Resource Forums – The Changing Face Of The Adult Industry

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: General | Response: 0

Online adult webmaster resource sites are becoming a thing of the past instead, we have witnessed a new breed of resource site being birthed in the adult industry, the resource forum. It seems like almost every major adult sponsor and webmaster has their own resource forum as of the current time however, what is making these forums stand out from one another and, more importantly, can you actually learn anything valuable from them.

Webmaster Resource Forums.

Back in the day there were only a handful of resource forums made available for adult webmasters to educate themselves further, these included such sites as Ynot Masters, Netpond (then The Condom Chronicles) and Porn Resource, however, to date there are no less than 200 webmaster resource forums floating around the internet for adult webmasters to post on.

With this amount of resource forums available to webmasters it seem impossible that many webmasters cant be making a profit however, upon closer inspection a disturbing trend seems to be taking place.

Resource Forums – Webmasters Posts.

With the sudden surge of webmaster resource forums in the last 6-12 months there is one thing that is apparent, most of, if not all of the resource forums to have spawned during this time have one thing in common, the webmasters who post on them, often, these webmasters are posting for a single reason, to get other webmasters to click on their signatures, nothing more, nothing less.

It would appear that the adult industry is heading towards a meltdown of the adult resource forums, with more and more webmasters grabbing free scripts such as phpbb to load onto their domain and launch their own resource forum it would appear at first glance as if the industry is a thriving community of webmasters all willingly helping each other out however, this is not the case, instead, we find post after post duplicated across multiple resource forums in the effort of making the longest thread, getting the most page views and, ultimately, getting the most signature clicks.

Webmaster Resources.

So with all of this going on what’s happening to the actual resource sites? Well they are still around and, they are still being used however, these have now become second place to the message forum, often as mentioned above, webmasters will post the same message on several message boards and get several replies of exactly the same answer from exactly the same people. Whilst this in itself is a good thing (the exchange of information) my personal feelings are that we are heading towards an excess of resource forums and, whilst communication is needed, there also becomes a point at which you can get an information overload, new webmasters entering the adult industry will see the variety of forums made available to them and start posting however, in doing so they forget the one thing that they actually should be doing, working.

Webmaster Resource Forums – Overview.

I think within the next 12 months we are going to see one of two things start to happen, either the resource forum phenomenon will continue as it is doing now or, the resource forum will become a thing of the past whilst a new medium takes its place, one thing is certain though all these webmasters posting on forums to get sig views and post counts are not doing the one thing they should be, making money and, this becomes all to apparent after watching the same old posts, make the rounds to the same old forums time and time again.

Resource forums can be great help to the adult webmaster however, at the same time, they can also become a webmasters biggest downfall, remember why resource forums are there, to help you when you need it and to socialize when you have to, at what point to do you stop getting help and start becoming a post whore? Well only you can answer that question.

Article written by Lee

Cleaning Up The Myths On Scrubbing

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

Time and time again on message boards I see the same old topics regarding scrubbing usually preceded by some company being accused of scrubbing their webmasters surfers to much and the webmasters sales being lower because of the sponsor ‘scrubbing’ their surfers however, the reality of this is, it isn’t the sponsors who control how much or how little the surfers credit card transactions are ‘scrubbed’.

The E-Commerce Dilemma.

Irrespective of whether you are an online bookmaker, bakery or adult pay site owner the fact of the matter remains that only credit card fraud is on the increase and, in addition to the rise of online credit card fraud the methods in which the perpetrators of these crimes carry them out is also changing often combating the methods put in place by the online transaction processors to stop this happening luckily however, this is where ‘scrubbing’ comes into effect.

So What Is Scrubbing?

Scrubbing is a method used by the credit card processor that the companies who’s site you are sending a surfer to uses. Scrubbing is in effect, a method of calculating the probability that any single transaction (or group of transactions) could be fraudulent. That is to say, is being carried out by someone other than the true owner of the credit or debit card.

Scrubbing is probably the single most useful tool provided to our sponsors by the credit card processors to ensure that every transaction that gets sent to them is credible and, once the transaction is allowed (or not) a part of the information contained with the transaction is sent to a central database to help other clients of that processor guard against receiving unlawful transaction purchases.

