• Converting Italian Adult Traffic – The Niche Paysites That Work

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

    Continuing with our article series of country specific traffic and which niches work for the various global markets in this article we will take a look at some of the most complicated traffic to ‘work’ Italian Adult Surfers. The reason I say most complicated is for the simple reason that, to date there are very few Italian paysites this makes it harder for us as webmasters to tap into these markets especially if we ourselves, do not know what the Italian surfer is after. That said, lets get on with the article.

    Italian Traffic – Quick Analysis.

    As already mentioned surfers from Italy are hard to pre-qualify given that there are very few sites catering to this European market at the present time, this means that there are no sources of background information to look at or, statistical analysis’s available from other paysites.

    Italian Adult Surfers – The Niches.

    For one of the most affluent international markets going it comes as a surprise to see that there are almost no localized pay sites for the Italian market this made our initial filtering of the Italian traffic much harder opting for translated free sites over paysite tour pages to send the traffic to itself then, once they hit the free sites either choosing to send them back into our central hub or, to the US version pay site of the niche free site they were visiting. That said here are the results from the previous 3 (three) months of traffic that we observed.

    Ebony.

    The Ebony niche would appear to be the most consistent converting niche on Italian traffic however, given that almost all of the niches we used on the Italian surfers were quite evenly spread for sales (Ebony was only 5 sales in front) this, I am sure is not a good indicator and, likewise with the Japanese and Chinese traffic, this is an area of international adult marketing that should ideally be re-visited at a later day.

    For Women.

    Even more surprising than the fact there are very few localized paysites for Italy was the fact that the ‘For Women’ niche converted just as well as the other niches we used for our Italian traffic, of course, this at first would seem to indicate that the vast majority of surfers we had on our sites from Italy were female however, as we all know, the Straight male niche is big in gay so, there is a chance the sales we got from our Italian traffic to the For Women niche paysites we used were equally male and female.

    Softcore General.

    (Softcore Adult Tours) The other strange thing we noticed was that paysites we offered to our Italian surfers that were Hardcore in nature didn’t convert as well as the paysites that had softcore tours, this would lend itself to the fact that Italian porn surfers are not looking for hardcore – quite different to most other country traffic sources.

    Tranny.

    The transsexual niche paysites that we offered to the Italian surfers also had some good results again, this is strange given that almost every other countries surfer we sent to a tranny site didn’t convert. One other thing that comes up with this and, given the fact that the for women niche paysites we used had good results would be that perhaps the Italian surfers are interested in the more obscure niches available on the adult internet.

    Italian Adult Traffic – An Overview.

    All in all, as stated at the beginning of this article the Italian surfers would certainly appear at first glance to be more varied and obscure in their sexual preferences than other countries whom appear to have clear cut, well defined ‘types’ of site that interest them.

    I think as mentioned above Italian traffic needs to be looked at in more depth in a future article as, to my surprise the traffic didn’t work on the niches that previously converted well for the same amounts and quality of traffic.

    Article written by Lee

  • So That’s What It Means!

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: General | Response: 0

    Often you will hear other webmaster talking about things such as unique hits, banner exchanges and, AVS systems. The article below is a simplified glossary of those and many other terms that you will begin to hear day in and day out of your working life as an adult webmaster.

    AVS (Adult Verification System)
    The protection system that was designed to prevent minors from accessing adult sites. AVS services usually also have a large network of sites that adult surfers can access with one password. You can find a list of Age Verification Systems at Adult Sponsor Programs

    AVS Site
    A site that uses an AVS system.

    Banner Exchange
    A program that enables an exchange of traffic between a whole variety of adult sites. They provide you with some coding which you put in your HTML in order to get additional visitors to your adult site. You can visit: Porn Client for a highly respected Banner Exchange System.

    Blind Links
    When you place a misleading link on a site that will encourage the surfer to click on it. They will be sent to a new site that has nothing to do with what they expected to see. For example, if you had a text link saying ‘Free Porn’ and they get sent to a paysite when they click on the link.

