The key to success in online adult erotica is organizing your time so that it supports a variety of activities. As one Webmaster said, "For every beautifully-designed site with no traffic, there's some not-so-pretty site out there that's making piles of money." You want to be certain that you're doing everything that needs to be done - and in the right proportion - in order to make your site successful.
We spoke with a dozen top adult Webmasters and came up with 29 actions that you can take immediately to generate more income from your adult sites. If you've been in this business for more than a few weeks, you're probably already doing some of these things, but few adult Webmasters are running such perfect operations that they can't use a little advice.
As you look to implement these suggestions, keep this rule of thumb in mind: Top Webmasters spend around 50 percent of their time on getting traffic to their sites, 20 percent of their time on content development (graphics, site appearance, updating members areas, building free sites, etc.), and 30 percent on general business issues (looking at statistics, communicating with other Webmasters, following up on contacts from trade shows, maintaining relationships.)
All set? Good. Here's the list:
1. Submit to Search Engines.
Becoming more organized will help you manage this next strategy, which is to make certain that your site(s) consistently appear high on the lists of the major search engines. Every time you build a site - pay or free - you need to go through all the major search engines and submit your URL. But that's only the first step. In order to be certain that your site continues to appear, you have to go back every month and resubmit your site name to the search engines. Use whatever you need - database, day-minder, notepad, alarm clock, etc. - to make certain that you attend to this very important, yet often neglected path. Cost: Low. Potential Impact: High.
2. Bid on Search Engine Traffic.
A less expensive approach to purchasing traffic is to bid on search engine terms that might direct traffic to your site. For example, if you've got a site that focuses on sexy cheerleader photos, you can bid for the term "cheerleader" on search engines like Google (www.google.com). The way to do this without losing money is to open an account with $100 of credit in it. Because the click-throughs are likely to cost 8 to 11 cents each, you'll probably burn through the $100 in a single day. However, if you look at the source of your traffic, you should be able to determine whether that $100 resulted in more than $100 of revenue, in which case it would make sense to continue to buy traffic for that term. Cost: Medium. Potential Impact: High.
3. Purchase Qualified Traffic.
Depending upon your budget, purchasing traffic can be a good way to obtain qualified customers. However, there are a lot of scams out there that promise great traffic, but can't deliver. In particular, some traffic vendors have been known to offer qualified traffic at a bargain to a Webmaster, who experiences a high conversion rate and then signs up for a longer subscription, only to find that the traffic no longer converts. What's happening in this case is that vendor is directing the high quality traffic to other first-time traffic purchasers in order to sell a similar long term contract. Therefore, if you want to purchase traffic you should go to a reputable traffic vendor, such as Detour Interactive (www.detourinteractive.com) or TrafficDude.com. Cost: High. Potential Impact: High
4. Obtain Customers from Mailing Lists.
Some Webmasters have had success with NaughtyMail.com, which provides a double opt-in mailing list for consumers who know the kind of porn that they enjoy. The site sends out lists of recommended sites and other information to customers who are, by definition, pre-qualified because they have qualified themselves. One word of warning: Don't bother with people who promise hundreds of thousand of e-mail addresses for a small amount of money. They're just SPAM factories and are an excellent way to get you in trouble with the state of Oregon and AOL. And you won't get good traffic from them anyway. Cost: Medium. Potential Impact: Medium.
5. Start a Yahoo! Group.
A good way to create buzz for your sites (and consequent traffic) is to start a Yahoo! group (http://www.groups.yahoo.com) that's on subject matter that's similar to the content on your sites. A Yahoo! group is one e-mail address and Website that allows you to share photos and files, plan events, send a newsletter, stay in touch with "friends," and discuss various issues. For example, if your main content is teen sites, it would make sense to start a group that featured pictures of cheerleaders. Cost: Low. Potential Impact: Medium.
6. Implement a Tell-A-Friend Button.
Get your customers to do your selling for you by implementing a "tell-a-friend" button that allows users to send your URL in an e-mail to one or more of their friends. Since the e-mail will be coming from them (not from you), it's not SPAM, and thus you stay out of trouble. Furthermore, a Website recommendation coming from a friend is far more likely to convince the similar-minded friend to visit the site than any other kind of marketing. If you're feeling ambitious, you can even implement a feature where users who "tell-a-friend" get immediate access to some premium content. Of course, this will result in e-mail being sent all over the place, but since the e-mail isn't coming from your site (though the text has your URL automatically embedded in it), it isn't your problem. Cost: Low. Potential Impact: Medium.
7. Create More Free Sites.
The more free sites that you own, the more likely you are to get traffic to your pay site (if you have one) or to the pay sites that are sending you money for the traffic. If you're serious about this business, you probably want to be creating a couple of free sites a week - at a minimum. And remember, you have to submit all of those free sites to search engines, every month. However, this is a minor price to pay, in terms of time, for the end result, which is an ever-increasing amount of traffic. Cost: Medium. Potential Impact: High.