How Does Scrubbing Affect Me?

As a webmaster, believe it or not, scrubbing is actually a good thing for you. You know that each transaction processed is first of all a legitimate one and, secondly, you know that the sponsor who you are using is not going to go bankrupt due to excessive illegal transaction. This means that the sponsor can improve the services they offer YOU as a webmaster to assist you in making more money.

In essence, the scrubbing of credit card transactions at a sponsors level increases the amount of money you make long term not only with that individual sponsor but, with every other sponsors who uses the same transaction processor.

Article written by Lee.

Article Writing For Publicity And Credibility

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Writing | Response: 0

If you’re looking for a powerful way to get free publicity and build your credibility at the same time, then writing articles may be your answer.

If you’ve been on the Internet for a while, you’ve probably subscribed to a few ezines including this one, hopefully. Many ezine publishers will include an article written by a guest author. At the end of the article are a few lines of text about the author referred to as bylines or resource box. These lines of text are basically just an advertisement for the writer. They usually contain a couple of lines about the author and a web address.

The writer gives the publisher permission to publish their article, free of charge, in exchange for the publisher including the author’s bylines.

By writing articles and allowing them to be published, your articles will have the potential to be viewed by millions of Internet users. They may be published by several ezines with subscriber bases of a few hundred to several thousand. In addition, they may be displayed in ezine archives or on high traffic websites.

Most ezine publishers prefer short articles between 500 and 750 words. Short “tip” articles of just a couple of paragraphs are also very popular. Articles should be formatted to 65 characters per line or less, including spaces, and written in short paragraph sections.

When you begin writing your article, avoid using your standard word processing programs, as they do not allow for proper formatting. Instead, use a text editor such as Notepad. It should already be installed on your desktop.

When you begin typing your article, use a hard carriage return (hit enter) when your text reaches 65 characters, including spaces, and leave a space between your paragraphs. This will enable publishers to easily copy and paste your article into their publication. By taking the time to properly format your article, you will increase your chance of being published significantly.

Most publishers receive many article submissions each week and only select a few to be published. Here are some basic guidelines to assist you in getting published:

(1) Make sure you follow the publishers’ submission guidelines. Articles submitted to publishers that don’t follow the submission guidelines will most likely be deleted.

(2) Make sure your article is properly formatted.
Publishers won’t take the time to format your article.
They’ll simply delete it and move on to the next article submission.

(3) Keep your bylines down to 6 lines or less.
Publishers will not publish articles that contain excessively long bylines.

(4) Select a descriptive title to intrigue your readers.
Use a powerful headline that demands attention and try to keep it all on one line.

(5) Use proper grammar and spelling.
Publishers will not take the time to edit your article. Make sure you read your article several times and use spell check.

(6) Avoid articles that are nothing more than a sales letter.
Publishers want quality content and will simply delete an article that is written like a sales letter.

(7) Avoid referring readers to an affiliate URL.
Articles containing affiliate links may make your article appear to be biased and untrustworthy.

(8) Write your articles with a sincere desire to teach and inform. Talk to your readers and share your expertise.

Once you’ve written your article, you’ll need to develop a list of publishers that may be interested in publishing it. The best way to accomplish this is to display your articles on your website. Place a subscription box on each of your article pages to enable your visitors to subscribe. This list should be used to send your new articles to your list of publishers.

Of course, you are already in one of the right places to start, we are always looking for industry related articles so, if you been given the motivation by reading this article to give it a try why not submit one to us for publication?

Writing and distributing free articles on the Internet will be one of the best promotional decisions you’ll ever make. Not only will it provide you with free publicity, but if your articles are good, you’ll become a trusted professional in your area of expertise.

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

Turning Opt In Mailings Into Pure Spam

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Opt-in Mail | Response: 0

Spam is frowned upon net wide and even more so than usual in the online adult industry especially unsolicited email Spam however, many webmasters do not seem to grasp the essential basics about what Spam is and more importantly, the point in which they themselves become Spammers, this is what we will take a look at in this brief article.

Double And Single Opt In Mailings.

