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Online Adult Laws – Privacy Policies
To many webmasters and companies working online the fundamental basics of their business is to turn a profit through effective online marketing campaigns and promotions however, within all of this profit making there is a side of business that is so often overlooked or, forgotten entirely, what is this business practice? The law.
In this brief article we will take a look at one such law that comes into effect in California on the 1st July 2004 namely, that all ‘web sites that collect any personal information from consumers to post a privacy policy’. Whilst this in itself is the first law of its kind in the United States it is worth mentioning that this is only a State law that affects California however, that said, where one state starts, others are sure to follow especially considering the huge potential left for the growth of the internet.
Privacy Policies – How Does This Effect You?
The main factor that you must take into consideration with this new law from California is that, because the Internet is truly global, you have no way of telling where one of your surfers are coming from thus, a surfer entering your site from California, may be making you break the law by not displaying a privacy policy should you collect their information. Incidentally, this new privacy policy law does not state what ‘collected’ information requires you to post a policy however, it would seem that personal information such as addresses, phone numbers and email addresses would be the primary target of this new Californian online law.Privacy Policies – The Basics.
So what is a privacy policy, in essence, it is a document informing your site visitors / customers that any information you collect from them, including user submitted information will be used in a specific way, this might be a case of solely being used by yourself or, specifically if you rent out this information you need to tell your surfers / customers exactly who you are renting this information to.Privacy Policies – Overview.
Whether you collect personal information from you site visitors or not the one thing that makes sense is to have a page created ready for the 1st July 2004 so that you can have it online for when you need it, perhaps storing this page on a central domain and linking to that page from all of your other web sites would be the best method to go as far as ensuring you are covered from prosecution or, perhaps creating a keyword rich privacy policy which you can get listed in the search engines is the way to go after all, just because this will become a legal requirement for you it does not mean that you cant profit from the potential traffic going to that page.Article written by Lee
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Converting Chinese Adult Traffic – The Niche Paysites That Work
Converting Chinese Adult Traffic – The Niche Paysites That Work.
To date we have looked at most of the types of country specific traffic available to webmasters every day and, more importantly, which niches they convert on. In this article we will finish up our look at the foreign traffic and how profitable it can be with the final main country on the net – China.Chinese Adult Surfers – Quick Analysis.
As with Japanese traffic, most webmasters seem to think that Chinese speaking adult surfers are pretty worthless when it comes to buying porn memberships and this is true – If you do not know what niches to offer your Chinese surfers that said, we found some interesting results given the three (3) month test we had on our Chinese traffic and, the results we observed might just make you change your mind about sending the Chinese surfers you get to your sites off to traffic trades.Chinese Porn Surfers – The Niches.
Because we knew relatively little about the Chinese traffic we had on our sites we decided that, rather send it to a specific language hub site we would send it to our main hub page and, allow the Chinese surfers to filter themselves through to the sites that interested them on their own, to our surprise, only 40% of the traffic we knew was Chinese chose to filter itself to a Chinese specific language hub site, the remainder, choosing to go through our main English hub site.Fetish.
Across all of the niches we offered the surfers, the Fetish niche was the one that converted most consistently month after month and, more than converted, actually retained members once they had signed up to the paysites.Gay.
Unlike the traffic we had that was Japanese a lot of the Chinese traffic that hit our site decided to visit the Gay niche paysites we had to offer them and, there was less than 10% difference between the Fetish and Gay signups we observed month after month. Quite a difference when compared to surfers from Japan and, a pleasant one at that.Amateur.
Specifically teen amateur niche sites or, at least sites that had amateur looking teen modes on the tours also did well on our Chinese traffic however, the conversion ratios for the recurring programs didn’t do as well as what we had expected with most memberships being cancelled within 2 months. Non the less, the Chinese surfers did join and most of them re-billed in excess of 1 month before leaving the site.Teen.
As mentioned above, it would appear that Chinese porn surfers are looking for teen niches again though, the teen paysites we used featured amateur looking teens prominently on the pages so whether this was a choice on the surfers part to join the teen sites or, because we only offered amateur looking teen paysites isn’t known.Asian.
Unlike Japanese surfers, Chinese surfers also joined the Asian niches that were offered up to them and, surprisingly enough, we noticed more signups to English Asian sites than localized Chinese pay sites.Chinese Adult Surfers – The Results.
