• AVS Changes – Is The Proverbial Sky Falling?

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

    With the announcement yesterday from several of the large AVS systems, Free Age Card, Sex Key and, Gay Passport (also speculation on and off the forums state that Mass Pass were aware of this happening) that they will no longer allow webmasters to use the terms; AVS, Adult Verification Service, AGE Verification Service and, Access to thousands of other sites what does this hold in store long term for AVS webmasters?

    Quite simply, it looks at first glance as if these changes have something to do with the speculation surrounding VISA and AVS systems from a few months ago.

    In fact, these changes have been on the horizon for some time now however, until yesterday webmasters seemed to be unsure as to what, if anything will be changing. Even though the speculation has been circulating for some time, one of the first AVS systems to envoke these new rules, Sex key, came out with the following statement; ‘While we knew changes were coming, we just now found out what we believe are the new requirements. With this new information, we are trying to comply as quickly as humanly possible.’ quickly followed by; ‘We felt it was better to give people a chance to modify their sites this weekend rather than to not be in compliance Monday.’- Craig Tant.

    One thing is certain, come Monday, there WILL be a lot of unhappy webmasters

    So apart from the added workload for webmasters what other issues is this likely to bring up in the immediate future, well, again, based on the rumors and, i should stress that is all they are up to this point in time, from a few months ago we could expect one or more of the following items to happen to the AVS model as we know it.

    1) Visa starts to charge the AVS companies the $750 fee just to process memberships.
    2) Visa starts to charge individual webmasters the $750 fee to use an AVS service.
    3) AVS Systems cease to exist.

    So, lets break each of the above items down and see how it will have a long term effect on both AVS webmasters and, the adult industry as a whole.

    AVS Companies Charged $750 Visa Fee’s.

    In itself this isn’t a big issue that we should be immediately worried about, after all the AVS company will be the one footing this bill and, with the amount of traffic and sales that these programs get $750 is a relatively small pebble at the foot of a mountain. That said however, some of the smaller AVS systems might end up having to close because they cant afford the fees in much the same way that some Amateur paysite owners had to close their aff programs.

    Webmasters Charged $750 Visa Fee’s.

    This is the option that i am most concerned with, after all, with thousands of AVS sites being built each day and being submitted to literally hundreds of AVS companies the potential cost of this could run into thousands for individual webmasters.

    Of course, with this expense there also comes some benefits. The immediate benefit that comes to mind is that a lot of the dishonest webmasters will refuse to or, be unable to pay this fee that in itself will lighten the strain for the rest of the industry.

    There is also the possibility that webmaster may need to pay this fee for each and every AVS that they submit to which, in itself will not only harm the individual webmasters but, it will also see the rise and, dare i say it, fall of some of the smaller or less profitable (from a webmasters point of view) AVS companies. No doubt if this did ever happen the likes of Cyberage, UGAS, Global Male Pass et al will be unaffected as, they have enough of a webmaster following and traffic base to ride this potential storm out.

    AVS Systems Cease To Exist.

    This is potentially the worst case scenario and, whilst i will be the first to admit that this is VERY unlikely to happen, the possibility needs to be looked at.

    What happens to all of your sites you have in the AVS systems? What happens to all of your potential rebills? What happens to all of that AVS traffic?

    Well i would say for the most part, changing your sites from AVS to the free model wont be such a big deal for webmasters however, the financial losses to individual webmasters and companies could run into hundreds of thousands a month. With these financial losses will more webmasters leave the industry or, will more of the AVS webmasters start running TGP’s and dilute the traffic quality even further?

    Speaking of traffic, we all know by now that AVS traffic is qualified potent traffic but, what will happen when this traffic, should the AVS be closed down, hit the adult web again? Quite simply long term the effects of such a force could have positive and negative effects ranging from paysite memberships sales rising to the onslaught and proliferation of free porn being searched for again – good news for TGP owners.

