Records Keeping Compliance Checklist for European Content Providers

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: 2257 | Response: 0

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

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

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

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

a.     Date Of Birth

b.     Legal Name

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

d.     Social Security Number

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

f.       Address, phone and other contact information

g.      The model’s signature

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

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

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

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

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

Article written by Lawrence Walters

Gay Adult Marketing 101

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

There is a myth out there that gay traffic is hard to convert because a gay surfer is reluctant to buy. This isn’t so. Conversions come down to two things:

• The gay surfer is discriminating; a membership to a site that has exactly what we want
• The gay surfer is loyal; I, believe, this comes from our experience as a community. When a Gay surfer decides to purchase a membership, it’s typically for a longer period of time.

This is evident with the better Gay Pay Sites; conversions may be lower than a straight hardcore site however, membership tend to be longer than the industry average. The gay surfer is discriminating; we look for a long-term membership with a site that has we want whether it’s teens, bears, amateurs, etc.

With that idea, I always advocate that age-old niche free site philosophy use a variety of sponsor programs on your sites. Typically, my free sites will have one main sponsor (I use Quality Males) then I’ll break my other banner slots down one Teen site, a Twink site and maybe a product like Viagra. But this will vary depending on the “flavor” or “personality” of your site – if you have a gay leather site, my main sponsor will be a Leather sponsor or product, with a variety of other sponsors (one mega site, a teen site, and maybe an adult toy store).

One marketing option, I tend to see working well is the full-page ad vs. only banners. I, honestly, do not know whether it’s a quality issue, a larger ad or the surfer’s disgust with banner ads, but it works well in our market.

One thing that experience has proven to me, it makes no difference whether you’re a webmaster to gay or straight traffic, you need to analyze your traffic. If you’re sending traffic out to sponsors and your not seeing the conversions, maybe you need to really look who your surfers are. If you’re lucky enough to know who your surfers are, then look for a specialty sponsor (whether partnership or click-thru program). It’s all a matter of finding the right sponsor programs and tweaking your site (and we all know how that can be). Don’t be afraid to experiment. It’s the long term that we need to be looking at. Remember that this isn’t “Who wants to be a Millionaire is 30 days or less”.

Gay traffic isn’t difficult to manage as many people think. It’s a matter of patience and understanding your market. And the best way to understand that market, is to ask a successful webmaster in the gay adult market..

Article written by Gary-Alan

Building A Surfer Trap – Stage 1

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

The last 2 weeks I have had a LOT of webmasters email and ICQ me regarding traffic and, not getting any sales.

So, I thought it would be a good idea to make a step by step tutorial on building your own surfer trap.

Now these are some of the arguments I have heard why people haven’t already built one over the last few weeks…

* To complicated to follow.
* I want surfers returning to my site.
* Don’t have the time.

The first two however seem to be the ones that I hear over and over again.

First of all, a surfer trap IS NOT complicated, in fact, it is probably one of, if not THE easiest type of site to build.

Secondly, Why get a surfer visiting your site over and over again if they are not paying for trial memberships? All you are doing is wasting your bandwidth.

Thirdly, A surfer trap can be built over a period of time, my very first trap was built within 1 hour my next was built in a day and my next one was built in a week.

So onto the start of building our surfer trap…

The first thing that I want you to do is to look at the Multi-Site FPA’s that ARS in the marketing section and choose ONE of them.

Download it, optimize the keywords on the FPA, make sure you add meta tags, titles descriptions and Alt tags on all images.

Once you have done this, you now need to search through ALL of the single site FPA’s and download and optimize one for each of the ARS sites that you have on your Multi-Site FPA. (Even the gay sites!)

This should take you 2-5 minutes for EACH FPA, any longer than that and you are doing TOO much work!

Once you have all of the single FPA’s downloaded, optimized and uploaded onto your server that is the first stage completed.

Article written by Lee

Making Money From Adult Webmaster Referrals

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: General | Response: 0

One method of income generation that is very rarely talked about in the industry is that of the webmaster, from the new webmasters to the adult industry right up to those who have been in the biz some time.

One of the easiest ways to generate ‘long term’ income is by referring webmasters to programs using your own linking (referral) codes.

