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.

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

Records Keeping Compliance Checklist for European Content Providers

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: 2257 | Response: 0

More and more European Content Producers are choosing to do business with American. webmasters. While citizens of foreign countries cannot be compelled to comply with United States’ restrictions on the creation of adult material, business realities are forcing foreign content producers to consider voluntary compliance. American webmasters, painfully cognizant of the increasing need to focus on legal compliance, consistently reject foreign content that is not produced in compliance with 18 U.S.C. §2257.  Non-compliant content not only increases the risk that an underage model could slip through, but failure to strictly comply is itself a federal felony, exposing those involved to a 2-year prison term.  Given the substantial compliance motivations involved, foreign content producers are expected to adopt the U.S. requirements as the global standard for creation of sexually explicit imagery.  The following constitutes a bare minimum checklist for compliance with the requirements of Section 2257:

1) Assume that all erotic images require Section 2257 compliance:  While the law only applies to actual “sexually explicit activity,” it is ill-advised for the content producer or the webmaster to attempt to guess which images require compliance, and which can be safely distributed without compliance. Since child pornography does not require the depiction of sexual activity to meet the federal definition, such distinctions can be risky business. And, in any event, a release given by a minor normally is not enforceable.

2) Obtain a signed compliance form created by a competent attorney:  Section 2257 requires that certain records be created containing certain information. The right form is the best place to start.

3) Obtain, at a minimum, the following information from each model:

a.     Date Of Birth

b.     Legal Name

c.     All other names, aliases, nick names, stage names, and maiden names

d.     Social Security Number

e.     Copy of Government-Issued Identification containing a picture; preferably 2 pieces of identification. Note the requirement that the producer actually examine the identification document, not just the copies.

f.       Address, phone and other contact information

g.      The model’s signature

4) Require the model to execute a binding model release prepared by a competent attorney.  The images are only as legal as the model release backing them up.  If all relevant rights have not been transferred and released by a valid model release, both the webmaster and the content producer are subject to claims once the content is displayed on a Web site.

5) Maintain the records so that they are cross-indexed by the models’ legal names and stage names and by web page. Alternatively, provide copies of all records to the webmaster if the webmaster will act as Records Custodian. You need to discuss the particulars of this with an attorney, because each circumstance may be unique.

6) The Records Custodian should maintain an off-site backup copy of the records: What happens if there is a fire or a government seizure?

7) Include a conspicuous records custodian disclosure on all CD’s / DVD’s containing erotic imagery, including the full legal name of the custodian and physical address where the records are kept.  The disclosure should also certify that all models are over the age of 18, and include the date when the content was first created, published or republished.  Placement of the disclosure on the product should be reviewed by an attorney.

Only through strict compliance with the mandates of Section 2257 will American webmasters fully embrace content produced overseas.  The right compliance procedure will open profitable markets for foreign content producers, and result in a wider variety of adult content for both webmasters and consumers.

Article written by Lawrence Walters

Pop Up Consoles Work – To A Point

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

As webmasters we are constantly thinking up new ways to generate sales to our sponsors however, the one medium to generating sales that has been and most likely will remain to be popular is the method of using consoles on our sites. Whether these are exit consoles, blur consoles or, on entry consoles one thing holds true, the more consoles you use, the more you annoy your surfer.

Marketing Console Numbers.

Through some research of my own i have noticed that a trend appears when the use of consoles on our sites takes effect this trend is that anything after the first console you use actually cuts your chances of making a sale in half, thus, the maximum amount of pop up consoles we should use on our sites, in my humble opinion should be two or three at the very most.

Console Sales Figures.

Okay lets take a look at some average (signups per month divided by days in the month) sales figures based on a three month period (sending roughly 10,000 hits per month).

Average signups to sponsor (A) = 113
Sales From Console (1) to sponsor (A) = 11
Sales From Console (2) to sponsor (A) = 2

The setup above uses pop up consoles in the following manner, on entering the site you get a Blur Console which hides itself behind the current page you are viewing, once you close the current page you see the blur console, once you close the blur console you see a smaller console, once you close the smaller console, the browser window closes altogether.

Evaluating The Figures.

From the above figures we can see an immediate pattern, namely that console (1) makes up roughly 10% of our total sales and also that console (2) makes up roughly 20% of console (1) sales. Putting these figures into practice across further consoles will show you that by utilizing any more than 3 consoles on your sites really does not amount to any significant raise in sales unless you send a higher amount of traffic to your sites in the first instance.

