Acquiring traffic is the name of the game.
And few people in the game can rest assured that they have a dependable, steady flow of it. Unless you're a program like Silvercash or Adult.com, which have thousands of affiliates sending traffic through daily, or a TGP like The Hun, which gets more than 3 million hits a day and has a three-month wait for paid listings, you're hustling just like everyone else.
So what are you missing?
You don't become Silvercash overnight, unfortunately, and you can't just drop some fantastical new content onto your site and sit back and wait for surfers to show up.
"There were days when you said 'build it and they will come.' It's not true anymore," says Eric Senecal, director of sales and marketing for GammaCash (www.gammacash.com).
Today, even well-established programs like Gamma are out there looking for better ways and means to acquire traffic, and they're looking just about everywhere.
"You cannot let only one means of traffic be on your site," Senecal says. "You have to look into legal mailings, search engines, TGPs, MGPs, free sites—any aspect of the game you have to look at and do as many trades as you can with other people. The more you diversify, the more you'll be able to get joins."
What it boils down to is trial and error. There's no easy formula for acquiring traffic and it's obviously different for every entity.
So if you want to fine-tune how you acquire traffic, you'd be wise to take advice from some of the people on the inside. That's what we did; here's what they said works:
Buy some targeted clicks
Toine Verheul is the CEO of adult search engine AskJolene.com. Jolene returns results featuring only constantly updated, free graphical content to surfers, which is where Verheul's pay-per-click program comes into play. Give Toine a few dollars and he'll give you 100,000 highly targeted clicks.
Have a pay site with large-breasted Asians over 50, then you probably want to buy the keywords "big tit mature Asians."
Some webmasters, it seems, don't understand this concept though.
"We've discovered that if you really want to be successful with buying targeted clicks, then you must send them to the right source. There are a lot of adult webmasters buying general traffic with keywords like 'sex,' 'porn,' and 'teen,' and sending it to a regular big boob gallery," Verheul says.
Whoops!
"You can enter your own keywords, so if you have a gallery in a really extreme niche – and it doesn't have to be hard content, it can be stockings or girls in bikinis – you can choose the word 'bikini' or the word 'beach,'" he continues.
"It's not a category thing, it's a keyword thing."
With pay-per-click and other types of paid advertising, you're not getting a ton of traffic. What you're paying for are people specifically looking for what you're offering.
"We have some niche advertisers with pay sites in the fetish market, like bondage, mature lesbians, or balloons. Where can you buy traffic that will convert on girls playing with balloons?" Verheul asks.
"You may only get 2,000 hits a day, but it will convert one out of 50 or one out of 70."
And that's a pretty nice ratio. So how do you tweak your content to improve your chances?
"Make it a part of your pay site," Verheul says. "Communicate the look and feel of the pay site in your gallery and do not give away too much, but also not too little. We see the galleries that convert really well have almost a skin of the pay site and have enough nice thumbnails and up-to-date content, not overpromoted content. They refresh a lot, with 50 to 100 new galleries a month. Those with 1,000 new galleries a month are converting big time. If there's something new going on, they do convert," he says.
Which brings us to ...
Getting some of the shit to stick
Yeah, you read it right. What we're talking about, of course, are free sites—most notably, TGPs.
Mark Galione is the CEO of Cybercat Inc. If you want a top spot on The Hun, Worldsex.com, or SleazyDream.com you'll be talking to Mark, because Cybercat is the one company that delivers this choice real estate. You'll also be waiting a while, since these spots are heavily in demand.
That's because they deliver a boatload of traffic.
"If you throw enough shit against the wall, some of it's going to stick. So when you get 100,000 people on a gallery in a day, some of them are going to stick," Galione says.
"You get 100,000 people going in there to take a look at free pictures and how many of them are there to buy? Starting off, I'd say none of them. How many do buy? A lot. It's an impulse, like the checkout at the grocery store."
And Galione agrees with Verheul that galleries should be representative of the pay site they're directed at but not give away too much. To take it a step further, the most successful TGP galleries are those that differentiate themselves.