8. Redesign Your Tour.
The best way to increase your conversion rate is to make your tour into a top-quality experience. A good tour has fast-loading pages, excellent graphics, well-written text, customer testimonials, and (most importantly) evidence of frequent updates, such as a running list of updated content. Sites that do this effectively don't have to offer trial memberships because they convince the consumer, up front, that the content is worth the purchase price. By the way, don't bother including the kind of stupid hype that's on every Web page ("750,000 pictures! 1000s of MPEGs!"). Consumers have been burned so many times that they no longer believe such promises, even when they're true. You need to offer real, hard evidence that there is unique content that updates frequently. The key is to increase the perception of value for your site so that the surfer pulls out his credit card sooner rather than never. Cost: Medium. Potential Impact: Very High.
9. Create an Electronic Newsletter.
Here's a high-impact marketing trick that generally takes only an hour a week, but which can result both in attracting new customers and the retention of existing customers. An electronic newsletter is simply an e-mail with links to various content that might interest the customer (or prospective customer). To be effective, a newsletters must be "content-rich," meaning that it should have links to premium content - like a free movie or a couple of free galleries - all of which has links to the pay sites that will eventually create revenue. Beyond this, virtually anything of interest - movie reviews, local fetish events, etc. - can be included. The newsletter should be mailed every week to anybody who has agreed to receive it. Cost: Low. Potential Impact: High.
10. Harvest E-mail Addresses.
Anybody who touches your sites should be offered the opportunity to receive the newsletter (or some other kind of content) in return for an e-mail address. It's true that some of these e-mail addresses will be bogus, but many will be valid and, when developed appropriately, can represent a strong base of qualified users that are likely to buy either your content or content similar to your own. The value of harvested e-mails can be greatly increased through cross-referencing harvested e-mail from similar sites. If an e-mail address is harvest by three or more "teen" sites, for example, it's a pretty good bet that the e-mail belongs to an Internet user who will buy teen content at some point in his browsing career. Cost: Low. Potential Impact: Medium.
11. Implement Double Opt-In.
Customers hate SPAM. Because of this, SPAM almost never generates useful traffic or conversions. This means that any mass mailing (such as a newsletter) that comes from your site should only go to Internet users who have specifically requested it. Everything should be double "opt-in," meaning that the user must specifically click a button requesting the information, and then must respond to a test e-mail with a positive confirmation that the information is truly wanted. The double opt-in is important because pranksters often enter the e-mail addresses of co-workers, bosses, political figures, etc. It's also important to be certain that you have an "opt-out" link at the top and bottom of every mass mailing. Cost: Low. Potential Impact: Medium.
12. De-SPAM Your Mailings.
You should make it as easy as possible for users who don't want your material to get off your list. This increases the list's value because it limits the list to those who are most likely to buy. In addition, making it easy to cancel (along with the double-opt-in) keeps you out of trouble with the state of Oregon (which has banned certain kinds of SPAM) and America Online, which blocks IP addresses that are guilty of SPAM. Also, whenever you do a mass mailing, don't use a mailer that puts multiple e-mail addresses in the header. Your customers don't want a bunch of other customers knowing the kind of porn that they like. In addition, including multiple e-mails can also result in the harvesting of those addresses, reducing their overall worth to you because they'll likely be inundated with SPAM from other, less ethical, sources. Cost: Low. Potential Impact: Medium.
13. Leverage Your Newsletter.
Once you've established your newsletter and have a mailing list that's receiving it, you can use your newsletter as a negotiation tool to get additional traffic from other Webmasters. For example, if you've got a weekly mailing going to 25,000 qualified customers, you can offer a link in that mailing to another Webmaster in return for a button on the other site's exit console, or a feature position in the other site's newsletter. Cost: Low. Potential Impact: Medium.
14. Do an Alumni Mailing.
While there have been (so far as I've been able to find out) no actual market studies of the online porn consumer, there is significant anecdotal evidence that some customers join, cancel, and then rejoin a site. Interestingly, customers that rejoin a site are far more likely than first-timers to continue as a paid subscriber. Wasteland.com, for example, experiences a retention rate of 3.5 months for first-time conversions but eight months for customers who repurchase a subscription. Thus revisiting your "alumni" with a mailing - perhaps offering a subscription at a substantially reduced cost - is a good way to generate some quick additional traffic and also some long-term revenue. Note, however, that this technique only works if the content is high quality and if the site is capable of retaining customers. First-time customers who get burned by a crummy site are highly unlikely to revisit, much less pay for, its "premium" content. Cost: Low. Potential Impact: High.