    As you can see from the above, all of the speculation, rumors and, facts speak for themselves in so much as, if you are an AVS webmaster, you NEED to start diversifying your business model to ensure that even if the worst doesn’t happen, you are still able to be profitable online.

    Article written by Lee

  • The Gay Adult Market – Gay Subcultures

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

    I thought I would take a break from writing about online adult marketing for a change and instead, give many of the straight webmasters looking to break into the gay market a bit of an insight into what makes a gay man ‘tick’ and, whilst this is going to be different from guy to guy, the one thing that will remain constant throughout is that this article is based on the gay lifestyle and subculture in both society and, the internet.

    What Is A Subculture?

    Lets start at the beginning shall we? To understand this article you are first of all going to need to understand what a subculture is well, a subculture as defined by http://www.dictionary.com is, ‘A cultural subgroup differentiated by status, ethnic background, residence, religion, or other factors that functionally unify the group and act collectively on each member.’

    In layman’s terms, that means, that a subculture is a group of people (or individual) that have something different about them than other people.

    In the instance of this article we are going to be looking at the gay subculture and specifically, how this culture is broken down into its own set of subcultures.

    The Gay Subculture – Lets Define The Gay Culture.

    Gay culture is the heritage of culture, knowledge, and references to which gay people fall heir by the fact of their sexual orientation.

    Some individuals argue that there are to many gay people who do not participate in ‘gay culture’ for the concept to be meaningful or that gay culture in itself is placing labels on the stereotype most people think of when they thing about gay people however with this said, there are also those who argue the flip side of the coin. One thing is for sure however, gay culture certainly does exist and, within this culture itself there are many complex facets ranging from sexual preferences through to the types of vacation people take.

    Gay Subcultures – The Facets.

    Whether we choose to think about the different subcultures within the gay community or not one thing is for certain, the subcultures in our community are wide and far reaching from your local gay bar to Soho in a city thousands of miles away most of the gay subcultures can be found almost anywhere in the world and, from this aspect, it makes gay individual no different than other person. For example, the BDSM lifestyle is large in the straight culture however, it is also hugely popular in the gay culture to often with groups of individuals who devote their whole way of life to this. In essence however, many of the gay subcultures are no different to that of their straight counterparts the only difference being, the individuals who practice them, are gay.

    Gay Subcultures – An Overview.

    For many webmasters who currently work in the straight market their first attempt and even their second attempt at marketing to the gay lifestyle may fail however, many do not realize the simplest of rules when it comes to marketing products and services to gay individuals online, you need to be as, if not more, detailed and direct to gay surfers than straight, give them something they can find anywhere at anytime and the chances are they will not buy however, give them something that suits their tastes perfectly and you have a customer for life.

    Article written by Lee

  • Outsourcing – Becoming More Profitable Online

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Employment | Response: 0

    As webmasters we already do a lot of outsourcing from hosting our sites to design and marketing to getting traffic which we send to our sponsors. However, many of us are missing out on opportunities to outsource even more of our work and, by missing these opportunities, we are losing money.

    Outsourcing work can consist of anything from translations, design, scripting, marketing, seo, site submissions and pretty much anything and everything in between.

    However, before we outsource some work to others there are several factors that need to be taken into consideration these are what will be addressed in this article.

    Cost.

    Ensuring we work ‘cost-effectively’ is one thing we all want to do, we need to make a profit whilst still being able to develop our business further. One good way to find out if the costs of outsourcing outweighs the cost of keeping the work in house to make a simple list of both the time and financial involvements both in and out of house. For example, in house you may have employees that need paying to do the work, you will almost certainly need to spend a lot of your own time on the project and, more likely than not you will need to research the work you want to undertake, all of this can become costly when looked at in detail a good reason to outsource your work to another company or individual.

    Benefits.

    How will outsourcing benefit you and your business? As with the cost example above make a list of things that will benefit you from the time saved on the project to the monetary benefits of outsourcing the work and the completion times often, by outsourcing your work you can have it done in much less time than if you handled it yourself ‘in-house’ so to speak.

