Last month, the topic was free pornography and how it affects adult Webmasters looking to actually sell pornography to the public. This month the topic is still free pornography, but instead of just identifying the major sources of free porn, we'll look at some ways that adult Webmasters can still make money off an adult Internet saturated with free content. Make no mistake; turning a good profit these days is no simple matter. Yet if you're dedicated to making a living as an adult Webmaster, and if you're willing to spend the time, the resources and the effort building the type of Website that will retain members and grow steadily over time, then there is hope for your kind even in that digital sea of free porn known as the Internet.
Members Only, Please
There are all kinds of reasons why you should keep hardcore pornography behind some kind of age verification screen. You don't need me to tell you that there's no way to know the age of surfers visiting the free area of your Website; putting hardcore in your "Members Only" area, or behind a credit card screen of some sort, will significantly reduce the number of minors who will access your material. For those of you not so concerned with helping parents control their kids, consider the financial advantage to putting a brown paper bag around your Website's hardcore content. By helping reduce the volume of freely available hardcore, you'll be doing your part to help ensure that hardcore remains "taboo" and therefore seductive. Logic suggests that a Website promising videos of nasty sex acts will have an easier time turning sales if its audience hasn't already been exposed to a large amount of free hardcore porn just prior to arriving at the site. Believe it or not, pornography that is freely available can sometimes lose its luster exactly because it's freely available. Place it just out of the immediate reach of your audience and they will long for it; make your audience feel special and exclusive for being a paying member of your Website and you'll have a paying membership base that will last for a long time.
Most people want what they can't have, or what seems to be off limits. I'm reminded of an old commercial for a candy called Toffifay. The spot featured an elderly man and his grandson. The man held this candy which he claimed was "too good for kids," and when his grandson tried to score a piece of the sacred snack, the grandfather danced around and taunted him, again saying that the candy was "too good" for someone so young. That commercial stopped running a long time ago, when I was just a kid myself, and I don't recall ever seeing another advertisement for that product - but I've been buying Toffifay ever since.
You might think that childish marketing tactics would be ineffective on adults; that's not always the case. Recently I drove across Arizona and New Mexico on my way to California, and couldn't help but notice billboards advertising a roadside store in Arizona. The billboards simply stated, "What is The THING?" There was no further explanation, but there must have been 30 of these cryptic billboards leading up to the location of the store. When I reached the store, my curiosity got the better of me, and I pulled into the parking lot and found that quite a few other travelers had been drawn to the same spot. Now, there are all kinds of free things to see in this world, but "The Thing" was safely locked up behind some doors that stated adults must pay $1.00 to enter. Needing a little entertainment and being thoroughly curious as to what this attraction really was, I paid my dollar and entered. So just what was it that was worthy of 30 billboards and a gigantic light-up sign? I'll never tell, but I'm betting that you're at least a little bit curious as to what I saw. Perhaps you're curious enough to pay a dollar yourself. If you ever find yourself on I-10 through Arizona and you start seeing signs for "The Thing," you may find you have an almost uncontrollable urge to stop and shell out a buck just to quiet down that curiosity that's raging in your head. A dollar isn't much to pay for a little entertainment, but for the person receiving the dollars, they sure can start to add up when enough people decide to satisfy their curiosity as well. Even those who stop to see "The Thing" but feel too silly paying a buck to get in are still likely to buy a soda or some other item while visiting the store. So remember, successfully playing to your audience's natural curiosities is one way to get people to pay for a product, even when essentially the same product is offered freely elsewhere.
So one approach to competing with free pornography is to simply lock up your hardcore in a special area and create a little mystery that will prey off of natural human curiosity for sexually explicit material. The level of curiosity you will be able to generate will depend partially on the words you choose to sell your site, and partially on the theme of the content that you offer. Most sources of free pornography offer a general collection of erotic images - usually there isn't much in the way of a theme. Some newsgroups and picture posts try to designate categories of content, but usually these categories are broadly tailored. So presenting content that is specific and relatively rare without losing mass appeal will do wonders for your conversion rates. I know, that sounds like a pretty hard feat to accomplish, but in fact it's all just a matter of presentation, as I will explain momentarily.