15. Create a Feedback Mechanism.
Soliciting content requests from your customers is a great way to keep them involved with the site. Ideally, your customers should feel that they have some kind of influence over the content on the site, so that it will gradually migrate towards the content they prefer. What commonly happens in this case is that the customers develop a marked preference for a particular model or a type of scene. Adding more of such content helps assure that those customers will remain as active subscribers (or active re-visitors) to the site. Cost: Low. Potential Impact: High.
16. Create a Spokesperson.
Porn consumers are, by definition, seeking some kind of connection with the object of their affections. This is one reason why amateur sites - with their constant interaction between talent and customers - often prove quite successful. Large sites that draw from a stable of models would be well advised to pay a model to act as the site's spokesperson. The spokesperson should answer all customer e-mail, adding a personal touch and should (especially) handle all user complaints, especially if they're by telephone. You'll find that customers are less likely to send flame-a-grams (or attempt angry chargebacks on their credit cards) if they're interacting with somebody they'd like to boink. Cost: High. Potential Impact: High.
17. Create a Virtual Spokesperson.
If your site isn't the type that can afford to have a model to act as a spokesperson, then it's almost as good to create a fake or virtual spokesperson. ("Maybe better," says one Webmaster, "Most models have too much 'attitude' to be good at customer relations.") There's one large fetish site where the spokesperson, ostensibly a slight Asian female model, is in actuality a husky, bearded fellow who has a talent for answering e-mails that sound as if they came directly from the real item. Cost: Medium. Potential Impact: Medium.
18. Create a Forum Discussion.
Some sites have had luck retaining customers by hosting an online forum where members can discuss content. The idea is to create a feeling of community, which is particularly effective if the site appeals to a very fetish-oriented audience, especially those who might feel that their fetish is a bit too "out there" for the general public. However, it's important to closely moderate forum discussions and to make certain that they don't degenerate into a series of endless complaints about system performance, bad files, and so forth. (The best way to ensure that this doesn't happen is to have the spokesperson, virtual or otherwise, act as moderator.) Note, however, that it's generally a bad idea to make the forum discussion open to non-members. What often happens in this case is that some joker (who probably joined with a bogus credit card) will post his password, resulting in a spate of illegal logons. Cost: Low. Potential Impact: Medium.
19. Give Your Models Some Online Personality.
Yeah, we all know that "talent" is here today and gone tomorrow, and that the today's ultimate bimbette is tomorrow's overweight biker-chick. Despite this, customers want to believe that talent exists in a timeless state of beauty, is always available, and is always attractive. Some sites play on this belief by offering e-mail addresses for all of the models (which of course go to a central mail box), include "birthday" announcements on the Website, and other kinds of "personal" data that encourage continued contact. Keeping this fiction alive, though it can take time in the answering of "fan mail," etc., can pay off big in terms of increased retention. Cost: Low. Potential Impact: Medium.
20. Reward Your Loyal Customers.
A good way to retain customers for longer periods of time is to reduce their monthly fee after they've been on the site for a while. Some billing companies already have methods for automatically reducing charges after a certain amount of time. Be sure to tell your customers, when they're about to convert, that they're monthly bills will be reduced. Another way to accomplish this is to raise your prices for new customers, but leave your existing customers at the previous rate - and promise them that they'll keep the lower rate so long as they remain subscribers. Cost: High. Potential Impact: High.
21. Offer Free Access to Complainers.
Conventional wisdom used to be that it's a good thing if a customer forgets to cancel, and continues to run up subscription charges. That, however, is a recipe for chargebacks. What's much more sensible, in today's climate, is to offer free months or even a partial refund to customers who complain that they haven't accessed the site in several months. Anything that you can do - short of losing money, of course - that can reduce your chargeback rate is probably a good idea. After all, you've already gotten the subscription money and, who knows, the consumer might decide to remain as a paid subscriber after the "free" period has run out. Cost: Low. Potential Impact: Low.
22. Locate Unique Content.
Sure, you can go to a broker of mass-produced, non-exclusive content and get images for pennies. Unfortunately, such content is all over the Web and is highly unlikely to attract (or retain) customers. The truth is that there's nothing like unique content to raise the perceived value of a site in the eyes of the porn consumer; and perceived value translates to more traffic and more conversions. If you're really ambitious, you can always work with a professional model and camera crew to create unique content. However, a photo shoot can cost upwards of $2,000 and results in images that typically come in at around $2 an image. If this is too expensive, you can often find interesting new content by surfing the photographer boards like www.onemodelplace.com. The contributors to such sites include thousands of up-and-coming (no pun intended) glamour and erotic photographers, many of whom have yet to receive wide exposure. While the content is more expensive than the bargain basement stuff ($.50 to $.75 an image is not unusual), the work of an unknown photographer is still something that can differentiate your Website from the rest of the crowd. Cost: Medium. Potential Impact: High.