By themselves single and double opt-in mailing lists can be a very effective method of promoting your or, your sponsors sites however, many webmasters forget the one fundamental rule when mailing their opt in subscribers, send them what they actually opted in for otherwise, you are spamming the list and ultimately, the recipients.

The line between opt in mailings and Spam is a very finely drawn one at best however in the adult industry it seems the edges of this line are more blurred than almost anywhere else. Quite often you see webmasters on a variety of message boards selling their ‘opt in mailing list’ to one or two other webmasters however, when does the opt in to Spam equation fit in? This is what we will look at next.

Turning Opt-In Mailings In To Spam Emails.

So you have collected opt in email addresses diligently for the last god knows how long and, you have successfully emailed those lists numerous times with some good results to show for it and you want to let others profit from your lists whilst making some money for yourself at the same time. Time to sell the emails you have collected. This is your first mistake, the email addresses which you have collected for your subscriber mail outs have been opted into YOUR list not another webmasters and well, the second that another webmaster buys this list from you the list itself becomes pure unadulterated Spam, nothing more, nothing less.

Of course, you don’t have to sell the list, you could offer the list up for trades however, the same thing applies, the second your mailing list changes hands that list not only becomes worthless to the person who has purchased it but, in effect, the list has now become worthless to you.

Adult Opt In Email Lists.

To make a long term profit from your opt in mailing lists the one thing that you should ensure is that the list you have remains clean and, more importantly than that, remains private, if you have spent several years collecting these email addresses why would you turn the revenue potential of them in to nothing less than worthless overnight? Keep the lists as clean and as private as possible, the next time a sponsor opens a paysite that is on the same topic as your mailing list you can send your opt in mailer to your database and profit from the unexposed site.

Adult Opt In Mailing Lists Overview.

When all is said and done, as mentioned above opt in adult mailing lists are a very hard to find commodity and, if you have a list for a specific niche or market the list becomes even harder to find, keep your list as clean as possible and ensure that you and only you use the opt in mailing list. By keeping the email addresses you have collected out of the grasp of other webmasters you have the potential to make revenue from that list for as long as you maintain it however, all of your hard work can be undone overnight if you sell the list to the wrong webmaster. In short, if someone opts in to a mailing list owned by you, make sure you are the only person who mails them from that list otherwise, you have indirectly spammed that email address.

Article written by Lee

Anime vs. Cartoon – What Is The Difference?

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Content | Response: 0

Over the past three years I have written articles, been a guest on radio shows, and even been part of panels, all discussing the wonders and bewilderment of anime and hentai content. In that time, I thought I had covered most aspects of the niche, the content, the market, the huge underground following, the money making potential etc. Yet I am still being asked on a regular basis questions about the niche and especially about the confusion of what is anime vs. other toon type content. So I decided to re-visit the issue in this article.

One of the newer occurrences that seems to have confused many a webmaster, is the recent surge of content providers now offering images that they have titled as anime. Many of these images are computer generated images (CGI) in 3D like format, which tend to portray almost life like images. While others are cartoon images in various styles, that while they do have their market, are certainly not anime.

Anime and Bishoujo (also known as Hentai) images are very unique in their style and characterization. If you know certain key points about the art work, you will know if what you are looking at or purchasing can truly be termed anime. And believe me, your surfers or members definitely know the difference! Here are some of the key things that you can do to assure yourself of what you are getting:

Eyes: The eyes are one of the most important features of anime style characters; they are the most expressive parts of the face, and are part of what makes each character different and recognizable. Large eyes are of course the one feature that most people associate with anime, but just making the eyes large is not enough. Anime characters’ eyes should always have at least some sort of shading. Anime females in particular tend to have really heavy shading and lots of shiny areas. Male characters have light glares in their eyes, too, though they often are not as large or obvious.

Nose and Mouth: Anime style noses and mouths are pretty straightforward, they consists of three basic simple shapes: a wedge for the nose, a long, thin line for the mouth, and a shorter line to define the lower lip. You will rarely see teeth on an anime character, even when the character is seen with the mouth wide open.

Hair: Hair styles of Anime characters are stylized, unique, and sometimes impossible to have in the real world. Any hair color is possible, be it blond, black, sky blue, light green, orange, pink, all the colors of the rainbow. Hair length is also unusual as most males have shoulder length hair and most females either have really short hair or their hair is at least four feet long.