Console Sales – Recap.

We have now seen that from a steady flow of traffic over a monthly period we can influence the potency of specific consoles within our exit chains and, by analyzing the figures we get from these consoles we can almost certain figure out firstly, the correct (or comfortable) amount of consoles we use on our sites and secondly, that the more consoles we add to our sites, the lower the potential sales figures will be from each subsequent console.

I will be the first person to admit that overall pop up consoles are an excellent marketing tool however, the figures above show that the more consoles we use, the less chance we have of making a sale further down the chain, use consoles wisely and they will benefit you however, abuse the use of pop up consoles on your sites and not only will be wasting bandwidth, youll be wasting a surfer too.

Article written by Lee

Niche Marketing – What Is A Niche?

Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

The first step as webmasters we must take to become successful is to discover what our niche specialty is however, many webmasters still do not realize exactly what a niche is.

In fact, from the webmasters I have spoken to it would seem that a ‘niche’ is just another word for the main topics of pornography, Teen, Asian, Fetish, Gay, Straight, the list goes on and, whilst this list is never ending they are all niches in themselves however, you need to look beyond the top level niche and start to develop a feel, a stance of your own as to what niche you will work on for example, Asian Midgets, you probably cant get more niche than that in this day and age however, realistically, the chances of you a) being able to find the content for this niche and b) Being able to find a sponsor are remarkably thin.

That said, if you can find a niche that you like personally, whether that be she-male, midgets, straight or, gay, this will give you a solid foundation to market your sites on especially if you build on your already vast knowledge of what turns you on.

Now, onto breaking down the niche you are comfortable working in..

Lets say for arguments sake that you have chosen to concentrate on the ‘Gay’ market,, within this market (as with any other) there is a remarkable amount of ‘sub-niches’ and, these are what you need to build your business around whether you want to or not, the ‘sub-niches’ of any given adult market is where the $$$ can be earned.

Now using the gay market as an example the first few niches that come to mind are:

Twink’s – Young looking hairless 18 – 20 year olds.
Bear’s – Hairy men over the age of 20.
Hunk’s – Muscular looking guys in the age group of 20 – 30 .
Straight Guys – Yes, that’s right, gay men get off on looking at straight guys.

As you can see from the above four examples we can now start targeting our market audience a lot better.

The next thing we need to do now that we have found the niche and the sub-niche we will be working is to look for a sponsor that complements the niche of our choice, this is the hard part. Many webmasters will go directly to the highest paying sponsor and throw links up to their ‘sub-niche’ pay site not even looking at the sites tour or members area. This is a huge mistake, the first thing you NEED to do is to look over the sponsors paysites and, more importantly, the sponsors site tour AND members area. What point is there sending your surfers who are after Twink’s if, your sponsors tour has images of a load of guys over the Twink age bracket?

From this point on and, after you have chosen a suitable tour to send your traffic to you need to build up a flow of ‘niche’ traffic the chances are, if you submit your TGP gallery to an ‘all gay’ TGP that you will receive a substantial amount of unfiltered traffic making your hard work in choosing your sponsors tour worthless.

So how do you choose a traffic source that is right for you? Simple, you need to experiment, start of with your niche TGP’s, Top Lists, Links Lists etc and see what happens, how much traffic are you being sent from your chosen traffic source and, more importantly, how much of this traffic is actually clicking through to your sponsors tour. Once you can get an idea of what traffic you are being sent from what traffic source you have won more than half of the battle already.

Record EVERY possible detail about your traffic sources that you can, how much traffic they send a day, how many visits your sponsor gets, how many sales you made, what content you were using etc, etc.

Once you have a working list of data to use you can start to abuse and filter your traffic like you would have not thought imaginable, if one of your sponsors has a higher payout on Bear traffic, then you instantly know what traffic source gives you traffic for that niche and, you can utilize that information to your benefit.

The most important thing to remember however when marketing a niche is that you need to have patience, you need to use a process of trial and error and, more importantly, you need to experiment, just because TGP A sends you 100,000 hits of Twink traffic one day, it doesn’t mean you will get the same quantity of niche traffic the next.

Article written by Le

Search Engine Optimization, Is It Worth It?

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Search Engine Optimization | Response: 0

One of the trendiest takes on Internet marketing these days seems to be the notion that securing top search engine rankings “no longer works.” Where it started, I have no idea.