23. Add Some Pay-Per-View.
A good way get some extra financial kick into your site is to offer some pay-per-view content. The easiest way to do this is contact a reputable streaming media company and work with them to bring your content into a pay-per-view environment. One of the largest of these companies is AEBN (www.aebn.net) which currently represents over 300 studios, including some very large players. The company provides a customizable content delivery system so that adult Webmasters can locate the high quality content and create their own custom package. Cost: Medium. Potential Impact: High.
24. Convert Old Pay Content to "New" Free Content.
If you've got a pay site whose conversion rate is dwindling, you may be suffering from the fact that online erotic content continues to get better. This means that only the absolute best content is likely to generate conversions. If you can't afford to purchase high quality new content (perhaps because you're focusing on another segment), why not get some more life out of your old content by converting a poorly-converting pay site to a free site? Then e-mail your alumni with a message that the content (which before was pay) is now free, and then send the traffic (through buttons or exit consoles) to a pay site (either your own or through somebody's else's affiliate program). With persistence, you should be able to squeeze more value out of virtually ANY content. Cost: Low. Potential Impact: Medium.
25. Add a How-To Section.
This is a little-used, but very effective method of reataining customers on your site. If a porn consumer is interested in a particular kind of sex, you can bet that s/he's going to want to get his/her partner involved in it - if only in fantasy. Bondage sites should thus include how-to information on bondage and discipline, gang-bang sites should include information about how to get your spouse involved in swinging, etc. Of course, this will take some creative writing, but much of this material exists elsewhere on the Web and can be easily adapted to the needs of your site. (Be sure that you don't just steal content; you wouldn't want somebody to do the same to you, would you?) Cost: Low. Potential Impact: Medium.
26. Create a Logo.
Want to look really professional to your customers (and help convince them that you site is a "happening place?" Creating a logo that represents your site adds distinction and helps customers identify your site and its products. A good logo incorporates the Website name with some sort of image (often a cartoon) that suggests the type of content that it contains. There's no need to spend a lot of money on having something designed; in most cases, it's just as effective to pull some clip art and slap your Website name on it. However, you must be sure that you're using real clip art (which means that it's pre-paid and that you have the right to use it however you like). Using somebody else's copyrighted art is a good way to find yourself in court. Cost: Low. Potential Impact: Medium.
27. Create Spin-Off Products.
Once you've created your logo, a great way to make it appear more professional is to put it on a bunch of products that members can purchase. You're probably thinking that this might prove expensive, with manufacturing, storage, shipping, billing, etc. Not to worry. Caf� Press (www.cafepress.com) lets you set up an online store with logo-embossed coffee mugs, mouse pads, coasters, beer mugs, thong underwear, t-shirts, etc. Caf� Press allows you to charge a markup on the goods, which are manufactured in quantities of "1" and drop-shipped to the customer. It takes about an hour to set up an online store and the results looks very professional. Cost: Low. Potential Impact: Medium.
28. Attend a Trade Show.
The ability of a Website to generate revenue is often directly related to the ability of the Webmaster to set up business relationships with other sites. Shows like Internext (www.internext-expo.com), World Telemedia (www.noconline.org), and Eurowebtainment (www.eurowebtainment.com) are excellent networking opportunities. However, it's a big mistake to think that you're going to cut deals during the partying, when everyone is drunk. According to our Webmasters, the best time to make deals is in the lobby, during meals, and on the trade show floor, when people are sober and not distracted by lap dancers and loud music. And don't forget the smaller, local shows, like Cybernet Expo (www.cybernetexpo.com) and the Adult Webmaster Events (www.adult-webmaster-events.com); they often offer wonderful opportunities for face-to-face conversations that otherwise might not happen at a larger venue. Focusing on relationship building - and ordering virgin screwdrivers - is the best way to make a trade show into a revenue-producing opportunity. Cost: Medium. Potential Impact: Very High.
29. Advertise in a Trade Journal.
This is one case where I'm probably biased, but I believe that any adult Website that offers any business-to-business service should have a strong presence in the only trade journal that is of any significance in this industry - AVN Online. There is a great deal of competition for services like billing companies, mass content providing, hosting, programming, etc., and your ability to succeed (if you're in these segments of the market) will be greatly dependent upon your visibility to your customer base. Trade journal advertising also is a great idea if you're looking for affiliates to send you traffic; you want potential affiliates to know that you're an established company that understands the importance of a strong brand image. Also, AVN Online is available at newsstands, which means new readers, both in the trade and at the consumer level, will be seeing your products and services. Cost: Medium. Potential Impact: High.
If we somehow missed your favorite technique, please don't hesitate to write and tell us about it. We're always ready to share good ideas with our readership.
Jack Morrison ([email protected]) is a frequent contributor to AVN Online.