    Flexibility.

    What are the indirect benefits of you outsourcing your work? Not necessarily the money saved but more along the lines of time management. if you give a designer a list of ideas and suggestions you WANT your work to have, chances are, they will get it right the first time whereas, if you amble along experimenting with what you actually create you may, in effect, take much longer to complete the task in hand. By saving yourself time what else can you get done, whether it is building more sites or marketing your existing sites further the indirect benefits all weigh up more often than not, these benefits will be favorable to outsourcing the work.

    Risk.

    This is probably THE most important thing to take into account when considering outsourcing your work, what happens if, you pay for the outsourcing and, overnight the company who is doing the work for you goes out of business? What happens if someone you have in your employ decides that they would rather be doing the work rather than you outsourcing it? Financially can you afford to outsource the work? All of these factors need to be considered before undertaking any form of outsourcing.

    Basically, what I am trying to tell you is that, if you spend a few moments actually running the numbers as oppose to the ideas you have in respect of your workload you will see that outsourcing can be come a valuable asset to your business and, more importantly, your bottom line profits.

    Article written by Lee

  • Foreign Search Engines

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

    ‘Suchmaschine’ | ‘Moteurs de Recherche’ | ‘Motores de Busqueda’ ? Or, to you and I ‘Search Engines’.

    Well what if I told you there was a huge chunk of the market (again I know) that your missing out on because, frankly, you haven’t attempted to get into it?

    What is this wondrous market? Simple.. Foreign search engines.

    I would say that AT least 80% of my traffic comes from the search engines, Google, AltaVista, etc, etc however a large portion of this se traffic is from countries whose language even some of my translators don’t know.

    So, how do you get the foreign search engine traffic? again that’s simple, there are several ways to get it, you can:

    1) Submit to your favorite search engine and wait, and wait, and wait… or 2) You can submit to your favorite search engine then, instead of leaving the page, go to the foreign equivalent of that same search engine!

    Guess what, if you submit to Google in English then go to google.de the submit form asks you exactly the same information as your submission on the English form would do…so, ya don’t even have to speak German to submit to google.de, isn’t that handy?

    In my previous article a few weeks ago I mentioned what countries were top of the ranks for surfers in Europe, well, this week I want to run some figures past you again about which search engines ‘seem’ to be sending a decent amount of foreign traffic.

    So here goes, we have the top 6 search engine referrals for December 2001:

    http://www.crawler.de/

    http://www.lycos.de/

    http://www.infoseek.com/Home?pg=Home.html&sv=ES

    http://search.yahoo.co.jp

    http://www.excite.co.uk/

    http://www.infoseek.com/Home?pg=Home.html&sv=FR

    As you can see infoseek (which has an English version) sends me lots of foreign traffic although, in reality, this is only for English pages, don’t ask me why but I guess the Spanish and French surfers love surfing for porn in English..

    On a separate note, for those of you who are either to stubborn, lazy or, stupid to try submitting to the foreign search engines we will shortly be releasing a foreign search engine submission chart on European Webmasters which will tell you step by step what to put in each of the boxes on the submission form, so even you have no excuse!

    Of course, the foreign traffic is going to mean you will need to pay more attention to your sites, perhaps offering these surfers a site in their language to sign up to or, before sending them off to a dialer, trade these foreign surfers off for some ‘English speaking ones via the use of a toplist. Admittedly, I haven’t found sending them to a toplist productive myself however, you might get different results to me.

    Basically, if you start to get the traffic, hell, the chances are your getting foreign traffic now and don’t even know about it… USE IT!

    If you want to ask questions specific to the foreign market that’s what our forums on EW are there for, we would gladly spend all day everyday answering your foreign traffic questions however, as yet, very few US based webmasters are taking the initiative to investigate further this GREAT source of revenue so, I guess ill just have to go back to my foreign search engines and get a bigger chunk of the ever increasing foreign porn surfer for myself.