Tell Me a Story
Most adult Websites try to win new customers by pointing to the statistics. They boast about their tens of thousands of images, or their thousands of video clips. Considering the fact that general volume porn is available for free in numerous places on the Internet, using the stats approach to sales probably isn't your best bet because you aren't offering anything that way which can't be had elsewhere - and without paying a fee. A better approach would be to sift through your content and look for unique ways to present it. Look for picture sets or videos that tell a story, then present the setup for that story in your sales pages while urging surfers to join in order to find out how the story ends.
So what's meant by content that tells a story? Well, suppose you have a picture set that shows a "naughty wife caught masturbating by the next door neighbor." You could present that content in a number of ways, but one simple approach would be to nurture the curiosity of your audience by inviting them to "find out what happens when her neighbor catches her with a banana." Through simple presentation you are now offering something that your audience will be hard pressed to find for free somewhere else.
Finding content that tells a story isn't always easy, especially if you license content from the standard content stores. You might have to spend a considerable amount of time looking through unhelpful image sets just to find one that you can use effectively. If you have the means to produce your own content, either by shooting it yourself or by hiring professionals to shoot it for you, then the sky is the limit. When looking for story ideas, you might consider joining a Website that specializes in erotic fiction. Find stories that turn you on and keep you reading to find out how they end, then look for content that could fit those storylines. A good storyline is something that almost all sources of free pornography completely lack.
Make It Live, Make It Interactive
Some content is easy to steal and trade online. MP3 music files are one example, as are image files and video clips. Yet not all content is easily traded online by free porn consumers. Try trading a live strip show through Internet newsgroups, for example. It can't be done. Sure, you could record the show and then share the video clip, but that would take away the live element that so many surfers find attractive. The more "live" your content is, the less it will have to compete with free pornography.
Interactivity is also something that can't be shared by content pirates. This is where "amateur Web girls" have a rather sizable advantage over the competition. Amateur personalities can interact directly with their audience, offering live chat sessions, customized photo sets, live sex shows, and sometimes even real world interaction through bar meets and fan conventions. If you don't act as the star attraction on your Website, then offering interactivity might be a little more difficult. You might be able to offer a traffic-for-content trade with an amateur, or you could simply purchase an interactive content package from a company that offers this service to Webmasters.
Guard Your Site
There is a very large and quite enthusiastic group of people on the Internet who feel that access to free pornography is a birthright. In fact, this group of people believes in this sentiment so strongly that they often view any attempt to charge for pornography as a personal insult. Since these people would have no problem sharing a username and password to your porn site with thousands of their buddies - thus resulting in an enormous bandwidth bill for you - it would be foolhardy for you to leave any adult site with a significant amount of content unprotected against password traders. Unprotected sites set themselves up for a big financial loss and unwittingly provide even more free porn to the Net.
Fortunately, protecting your site from password traders is pretty painless. Far more painless than that bandwidth bill the first time tens of thousands of porn leeches sucked your server dry for a few days. There are Perl scripts available that will detect account abuse and disable an offending account before it causes any real damage.
What Does It All Mean?
Remember that while free porn is indeed a problem, it's not an insurmountable problem. People will buy something they can get for free as long as you present it to them properly. Make your audience believe that they will be part of a special and exclusive group if they join your Website, and prey on their natural curiosities about sex and nudity while keeping hardcore content locked away for paying customers only. Find content that tells a story and entice your audience to find out how the story ends by paying to see the conclusion. Feature live and interactive content if at all possible, and do your part to protect your content from password traders through use of a good Website security script. Remember that you're part of the entertainment industry; often it's creative marketing that means financial rewards in this business.
Connor Young is the Editor in Chief of The ADULTWEBMASTER Magazine (www.theadultwebmaster.com).
