Content – Keeping your members coming back for more

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Content | Response: 0

We know that the first battle for pay site owners is getting the traffic and the signups. But, sometimes this becomes such a focus that we forget the other battle: keeping members interested once you have them. When people pay for a membership to a site they are expecting to get their money’s worth. In return for their monthly fee they are looking for a site that encompasses quality, variety and originality.

As the web grows, so does the online entertainment industry. Four or five years ago there was only a handful of pay sites around compared to the thousands and thousands that are on the net today. Back then, you could literally put any kind of content on your sites and you would have membership, there just was not much choice out there for the connoisseur of porn. Now, potential members are more informed, they know what is out there, they know what they like, and they know what they want to see.

What has to be done to cater to these more discriminating porn shoppers? You have to give them what they want. Here are some useful tips for choosing a content provider and/or content for your pay sites that will keep the members coming back for more:

Go for the exclusive content.

You want to be able to provide your members with something that is fairly fresh and that is not pasted on every pay site on the Internet. The last thing a potential buyer wants to see is a site that is a carbon copy of half the sites out there.

Choose leased content.

Choosing leased content over buying CD’s is a good way to keep your site fresh. Most leased content providers will update their content on a bi-monthly or monthly basis. As well, with leased content, it is just a matter of adding the feed into your site. This alleviates the need for extensive extra graphic design work.

Have a wide variety of content.

Make sure that your site has a little bit of everything a potential member could want: pictures, videos, live feeds, etc. The more you have the better. Many content providers have great package deals available that will include all of these things all set up and ready to put on a site.

Choose a reputable content provider.

You want to make sure that when you choose a content provider that you do not just go for the best deal out there. You want to also look at things like: how much bandwidth they provide, what their technical support is like and last but not least, do they have good customer service.

These are just but a few helpful suggestions to follow when choosing content for your pay site. There are certainly many ways to achieve a high rate of member retention. One thing that many of our customers tell us is that they find that having a least one voyeur feed on their site great for keeping the members coming back for more. Laura’s Condo, one of our voyeur feeds, has one of the best member retention rates around. Visitors get attached to the girls, develop a rapport with them and they do not want to lose that. Hence, they will keep renewing to be able to keep their relationship going with their favorite girl.

The number one thing that pay site owners must remember is that members equal money and in order to keep the cash flow rolling in they must keep the members interested and give them what they want. By spending a little extra money to get high quality exclusive content, you will actually be putting more money in recurring memberships back in your pocket at the end of the day.

Article written by Meredith Murray

Masters Of Discipline – Have You Got What It Takes?

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: General | Response: 0

So you want to throw in your day job and become a full time adult Webmaster? Well yeah, I can hear you saying, “Who wouldn’t want to be surrounded by pictures of beautiful women all day, make up their own hours, and be the master of their own destiny?” It just sounds sooo good when it’s put like that doesn’t it?

Before you tell your boss you quit, you might want to read this article first, as the reality of working in this industry and especially for yourself can be a real wake up call for many.

The main thing you need to succeed in this business is discipline, and lots of it. If there are temptations when you work for someone else to slack off, take a sick day, or simply not bother showing up, then you can double those temptations when you work for yourself.

It’s so easy to roll over in the morning rather than get out of bed, stagger to the PC, and actually work.

It’s so easy to decide to take the day off when the sun is shining and the beach is calling. You simply tell yourself you’ll make up for it tonight, and then find yourself coming home at 3am.

It’s so easy to not actually work, when you work for yourself, that at times it can be unreal.

The reality of doing any of the above is longer nights, less sleep, and almost inevitably smaller paychecks.

Structure Your Day.

The answer to this problem is to really think about your working day and give it some structure, just as you would if you worked for someone else. Work set hours and take frequent breaks. When you work for someone else they make you take breaks for a variety of reasons, but mostly, because as research has proved, you’ll be more productive after one. It’s also important to make sure others know your hours as well, and always remember to add what time zone you are located in on any correspondence. There is nothing worse than being awoken by an associate at 3am because you forgot that little detail!