However, this is for some a huge step out of their everyday site building even though it shouldn’t be.

This is what we will investigate in this article.

By now we should at least have a fair few sites online and getting surfer traffic but, how many of us get traffic from other webmasters and don’t even know about it?

The chances are, if you submit a site to ANYWHERE you will at least get one webmaster hit to it regardless of whether it is a webmaster of a TGP, Links List, Dmoz Editor etc these are all potential money makers for you.

One of the easiest ways to make money from other webmasters is to simply have a link on each and every site you build in text that says ‘webmasters’ this should be linked to a single page on your domain with a listing of various affiliate programs you use or can recommend.

Often placing a button or a banner on this page for each of the referral programs will work much better for you as the webmaster can actually see a little more information about the sponsor you are trying to make them join.

We all know of some of the big sponsors like ARS, Topbucks, Sic Cash etc etc but, what about the smaller programs that, perhaps not many webmasters know about, these would be the ideal types of sponsor to use on your webmaster page.

However, in addition to the affiliate programs you could also recommend hosting companies, content providers etc etc for example, the following companies have referral programs that you could use on this page:

Content Providers:

http://content.xphotography.com
http://matrixcontent.com
http://pixmasters.com

Hosting Providers:

http://webair.com

Message Forums:

http://arsresources.com/forum/
http://xnations.com

Traffic Generation:

http://adultbuttonexchange.com
http://pornclient.com

As you can see from the small list above, you could have more than one way for webmasters to make you some additional profits in the form of either, cold hard cash or, from some of the places, additional traffic to your sites.

Hopefully list brief article will have given you some ideas as to how you can make some additional money from webmasters visiting your site and, don’t forget, once you have the page linked on your site, it will, inevitably get into the search engines, so keyword the page up and you might start generating more webmaster traffic than you could imagine.

Article written by Lee.

What’s A CHMOD?

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

CHMOD is another name for setting the permissions of files on your server.

All UNIX based web servers understand the concept of permissions. these are broken down into three distinct areas.

Permissions for the person who OWNS the file.
Permissions for the group (all users are members of one or more groups).
Permissions for everyone else.

Permissions are listed one of two ways either using numbers such as 755 or, using letters such as rwx-xr-x however they both mean the same thing.

The first number or first group of three letters stands for the permissions of the owner (IE 7 or rwx).
The second number or second group of letters stands for the permissions of the group (IE 5 or xr).
The third number or third group of letters stands for the permissions of everyone else (IE 5 or x).

The way the system works is as follows:

1 = x = you are able to execute (run) this program.
2 = w = you are able to write to this file.
4 = r = you are able to read the contents of this file.

so if you add it up rwx = 7.

So, in the example given above (755 or rwx-xr-x) the owner is allowed to read and write the file AND execute it.
The group is allowed to execute and write to the file.
Everyone else can execute the file.

We hope this gives you a little more insight to how CHMOD’ing or, setting the permissions on your server can affect how files act.

Article written by Lee

Using .htaccess Effectively

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

The .htaccess file is an ASCII text document that can be placed in any directory on your site. It can be used to control access to files and directories, and customize some server operation in your site. A .htaccess file can be created in any word processor but must be saved as text only. You must use FTP software in ASCII mode to upload or edit your .htaccess file. For the examples provided here, place the .htaccess file in your root directory.

There are a variety of functions that you can control using .htaccess some of the more useful of these are explained below:

Custom Error Messages.

Add the following to the .htaccess file::

ErrorDocument 404 /notfound.html

After “ErrorDocument” specify the error code, followed by a space, and then the path and filename of the .html file you would like to be displayed when the specified error is generated, each specific error code is detailed below with the recommended codes to be used in the .htaccess file in bold :

200 OK
206 Partial content
301 Document moved permanently
302 Document found elsewhere
304 Not modified since last retrieval
400 Bad request
403 Access forbidden
404 Document not found
408 Request timeout
500 Internal server error
501 Request type not supported

Using the codes above your error section of the .htaccess file should look like this:

ErrorDocument 301 /notfound.html
ErrorDocument 400 /notfound.html
ErrorDocument 403 /notfound.html
ErrorDocument 404 /notfound.html
ErrorDocument 500 /notfound.html
ErrorDocument 501 /notfound.html

Redirect to a Different Folder.