    Browser
    A program that displays and navigates web pages you are using a browser now to view this page.

    Chargeback
    A chargeback is what happens when a surfer changes their mind or decides they don’t like the site or service they signed up for and tells their credit card company they will not pay the fee for your sponsor or paysite charges. Chargebacks are bad for everyone concerned because do you not only lose income for the sale, penalties are applied and sometimes they are applied to you.

    Click-Thru Program
    A sponsorship program that pays you an amount of money for each and every single visitor you send to their site. You can also find a list of per click sponsors at Adult Sponsor Programs.

    Content Provider
    A company that offer adults pictures, video clips for sale or lease. For a complete list of the best content providers head over to http://www.adult-content-providers.com.

    Dead Or Broken Link
    A link that is no longer valid or isn’t working. When you click on the link you get a page not found error.

    E-Zine
    An E-Zine is in simplified terms and online magazine.

    FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
    You need to upload (FTP) your web pages from your computer on to the web for everyone to see. One of the most well known FTP clients is Cute FTP.

    Hits
    Number of times your page was viewed over a specific period of time.

    Hit Counter
    Tool used to track the number of surfers that click onto your adult site. A good hit counter can be found at: http://www.sextracker.com

    Hot-Linking
    When someone links to an image on your server to display it on their site instead of linking to the image on their own server. You can prevent Hot-Linking by having a .htaccess file on your server.

    HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
    This is the language used to write web pages. This page is written in HTML.

    ISP
    Your internet service provider. AOL is a well known ISP.

    Java
    A programming language used by programmers to build and create programs. Not to be confused with JavaScript (see below).

    JavaScript
    A scripting language you can directly insert into HTML documents. They only work with surfers that have Java enabled on their browser.

    Legal Content
    Adult content for which you have rights to display on your site.

    Model Release
    Document that a model signs at the time the photographs of them are taken.

    Message Board
    A message board is a place where you can ask and offer advice about the industry or just generally chat with other adult webmasters for example the message board at: http://www.europeanwebmasters.com.

    Newbie
    A new adult webmaster.

    Partnership, Sponsor or, Affiliate Program
    A revenue program that pays you a percentage or fixed price for every member you send to your sponsor’s site.

    Pay Site
    An adult website where surfers have to pay a fee for access.

    Pic Post
    A site where you can submit a picture and your ad on a daily basis.

    Plug In
    A plug in is a ready-made type of web “CONTENT”. Many plug in providers will even host the content on their servers and allow you to change colors, Fonts and, add a logo graphic, so the plug in matches your site. Plug In content is generally more expensive than image content.

    Ratio
    A ratio like this refers to click throughs and actual sales made from them. When a webmaster says they got a 1:250 ratio, they mean that out of 250 people who clicked on his sponsor banner, one of the surfers paid for memberships.

    Signup Ratio
    The amount of surfers that paid to view your adult site (See the example above headed RATIO).

    Spamming
    Promoting a site or service to newsgroups or e-mail addresses that have not given you permission to do so. Spamming can also mean posting your referral codes on message boards constantly inn order to get other webmasters to sign up beneath you.

    TGP (Thumbnail Gallery Post)
    A site where you can submit your gallery pages. They in return put up your gallery and send you additional traffic.

    Thumbnail
    A smaller version of an image used to link to a larger version of the same image.

    Turnkey Site
    An adult site that is already designed and finished with logos, content, billing solutions and, hosting. All you have to do is maintain the site. Newbies often make the mistake of buying a turnkey site before they properly know how to market them.

    Traffic
    The term used to refer to the amount of visitors to your adult website over a specific period of time.

    Uniques
    Number of visitors to your site. If 10 surfers visit your site on any given day and 2 of them click onto your site 3 times the same day, it will be referred to as 8 unique visitors for that day.

    URL
    A web address. Actual address to a page would be a URL. For example: http://www.adultwebmasternewsletter.com is the URL to our Adult Webmaster Newsletter Site.