Set A Routine.

Get into a routine! There are various tasks that must be done each week no mater how boring. By creating a work routine, you can control your time and structure the more boring jobs at the end of the day when for most our creativity levels are less. You can also structure that routine as I do, when I’ve finished those boring tasks at the end of each day, I reward myself with some time doing what I want to do.

Going Solo.

This can be a lonely business and if you don’t like working alone then maybe it’s not the right one for you. You’ll likely spend many hours in your own company and as someone else pointed out to me, while boards and instant messengers are great, they can also eat heavily into your working time if you’re not careful. Personally, I use the boards and chats as a treat when I’ve accomplished a goal, unless I need to talk to someone in order to get that set goal done.

If, like me, your office is in your home, in reality you never really leave work. It’s just always there and there is always something else to be done, and it’s so tempting just to work a few more hours. Having the discipline to stick to your office hours is the trick and where structure comes into play. The saying all work and no play makes Jack/Jill a dull boy/girl is really true here.

The biggest trick of all though, is learning to recognize your limits. Set them and stick to them. Unlike in the normal workplace, you won’t have the big cheese or even the little one watching over your shoulder, making sure you work or making sure that your paycheck and your bills are covered each week. That’s up to you now.

Think Before You Leap.

Another thing you need to consider is can you REALLY afford to give up your day job? Working for someone else means that for the most part you will have a reliable pay check each week or month, when you work for yourself you loose that security. There are other things to consider as well like health insurance, book keeping and how exactly you are going to pay for them. Of course if there is another bread winner in the house this may not be of such a concern, but it’s still something you should consider before you give in your slip. As a general rule of thumb, if you’re considering going it alone, don’t, at least not until you have enough cash saved to cover any outgoings you might have over a six months period.

How well do you know the law? If you think the law doesn’t affect you because your just one person working from home then think again. If you don’t know your Title 18 USC 2257 from your arse then you may be heading for trouble. Standing in front of a judge and saying I didn’t know won’t get you out of a heavy fine or even a prison sentence.

The real questions you need to ask yourself now are you up to the challenge, and do you have the personal discipline to make this work for you?

Article written by Jenne.

http://www.clitical.com.

Direct Debit Payment Explained

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Billing Solutions | Response: 0

Something that is very rarely spoken about as a means of payment is Direct Debit, this is a popular payment method across Europe and, especially in the United Kingdom. Direct Debit can offer your surfers a cost effective, easy way to pay for products and services from your site especially, if they have a ‘recurring’ cost associated with them.

Direct Debit – What Is It?

Direct Debit is quite possibly one of the simplest ways to collect funds from your surfers basically, a form is filled out by the surfer, where they enter their bank payment details, account number, name, sort code. Then, the form is signed either electronically or, in person by the customer, in this case, electronically by the surfer.

Once you have the direct form filled in by your surfer, you may continue to deduct funds from the bank account on the Direct Debit form until such a time whereas the surfer cancels the Direct Debit agreement.

At the present time, around 45% of the population in the UK currently choose to pay their utility bills online by Direct Debit and, around 75% of the total population in the UK have used Direct Debit at least once in addition Direct Debit is also an alternative method of payment in the vast majority of European countries and, it is also used (although not as much) in Australia.

Direct Debit – What Are The Cost?

Direct Debit payments cost around $0.5 for you as a merchant to process, however, this charge, rather than happening on the processors side of the transaction, happens when the Direct Debit request hits your banking account.

This in itself is god news after all, you now ensure that if a membership or product costs $35 per month, you will get virtually the full cost of that membership until such a time when the surfer cancels the direct debit at their bank.

Direct Debit – An Overview.

All in all, Direct Debit is probably one of the only payment solutions that allow you to collect the full price from your surfer at the point of sale and, furthermore, because the Direct Debit method of payment is trusted, this offers your surfers something that no other form of payment can – Peace of mind. There is however one major drawback to this method of payment, it is very hard to find processors that will allow you to utilize Direct Debit on your sites in fact, to date, the main use for the Direct Debit payment method has been payments of utility bills, Gas, Electricity, Water Supply, etc however, many financial institutes will let you pay for goods and services using Direct Debit on ‘credit’ terms which can vary from 1 day to a year interest free or, not as the case so often is.