Overall we were very impressed with how the Chinese traffic we had flowing through our sites both acted and, converted on the sites that we offered them to join, especially since the Japanese traffic we had didn’t seem to like the gay niche sites yet Chinese traffic worked wonderfully on exactly the same gay niche pay sites.Across the board I think a revisit of Chinese traffic is needed with more options on our part when it comes to the teen and amateur niches especially just to see if the results we experienced thus far were unique or, are truly indicative of how the Chinese surfer navigates and joins pay sites.
Article written by Lee
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Maximizing Your Profit Potential – Upsells
We all know the reason why pay sites have upsells inside them, to make more money so, the past few weeks I have been ‘experimenting’ with the same type of strategy the pay sites use and, to my surprise, actually found out you can make quite a nice amount of additional income by offering your surfers products or services other than porn!
Now, this may come as a shock to many but, when you build a free site, TGP Gallery, AVS site etc you can use non adult products on them.
I have found the following work well for the various different types of site:
Free Sites.
Dating Services such as http://www.oscardate.com , http://www.adultfriendfinder.com, etc etc.Video Stores such as http://www.mallcom.com and http://www.moviemountain.com.
Sex Toys such as http://www.gayadultshopping.com and http://www.mallcom.com (Mallcom sells toys and videos)
Also, to my surprise, search engines have done really well on our traffic. Where we would usually use a text link I SSI’d some files and included some text files going directly to a variety of niches earning me in excess of $0.40 per click in some instances!!
AVS Sites.
Dating Services like those mentioned above e have found have done reasonably well however, for some reason not as well as they did on the free sites, you would think that they should do better than on free sites so I guess it is something wrong with my marketing, either way, we just plugged a link to one of our dating affiliates and, sure enough made some $$$ from them.Penis Enlargement programs did VERY well inside our AVS sites again, all we did was place a simple text link with ‘enlarge your penis’ for the text and, surprisingly we made a few good sales from that.
We also integrated our own little MallCom store front on its own domain and have been sending traffic to that and, again, the results have been reasonable.
TGP Galleries.
To my surprise, the most profitable thing that we have tested on our TGP Galleries is again, Penis Enlargement type programs, Viagra sales from http://www.kwikmed.com have been doing well the last few weeks and we even had a rebill already!One thing that I didn’t expect to work well that did was email collection, in fact, after just 10 days we already have 95 email addresses purely from our TGP Galleries. These emails will be used further in time to send out our newsletter and hopefully make some recurring sales from them.
I guess the point of this was to let you know you can use alternatives to your adult orientated sponsors on any type of site you build and make a profit from them.
Anyway, I’m off to do some more testing, I have found a nice casino sponsor imp going to send a few days of traffic to.
Article written by Lee
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Now They Signed Up – Learn How To Keep Them
Member retention is going to have a large effect on the adult industry over the next few months, with Visa chargeback rates being lowered and, many affiliate programs lowering their payout model something has to give and, hopefully, the thing that does give will be that affiliate programs start to realize that once they have your surfer, it becomes their responsibility to make that member retain.
With that in mind this article will look at a few things that we have been doing on some of our paysites for the last few months and, instead of having to provide an excess of plug in content we have started updating our sites regularly within the niche confines of what our members are actually looking for, also, despite this increase in content, we have started doing something unique so far as member retention goes – actually communicating with the member directly.
Communication Pays.
Actually spending the time to listen to what your members want can be beneficial on many levels for example, how many of the big sponsors offer the member a chance to become involved in a ‘community’ inside their paysites, i can only think of 3 paysites that i have personally visited that do this.Often, offering your members a way to communicate to YOU what they want inside the site can, and usually will increase the value of their membership to you in the long run. offer your members weekly polls, offer them incentives to keep an active membership, perhaps some kind of loyalty program, in addition to a method of your paysite members being able to communicate to each other inside your site.
Content Updates.
We all know that paysites need to update however, how many paysite owners spend the time to ask their member what they are looking for? As mention in the previous section, offer your members polls on the next updates you will be doing, ask them what sections of the site need improving and, more importantly, ask them if they are happy with how your site looks and feels overall.Renewal Time.