    Article written by Lee

  • Mirroring Adult Sites – Stage Two

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

    Ok, in stage 1 of this tutorial we learnt the basic ‘setup’ for our multisite generation now we have to start putting the rest of our puzzle together.

    At this stage in the tutorial we should now have a 50 pic free site, all of the images are in the appropriate folder on our HD along with the HTML in their own folder. If you have not already done so, you need to ensure that when you add/added the links to your individual HTML pages that you call the images like this:

    /FreeSite/Images/pic1.jpg

    The Thumbnails like this:

    /FreeSite/Images/Thumbs/thumb1.jpg

    The gallery links like this:

    /FreeSite/Galleries/gallery1.html

    And the FPA from the warning page like this:

    /FreeSite/FPA/fpa.html

    Why are we calling the links like this and not like, http://www.mydomain.com/FreeSite/Galleries/gallery1.html I hear you ask, well the answer is simple, in order to use this site TEMPLATE over and over again, we need to ensure that there is a standard way of calling the links, this way, once we decide duplicate this site on a different domain, all we do is upload the folder to our server with a different set of images and we have another set of sites built.

    Ok, we now have our free site but, we have some empty folders that need filling up, here is how we are going to achieve that.

    What we now have to do is re-open the Gallery Pages, DO NOT change the image calls or the thumbnail calls however, what you will need to do is select 15 TGP’s that you would like to submit to, download the recip buttons for these TGP’s and save them in the /FreeSite/Images/Recips/ folder.

    Now we have the gallery pages open we need to modify them like this..

    Take the top text link that you created and replace that with a 3 cell table. In this table for the first gallery, you need to call the first 3 recip links for the TGP’s you want to submit to and link them to the appropriate recip url for each of the TGP’s again, calling the recip images like this, /FreeSite/Recips/recip1.gif. Also, you will need to modify the text link at the bottom of your gallery pages, I would suggest creating an 8 cell table, containing 8 niche text links, four of which should go to your Single-Site FPA’s (as created for the surfer trap) and the remaining 4 text links should go directly to your sponsors site tour page.

    Now save this newly created page as tgp1.html in the /FreeSite/TGP/ folder. Do the above again for the remaining 4 gallery pages but calling a different set of recip links each time. each time you modify a gallery page save it in the /FreeSite/TGP/ folder so gallery2.html would be renamed to tgp2.html, Gallery 3 would be called tgp3.html and so on.

    What you should now have is a single 50 pic free site with 5 galleries of 10 pics, all pics going to the larger image on a HTML page and, 5 TGP galleries.

    This is as far as we go with the tutorial today however, in the next stage we will continue to fill in the rest of the puzzle pieces.

    Article written by Lee

  • The Successful Marketing Approach

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

    In today’s volatile and competitive marketplace, the strategic manager must possess a sophisticated perspective regarding creating and maintaining the overall image of the organization.

    In order to accomplish this goal, marketing must play a key role, regardless of the company’s size.

    To be truly effective, a company must be up-to-date with it’s marketing ‘psyche’. In bygone times, companies concentrated on items it was able to produce, not on customer needs and wants. This type of outdated thinking will most likely lead to a rather short lifespan.

    Today, marketing is a holistic approach that is often more complex than first thought.

    What Is Marketing?

    It is a process through which an organization identifies a need and then provides a means of filling or satisfying that need.

    Customers are more informed and savvy than in the past and they expect more – in the quality of both products and service. Today’s customer is not willing to merely sit passively by and consume – he wants a voice and relationship with the companies with whom he chooses to conduct business.

    Marketing is not deciding where and how to advertise. This is only one component of the process. Effective managers make sure they have a well-defined and mapped out strategy that deals with the entire lifecycle of the process. The most successful companies have a keenly honed customer-centric marketing model.

    This model outlines a process that allows the company to determine the needs and wants of a “target market” and deliver this while instilling in the customer the belief their company’s ‘satisfaction solution’ is better value than the competition’s.