    Warning or Entry Page
    The page before a surfer sees the main content of your site.

    Web Host
    A company that will provide you with a hosting account so that you may upload your website on their server so that surfers may see your site. For a reputable host you might like to try http://www.webair.com.

    Article written by Lee

  • Building A Surfer Trap – Stage 3

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

    Building A Surfer Trap – Stage 3.

    You should hopefully by now have a basic looking surfer trap ready on your server and on your hard drive.

    Now we need to start to ‘dirty’ this surfer trap up a little.

    We have already added 1 pop-up console to each of the FPA’s including the Multi-Site FPA.

    For the next step in this ‘dirtying’ process we need to add some additional links onto each of the FPA’s including the Multi-Site FPA.

    On the FPA’s what you need to do is create a ‘no thank you’ link so, if your surfer does not want to visit the site for the FPA you have sent them to you can send them to an alternative.

    This no thank you link can go to one of two places, you need to decide where you feel the traffic can be best utilized however, from my experience i would highly recommend using this first method:

    Link the ‘no thank you’ text on each of the single site FPA’s to another DIFFERENT niche FPA in your surfer trap so, as an example, if your surfer is on the All Petite FPA in your trap, the ‘no thank you’ link would lead to Just Toon’s. If they decide not to go with the Just Toon’s site, the ‘no thank you’ link on this FPA would go to Gay Ultra and so on, you need to ensure however, that the ‘no thank you’ link goes to a completely different niche to the one of the FPA the surfer is currently on.

    The second option you have is to link the ‘no thank you’ text to the ARS POTD (picture of the day) program. This will be your last chance at selling the surfer to one of the ARS pay sites.

    In addition to the ‘no thank you’ link on each of the FPA’s you also need to add a small table to the Single-Site FPA’s. ideally this should be four columns across and 2 rows down. This will give you 8 places to put a one or two word link going to another different niche FPA than the one the surfer is currently viewing however, you also need to ensure that these 8 links are going to a different FPA than the ‘no thank you’ link you have created.

    The above stage is where we could potentially start to lose people in the instructions therefore if you have ANY questions or queries regardless of how small they may be please post on the forums.

    This stage should hopefully only take you a couple of hours to complete and, once you have tested all of the links and uploaded the FPA’s to your server you are all set for the next MAJOR step in this project…. Generating Fresh Traffic.

    Article written by Lee

  • Building A Surfer Trap – Stage 1

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

    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

  • Seasons Greetings For The Adult Surfer

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

    How do the national and, international holidays affect our sponsors sales? More than you would think especially if you can offer your surfers something ‘seasonal’ when they hit your site. However, that said, when should you start planning for these holidays and, more importantly, how can you ensure that once you have implemented your seasonal marketing campaigns that they actually work?

    Seasonal Marketing – The Basics.

    Seasonal marketing is, in effect a method of changing your marketing approach around different times of the year to affect both the volume of sales you make and, more importantly, the uniqueness of the product you are offering your surfers. A good example of this is at Christmas time, many of the sponsors will provide their webmasters with banner with a holiday feel to them, perhaps using scantily clad men in Santa outfits or half naked women in elves costumes. By offering a seasonal marketing approach to your site surfers you actually increase the chances of making a sale.

    Holiday Porn.

    One of the best ways to offer your surfers a fresh marketing angle is to ensure that you plan for all of the major holidays throughout the year in advance so for example, as mentioned above, Christmas is a big holiday as are, New Years, Easter, Thanksgiving (US), Independence Day (US) and, Halloween. By building sites specifically for these holidays you are increasing the chances not only of building your sales but, of gaining additional traffic that you might otherwise lose out on. It has been said certainly over the last four years i have worked in the adult industry that many webmasters experience an increase in search engine traffic searching on keywords such as ‘Christmas Porn’ and, ‘Ghost Porn’ around the various holidays, build now for next year and, when the holiday season arrives, you will be one step ahead of your competition.