"When you're going with hosted galleries, try not to pick one in the top three, which is what people normally do. Go down a bit and get something a little bit different. If you can, host your own galleries and make it look different. I know it costs a little more to host your own gallery, but it makes all the difference in the world when you have users surfing on different TGPs and they see the same affiliate over and over and over," Galione says.
Also, be aware that there are two kinds of TGPs—large and small. Large TGPs offer clean traffic that consists of smut hounds that are new users or bookmarkers looking for free porn. Smaller TGPs offer something a little different.
"It's kind of like a circle jerk. One TGP will trade traffic with another, who will trade traffic with another. By the time you get to [the surfer], they may have been through 10 TGPs," Galione says.
"A TGP that doesn't have a lot of trades converts better, simply because the user is not looking at repeats."
So you want to be listed on The Hun? Well, you better be prepared for the crush on your bandwidth.
"For a smaller webmaster, I'd say watch your conversion rate because if you're not buying advertising, you're down lower. Even if you get 15,000 to 20,000 people coming through your galleries, that's a lot of people in a day," Galione says.
While free-site success is fairly straight forward, some things are a bit murkier....
The search-engine enigma
There are some pretty successful program owners who, until recently, had no idea what search engine optimization (SEO) was.
Hey guys, it's another viable – not to mention free – option to get traffic. The only problem is, it's a constant battle.
Just ask Tanya Martin, the Director of Internet Marketing for SEO site Adult Search Engine Marketing (www.adultsem.com) and a seven-year SEO veteran.
"Search-engine optimization changes constantly. The best way to get listed in search engines is to get links from sites that are already in search engines. Still, it will take some time. The other option is to buy paid search engine listings to get traffic right away," Martin says.
"My suggestion is to learn what you can, test what you have learned, keep learning, tweak, test again, and repeat. Testing and tweaking are probably the number one thing a webmaster can do for SEO."
Sounds frustrating. There has to be something people are overlooking.
"Frequently overlooked is the use of meta tags, free directory listings, and DMOZ [an open-source search directory edited by human volunteers]. People feel that Google doesn't use meta tags so there is no point in using them. The fact is, there are instances where Google does use them – full Flash sites, for example – and there are other search engines out there besides Google," Martin says.
"As far as free directory listings go, they may not individually send you a ton of traffic, but they do assist in link building, which is very important."
Wait a second, so what about this DMOZ thing?
"DMOZ is often overlooked because people feel it is too difficult to get listed with them. The secret to DMOZ is to use as micro-specific a category as you possibly can. In other words, don't just go for the redhead midgets category, go for the redhead midgets with green eyes if it's available," Martin says.
So if you're willing to put in the time and deal with the changes the engines throw out, SEO is going to result in some free, high-quality traffic with high conversion ratios. It's also going to help or hurt the brand.
"If someone searches for 'porn' you would expect to see the big companies there. Not being there does hurt [your] brand. It's like searching for computers—you expect to see Apple and Dell," Martin says. "Even worse is searching for that brand name and not finding it on the first page. Searching for Hustler or Playboy you expect to see their results on the first page; if they weren't, that would look bad."
As long as we're investigating acquisition models that are, for the most part, less than clear, it would probably be a good idea to take a look at ...
Turning your message into a virus
Getting your message out with viral marketing is all the rage. It's an approach that can take many forms, but the bottom line is, you want people to pass your message, or content, on to others and have it occupy a place in the collective mind.
A prime example of viral marketing is Burger King's Subservient Chicken (www.subservientchicken.com). Personally, someone first emailed me this link more than a year ago and I laughed heartily and thought that was the end of it. Then, lo! Another friend emailed me the same link just yesterday. That's what I call staying power.
"Everybody's seen that and it's a perfect example of viral marketing. Here's something that's just stupid, funny, and entertaining. At the same time, we all know what it is because we all passed it around in our email," says Legendary Lars, Adult Friend Finder's director of marketing.