    The first step in a marketing strategy involves the identification of unmet needs within a market and delivering/developing products and/or services to meet those needs.

    Define Your Market First.

    Is it a business-to-consumer company, a business-to-business company, or both? Regardless of the target(s) a company must be able to clearly identify a common need amongst a large portion of this market, as well as that portions propensity and ability to buy that product or service.

    Once the target market has been identified it is time to do some analysis. The depth, complexity and related cost should remain proportionate to the ratio of overall business this product or service is anticipated to generate.

    Analyze Internally.

    What will be involved in creating this product or service? Is there access to all of the necessary components? How much volume can be handled? Are their efficient distribution channels? What will it cost to make or provide this? The next phase is an external analysis that looks at specific trends within the target market. With this information in hand, a company is then able to make an informed decision as to whether or not it is feasible to proceed. Now that the target market has been identified and the operational side has been flushed out, a strategy can be addressed. How a company decides to communicate its message should be in correlation to its overall marketing strategy. Whether the most effective method of conveying you message to the target audience is through traditional advertising channels, the Internet or more innovative activities, it should be apparent from the prior analysis. The final phase of a marketing strategy should examine the component of customer relationship management: What processes are in place to service our customers? How do we ensure a positive resolution of customer complaints? What performance measurements will be used to determine how well clients are being serviced? And, most importantly: How will customer relationships be maintained so they will do business with us again and again? By developing a comprehensive strategy that spans the entire lifecycle of new to repeat client, a company will find it is able to effectively address the present needs and wants of it’s target markets, as well as being able to incorporate new areas as they develop. Article written by Lee

  • The Ins and Outs of European Domain Name Registration

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Domain Names | Response: 0

    A domain name is more than just your online adult business address; it’s a crucial aspect of your online adult business. It is closely linked to the way a surfer thinks of and, more importantly, remembers your site. In many European countries, domain names that end with a country code carry more weight with the Internet-surfing public than dot.com domain names. So, if you want to have of a chance of selling to a foreign adult surfer in a European country you might consider registering a European country code top-level domain name (ccTLD) for your site.

    Obtaining a ccTLD could potentially:

    • Increase your chance of getting listed on a national search engine. Many national search engines require a company to be local, however that may be defined, to be listed with them.
    • Get you a higher ranking with a local search engine.
    • Make your business more accessible to customers and vendors in a specific country.
    • Make your business seem more local and thus help overcome any fear local customers might have of buying from a non-European outfit.

    What Is a ccTLD, Anyway?

    Generic top-level domains (TLDs) are not linked to any geographic area. They include the well-known and familiar .com, .org, and .net domain names. In contrast to these generic TLDs, there are ccTLDs: Each country and territory in the world has its own TLD. They include, for example, .at for Austria, .be for Belgium, and so on.

    Essentially the domain name policies regulate who can register what type of a domain. In principle, nearly anyone can register a generic TLD.

    It is important to keep in mind that you might lose a domain name you recently registered in Europe if another company can prove in court that the name is rightfully theirs. If the court decides that the plaintiff has a right to it, you will lose that domain name however, I am assuming that nobody reading this is going to be considering registering ccTLD’s for the purpose of cyber squatting.

    Each country or region has its own rules, policies, and regulations about who can register a ccTLD, and how. Common restrictions include the requirement to be a local registered company or to have registered the company and/or company name as a national trademark in a specific country. However, some countries are less strict about who can register. As always, it depends on the country and its particular rules.

    The table below is meant to give you easy access to the information you will need when you are ready to register a European domain name for your site.