So you have managed to keep hold of your paysite member for a few days without them canceling and, their trial period is ending what now? Well, more often than not, communicating to the member that they are about to get rebilled can have a positive effect, send them an email prior to the rebill informing them of what your next set of updates will be, let them know they are a valued member of the site and, more importantly than this, that you are there to help them and listen to their suggestions. This is also an ideal time to remind them of why they joined your site in the first place, you have a lot of exclusive content that, simply put, no other paysite can offer them, you listen to their feedback and, again, value their feedback, all of these things will ensure that your member base retains well over the trial period.Second Month Renewals.
So you have managed to keep your member for a month, and, again they are due a rebill, as with the first rebill you gave them, re-iterate the points of your site and, tell them what has changed over the past month, give them some sales speak about how your site is doing and, more importantly, what you have coming next month, by communicating these updates to your members a day or so before they have to renew, you should, in all honesty, keep their interest in your paysite and, more importantly, make more money from your members.So Your Member Cancels.
Okay, so perhaps you managed to rebill your member for a few month or, perhaps they left after the trial period, what now? Simple, send them a follow up email, find out the reasons they cancelled their membership to your site and, see if you can offer them an alternative to stay, perhaps a reduced cost membership or, maybe even an alternative site altogether, if they entered your teen pay site and, were looking for amateur teen pics, even though you know you don’t have them yet, you will probably know of a site that does, tell this cancelled membership about this site and, get them to try it out, if you can match what the surfer is looking for to a site you own then you have a second chance at keeping their membership and, making money.Retention Overview.
When all is said and done the one thing that is apparent so far as pay sites go is that a lot of them do not communicate with their members and build the sites they operate around what their members are looking for, we can all say we actually do this constantly but, how many of us really, hand on heart, can prove that they ask, listen and, more importantly, implement the feedback from their members base?Article written by Lee
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Golden Rules For Finding A New Domain Name
We all know by now that domain names are being registered at an unbelievable rate and, whilst the vast majority of ‘decent’ domain names have already been registered there are still some god domains to be registered and, this article will give you some insight into how you can choose an effective domain for your business purposes – regardless of what they are.
Avoid Play On Words.
Whilst sitting at a bar you come up with an idea for a domain www.4play.com and, at the time this might seem like a great domain name to buy however, before you head to your favorite register and purchase the domain stop to think about the long term implications.Let me explain this a little more using the example www.4play.com lets think about this, every time you mention the domain in a conversation people are more likely to head across to www.foreplay.com or www.fourplay.com first as a type-in. This is also true of the other abbreviation styles of ‘internet slang’ remember the days of the ‘dot com’ registrations, you know domains such as www.dotsex.com looking back now, these seem ridiculous to have been registered however, at the time they were popular but they died their death years ago.
Think Investment.
A good ‘commercial’ domain must be able to distinguish itself from the competition, there are several ways to achieve this for example:Consider Your Target Audience.
Aim your domain at a specific, yet broad market audience. use tools to narrow down what your customers (surfers) are looking for, narrow this list down to a select few domains and then, narrow the list down some more.Follow Trends Or… Create Them.
If you are serious about picking a good domain name or two then be prepared to invest the time required to get a good domain name. Research the latest trends on the internet, see what products or services are ‘hot’ and will be around long term and also see which domains are just a flash in the pan.A good example of ‘long term’ domains would be www.europeanwebmasters.com which i registered several years ago when, in all honesty, the foreign markets were not even thought about however, you cant go to any forum nowadays without someone asking about the international marketplace.
Act On A Whim.
In complete contrast to my opening statement in this article, if you think you have a solid business idea, act on it, the chances are someone else will also think of the same idea as you and, if you don’t get the domain name first, they will.Alternative Buying.
So you have decided that you do want to buy www.4play.com before you make your purchase have a look at what other variants of this domain are available, for example, you might like to check registrations of www.4-play.com, www.for-play.com, www.forplay.com, etc etc.If you have a great business idea, make sure you have all of your bases covered, just because you are starting a new craze, that doesn’t mean the domains will be available for registration tomorrow or next week.
By purchasing all the variants of the high quality domain you have thought of you are, in effect, eliminating all of the competition you could face long term.
Don’t Cyber-Squat.
If you are a serious domain buyer, avoid tailgating on other peoples domain names unless of course, it has enormous potential for example, if someone has registered a generic domain such as www.123456.com but failed to register www.123-456.com why not register the available domain? You are not impeding on anyone’s property rights and, you might benefit from some mis-typed traffic at the same time. As with any type of mis-typed domain, before you register it, seek legal advice, a few dollars spent before registering the domain could save you thousands afterwards.Fools Rush In.