Now this is obviously a generalization as there will be some variance in images depending on the style of a particular artist. But in general, this is what the anime/hentai surfer will look for. The other key to authentic anime is the style itself, the art is hand drawn and until recently always hand inked or colored as well. Though some artists now draw the sketches by hand and color via the computer, it is still very easy to notice the difference in quality of hand drawn art.
I am not saying that other artworks do not have their market, they certainly do! I just want to make sure, if you are promoting images as Anime that you are truly using anime images, otherwise your sales or sign ups will not be near what they could be.

Now let’s visit toons shall we? Cartoons, toons, sexy toons, erotic art, erotic illustrations, what ever you want to call them, are also very popular with many surfers. Toons are just what they seem to be, illustrated drawing depicting various characters in an exaggerated form. These images are fantastic for use on or for promoting the mired of Toon sites out in the market today. Toons, like Anime can fulfill fantasies that cannot be realized in real life or with real people. If you can think of it, it can be drawn! There is high demand for quality sexy toons because the loyal surfers out there cannot get enough.

There are things to watch out for however even in toon content. Copyrighted characters, this has been a popular debate among those of us that deal and make our living from anime and toons. A copyright is a copyright is a copyright! Whether it be created or shot, the characters belong to the creators. Even if the character has been modified to blur the identity, if it is a recognizable character, ie, Batman, Flintstones, Sailor Moon, DragonBallZ etc. then you can be opening yourself up to prosecution from the copyright holder. Many a webmaster can tell you about hearing from Nintendo, Disney, Marvel and many other companies on this issue. Some providers feel that since such images are a parody of the copyrighted characters, they are protected, and in some cases they might be. But unless you have very deep pockets or a rich uncle to help you win that court battle, I would strongly suggest you steer clear of this type of image.

As with any content you purchase it is important that you do your research and know your provider! Just because some one is selling something, it does not automatically make it legal, nor does it indemnify you, if it is not illegal. Unfortunately, as in all business there are a few bad apples out there that are willing to risk their reputations and their business to make a few quick bucks. If a provider tells you that the anime/toon images they offer come from Japan, and it is ok to use them, because the Japanese artists do not care, run, do not walk from this provider because that is simply a lie. Japanese artists are very aware of the theft of their artwork and many are now utilizing the Bourne Convention (http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/overview.html) to actively prosecute offenders throughout the world.

I hope this has helped clear up some of the confusion about anime vs. cartoons, and as always I am more than happy to answer any questions you may have on the subject. You can always find me through my sites.

Article written by Bestat

http://www.exclusivecontent.com

Adding Images To Your Web Pages

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

The Basics

Adding Images To Your Web Pages – The Basics.

So you have just got into the online adult business but don’t know your ass from your elbow, you have the simplistic stuff relating to HTML down but, you want to find out how you can start adding banners and images to your pages here is a quick guide to help you on your way.

What Is An Image?

The answer, is, believe it or not simple, An image is a picture on a page of your website. There are however, many way to display images on your site from the size of it to the overall effect you want the image to have on your HTML page and from borders around the image and many other things.

However, I don’t want to blind you with information at the moment considering you need to actually know the basics of adding images before you can start using fancy styles and the likes.

Adding A Basic Image.

The HTML code to add an image on any HTML based page is a straight forward one however, before you can use this HTML tag you need to know where on your page you want the image to appear.

Now that you have decided where you want your image to display you need to use the image tag, the HTML coding to place an image on your page should be IMG. Also, you will need to tell your page where you want the image to come from or, in other words, you need to tell it the source of the image you want to use the HTML tag to do this is SRC.

For example, lets say you have an image called porn.gif (you need to include the extension in your SRC coding) you would display this image on your page using the following code:

<IMG SRC=”porn.gif”>

Simple huh?

Well, actually, maybe not, for example, what do you put if the images you are linking to is NOT in the same location as the page you want it to appear on? That’s not a problem, all you need to do is use the FULL location of the image in your IMG HTML tag like this:

<IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif”>

You should now be able to include images on your pages without any problems.

Image Sizes.