    Here is an explanation of the categories used in the domain registration table:

    • Country: Name of the country you might want to obtain a domain name for your business in.
    • Name of domain: The ccTLD (a two-letter abbreviation).
    • Must be local: This can mean that your business presence, your company’s physical presence, or your trademarks must be local.
    • More domains possible: Some countries limit the number of domains that you can register.
    • Same name as owner: Some countries require that the registered name be the same name as the owner’s company name or trademark.
    • Signed contract: Some domain name registration agencies demand a written, signed declaration or contract to be sent in. If in doubt, read up on specific rules relative to the specific domain name registrars you will be using.
    Country Name of Domain Must be local More domains possible Same name as owner Signed contract
    Austria .at No Yes No No
    Belgium .be Yes Yes No Yes
    Denmark .dk No Yes No No
    Finland .fi Yes No Yes No
    France .fr Yes Yes No No
    Germany .de Yes Yes Yes No
    Greece .gr Yes No No No
    Iceland .is Yes No Yes Yes
    Ireland .ie No Yes No No
    Italy .it No Yes No Yes
    Luxembourg .lu No Yes No No
    Netherlands .nl Yes Yes No Yes
    Norway .no Yes No Yes Yes
    Portugal .pt Yes Yes No No
    Spain .es Yes No No No
    Sweden .se Yes No Yes Yes
    United Kingdom .uk No Yes No No

    Now you can see the possibilities available in respect of registering more than just dot.com addresses perhaps you might like to find a country you would want to gain some extra traffic from and see about registering a ccTLD and developing it.

    Also, you could improve your chances of gaining additional traffic to your new ccTLD domain by having some country specific language on that domain, again, how your site comes across to the surfer is just as important than the domain and, there are plenty of Adult Site Translation companies out there who can assist you with this part of the ccTLD development.

    There are, of course, other ways to gain additional foreign surfers other than just registering a ccTLD for example, on European Webmasters we have a domain name registration section that will allow you to translate specific text in order to gain type in foreign traffic on dot.com TLDs perhaps, if you don’t want to or, cant register a ccTLD in the country of your choice you might like to take this approach at gaining additional foreign traffic to your sites.

    I hope this article has given you a little insight into the varieties of domain names available in and around Europe and that you might just register a domain and see for yourself how profitable the European markets are.

    Article written by Lee

  • Marketing to Foreign Surfers

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

    Marketing to Foreign Surfers.

    What would you do if I told you that there are 3 million plus new surfers last year that you did not market too? You probably marketed your product or adult site to those that could read English well enough to be searching with English terms. How about the growing numbers of surfers with English as their second language?

    According to Nielsen/Net Ratings, from September 2000 to 2001, Italy’s online population grew by 3,540,970 users: about one new user every ten seconds. Italy is just one of the non-English speaking countries that is coming online at lightening fast speed.

    Are you relying on these surfers searching for your English keywords? Are you thinking that every language uses the words “porn and hardcore” and what about the finer niches like “bisexual and titties”? The best conversion is with newbie surfers just online for the first time and wanting to see adult sites and products. Those that have been around a while find out about the plethora of free porn. This means that websites do their best marketing with search engine placements of their main sites or feeder sites. If you are on your money, you are trying to work every engine for every related keyword. Now think of the keywords that you could be going for in all the worlds’ languages!

    Do a bit of research in some of the common languages. If I was Italian and new to the net, the first place I would be searching is in an Italian search engine. Go to http://arianna.iol.it/ and search using the word porn and you will find 10 listings come up all in Italian. Not one is English. Even http://it.yahoo.com/ Yahoo Italia does NOT serve up your English porn site in its results.

    So how do you get a piece of this pizza pie? You need at least a doorway written in Italian. You need to visit a site like http://www.adult-site-translation.com/ and find out how affordable it is for a doorway page that is put together by a foreign translator. Not only is the text for your doorway sites or even complete tours with the proper keywords but the graphics are redone where necessary. You really cannot rely on a text translator. We all have been on a site where it was obvious that the webmasters first language was NOT English and felt bad for their awkward use of words. This is not how to make a sale.

    You need to be careful that you choose a professional service for your translating needs. You need to know that the translators are top notch and can not only translate your existing page/site keeping your marketing angles but they can also advise you on such things as proper wording and what a surfer from that culture would find erotic. Languages do not translate word for word. A service like Adult Site Translation has hired translators who also know how to market adult sites. They will tell you the search terms your page should be listed under and can assist you with foreign search engine optimization.