Add the following to the .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/oldfolder(.*)$ /newfolder/$1 [R]

This redirects the user from /oldfolder/anyfile.html to /newfolder/anyfile.html, when the .htaccess file is uploaded to the otherwise empty “/oldfolder” directory.

Denying User Access.

Add the following to the .htaccess file:

<Limit GET>
order allow,deny
deny from 000.00.00.
deny from 000.000.000.000
allow from all
</Limit>

This is an example of a .htaccess file that will block access to your site to anyone who is coming from any IP address beginning with 000.00.00 and from the specific IP address 000.000.000.000 . By specifying only part of an IP address, and ending the partial IP address with a period, all sub-addresses coming from the specified IP address block will be blocked. You must use the IP addresses to block access, use of domain names is not supported

Redirect a Machine Name.

Add the following to the .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteBase /
# Rewrite Rule for machine.domain-name.net
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} machine.domain-name.net $
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !machine/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ machine/$1

This will redirect requests for the machine name machine.domain-name.net to the directory machine on the site domain-name.net.

Different Default Home Page.

Add the following to the .htaccess file:

DirectoryIndex filename.html

Then a request for http://domain-name.net/ would return http://domain-name.net/filename.html if it exists, or would list the directory if it did not exist.

To automatically run a cgi script, add the following to the .htaccess file:

DirectoryIndex /cgi-local/index.pl

This would cause the CGI script /cgi-bin/index.pl to be executed.

If you place your .htaccess file containing the DirectoryIndex specification in the root directory of your site, it will apply for all sub-directories at your site.

Preventing Hot Linking.

Add the following to the .htaccess file:

# Rewrite Rule for images
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} <URL of page accessing your domain>
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://<same as above URL>

You would replace the <URL of page accessing your domain> above with the domain name and path of the page that is referring to your domain. For example: www.theirdomain.com/users/mypage/

The RewriteCond directive states that if the {HTTP_REFERER} matches the URL that follows, then use the RewriteRule directive. The RewriteRule directive will redirect any reference back to the referring web page.

Using the above you should, safely be able to publish your sites on the internet knowing that you will not be privy to bandwidth thieves via hotlinking and also, that you will not lose any traffic through pages that are ‘not found’.

Article Written By Lee

Utilizing All The Content You Use On TGP Galleries!

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: TGP | Response: 0

Utilizing All The Content You Use On TGP Galleries!

For the last few months i have been experimenting with a few new (but old, if ya see what i mean) ideas.

Basically i have adapted Voltars 3x3x3 project slightly and incorporated it into the TGP/TGP2 game.

The results have given me some of the best sales ratios ever! We’re talking under 1:60 almost consistently across all sponsors!!

What you did is thus….

Design a NICE 15 pic tgp gallery in a table preferably four rows high and 5 columns across.

In the first row place one thumb in each cell (5 pics).
In the second row place one odd sized banner in the first cell and merge cells 2,3 , 4 and, 5.
In the cells you have merged place some descriptive text about the pics you are using in under two paragraphs and include a line of text where you MENTION the sponsors site name.
In row 3 place one thumb in each cell (5 pics).
in row 4 place on thumb in each cell (5 pics).
under the table place a juicy text link.
below this juicy text link leave a line or two and add a money bar (one row by three columns using a contrasting color to the background of your gallery page).
ALL pics go on html pages using the same layout as your main TGP page but, without the table included.
Repeat this process 4 times once for four different niches, saving each niche in their own sub folder for the main site i.e:

url/sub folder/niche 1
url/sub folder/niche 2
url/sub folder/niche 3
url/sub folder/niche 4

You should now have 4 TGP galleries using 15 pics on each in four niches (60 pics in total).

At the top of each of these main pages place a three cell one row table.

in this table use text links to describe each niche i.e:

Teen
Gay
Lesbian
Mature

in the template for the teen niche you use text for the gay, lesbian and, mature templates and link these to the appropriate TGP template.

This is where the fun begins…..

Take all four TGP niche galleries you have just made and do the following….