Don’t automatically buy the first domain name you think of, think on it some more, sleep on it if you have to, ask your family and friends on their opinions. Although the really good domain names have virtually almost all gone, its better to carefully think out each and every domain name purchase you make and save yourself some money long term than to rush in and buy a domain that wont be any use and have to register a new domain to take the place of the first.In addition to the above don’t sit on a really good domain name idea forever because, forever comes a lot sooner than you may think.
Hopefully this article has given you some useful information in respect of registering new domain names and you can put this information to good practice when buying domains. Article written by Lee
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Utilizing All The Content You Use On TGP Galleries!
Utilizing All The Content You Use On TGP Galleries!
For the last few months i have been experimenting with a few new (but old, if ya see what i mean) ideas.Basically i have adapted Voltars 3x3x3 project slightly and incorporated it into the TGP/TGP2 game.
The results have given me some of the best sales ratios ever! We’re talking under 1:60 almost consistently across all sponsors!!
What you did is thus….
Design a NICE 15 pic tgp gallery in a table preferably four rows high and 5 columns across.
In the first row place one thumb in each cell (5 pics).
In the second row place one odd sized banner in the first cell and merge cells 2,3 , 4 and, 5.
In the cells you have merged place some descriptive text about the pics you are using in under two paragraphs and include a line of text where you MENTION the sponsors site name.
In row 3 place one thumb in each cell (5 pics).
in row 4 place on thumb in each cell (5 pics).
under the table place a juicy text link.
below this juicy text link leave a line or two and add a money bar (one row by three columns using a contrasting color to the background of your gallery page).
ALL pics go on html pages using the same layout as your main TGP page but, without the table included.
Repeat this process 4 times once for four different niches, saving each niche in their own sub folder for the main site i.e:url/sub folder/niche 1
url/sub folder/niche 2
url/sub folder/niche 3
url/sub folder/niche 4You should now have 4 TGP galleries using 15 pics on each in four niches (60 pics in total).
At the top of each of these main pages place a three cell one row table.
in this table use text links to describe each niche i.e:
Teen
Gay
Lesbian
Maturein the template for the teen niche you use text for the gay, lesbian and, mature templates and link these to the appropriate TGP template.
This is where the fun begins…..
Take all four TGP niche galleries you have just made and do the following….
Delete the first row of cells (including pics) on all TGP galleries and save the new page layout in another folder using the same navigation structure as the original ie:
url/sub folder 2/niche1
url/sub folder 2/niche2
etc
etcYou should now have the following:
four TGP templates consisting of 15 pics each.
four TGP templates consisting of 10 pics each.Again, link these new 10 pic templates to each other in the same way as you did the 15 pic templates.
Repeat this procedure to make the 10 pic TGP page using the original TGP page BUT, this time, delete the bottom row of cells.
You now have the following:
4 niche 15 pic TGP pages
4 niche 10 pic TGP pages
ANOTHER 4 niche 10 pic TGP pagesStill with me?
Its gets better….
Take your original 15 pic TGP template and do the following…
Delete the first and the third row of cells including all the pics and save them in ANOTHER folder using the same structure as before i.e:
url/sub folder 3/niche 1
url/ sub folder 3/niche 2
etc
etcAgain link these in the same way as before using the text links at the top of the pages.
What do you have now?
4 TGP pages using 15 pics
8 TGP pages using 10 pics
4 TGP2 pages using 5 picsCan you guess what’s next?
Take that original template again and…
Remove the first and fourth row of cells do the same when you save it as you have done above…
What do you have?
4 TGP pages using 15 pics
8 TGP pages using 10 pics
8 TGP2 pages using 5 picsDo it once more using the original templates but removing the final set of 2 rows of cells you now have…
4 TGP pages using 15 pics
8 TGP pages using 10 pics
16 TGP2 pages using 5 picsIn the root of the domain where you are going to upload these pages do the following…
Create a simplistic warning page… link this to a multi site FPA… this multi site FPA links to each of the niche (15 pic) TGP templates you have made.
On this same fpa place an email erotica collection box, banner exchange code and a toplist counter code along with an exit console going to a MC POTD program.