But rarely does a week go by when I don’t see one or more Internet marketing “experts” claiming that search engine positioning is largely a waste of time and should not be a primary focus of Website owners.

Well, as the saying goes, “there are two sides to every story.”

But let’s not make this article about my side, or your side, or anyone else’s side. Let’s forget about my opinion and other “expert’s” opinions and stick to the indisputable facts, as reported by highly credible third party sources:

According to a Forrester Research Media Field Study, getting a loyal audience in the first place is best done by Search Engine Placement.

According to a GVU Users Survey, 84.8% of Internet users use Search Engines to find Websites.

In a study released by ActivMedia Research in September 1999, Search Engine Positioning was ranked as the #1 Website promotional method used by eCommerce sites.

And look what I just found in the April 2000 issue of Target Marketing Magazine.
“Top Ways Websites are Discovered”

Banner ads: 1%

Targeted email: 1.2%

TV spots: 1.4%

“By accident”: 2.1%

Magazine ads: 4.4%

Word-of-mouth: 20%

Random Surfing: 20%

Search Engines: 46%

You’ve now seen the numbers and know that search engine promotion is very much alive and kicking. But let’s take this a step further. Let’s talk about the *quality* of prospects coming to your Website through search engines as opposed to other advertising mediums.

Every time your potential customers use the search engines, they qualify themselves as *hot prospects* by conducting searches on keywords that are directly related to your product or service. Their choice of keywords is proof that they have a genuine interest in what you offer. These people spend their valuable time exploring the search engines for your type of product or service.

Think About That.

They didn’t stumble upon one of your ads, or wander past a hyperlink to your site. And they didn’t get a banner ad thrown in their face. They made the *decision* to actively search the keywords that brought them to YOUR Website. And when they get there, they are ready and willing to do business with you. At the very least, they’re seriously considering it and, that’s the most powerful sales tool you can have!

But merely getting your Website “indexed” or listed in the search engines is not enough. In order to get any significant traffic from the search engines, your Website must be listed within the top 30 search results (preferably the top 20).

Very rarely will anyone look beyond the first 30 results returned from a search. This makes perfect sense because the most relevant sites are always listed at the top. So if your prospect doesn’t find what they want within the first 20 to 30 listings, they’ll simply do a new search.

If your site falls anywhere below the 30th listing, you don’t stand a chance against anyone in the TOP-20. Hence, it should be your goal to achieve Top 20 positions.

How Do You Get Your Website Listed In The Top 20?

1) You can attempt to gain these Top 20 rankings yourself. However, this can easily become a full time job. (I think this is why so many marketers advise against focusing on search engine positioning.)

2) You can hire a reputable company who can achieve AND maintain your Top 20 rankings for you (be sure they guarantee their service and have several verifiable clients that currently have multiple Top 20 rankings).

3) You can do nothing at all. But as you’ve seen from the third party statistics referenced above, search engine positioning is something you can’t afford to ignore.

Whatever choice you make, I hope that your eyes have been opened to the tremendous profit potential that exists with top search engine placement.

Article written by Lee

Building A Surfer Trap – Stage 8 – Final Stage

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

Ok people we have hit the final stage in our surfer trap, Stage 8.

All we are really going to do in this stage is a brief recap over what we have done so far along with checking that our trap is working properly.

In order for us to check our trap is working properly we need to upload it to our server if we haven’t already done so, therefore, you should do this now.

Once the surfer trap has been uploaded we now need to go to the first page, the Multi-Site FPA.

Depending on how you set up your Multi-Site FPA you should either get a pop up or not.

You should also have a counter AND a banner exchange code loading at the bottom of the page below your ‘no thanks’ link.

If this works how you want it to then this stage is working ok.

The next thing we need to check is that ALL of the links off this Multi-Site FPA are working so expect to get a lot of pop-ups while we check this.

You should click on each of the Single-Site FPA’s in turn ensuring that for every one you have a pop-up console appear.

In addition to checking the Single-Site FPA links you should now click on the ‘no thanks’ link along with the counter code and the banner exchange code on your Multi-Site and Single-Site FPA’s.

If these all load fine then this stage of the checking is complete.

Next, we need to close down any and all of the FPA’s we may have open including the Multi-Site FPA.

You should now be left with a couple of consoles, again, follow the links on your consoles including any to the counter you chose along with any banner exchange code you utilized on your consoles.

