional pages into the search engines and, as such, it then becomes a good traffic driver to your website regardless of the amount of subscribers you have. However one of the most important benefits of having an email newsletter sent on a regular basis is that it build brand recognition of your website or business.

    Your newsletter should provide information, not just of an advertising nature but that, should also be informative to your subscribers. In doing this you are offering information of value and, ultimately, ensuring that your subscribers remain. However, remember newsletters are for promoting your area of expertise not just a vehicle for revenue generation.

    One of the first things you should consider when deciding to do a newsletter is the amount of commitment you will have to put towards the project. Whether you start a monthly, weekly or, daily newsletter a great deal of commitment must be made to both the newsletter and, more importantly, your subscribers. For example, We generally spend a good 3 days researching the articles that have been submitted and trying to ensure that the details contained within them are relevant at the time of sending the email, this is not an easy task especially when the adult internet is constantly developing. If you don’t have the time to research and maintain consistency in your newsletter, then don’t even consider doing one, it isn’t for you at the present time.

    Now you have decided you can make the commitment required to run a successful email newsletter what do you do next? Collect email addresses. Probably one of the easiest ways to get email subscribers to join your list is to go through your current mail clients contact list and manually add those email addresses or, further still, you may even have an opt in collection program that you have been using for a while but have never really had the time to commit to writing a newsletter worthy of sending out. Remember though, an email list is only as good as the addresses contained within it. You want to run an OPT-IN email list, any other type of list will be considered Spam and, that will do you more damage than good. Of course, if you haven’t already got an email collection program you can find one online there are literally hundreds of them floating around that you can get for free from sites like http://www.hotscripts.com.

    So, you now have your emails, onto writing your newsletter. I think the greatest part of email is that it is somewhat less formal than writing for print copy. Email in fact tends to be very informal in comparison. The best way at approaching writing for an email newsletter is to write how you talk, it is more enjoyable for the reader and gives your newsletter a personality that no one else can emulate. Content wise, that depends on what you do, what would YOU like to see if you subscribed to an email list of the type you are going to be running and, more importantly, what would ensure you stay subscribed to the newsletter? Ask your friends, colleagues and, peers what they would like to see in an email newsletter, often they have been looking for information that is not readily available, this is an area where you then start to provide a service that no one else does.

    So you are at the point where you are starting to realize that running a newsletter is a lot of work correct? Well, it is. However, the effort, work and, time spent in putting your newsletter together will help you build a relationship with people whom, in all actuality, you may probably not ever meet in a face to face situation and, more importantly, it can become a great income generator over time.

    Article written by Lee

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