Now, what you need to do is start submitting these pages to the TGP/TGP2’s submit one a day or as many as you can until you have submitted them all.
Ok still here?
Next you have to duplicate ALL of the above again.
Place the duplicate of the above into a separate set of folders/sub domains etc.
On the new root you have created, link to another multi site FPA AND the first root index.html page.
You now have the makings of an EXCLUSIVE 3x3x3 TGP hub which, you can leave alone and submit all of the pages intermittently to any TGP/TGP2 you wish for LIFE!!
All the time you are adding new sections to it and building your link pop in the search engines because you are continually interlinking to each of the separate niche and relevant sub niche folders.
Of course, you NEED to get the meta’s sorted on the first main template for this to work but, if you change all subsequent meta descriptions etc you’ll have a very reasonable listing in Google for the relevant search terms

Article written by Lee
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Mirroring Adult Sites – Stage Four
We are now going to take our basic template and start to make some pages for the link lists for this you will need to open up your original warning page. Once you have this page open you need to visit a couple of the link lists that you use. Go to the submissions page of the link list and download their reciprocal buttons.
In the same way that we did with the TGP pages we created you now need to edit the warning page you have open and insert the recip links on your warning page, ideally and, as most link lists will require this, the recip links should be placed above the enter and exit links.
Once you have done this, you now need to save your newly edited page as linklist1.html in the /FreeSite/LinkList/ folder, do this for as many of the link lists that you wish to submit to, each time saving the new page in the /FreeSite/LinkList/ folder.
Also at this stage, we should add a console to our link list page, ideally a blur console with links going to your surfer trap FPA’s. You can find the Java coding to create a blur console on the tutorial about building a surfer trap.
Once we have done this, we now have some more sites created. However, this time, the page/s we have just created are designed to build the traffic we have to our site/s.
Once you have these pages saved you now need to re-open your original warning page once more.
This time, we are going to optimize the page for the search engines, again, in the same way we added our ALT tags on the surfer trap we are going to add them to the warning page however, we are also going to optimize our keywords, description and, site title.
Once we have optimized our original warning page we should now save this as se1.html in the /FreeSite/Engine/ folder we created at the start of this tutorial. Once one SE page has been created, you need to create a selection of others making sure that you swap around the meta tags to ensure they are all different to each other, I would suggest making three variations of these SE pages each time saving them in the /FreeSite/Engine/ folder.
The next thing we are going to do is to ‘dirty’ these SE pages up some more, pretty much in the same manner as we did with the surfer trap tutorial. What we need to do is add a small pop up console to the three SE pages along with a blur console, these consoles can be the same ones that we used for our surfer trap or, we can create new ones however, I think the smart thing to do would be if we used the ones we currently have online. So once we have added these consoles we need to save the pages.
Also, to these SE pages we should add our Banner exchange code, as these will be going into the search engines there are no rules as to what we can and can not do on these SE pages so we should make sure that even if they just get one hit, we get additional traffic from them. By adding a banner exchange code as we did on the surfer tutorial we can drive additional traffic either to our sites or to our surfer trap, where you send this traffic is your choice. If you want to sign up for our new banner exchange you can find it at http://www.pornclient.com.
Now we have the completed site template built. We need to submit the pages and sites we have just completed to the TGP’s, AVS’s, Link Lists and, the Search Engines.
Once we have submitted these sites all that we need to do to create a new set of sites is to find another set of 50 images, rename the images as we did at the start of this tutorial, pic1.jpg, thumb1.jpg etc and simply upload the site to our server without the full size images and the thumbnails. Once the HTML pages are online, we now have to upload the full size images and the thumbnails and we have a set of sites using different content to our original one built in less than 5 minutes.
The best thing with these sites is that if a any time we want to alter the layout, all we need to do is edit the HTML of the version we have saved on our HD and we have a new template ready to use.
I hope you have found some use out of this tutorial and, I am sure you can think of other ways in which we can use templates of this style, this tutorial was just detailing some of the basics however, we can make the template as simple or as complicated as we like. Our only limits are what we make for ourselves.
Article written by Lee
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Filtering Adult Traffic For More Sales
When webmasters build sites there seems to be the train of thought that just because they use one of the top converting sponsors site they will make sales regardless of what type of traffic they are sending.
Unfortunately, this is often not true.