Delete the first row of cells (including pics) on all TGP galleries and save the new page layout in another folder using the same navigation structure as the original ie:

url/sub folder 2/niche1
url/sub folder 2/niche2
etc
etc

You should now have the following:

four TGP templates consisting of 15 pics each.
four TGP templates consisting of 10 pics each.

Again, link these new 10 pic templates to each other in the same way as you did the 15 pic templates.

Repeat this procedure to make the 10 pic TGP page using the original TGP page BUT, this time, delete the bottom row of cells.

You now have the following:

4 niche 15 pic TGP pages
4 niche 10 pic TGP pages
ANOTHER 4 niche 10 pic TGP pages

Still with me?

Its gets better….

Take your original 15 pic TGP template and do the following…

Delete the first and the third row of cells including all the pics and save them in ANOTHER folder using the same structure as before i.e:

url/sub folder 3/niche 1
url/ sub folder 3/niche 2
etc
etc

Again link these in the same way as before using the text links at the top of the pages.

What do you have now?

4 TGP pages using 15 pics
8 TGP pages using 10 pics
4 TGP2 pages using 5 pics

Can you guess what’s next?

Take that original template again and…

Remove the first and fourth row of cells do the same when you save it as you have done above…

What do you have?

4 TGP pages using 15 pics
8 TGP pages using 10 pics
8 TGP2 pages using 5 pics

Do it once more using the original templates but removing the final set of 2 rows of cells you now have…

4 TGP pages using 15 pics
8 TGP pages using 10 pics
16 TGP2 pages using 5 pics

In the root of the domain where you are going to upload these pages do the following…

Create a simplistic warning page… link this to a multi site FPA… this multi site FPA links to each of the niche (15 pic) TGP templates you have made.

On this same fpa place an email erotica collection box, banner exchange code and a toplist counter code along with an exit console going to a MC POTD program.

Now, what you need to do is start submitting these pages to the TGP/TGP2’s submit one a day or as many as you can until you have submitted them all.

Ok still here?

Next you have to duplicate ALL of the above again.

Place the duplicate of the above into a separate set of folders/sub domains etc.

On the new root you have created, link to another multi site FPA AND the first root index.html page.

You now have the makings of an EXCLUSIVE 3x3x3 TGP hub which, you can leave alone and submit all of the pages intermittently to any TGP/TGP2 you wish for LIFE!!

All the time you are adding new sections to it and building your link pop in the search engines because you are continually interlinking to each of the separate niche and relevant sub niche folders.

Of course, you NEED to get the meta’s sorted on the first main template for this to work but, if you change all subsequent meta descriptions etc you’ll have a very reasonable listing in Google for the relevant search terms

Article written by Lee

European Surfers – Porn High On The List!

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: General | Response: 0

Adult web sites were visited by 3.8 million home Internet users in the UK in June 2001, according to Internet monitoring company Net Value. This accounts for more than a quarter of the entire UK home Internet population.

UK visitors to adult websites spent more than 45 minutes on these sites each in June. Adult sites make up 41.2 per cent of all the sites visited in the UK with a significant audience. Students (23.2 per cent), manual workers (15 per cent), and professionals (12.8 per cent) are the largest groups of UK visitors to adult sites.

However Germany has the largest audience for online porn in Europe with more than 5.3 million Germans visiting an adult site in June. They also spent more time on these type of sites than any other nationality – each German visitor spent almost an hour on adult sites in June. Net Value data also showed that more than half (52.3 per cent) the websites visited in June by a significant number of German users were of an adult orientated nature.

Spain has the greatest proportion of visitors to pornographic sites – 40 per cent of Spanish home Internet users visiting a pornography site in June 2001.

“Pornography has become a lucrative online business, with many companies now recognizing it as a valuable additional revenue stream,” Net Value’s Alki Manias said. “And this would seem to be a stable business area – the popularity of online pornography continues unchecked.”

Adult sites are also popular amongst the earliest adopters of the Internet. People who first got online at home before 1997 account for 18.5 per cent of visitors to adult sites, though they only make up 14.1 per cent of the whole UK online population.