    Seasonal Marketing Overview.

    As already mentioned the holiday season especially Christmas time, can be a great way to gain additional traffic, not only from those surfers specifically looking for Christmas Porn but, also the newbie adult surfers who have perhaps only just got their first computer on Christmas day, by adding to your collection of seasonal porn sites year after year you will not only learn a lot about the way the various holidays and seasons affect your sales but, you will also be able to profit from your surfers in a way that not many other webmasters do.

    Article written by Lee

  • Networking – Not Just For Computers

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

    Networking – Not Just For Computers.

    “Networking” is a buzz word today. Everybody talks about it. Everybody hears about it. Everybody wants to do it more effectively. But why? Why do people network, and what do they hope to accomplish?

    Primarily, networking is the process of meeting new people, either through a contact that you initiate, or through an introduction by a third party.

    Networking allows you to meet, and establish a relationship with, people who may not have heard of you and your business through any other method.

    For most professionals, networking is done to increase revenues. Sometimes new clients are found, sometimes suppliers and, sometimes new ways of doing things that increase your bottom line are found through networking.

    When networking you should work towards these common goals:

    To exchange business ideas.
    To get better service.
    To develop your business skills.
    To potentially increase your revenues.
    To establish long term friendships.

    This means that networking is an essential part of building up strong business relationships. We need each other to buy from us, sell to us and, brainstorm with us in order to progress in our fields. In order for us to do these things we must give something back in return, its all about give and take.

    we must be willing to hone our relationship building skills. We must be great listeners. We must be willing to give before we receive. We must get into networking mode in our own minds before we ask the same of others. This must be constant.

    Through consistent contact with others, you will, instinctively start to put 2 and 2 together. When you begin speaking with someone your mind will automatically start searching the inner most recesses of your brain to remember people, places, even products, that will assist the person you are networking for and, at the same time, you will also be thinking of what they can do for you in return.

    This Is Networking.

    This is the state of mind you should be in whenever you are talking to someone in your industry, to get your mind in this state takes a while but, once you have focus and determination, you will immediately see how you can help others and, how they can benefit you in return whilst listening to them. this is the first step in getting them to help you.

    Networking, as its name would suggest is WORK, hard work, the process is also a learned skill, its not something that we are all born with or, can all do. It can often be frustrating when you have a goal in mind but, your networking functions are not achieving that goal. All in all, networking is the building block of many a business venture, it can make and it can break you. Take some time to consider this fact the next time you are posting on a board or go to one of the tradeshows, you might just come away with more than you hoped for.

    Article Written By Lee

  • Bandwidth Explained

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Hosting | Response: 0

    Bandwidth is the total amount of data that can be sent in a given time between two computer devices. The more bandwidth that is available, the faster the server.

    Any webmaster expecting a decent amount of traffic to their adult site will require a web hosting package that includes a large amount of bandwidth. This is so important, especially with the growth of your online business and, ultimately your sites. The more bandwidth your server has, the larger the number of surfers who will be able to view it at the same time, and the access it quickly will be. If you don’t have enough bandwidth, surfers will not be able to access your site as quickly, and that may turn them off which in turn, will mean they will leave your site.

    For this reason alone, it is important to select a hosting company that can offer you a great deal of bandwidth. As an example, larger hosting providers will have T1 lines or fiber-optic relays to access the Internet; these will provide a fair amount bandwidth. Another way is to get a dedicated server which, in turn, gives you exclusive access to your server’s connectivity instead of sharing it with others, as such allowing for maximum hardware performance.

    To calculate your bandwidth needs, you must know how large each page on your site is, including the graphics and any script usage you may have. Then, you multiply that by the number of views you expect the site to get every month.

    For example, say you have three 5k images on your page and a 2k HTML file – you would have 17k of data on that page. Multiply that by your expected page views (let’s say in this case it is 100,000 per month), and you get 1.7 G of data to be transferred that month for that page alone. Now calculate this for each page, and you will know approximately how much bandwidth your entire site requires.