One of the first steps that we should take as webmasters when it comes to creating a new site, whether it be a free, avs or a TGP site is to learn the art of targeting our sponsors tour with the content and, more importantly, the traffic we are going to use.
taking it to the simplistic levels, a straight teen sponsors wont convert on a site that gets mostly mature traffic, the niches, although complementary, are so far apart its unrealistic.
That said, lets take a look at some options we can all implement on our sites to better target and filter our traffic to ensure optimum conversions.
One of the simplest ways to target and filter your traffic is to build yourself a hub or a surfer trap. Of course, we also have to take into consideration the type of traffic we are currently receiving to our site and, that we ‘could’ receive in the future.
Just because we receive 10,000 hits to our teen TGP doesn’t mean that ALL of that traffic IS looking for a teen site, this is where our surfer trap or hub site can come into play.
Even if your main focus is the teen niche, you should make sure that the first thing the surfer see’s when visiting any type of site you build is a multi-site FPA (Full Page Ad) where applicable.
This then starts your filtering process. If they know that they can find other niches than teen on your TGP then chances are, they will go to them either because that is what their niche is or, they are curious about that niche.
Another thing we can do as webmasters is to ensure we use the headers and footers of our pages in the proper fashion, offer our surfers a choice of the main niches, Asian, Gay, Ebony, Teen, Ect using only text links and, you will probably find that by lining these text links to your hub or surfer trap that you actually have a diverse range of traffic available to you.
In addition, rather than sending our surfers directly to our sponsors, send them via a filter page whether this is an FPA, or a page full of text links you made yourself detailing the benefits of the sponsor you are going to send them to, again, you will let the surfer know where they are going and, give them a choice as to whether they want to continue to that site or, choose an alternative.
Overall, webmasters who target their surfers by niche can, for the most part have some excellent sales with a variety of sponsors that otherwise they would not be able to see.
Target, Filter, Micro-Niche, however you do it, make sure your traffic is not wasted and, more importantly, make sure your sponsor is able to offer your surfer what you are telling them is inside the site.
Article written by Lee
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Community Forum Scripts
Whether you have little or much traffic one thing that will enable you to benefit greater form this traffic is giving your surfers the sense that they are part of a ‘community’ much like the message boards built around adult webmasters have the feel of a community to them your surfers will end up staying around a lot longer if you can give them a reason to come back to your site over anyone else’s.
That said, one of the main factors in starting your own little porn community is the need to have a place where all the ‘action’ take place. What better way than you own message forum.
However, we hit our first problem, having never thought about starting a forum up before you wouldn’t know where to go to look for scripts or, what the best one is. That’s the reason behind this little guide.
Below you will find a short breakdown of the more commonly used message forum scripts along with a short list of features each one has to offer you when choosing to build your own online community.
VBulletin http://www.vbulletin.com
This is actually quite a good forum script, most of the main forums on the web use either VBulletin or PhpBB when it comes to threaded forums. VBulletin uses MySQL and .php to run the actual forum and, set-up of it can become a little tricky if you want to customize it to your exact needs and color scheme. That said, once you overcome the initial complications in setting the forum script up it is easy to handle and, with a price tag of only $160.00 its an affordable option for many.
Ultimate Bulletin Board http://www.infopop.com
Unlike VBulletin UBB uses Perl programming for the forum script which, means you can install it on any cgi enabled host. However, the one main drawback with this script is that it uses flat text files to store all the data which, can sometimes bog down your server with unnecessary file calls. The cost of $199.00 however can be a bit to expensive for most webmasters.
Ikon Board http://www.ikonboard.com
Ikon board is a nice little threaded forum script and, the fact that it is free to download makes it even more so however, even though it uses MySQL for the backend or, choose to store your data in flat text files this script just seems a little to ‘basic’ looking for my personal taste. That said, there are many types of site using IkonBoard so the script must be good enough for them to be using it. Then again, maybe its the price tag of $0.00 that has made this a popular choice.
PhpBB http://www.phpbb.com
PhpBB is probably the most well known free forum script on the web today, its easy to customize (within reason) supports php and MySQL functions yet seems to offer nothing in return. The basics of a forum are there however, every webmaster and their closest friend seems to be using this script. The whole idea of building up a community is so that your site can stand out from the crowd, in my humble opinion, the script does what it is supposed to but, it doesn’t offer any redeeming qualities to your site.