I strongly feel that within the next 12 months this method of payment could become advantageous to the adult webmaster however, the current online payment processors need to be pushed in order for this to become as widespread as credit and debit card processing is. That said, there are a few online adult companies already accepting Direct Debit as a form of payment so, at least the ‘DD’ revolution has already started.

Article written by Lee

Billing Solutions For International Surfers

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

We all know the lifeblood of the webmaster is to be able to accept credit cards for site access however, with the global markets emerging more and more, many webmasters still do not realize that they can accept credit cards from international countries at little or no extra cost to themselves or, their business.

Presuming you already have your sites translated into a selection of global formats you need to make sure you can process foreign transactions and, these should be handled differently than regular US based credit card users however. This is what we will approach upon in this article.

The main reason we own our businesses is to turn a profit and, from a profit making point of view is just how the details below will enable you to benefit your long term global business.

The first step you need to take in order to correctly ‘charge’ your international customers is to ensure that you are sending them to the right language, after all, over 70% of internet users can not speak English, let alone read it. This is where having some geo-scripting comes in handy on your join page, the second the surfer hits this page he (or she) will be directed to a localized version of your join page.

Now that you have the surfer on your join page you also need to ensure they have a variety of options available to them to actually finalize the purchase however, you should also ensure that, if they want to view your join page in another language, that they have this as an option too.

Some alternate payment methods for your international customs could include one or more of the following, PayPal, JCB, Mastercard, Discover, Maestro, EuroDebit, Checks and, of course, a dialer.

I would however use the dialer as a last minute option should their chosen method of payment not be accepted.

Even though you may run a ‘recurring’ based site, you might not want to have your foreign surfers recur and risk having their card declined when it comes to authorizing your charge next, for this reason you may like to add the option of a 3 month membership or perhaps a 6 month membership however, make sure you lower the cost of this membership in relation to buying a monthly membership, this might just be the clincher you need to close the international sale.

As with any purchase the after sales support is also needed, especially if you are wanting your international customer to rebill for several months and, trust me, they WILL rebill, often for in excess of 6 months. They pulled their credit or debit card out for a reason and, they will stay if you can give them more reason too.

With any type of sale a follow up is always good, many sponsors and processors send out an email automatically upon sign up, however, how many of these emails are written in the surfers native tongue?

In conclusion, when dealing with international customers you should cater to them NOT make them cater to YOU by doing this you will ensure the longevity of your international business.

Finally, if you have any type of online business you should carefully consider the global market place as it is growing a rapid rate with millions of new international surfers coming online each year this would be a bad business choice on your part if you were not to cater for them.

Article written by Lee.

Think Fresh – Work Smarter

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: General | Response: 0

We have all experienced it at some point in our webmaster career, more often than not though, we hear about it all the time. What is it? Wanting to give in when we hit that proverbial brick wall.

Hopefully this article can offer you some help and advice when it comes to getting your sales back on track or, even getting them started at all.

Ask For Help.

The one thing that amazes me about this industry is that despite the fact we are all business competitors we are all (mostly) willing to help other webmasters out for little or nothing in return. if you hit that brick wall then imply ask for some help.

As webmasters we have a barrage of free tools readily available to us for asking the advice of others whether it is in email from your sponsors support reps, icq or even on the many industry related chat boards, by actually spending sometime to help yourself by asking others you can often see things from a new perspective and, get advice as to why thing that should be working are not.

Start Over.