In the UK, Lastminute.com has just introduced an auction for adult toys and aids, whilst in Germany, Freenet.de and T-Online are also moving into the adult business.

The following charts detail various demographics relating to European surfers usage of adult sites:

Number of adult websites visited, June 2001

* Sites with a significant reach

UK visitors to adult websites by occupation, June 2001

As you can now see, we, as adult webmasters, have a considerable chunk of the online adult industry sitting in our laps and, we should concentrate on tapping into this market as more and more American companies are realizing the importance of these figures we will inevitably reach a stage where the European market will be passed across to our US counterparts.

Newbie Basics – The HTML Layout

Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

In this article we will look at some HTML tags that you will be using in every HTML document that you create. They are the base for every web page and are the essential pieces of HTML coding to ensure that your pages display correctly.

The Structure Tags.

Here is a look at the main structure tags. You will have to get used to these since you will be using them for all your pages.

We would suggest that you start by copy and pasting the structure into your document then creating my page once they’re in place.

Make it a habit to ensure that all surfers (regardless of their browsers) will be able to identify your creations. Each of these HTML tags are used in pairs with a start and ending tag in the same way as we mentioned in the previous chapter.

<HTML> </HTML>

The HTML tag tells the browser that your page is a valid HTML page.

The first and last tag on all your HTML documents will be this tag.

The complete HTML coding for the remainder of your document will be placed between these two HTML tags.

<HEAD> </HEAD>

This tag is used to reference your document.

<TITLE> </TITLE>

This tag enables you to give your HTML document a title.

It’s best to insert descriptive text about your page between these tags we will go into this in more detail in the later chapters.

This will also be the name that is displayed in a web browser’s system tray when someone bookmarks or adds your HTML document to their favorites list.

<BODY> </BODY>

The entire coding for your page goes in between these two tags.

Basically, they mark the beginning and end of your web page’s body. They are the essence of your HTML.

All your HTML tags in your document will be resting in between these two HTML tags.

Putting It All Together.

Now that the main tags have been outlined, it’s time to put them all together. Here is an example of what your HTML documents should look like.

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>The Title Of Your Html Document Goes Here</TITLE>
</HEAD>

<BODY>

All your other HTML tags and text goes here.
This Is the main body of your HTML document.
At the end of this text you will also see where the closing Body and HTML tags go.

</BODY>

</HTML>

This is the basic structure for any HTML document. Once these tags are in place, the rest is down to you. These Tags are not case sensitive. In other words, you don’t have to use all capital letters like we have in our Chapters. It won’t make a difference to the overall outcome of your tags. However we would recommend using Caps for your tags. It makes them a lot easier to distinguish from all the other sections of your HTML document coding, as you can see in the example above.

Article written by Lee

The Curse Of The Broken Image

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

At one time or another we have all done it, uploaded a new site only to find out that when we view the page in our browser one of the images are broken because we either didn’t link it properly or the filename wasn’t named correctly on our server.

We may think that this is a bad thing however, recent experimentation on my part has found quite the opposite.

We all search for new ways of getting the surfer to visit our sponsors in order to have them buy a membership and earn us a nice little slice of $$$ in the process but, what methods could we use that quite simply are overlooked?

One such method is that of utilizing broken images, lets be honest here, no-one wants broken image son their site, it makes the site look unprofessional but, lets think about this, on a page full of banners and graphics all nested together neatly on an FPA (Full Page Ad) what’s more likely to grab the surfers attention, a completely loaded heavy bandwidth graphic or a single solitary broken image placed in a such a spot the surfer actually notices it?

Makes you think doesn’t it. Our recent testing of this method has actually shown that our CTR (Click Through Ratio) rose slightly on a couple of sponsors we used this method on all of the sites in question had nice looking text and banners with corresponding thumbnails leading tot he full size image but, upon deliberately leaving an image off the server thus resulting in the ‘appearance’ of an erroneous broken graphic the spot where that image should have been was were a great deal of our click throughs came from.

I am not saying you should immediately go and delete all graphics from you pages but, a single, well placed broken image on a free site can work wonders in getting traffic off your site and to your sponsors pay site tour which ultimately, is what we want to happen at the EARLIEST possible time.

Article written by Lee