Site Net BBS http://www.focalmedia.net
Sitenet BBS, formally known as Netboard, is probably one of the better Perl based forum scripts on the market, it price tag of $69.00 makes it an affordable choice for almost everyone and, the installation process itself is VERY simple to understand. The one drawback that i have found with this forum script however is that it stores the data in flat text file which actually slow the server down quite a lot making connections to the forum time-out on numerous occasions. However customization of the script is very easy using only HTML based templates you do not need any additional programming skills and, it has a nice interface with a few good features. For the price it is well worth a look. They also offer a freeware version however the links on the bottom of the forum become annoying after a while.
In summary there are a lot of popular forum scripts available for webmasters to start using some are free other require payment ALL have a range of different functions available in them.
Before looking at installing any of the scripts you should always try a demo first to see which one has the features and benefits you would like to offer your community members.
If you can get your base community built up on a forum they enjoy using then all the rest of your marketing should pay off in dividends long term.
Article written by Lee.
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Writing Your Sales Text – Some Facts
Do you know the difference between writing sales text for print advertising i.e. magazines and, writing sales talk for websites?
Well some of these differences will go against your intuition however, these differences are based on how people read specific items.
Where Do Eyes Go First When Your Page Loads?
Contrary to what most webmasters think it may not always be towards the thumbnails and banners on your page instead, surfers eyes will more than likely go to the first few lines of text on the page therefore, your first chance at making a sale before the surfer starts to burn your bandwidth is to have some enticing text on any site or page you build. Another reason why learning to write good text links can benefit you long term.Also, as most surfers will only look at a page for between three and fifteen seconds before they decide whether they want to stay on the site they are at or close it this now starts to question webmasters use of heavy graphics on their sites, if a graphic takes three to four seconds to load you have just lost valuable sales time on your site.
How Much Of Your Copy Do Users Actually Read?
On average surfers will read about 75% of the length of any given page. Again, this is good news because it now means we can draw our surfers attention tot he ‘important’ sections of our sites by using headlines and bullet points to make them stand out. Also, this means that, given surfers will read only the first 75% of any page that the bottom half of your pages may not be as important as what was first believed.Why Do Most Banner Ads Produce Poor Click-Through Rates?
Again as with any advertising media there is only a specific time frame that anyone will look at something, in this case it has been found that the vast majority of surfer will spend a mere 1.25 seconds looking at a banner which, is about enough time to read say 5 words based on the average college students reading time of 350 words a minute.Therefore, banners which are animated and can take up to 5 seconds to get all the information across may in effect be completely worthless on our sites. More bad news for webmasters who have fancy animations and the likes on our pages.
Why Is Reading Online More Frustrating Than Reading Print?
Did you know that reading text on a computer screen can cause your reading ability to slow by up to 25% in some cases? This means that over inflating pages with text heavy content may actually aggravate the surfer instead of draw there attention! But, how can we stop this from potentially losing us a sale? Simple here are a few suggestions.Rather than having one long continuous stream of text have several smaller one or two line paragraphs of text.
Use headlines to summarize what you are telling the surfer for example, if you sponsor has free trials tell them in bold lettering ‘Free Trials’ you get the point across and, you may draw their attention to click on the text.
Are Your Web Page Users Not Getting The Whole Picture?
Can surfers ‘scan’ your website? Lets look back at the above figures, 75% of the page gets read, banners have an attention span of only 1.25 seconds on average, that’s not much time for a surfer to look at your pages.I think that would probably explain the reason why surfers tend to ‘scan’ our sites and only concentrate on the free images, how many of us actually take the time to read word for word EVERYTHING on a page?
I know I hardly do I just sit there and scan the page for things that draw me into the text or site. This is true again for surfers in fact, estimated figures show that roughly 21% of surfers actually spend the time to read every single word on any site meaning the other 79% only scan through our sites this again, cuts down our marketing capabilities dramatically making it more important to have headlines and well laid out pages highlighting the part we want our surfer to look at, namely, our sponsor links.
If we do not do this we are in effect only making 21% of our marketing efforts count again, taking away from our profits. That’s a huge chunk of our surfers we are losing out on gleaming a sale from.
What do all of the above figures tell us? Simple, we need to keep our pages quick loading, concise and more importantly unique, we need to draw our surfers to the specific areas that we want them to go to first and, in the process we should start to make more money from each of our sites.
Article written by Lee
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