Again if these work how you expected them to, this section of the checking process is now complete.

For the next step, you need to log into your counter AND banner exchange account, you want to make sure that you have gained additional impressions and rankings from your banner and counter impressions and clicks.

Be aware however, that some counters and banner exchanges will not count multiple views and click from the same IP address so you may only show one or two additional clicks, impressions, or rankings. This is perfectly normal.

If your accounts have gained additional ranks, impressions, and clicks then this stage is completed.

Close down your consoles, you should now get the blur consoles that you created (if you used them) again, as before, check that all of the links from this consoles work.

If they do then you now have a fully complete Surfer Trap to use.

So, what next? Well there are a couple of options, you can mirror this surfer trap to experiment with your sponsors different tour pages, link your first mirror to the second tour page, your third to console free tour pages, etc.

Another good thing that you can do is to create additional Multi-Site FPA’s however, this time, create them by niche so where we have a general Multi-Site FPA at the moment you could use this same method for a Gay, Asian, Teen, etc Multi-Site FPA using the same methods we did when we created this trap.

You should always sign up for a new counter and banner exchange code for each variation of your surfer trap. This way, you get to see performance based on a new working model enabling you to decide which version of the trap works best for you.

I hope this tutorial has given you some insight into how we can generate, filter and trade traffic whilst marketing our sites effectively and, that it has given you some ideas on how you can implement even the simplest item provided to you by your sponsor to generate sales.

For those of you who have been following this tutorial I would like to thank you and wish you all the best with your new found marketing skills.

If you have any questions as always, feel free to post on the forums and we will endeavor to help you out.

Article written by Lee.

European Surfers – Gold Waiting To Be Harvested

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

80% Of the internets content is English. 40% of internet surfers cant even read English, let alone understand it. Out of all the countries in the world, German internet users spend an average of 59.2 minutes looking at porn a month closely followed by Norwegian surfers who looked at it 55.4 minutes every month, how many of you have sites catering to this market? Not one of you… I would bet!

Most webmasters that I know of automatically assume, European surfers = Freeloading Bestiality Loving Sicko’s. That’s bullshit! In fact, a larger and larger percentage of European surfers are looking for porn. Sure, they can find it by the bucket load but, lets be honest, Herman from Munich who cant speak a word of English is going to be making a lot more from this industry than Jason in Miami.. WHY? Because Herman has a captive audience, most of his surfers are German speaking after all, that’s the language he makes his sites in, that’s the language of the sponsors he uses and, like it or not, German surfers are proven to be avid porn surfers and, more importantly, Credit Card spenders!
But Wait…

Hang on a second, Credit Card spenders? But I thought the best way of milking $$$ out of foreign surfers was to send them off to a dialer program? hmmm…. perhaps I’m missing something??

You are! there are a lot of sponsors that don’t have any sites in English, Germany has a load of high converting AVS sites, why is this? Because they are written completely in German, Spain has a lot of good quality sponsor that work wonders, Why? Again because they are written in Spanish.

You have a lot of AVS, TGP and free sites that don’t make as much as they could, WHY? because you haven’t considered the global market! Let’s be honest here, the big sponsors of this world you use, how many of them say in their terms and conditions, they don’t allow access to German, Spanish, Ukrainian, Russian surfers? Ill bet at least 50% or more of them right? that’s money you have just lost! Sure, you can ship them off to a dialer program and hope they download it, most wont, sure you can send them to an opt-in email program and hope to make some money from them long term, you wont, In fact, European surfers detest having to give any information about them out. Its a privacy thing, they don’t want you to know who they are, so you cant tell their governments who they are, it sounds harsh but, its true.

So How Do I Do It??

The best way to milk money from the European surfers is to treat them EXACTLY the same as American surfers, but, with one major difference… You need to build for their language, get this right and you’ll be laughing all the way to the Bundesbank

But, where do you start, how can you build a site in a language you know nothing about? Simple, do some research, there are places out there that cater to European based webmasters, go to the forums, ask for help, you wont be laughed at, you wont be ridiculed and, who knows, you may just learn something in the process!

Sign up to a foreign sponsor, you can find a lot on our site, most of, if not all of these foreign sponsor will gladly help you out, they have email support in a variety of languages themselves, drop them a line, tell them you need help, Ask for it… It will come.