And the Legendary one would know a thing or two about viral marketing, having built cam network Streamray from scratch, merging it with Adult Friend Finder, while having his hands in the mainstream through his All Advantage venture, whose sites – first CashSurfers.com and now FriendSurfer.com – are built on the viral marketing concept.
"That's the beautiful thing about the Web. If you find something unique and appealing, it doesn't even have to be commercial, but you can take that idea and turn it into a commercial use," he says.
Of course, the giant chicken that does whatever you tell it to has already been done. So what else is there to do?
"Viral marketing is really tough to do reliably well, often," says Jack Mardack, who operates traffic consultancy ProfitLAB and is the former affiliate manager at Adult Friend Finder.
"There's really no way to predict other factors. The objective is that this will first have that hard-to-describe quality that will make people [pass it on]. On top of that, it has to have some association with your product, impart some sort of a message and by a combination of mind-share that you acquire on the basis of the campaign and some clicks, hopefully it was worth doing."
If this trip through Chicken Land could get any stranger – and it can – there's always the message board aspect, which both Mardack and Lars have used to effectively market themselves and their products.
"It's a parallel universe, a strange place to discover and find out how much power there is there on the business side to convey your message by way of creating a virtual persona, becoming a voice in an ongoing debate among people that have influence and connect themselves to the decisions being made. I certainly could not done what I've done without the boards," Mardack says.
Got it? If you're successful enough with some of these other models, maybe one day you'll be successful enough to look into...
Generating affiliate mass
Everyone and their grandmother has an affiliate program. They give you hundreds, or, if you're really good, thousands of people working for you who aren't actually employees.
"That's the whole point—you have thousands of people working for you, and at some point, one of those people is going to find the best match. You couldn't possibly hire all of those people to do that job independently. That's why an affiliate program is necessary to grow so big," Lars says.
And when it gets down to brass tacks, good converting sites are the best form of viral marketing or any other form of promotion or traffic generation.
"Affiliate programs pick up their affiliates through true word-of-mouth, even more than through branding, promotion on the boards, or anything like that. It really comes from one webmaster asking another webmaster what's working ... this month. Word-of-mouth is the biggest aspect in attracting more webmasters, which in turn attracts more traffic," Lars says.
Okay, BigTimeAffiliateBucks, maybe you can tell me how I can tweak my content or give me an idea for getting more traffic? (nudge, nudge)
[Silence]
Guess I'll have to give it a whirl by myself and see what happens.
Which is kind of what Brock MacKenzie, the affiliate and sales director for SlickCash.com, SexPromote.com, and CupidBucks.com did. MacKenzie got into the affiliate game while admittedly still green and has picked it up along the way, mostly from people like you.
"We as a program can come up with the most fabulous ideas at times, but if it isn't what an affiliate wants, it isn't going to be a great avenue for traffic," MacKenzie says.
"The biggest downfall of any program, ours included, is to try and guess what an affiliate may need and want to promote a program. When I start telling an affiliate what I think they should be using to promote us, I come across as saying I know more about their traffic than they do."
When talking to anyone who has an affiliate program you'll hear the same refrain—high-quality content, update often, supply a lot of tools to webmasters, try to do something completely different than everyone else, etc.
However, when talking about traffic acquisition, you'll hear a lot of different ideas and methodologies. These just happen to be some of those that are worth investigating, but they're only the tip of the iceberg.
Commonalities in an uncommon world
"We ... think we know 1 [percent] or 2 percent of what there is to know and we've been doing this for seven years," says Scott Rabinowitz, president of TrafficDude.net, an online advertising and traffic monetization firm.
Point being, there's something new and shiny at every turn. There are also common denominators—after all, traffic is a commodity.
"When you've measured out what you're spending to bring the traffic in, it's not a question of one source working better than another. The idea is to build as much of a foundation of campaigns as you can maintain as possible," Rabinowitz says.
"We see a lot of people who want the magic bullet, and the magic bullet really is having multiple medium-sized campaigns running at the same time that are profitable."
If only Arlen Specter had come up with a theory that plausable ...