    The best way of using bandwidth efficiently is to keep the size of your html pages low. In other words, ensure your HTML programming is adequate enough to use minimal amounts of coding for the purpose you want and, that your photos and graphics are small. To reduce photo file sizes you should always use JPEG format, which can reduce files up to 5% of its original size. Make sure to use the GIF format for graphics, as opposed to TIFFs or BMPs, which are generally much larger in file size.

    If you attach URLs to your IMG SRC that link to another person’s images without their permission, this is known throughout the online industry as hotlinking which, costs the person you are linking the image of money and not yourself. For this reason, hotlinking, is looked upon dimly.

    The unfortunate truth is that hotlinking is rife in the online industry. However, lets not let that deter you, by utilizing a file called .htaccess on your server, you can prevent other dishonest webmasters hotlinking your images.

    As with most things in this industry, you need to shop around to find the best prices available to you. However, that said, as a general rule of thumb, a gig of transfer can cost between $1 and $5 these are usually thought to be good prices for a gig of bandwidth. You can also get certain hosting packages that have a specific amount of bandwidth included in the price, however, the one draw back of these types of deals is that, if you go over that limit, you will either need to pay and excess bandwidth usage fee or, upgrade your hosting plan.

    Article Written By Lee

  • Billing Solutions For International Surfers

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Billing Solutions | Response: 0

    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.

  • Thinking Of Starting An Adult Website In The UK?

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: General | Response: 0

    We all know that there are many foreign / international adult webmasters and there are some very well known ones based in England however, before you start building your online empire what are the legalities regarding the type of content you can and cant use on your adult pornographic sites?

    To be honest with you, there are no ‘defined’ laws in England (At the time of writing this article) regarding the use of online media to promote adult activities however, it is a commonly held belief that as long as you stay to the same standard as what most ‘top shelf magazines’ or ‘R18 Videos’ have in them you shouldn’t go far wrong.

    So what are these standards? That’s the information that I am about to give you.

    Content that IS NOT acceptable.

    1) Any material which is in breach of the criminal law.

    2) Material (including dialogue) likely to encourage an interest in abusive sexual activity (e.g., pedophilia, incest) which may include depictions involving adults role-playing as non-adults.

    3) The portrayal of any sexual activity, whether real or simulated, which involves lack of consent.

    4) The infliction of pain or physical harm, real or (in a sexual context) simulated. Some allowance may be made for mild consensual activity.

    5) Any sexual threats or humiliation which do not form part of a clearly consenting role-playing game.

    6) The use of any form of physical restraint which prevents participants from withdrawing consent, for example, ball gags.

    7) Penetration by any object likely to cause actual harm or associated with violence.

    8) Activity which is degrading or dehumanizing (examples include the portrayal of bestiality, necrophilia, defecation, urolagnia).

    As you can see from the above, there ARE very specific guidelines regarding water sports, animality and, some of the more ‘out there’ fetishes.

    Now you know what you cant use on your adult sites, lets take a look at the list of sexual activities that you can use. Its no surprise that the list of what you can use is considerably shorter.

    Content that MAY BE acceptable.

    1) Aroused genitalia.

    2) Masturbation.

    3) Oral-genital contact including kissing, licking and sucking.

    4) Penetration by finger, penis, tongue, vibrator or dildo.

    5) Non-harmful fetish material.

    6) Group sexual activity.

    7) Ejaculation and semen.

    It also worth noting that the above guidelines are not distinguished between heterosexual or homosexual activities.

    So, that’s the low down on what the current status of affairs are with regards to the use of adult content on websites in England and Wales. Actually, that’s not to bad just ensure that you stay within these guidelines and, more importantly, that you do consult a solicitor before commencing any form of adult business after all, that’s what they are there for, to give you SOUND legal advice instead of basic ‘guidelines’.

    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

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