Now you have the help you need what next? use it, ask everyday if you have to, there are some good translation services available on the net, spend $50 to get an existing site you have that’s working well translated into a foreign language, I guarantee you, its money well spent! Once you have this translated ‘template’ site use it time and time again, tweak it until you find the best converting site you can, submit it to all the foreign search engines around, you’ll soon pick up that its not much different to working your ‘standard’ sites except, you’ll have trapped a larger percentage of internet porn surfers and, what’s more, this is a percentage that YOUR competitors wont have!

Integration..

Is it possible to build foreign sites and English site to work together? YES but, its hard, you have to mimic the responses you have learnt from the trial you did with the first translated site, once you start to see trends happening, build on them, if something doesn’t work, swap it out, put something in its place, even if.. Its a US sponsor. You have the framework, the surfer is in your site, they know what its about, that’s the time to start introducing the foreign (to them) sponsors ads.

The Results..

The results of your trial will speak for themselves, you will have tapped into an as yet untamed market, You will have more scope of growth for your business, You will have established a new traffic source, You will be able to reap the benefits. Of course, you need to work for it, don’t expect magic overnight, it just isn’t gonna happen! Remember when you first started webmastering? it was hard work, tapping into the European market is even harder, its like starting all over again from scratch then, realizing you know what your doing but you have been doing it wrong all these years.

Article written by Lee

Everybody’s Going Gay

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: General | Response: 0

The past few months in the online adult industry have seen some rather dramatic changes happen from Visa charging additional fees to accept their credit cards online, Paypal no longer processing adult and, several large companies going out of business. However, one thing that also seems to be changing for the better is the amount of webmasters looking at new niches to promote. Surprisingly, the one niche that many webmasters are looking at is that of the gay niche.

Where The Money’s At.

For years, the adult webmaster community has been split amongst themselves, those that are only focused on straight niches and, those that focus on gay niches however. As of late, more and more of those webmasters from the first group are looking to make additional income from the gay niche. With this inevitable surge in gay adult sites coming online, there are bound to be some knock-on effects, and those webmasters just starting to look at the gay niche, will return to what they know. However, for most, i think this is going to be a fruitful encounter with one of the industry less socially accepted markets. Many of the webmasters who have been concentrating solely on the straight market for their income are going to realize just how much money they have been losing out on for all these years. And with this realization, comes its own set of problems for the industry as a whole.

The Gay Market.

Whether you are a straight webmaster or a gay webmaster the one thing that will become apparent is that your sites are going to reflect you in both, how they look and, the marketing techniques you use. More importantly, the attitude you have towards your gay surfers will in fact show through. Many of the straight webmasters whom, perhaps are not as tolerant towards this niche will, almost certainly fail before they can really get going. Marketing gay adult sites is far different than marketing straight adult sites. You have to know the surfer, understand what they want and, more importantly, know the terminology in the gay market. Many times a post can be seen on various message boards belittling those webmasters who are openly gay – often accompanied by terms such as ‘fag’, ‘queer’, ‘homo’, etc along with with images being posted that, quite frankly, would turn most people’s stomach.

The gay niche is much more than just a single online market, it is a whole lifestyle unto itself. While this lifestyle is affluent (having an abundance of readily available money to spend) it will take a lot of work and perseverance to ensure you get your share of this market.

Starting Points.

As I mentioned above, the main thing many webmasters are going to have to learn are the terms of the gay market, what is a twink? A bear? A cub? What products work well on gay sites? Despite what most people think, you cant just throw up some banners with naked men on them and turn a profit. Match your content to a niche and then, match your advertising to your content, what use is it having bears on a site if, the paysite you are promoting features Teens ‘n’ Twinks?

Similarly, your text links, ‘Click Here For Hot Gay Action’ might get you a few clicks but, by targeting your surfers even more, you will see how some of the gay niches can really turn a profit. The trick is this, get the surfer to your site and actually give them something that you think will suit their desires. This may mean making a 10% commission on a sex toy sale as oppose to a $35 commission on a pay site membership. And so be it. Those 10%’ers start to add up after a few sales.

In Summary.

To summarize, the gay niche will make you money however, to make money you will need to invest something that, perhaps isn’t for everyone – a lot of time and understanding. Marketing the gay niche isn’t for everyone, we have seen this too many times. However for those who are, spending time adding a gay market portfolio to there straight, with a little time increase your overall income significantly.