Ok we can now include an image on our pages but, what if we want to make this image fit the feel of the rest of our page / site, how do you manipulate the graphic to ‘look’ right?

There are a number of ways images can be manipulated for example, if you want the image to be 100 pixels wide by 100 pixels high you can add the WIDTH and the HEIGHT tag to your HTML coding like this:

<IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif” WIDTH=”100″ HEIGHT=”100″>

That will now resize your image into a square that is 100 pixels wide and high.

Now we have the image on our page in the right size we require what else can we do with it? Read on..

Borders + Colors.

In addition to placing the image and resizing the image on our pages we can also add a border and, a border color to the mage to make it stand out if needed for example:

<IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif” WIDTH=”100″ HEIGHT=”100″ BORDER=”2″ BORDERCOLOR=”FF0000″>

As you can see we have now added the two tags ‘BORDER’ and ‘BORDERCOLOR’. The first ‘BORDER’ tag tells your HTML what size of border you want around your image and, this can be any size you want to make the image stand out on your page. The second ‘BORDERCOLOR’ tag tells your HTML code what color you want the border to be again, this can be any color you like to match the rest of your sites pages.

Linking An Image.

In addition to resizing, adding borders and colors we can also link our image to a specific URL (the most common form of this is with banner advertising) and, if you want to link your image to a URL you would use the following coding:

<A HREF=”http://www.sponsorsurl.com”><IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif” BORDER=”2″ WIDTH=”100″ HEIGHT=”100″ BORDERCOLOR=”FF0000″>

This will create an image that is 100×100 pixels in size, with a border size of 2 pixels in the color FF0000 that is linked to http://www.sponsorsurl.com

Also, the order of the HTML tags we use is not important however, you should try to get used to arranging them in a certain way to make your work easier if it ever comes to editing your images.

Hopefully this has been of use to you and you can now see that adding banners and images to your sites isn’t as daunting as you first thought.

Article written by Lee.

There’s Face Value And Then There Is Real Value

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: General | Response: 0

How often do we sign up to affiliate programs based on their standard terms of service for example, Sponsor A will pay you $35 for every signup you send to them and they tell you they convert at roughly 1:200 whilst Sponsor B will pay you $30 per signup and they convert at roughly 1:200 also, which of these scenarios straight off the bat will make you the most money? Think about your answer first then read on.

Negotiate The Figures.

Most, if not all of us would have immediately chosen Sponsor A for the pure fact that they pay you $5 more per signup and they convert at the same rate as Sponsor B however, how many of us would have written or icq’d Sponsor B and asked them to raise their payout? Not many of us I would guess. With that said, what is to stop you from emailing a certain ‘Sponsor B’ if you are able to convert consistently at their published 1:200 and asking for a higher pay rate to continue sending your traffic to them? Nothing at all and, surprisingly enough, I would guess that for most programs, they would actually increase your payout if you have a history with them.

Haggling The Costs.

The example above used a sponsor as the main focus however, how many times have you spent money at a content provider? A hosting company? A traffic broker? Have you actually taken a moment to ask these companies if they would give you a lower rate on the services they are providing you with? Again, I bet not many of us have I know it was only recently when I started asking for long term customer discounts and the likes. In fact, from the first point of contact you have with any company online, be they an adult web host, adult traffic broker, content provider or, in fact, an affiliate program, spend an extra few seconds when you first sign up and see how they can improve their service for YOU. To your surprise they might just cut you a deal that is unmatched anywhere else!

Don’t Undersell Their Products.

With the above said, one thing that you need to be aware of is that if you start making absurd price cuts from these companies you will probably be told to politely take a running jump however, lets say you were going to be charged $50 for something, ask them if you can get the same service at a 10% discounted rate if you use them again, perhaps not even on the first purchase but on the second, the third, etc.

By contacting these companies directly and not just going on ‘face value’ even if you only save yourself one or two dollars per purchase over a year those odds and ends soon add up to a nice saving.

Saving Money – Recap.

In essence many of us take things at face value whether we are talking to friends and peers or whether we are paying for goods and services but, by at least in asking for a discount on our purchase the worst thing that will happen is that you get told ‘no’ however, on the flipside of the proverbial coin, you might just find yourself a better bargain than you had already found in the first place and that’s some food for thought.

