Editor's Note: This is the 11th in a 12-part, hands-on series about the wonderful world of adult Website building. The resulting site will have been built by real people who have no Web-building experience and no inside experience in the adult industry.
There names have been changed to protect their real identities and their mainstream business interests.
So ... the site's up, it looks good, everything's been checked and re-checked to make sure it all works, META tags have been massaged, the URL's been submitted to every conceivable search engine and directory.... Now, at long last, comes time for relaxing and watching the traffic - and hopefully the money - roll in, right?
Wrong.
One of the biggest mistakes new Webmasters make is pouring everything they have - time, energy, heart, content, bandwidth, and storage space - into a brand new Website. While a Website that's going to be profitable should be teeming with all of these things, it's not necessary for Webmasters to use up every resource at their disposal prior to opening day.
Because the level of competition on the adult Web is staggering, sites that hope to be successful have to be prepared to maintain a freshness about themselves from the get-go. In Web parlance, that means new content should be added frequently, and the look and feel of the site should be updated as traffic warrants. There are no hard and fast rules governing how often these things should be done, but there are a few pretty good rules of thumb, and they apply equally to free and pay sites.
As should have become more than painfully evident by now, traffic makes or breaks any adult Website. Traffic isn't a vague number in a server's log files. The number represents people, and people, above all else, want the adult Web to entertain them. Consider this: How entertaining is a stale site? Will users, or even paying members, come back for more if there's never anything new or different available? Probably not. After all, even the most salacious porn can become boring after the 15th or 20th viewing.
Pay site owners usually find themselves in a constant scramble for new content. Whether they create it themselves or buy it from someone else, most successful pay site owners update their content at least twice each month, and many update weekly. That kind of conscientiousness comes at a price that can be steep: Whether a pay site owner shoots, records, or otherwise produces his or her own content or buys it from someone else, the finished product requires a significant expenditure, and the result of that expenditure must be priced at retail so that it sells at a rate that justifies the creative expense. Only experience - trial and error - can guide a Webmaster in that regard. Watch server logs to see which parts of a site visitors seek out most often (and revisit most often) to determine what kinds of content most strike members' fancies, then concentrate on adding that type of content in greater proportion than the other types of content that are offered.
For example, say Webmaster A owns a bondage and domination site that includes sections depicting "adult babies," watersports, females training male submissives, and over-the-knee spanking play. When the site debuts, all the sections contain roughly the same amount of content, and the same amount of content is added to each section during the first two or three updates. During this same period of time, however, the server logs indicate the femdom section is receiving about 50 percent of the site's unique visits each day. Webmaster A, therefore, would be well advised to spend about half of the updating budget on the femdom area of the site, because that is the content that seems to attract and hold the majority of his members. The other 50 percent of the budget can be split equally among the other sections, or apportioned in accordance with visitor interest as indicated by the server logs.
Bear in mind that a pay site may not see an appreciable profit for as many as six months after launch, but that's no reason not to update it. In fact, just the opposite may be true. Competition among pay sites is fierce, and without a respectable amount of content that is freshened on a regular basis, a new pay site stands very little chance of becoming profitable. Attracting new members, of course, is one key to success, but virtually all successful pay site Webmasters agree that the real secret to success is maintaining the members a site already has - and that can't be done with stale, old content.
For free sites, the focus is a bit different. Although some free site Webmasters offer unique, original content on their pages, most obtain their content from the sponsor programs they promote. For free sites, the focus should be on attracting traffic and sending it along as soon as possible to a program that pays. This is not to say that freshening content is not advisable for free sites; it's just not as important as it is for pay sites, because the majority of surfers attracted by free sites are likely to be one-time visitors (except in the case of specialized sites like link lists). Server logs are equally as important for free sites, however. In addition to revealing what kinds of content surfers seek, they also indicate which banners and text links "pull" best for sponsors and which sponsors attract the most attention from visitors (and therefore may generate the most income for the free site's owner). Free site Webmasters who pay close attention to the information in their server logs have an advantage when it comes to funneling surfers to profitable sponsor programs. By rotating banners and adding and dropping sponsors as indicated, free site Webmasters can maximize their income with minimum financial investment.
Regardless of the type of site, Webmasters should consider updating the look and feel of their sites periodically. Again, clues about timing can be gained from server logs: When traffic declines, a facelift may be in order. The change may be something as simple as a navigational overhaul, or as extensive as an entirely new look. Remember, though, that facelifts don't just include the look and feel of individual pages. They also should include META tag adjustment and resubmission to search engines and directories.
How often should facelifts occur? That's an extremely subjective decision. Some Webmasters overhaul their sites three or four times a year, or whenever a new idea strikes them. Others consider the task too onerous and their traffic too stable to attempt making major changes more than once or twice a year.
Next time, we'll review everything from the beginning and try to answer some of the nagging questions that always seem to crop up just about the time one thinks he or she finally has a handle on the business of adult Webmastering.
Next: Looking Back, Peering Ahead.
Previously: Copping Traffic.