So you have been doing this webmaster job for the last few months submitting to the TGP’s, building free and AVS sites but you still haven’t made a dime, something is wrong somewhere but how do you pinpoint the error? By far the easiest way to find out what is wrong is to start afresh. Head over to one of the webmaster resource sites and see what others are doing ask for advice and feedback on your sites and learn from the experiences they tell you about. Just because you might have heard the same information before doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask about it, often one webmaster will be able to tell you an alternate way of doing something that another webmaster is. One of the best ways to get a grasp on this learning curve is to read articles and tutorials, there are thousands of them on the net from HTML to Programming and everything in-between emulate the information contained in these articles and adjust that same information to suit your needs.

Don’t Stagnate.

If you are not having success at the AVS side of the business try something else, you already have a good base for building free sites and even TGP’s just because you have never tried using these sources of traffic and income doesn’t mean you wont be any good at them.

If traffic is your problem as mentioned above, ask others where they get their traffic from and how they built it up, learn to start small and grow instead of running head first into millions of hits a month that are being wasted.

Research The Industry.

If you are thinking of quitting, before you do spend a day or two just doing a little background research in the industry, its no secret that webmasters who join the online industry today have to work two or three times harder than our peers who joined several years ago, this is and always has been true in any business. By researching the industry you should be able to find out how others that joined before you failed and, more importantly, WHY they failed, learn from those experiences.

Finally.

No matter how hard and meaningless you find the work stick at it, just because you are not making any sales it doesn’t mean you wont make any sales tomorrow or even next week / month / year. Keep turning those sites out and, soon enough, when you least expect it you’ll make a sale and, you know what… the euphoric feeling you will get will be more than enough to make you realize that you HAVE been doing something right all along.

Article written by Lee

GEO::IP – What Is It?

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: General, Hosting | Response: 0

As more and more webmasters investigate the international market place to expand their online businesses I thought it would be prudent to take a look at one of the more important modules of Apache and, just how this module can help webmasters to monetize their international traffic. What is this module? GEO::IP.

Geo I.p – The Basics.

GEO::IP is an Apache module which is able to recognize countries by specific I.P blocks. GEO::IP in itself is, in effect a database of the current i.p addresses in use on the internet across the globe. When used in conjunction with various scripting languages, Perl, Php, Etc the Apache GEO::IP module can assist online businesses with the following:

Detecting credit card fraud.
Automatically select the geographically closest mirror.
Analyzing your web server logs to determine the countries of your visitors.

What this means to the webmaster is that they can now market their sites to a specific language or, country in addition to either redirecting or, refusing other countries / languages access to their online sites.

GEO::IP Module – Where To Find It.

The GEO::IP module is available from several sources online in either paid or, free forms. The most up-to-date and professional form of the GEO::IP module can be found on the Maxmind website ( http://www.maxmind.com ).

Once you have the GEO::IP module you should either ask your host to, or, install it yourself on your Apache based web server.

Geo I.p – Different Modules.

In addition to the simplistic ‘country i.p’ based detection, there is also another more complex GEO::IP module, this module is often referred to as ‘I.p to Location’ which, in simplistic terms means that you can target specific cities of the world hence, if you want to offer a service to surfers in Miami, you are able to redirect your Miami surfers to a page with content of specific interest to them.

Redirecting Traffic.

Geo i.p is the basis behind most of the international traffic redirection systems available for webmasters to use in order to monetize their global traffic more efficiently, whether those systems are paid, free, subscription based or, otherwise they will ALL use the fundamental basics of the GEO::IP module.

Through the use of the geoip module you will be able to maximize and filter the traffic sources you currently have and, decide on whether you send your surfers to a Pay site, a dialer or, a traffic trade.

Scripting – Putting GEO::IP To Work.

Many programming firms are now looking at the global market place in addition to webmasters as they now have the ability to offer their clients a wider product base from country specific banner displays to multi-lingual tours, programmers can develop new ways to enable webmasters to profit from their traffic unlike ever before. One such company is Geo Scripting ( http://www.geoscripting.com ).

GEO::IP – Overview.

All in all the Geo i.p Apache module is going to become more and more prominent in the industry, sponsors are already starting to use country specific redirects on their affiliates traffic base and, individual webmasters are beginning to capitalize on this module through redirecting their own traffic to the sponsors that offer them multi-lingual paysites. When all is said and done, I am all for anything that can better assist webmasters in monetizing their global revenue streams especially as in the last 4 years I have been online it would only seem to be the last 2 months when this untapped source of income has come into the forefront of the adult industry.