Article written by Le

Message Boards – Getting The Postings

Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: General | Response: 0

There are plenty of free scripts available on the web which will enable you to start your own online discussion forum.

However, having the most sophisticated and advanced features in a forum does not mean it will be successful by any means. It is the people who post on the forums that make them good not the scripts used to maintain them. This article is dedicated to getting people posting on your forums.

It can be really quiet on your forum especially at the beginning when there are no real discussions going on, this is because people don’t want to be the first to post. They want to see some topics that interest them already being discussed, they want to be able to read through some posts first before having to post themselves. With this in mind, you should also be aware that just because a forum doesn’t seem busy, it can in fact get thousands of hits a day. Lurkers make message boards what they are, and, for this reason alone you should act professionally and courteously when making posts on any forums, one day, you might have to do business with one of these so-called ‘lurkers’ and, if they have seen you in a bad light on a forum, the chances are they wont want to know you. So what do you do to get your message board off the ground? There are a number of things actually and, some of these are as follows.

First of all, make sure the signup process is as simplistic as possible, even better, ensure if the user doesn’t want to register, they don’t have to! To attract people to post on your boards why not get a few of your friends together and start some discussions of your own, you could even register a couple of different usernames so that your forums look busier than they actually are thus cementing the thought that your forums are active and will have worthwhile discussions taking place.

To find some current topics for your forums why not visit some of the other message boards and see what people are discussing, if a topic is receiving a lot of interest, post about it on your forums. This is especially a good idea if your forums are specific to one area after all, if your competitions forums posters are interested in this topic, your forums users will be too.

Another great way to get people to start talking on your discussion forums is to use a contest. For example, currently on European Webmasters we have a content giveaway whereby for each post you make you gain a point and, once you have reached a certain level of points you will be able to download exclusive content sets. If you are going to start a competition then make sure people are aware of it, post some information about it online and get something to giveaway that everyone wants.

One other method to get additional posts is to put up subject lines and links to the topic threads from your main website page. Again, if you publish articles on your site create a link to your discussion forums and invite people to openly discuss the articles in question, not only will you get people posting on your message board but, you will also gain invaluable information from your user as to what they look for and want in articles you write.

If you publish a newsletter, again, this is another great way to build interest in your message board. Simply ask them to post, tell them you are building up a great resource and, you need their help as much as you need theirs to make this happen. If you have provided them with high quality information in your newsletter the chances are they will repay you by posting on your message board.

In conclusion, you should basically try and plug your message board wherever you can by doing the above, create banners for it and display them on your website, place a note in your signature file encouraging people to visit and post if they require assistance with anything. Its hard work but, once you have a few regular posters it will take off.

Article Written By Lee

Blogging For Traffic – An Alternate View

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Blogging | Response: 0

Just recently the adult industry seems to have gone ‘blog’ crazy in fact, it is almost a daily occurrence that webmasters mention a blog of some description on several message forums however, when it comes down to it, does blogging really matter at all? This is what we will take a look at in this article.

What Is A Weblog Or Blog?

A Weblog, or ‘Blog’ for short, is a kind of website or a part of a website. It is usually, but not always, run by a single person and they publish bits of writing on the Weblog. These bits of writing, called ‘entries’ or ‘posts,’ generally appear on the front page of the weblog in reverse chronological order, that is, with the newest entry at the top of the page, with older entries progressively further down.

So How Can Blogging Help Me?

Quite honestly, I don’t think it can. Think about it for a moment, you spend an hour or so a day writing a page in your online journal only for it to be erased or archived at a later date, doesn’t that seem strange to you? Instead of blogging why don’t you actually do something constructive such as making a .html page out of the text you were going to use for your blog, keyword it up and upload that directly onto your server? After all this in itself will benefit you in the long term much more than a quick page that will eventually disappear from existence. Of course there will always be those people who do successfully use blogs as a part of their marketing strategy and, kudos to them however, looking at the bigger picture, it makes much more sense to have a fresh HTML page which will remain indefinitely on your site that you can keyword and SEO for the search engines rather than something that is going to become relatively short lived.

Blogging – Overview.

To be perfectly honest with you, all of this talk of creating a blog to get additional traffic is, in itself just ‘hype’ unless you have a source of blog owners to link back to your blog or, an hour or so to kill each day wasting your time writing your blog your time really would be much better served coding HTML pages. After all, HTML pages have worked for the last 30 years, why all of a sudden have webmasters stopped using them?

Article written by Lee.