    Remember the days where you were the only site in a category or niche? It was like being a pioneer and it was very lucrative. Do you want to be first to market to these growing pockets of millions of new surfers? There are new frontiers out there and finally sites like Adult Site Translation can assist you to conquer them successfully!

    Article written by Susanna

  • SMS Marketing To MMS Marketing – WAP Billing Solutions

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Billing Solutions | Response: 0

    MMS Billing (Multimedia Message Billing) is going to be one of the next huge leaps forward for the online industry’s, with more and more surfers firing up their cell phones to visit our sites and properties we need to start looking at the ways in which we can ultimately bill these types of customer and this is where MMS Billing comes into play.

    MMS Billing – What Is It?

    MMS Billing is a method of charging surfers using cell phones for access to your sites and services. Much like how the SMS Billing model works however, rather than solely billing for text or images, you can utilize MMS Billing on a wide range of rich media applications including movies, sound and, flash applications.

    MMS Billing – What Are The Costs?

    The costs for MMS Billing can vary greatly depending on your MMS Billing provider however, as a rough guideline, you can expect to pay anywhere between $0.10 and $0.50 per purchase through the MMS Billing method.

    MMS Billing – An Overview.

    MMS Billing is still in its infancy across the internet however, with more and more sites becoming WAP enabled and, more and more surfers turning their cell phones on to browse our websites this billing model will soon grow to what the current SMS Billing model is today.

    Article written by Lee

  • Personality Plus

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

    I have been selling to the gay market now for 5 years. And one trend I have noticed that works best in ANY marketing attempt is to make it personal as possible. Now this is true in any marketing venue; however, the same tactics of Personality I have used in the straight market were not enough for the gay market.

    The gay market is better served when the surfer BELIEVES, not just feels, you know him and know what he wants. This goes back to my previous comments on knowing your niche.

    I really believe that the “1 to 1 dialogue” you can have with your surfers is more important than just high traffic averages when making sales. Giving him the sense that he matters to you, a sense of community, a sense that you are here just for him is all accomplished by adding your own personality to your work.

    In many avenues I have said “talk to the surfer”. I have said it so much you are all probably sick of hearing it. But it WORKS. With many of my straight sites, I attempt to speak quickly and to the point, because while I know straight people I don’t know what is going to fly all the time. In those cases, though, instead of saying, “Click Here for Great Sex Sites” I will probably phrase it as “The best site on the net and Cheaper than a six pack of beer”. Am I being heterophobic with my lack of enthusiasm? Maybe. It is how I approach it and it does work.

    On my side of the fence, I would talk the talk, differently. While the basics remain the same, “talk to the surfer”, I approach it in a more personal manner… Again, instead of using “Click Here”, I would go with “Hmm, Hmm … I followed this yummy thing to Absolutely Male. I have to tell you, I had more fun here than anywhere else on the net. Made my toes curl and then some…” Enough of that now, huh? = )

    I do not stop at just the marketing. I do the same thing when it comes to the body of my sites. I will add statements that include a recent trip to the local gay watering hole, the men I saw on the beach, my own experience with a man in uniform, and so on depending on the theme of the site. And, yes since I’m not a total sex fiend, I do make things up as I go along ; )

    Recently, I have received letters from webmaster who have worked the personality approach. They have found a lot of success. However their bigger complaint was they now had a lot more bookmarkers than before. That’s great, as far as I’m concerned. This means they have been to glean a following of loyal surfers. And if you can work it, it is that loyalty that can make a HUGE difference. I think I will save how to work that loyalty factor for a future article or post.

    The gay adult net has gone full circle. In the beginning, personality was the KEY to success. Then we followed suit with most of the adult web and moved away from it to a “here’s some porn now buy something” attitude. Right now, when the going seems to be getting tough, our surfers are looking for the exact thing that made us different to begin personality and community.

    Article written by Gary-Alan

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