Article written by Le

Promo Material – Make The Most Of Your Marketing

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

Cross Selling – Offer Your Surfers An Alternative

Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

As webmasters our primary goal is to make money from our surfers in order to be successful at business, however, in order to make money from our surfers we need to constantly change the way in which we sell products and services to them.

One such method of selling products to surfers is by using cross selling or, up selling as it is sometimes referred to in the industry. So what exactly is cross selling and, more importantly, what benefit does it give your business model? This is what we shall take a look at in this article.

Cross Selling – The Basics.

Cross selling is a method used by marketers to make the maximum amount of money out of a single sales lead at any given time regardless of whether you are working online or, in a bricks and mortar store cross selling is something that almost every sales person does from offering an extended warranty on a new television purchase to offering an affiliate product from inside your sites secure area.

Cross Selling – How To.

One of the easiest ways to initiate the cross selling process is simple to provide your site visitors with a selection of links going to a multitude of individual products, this may be a dating site, a software package or, something else, either way, by placing a selection of links on your main selling pages you have already initiated the cross selling process and, by doing so, have already increased your chance at making a sale.

Cross Selling – New Customers.

One method of cross selling that is becoming more and more prevalent on the internet is that of cross selling or, up-selling new customers immediately after they have made a purchase, this in itself is not a bad thing after all, you know they have money to spend so, why not use this fact to garner additional sales.

One good way of offering cross sales to new customers is to give the an option on the actual shopping cart page immediately when they hit it, this may be for a site that complements the product they are making a purchase to already or, something completely different either way, by having this already on the order page waiting for your customer you might just make additional money from them.

Cross Selling – Old Customers.

So what happens when a customer leaves your site after making a purchase? Well there are two routes you can take with thee customers, one, is to leave them alone and hope that they return to buy from your site again whilst, the other, my personal preference, is to send these customers a regular follow up letter offering them a product they may be interested in based on their initial purchase after all, if they purchased a copy of Adobe Photoshop, the chances are they may also be interested in something such as Paint Shop Pro, why not give the surfer this as an option by placing a link in the follow up letter taking them to that specific area on your site.

Cross Selling – Overview.

When all is said and done, cross selling whether you agree with it or not is a very powerful sales tool, not only can it increase the revenue potentials from new clients but, can also enable any business a method of gaining further incomes from older customers, the one thing that you should all be doing on a regular basis is ensuring that you have a good cross selling strategy in place, regardless of whether you actually are selling memberships to sites, warranties on televisions or, mouse pads for new pc owners.

Article written by Lee

JavaScript – Redirecting Foreign Surfers

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Scripts, WebDesign | Response: 0

At some point or another we are no doubt going to have the need to redirect some or all of our surfers based on the language they speak, this snippet of JavaScript when placed on your page will enable you to do just that without the need for .php or other more complex scripting.

Here is the coding that you need to place between your <head> and </head> tags:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE=”JavaScript1.2″>
<!– Begin
if (navigator.appName == ‘Netscape’)
var language = navigator.language;
else
var language = navigator.browserLanguage;

if (language.indexOf(‘en’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘english.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘nl’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘dutch.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘fr’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘french.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘de’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘german.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘ja’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘japanese.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘it’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘italian.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘pt’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘portuguese.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘es’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘Spanish.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘sv’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘swedish.shtml';
else if (language.indexOf(‘zh’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘chinese.shtml';
else
document.location.href = ‘english.shtml';
// End –>
</script>

To add additional language redirects to this JavaScript all you need to do is duplicate the:

else if (language.indexOf(‘zh’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘chinese.shtml';

Section of the coding changing the (‘zh’) language code to that of the language you wish to redirect.

Article written by Lee

Maximizing Your Profit Potential – Upsells

Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: Sponsors | Response: 0

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