Article written by Lee

Designing A 404 Error Document

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

Designing A 404 Error Document.

Now that we know how to use .htaccess let’s get into how exactly to effectively design a 404 error document page. Here are a few tips when building your document:

Keep The Design Constant.

That is, whatever design your web site supports, consider keeping that design when building your error document. This is not mandatory, however. If you have a good reason to stray from your design, then do so. Otherwise, keep it constant.

Use Attractive Dialog.

Do not use the word error. Error signifies something is terribly wrong, and while that may be so, you should give that information to your visitor in a very friendly way. Instead, consider writing “Sorry, the page you were looking for is not available at the moment”.

Include Contact Information.

Obviously, you want to fix the error, so give the user every opportunity to e-mail you about the error. Some users will not bother to do so, but you still need to give them the opportunity.

Keep The Visitor Moving.

Often, 404 error pages are like road blocks, or brick walls that the user cannot pass through. You need to break through the barriers and allow the visitor to keep traveling through your web site. If your web site supports a search capability, include a form on your error document to let them search for the information they were originally seeking. At the very least, include a link to your home page.

Give Them A Site Map.

When the user clicks upon a page that is no longer available, or was mistyped by the webmaster, consider adding a link to a site map page, or include your site map right on your 404 error document, so the user can get their bearings within your site, and can locate their desired content quickly and easily.

Give Them Help.

List tips on your error document page to help the visitor diagnose the error. For example, ask them to double check the URL in their browser’s address bar. If it’s correct, politely ask them to e-mail you to report the error. Also suggest that they visit your home page (or search utility) to find the information they are after.

List Some Popular Links.

Provide the user with a few links to your most popular content areas of your web site, as it is more likely they were searching for that content than anything else.

As you have seen, error documents are more important than you may think. Merely having a custom error page shows you have put forth effort on your web site and want to help the user find the information they need. Error documents are easy to create and adds professionalism to any web site.

Article written by Lee

Gay Industry Networking – The Gay Boards

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

Gay Industry Networking – The Gay Boards.

With so many ways for webmasters marketing straight sites in the adult industry to network I started to look at the various alternatives available to those webmasters who market gay sites to network and, although there are a few different ones about, they still seem to be few and far between.

So What Boards Are There For Gay Webmasters?

Presently, to my knowledge there are four dedicated gay boards that webmasters can utilize for networking purposes in the adult industry with several straight orientated resource sites having a gay board also these are as follows:

The Gay Boards:

Rock Me Hard
Triple X Gay
Gay Webmaster Chat
Gay Wide Webmasters

The Straight Sites With Gay Boards:

Ynot Gay Board
Xbiz Gay Board

Obviously my favorite is The Gay Board at Gay Wide Webmasters but i am slightly biased towards that seeing as its one that we own privately however, the other boards are almost certainly worth a visit in addition to the GWW community forums.

So what do these gay boards offer those marketing to the gay surfer that the straight boards cant? Simply put, it can offer you a place to network without fear of ridicule from your colleagues and peers in addition you will find that a lot of these gay boards have a wealth of information about the gay market being posted on them on an almost daily basis.

It is also worth mentioning however that just with the numerous straight orientated message boards, the gay boards do have their own individual feel to them, for example, Rock Me Hard is what I would personally classify as a ‘fun’ board and Shelmal does a great job keeping the spirit of the board going likewise, Gay Webmaster Chat is more a board geared towards webmasters who operate traffic sites such as TGP’s and Link Lists which becomes apparent after reading a few threads. Gay Wide Webmasters is more a board with a wide reach but, primarily, it is a business orientated gay webmaster community and Triple X Gay, because it is fairly new is still, imho, trying to identify the direction it wants to take but non the less, a lot of the forum members posting there also post on GWW.

The Gay Board – An Overview.

When all is said and done, no matter whether you are gay, straight, black, white or any other demographic, focusing your attention to one type of board can become counter productive after a while, I mean how often can you hear from the same people over and over again before being given the same information again and again? Diversify your posting activities to include some of the gay market community forums and at the same time, you will also diversify your business knowledge which, im sure you will agree, is good for everyone, especially you and your bank account.

Article written by Lee