So you have finally decided to become an adult webmaster; Congratulations
and Welcome! Before you start investing money into content, design, and
ecommerce solutions, how can you protect yourself from doing it all for
naught? Where do you go to find professional adult business-to-business
companies that will treat you with respect and follow through? Adult webmaster
resource centers can give you a good idea what the professional companies
have to offer and where to get started.
IDENTITY
Did you know that you don't own your domain name? If you trademark your
domain name, only then do you truly OWN it. So many webmasters have invested
time and money into development and finally reached the point of promoting
their website, only to realize that their domain name has infringed on
someone's trademark or copyright. Before you get your hopes up and cough
up your credit card for a domain name, try performing a trademark/copyright
search at a service like NameProtect.com to see if your site name, or
variations thereof, infringe on a registered name. Although an online
search will not guarantee that you are in the clear, it will give you
a good idea if you are directly stepping on toes. The last thing any webmaster,
or business, wants to hear is that they have to terminate operations under
a domain name due to infringement. This also applies to trademarks that
are pending. If the possibility of infringement is questionable, ask for
professional legal advice, or find a service to do a comprehensive search
report and file for the trademark so that it cannot be taken from you
at a later date. Ignoring this important factor of identity is oftentimes
the single most devastating mistake any webmaster or business owner can
make.
HOSTING
With your identity secured, now decide if you want to run a pay site,
a free site, or a site accessible via an Age Verification Service (AVS)
network. Most commonly, new webmasters will begin their own pay site to
test the profit making potential of the idea. If you want to make money
with a pay site, use caution if you are considering the use of a free
hosting service and never, ever, use a host that promises you free unlimited
bandwidth. Always remember, there are no free lunches; bandwidth costs
money and fees are passed on to you as service charges. Web hosting directories
such as Hosts4Porn.com allow you to search for your exact hosting needs.
As well, AdultChamber.com has a section dedicated to professional adult
hosting providers.
ENABLING E-COMMERCE
After finding a professional web host with expandable bandwidth packages,
as traffic may vary from month to month, you will need to locate a reliable,
trustworthy, payment processor. Some companies will offer web hosting
and payment processing as a combined package. We at AdultChamber.com believe
this to be a risky situation since they may be controlling the scripts
that provide the credit card transactions and access to your web site/domain
name. Should you ever decide to change hosts or billing providers, it
may become very difficult.
Different billing
options are available for different situations. You can try to get your
own merchant account accepting full responsibility for charge backs and
merchant status, or you can use a third party billing service to process
your credit card transactions online. A third party, or factoring service
allows you to approve transactions through the providers' merchant account
therefore making them an "Official reseller" of your products
or services. Webmasters pay higher transaction, reserve, and processing
fee's that can total over 30% of the original transaction amount. A webmaster
can stand to lose a lot of money if the relationship turns sour, so do
your research carefully and ask a lot of questions about reserve refunds,
uptime guarantee's, and the merchant account status (and backup plan)
of the provider. Some of the well-known adult merchant service providers
are Ibill.com, CCbill.com, and MSbill.com. Other billing options include
dialers, check processors, and 900 phone billing. Offering more than one
payment option is always preferred.
CONTENT
Choosing your website content is an enjoyable part of getting a new adult
site started. If you have a theme, or niche, stick to it! You can not
really begin your website graphics design until you have purchased legal
adult content. What people see on your front pages are most often what
will encourage them to join, peak their interest, and keep them coming
back. Picture rating systems, like XXXHotOrNot.com can help you determine
what types of pictures generate the most number of clicks to your site.
Your content must be licensed and legal. Stay informed about federal requirements
that you, as an adult site owner, must fulfill. According to Child Pornography,
Record Keeping, and Title 18 U.S. Code Section 2257, adult webmasters
and content providers must be able to produce age verification (18 years
or older) of all models depicted in sexually oriented material. Documentation
such as drivers license, social security card, passport, or other legal
documents must be kept on file and compliance notification is required
on your web site. You can learn more about adult website laws at AdultWebLaw.com
and AdultChamber.com. Expect professional content providers to furnish
you with the required licensing documentation you must keep on file. Essentially,
you are looking to provide your members with original content that can
rarely be seen elsewhere on the Net. Top providers such as Pornication,
ABEN, AdultLegal, Pornholio, and NYNE can provide you with not only picture
content, but audio sex stories, live streaming video, mpegs and avi's,
as well as chat rooms, games, and private chat up-sell opportunities.
Keep your original theme in mind, shop around, and beware of choosing
only the content you personally enjoy. What you like is not always what
will turn your members on. Stay focused!
GETTING TRAFFIC
Now that you are 'up' and ready to fly, where do you go for quality adult
traffic? Start with your website and optimize it with related keywords
for your content niche. There are tons of resources to help you do this,
and submit to the search engines properly. One place is AdultChamber.com's
Webmaster Tools. With everything from Meta Tags to a huge list of adult
search engines to begin your promotions, this is a great place to start
getting your site listed for FREE. Submit your site to Sexual-Linkage.com
for a good traffic boost and begin creating & submitting Thumbnail
picture pages to places such as Richards-Realm.com and Al4A.com. Begin
networking yourself as a webmaster and strive hard to send more traffic
than you receive. You will find that positive relationships with other
adult webmasters will help keep you in business.
There are several
options available if you choose to purchase advertising to market your
adult site. Google.com, the default search engine for Yahoo (Yahoo Web
Pages) offers an easy way to purchase advertising for keyword results
online. The Ad Words program allows advertisers with a limited budget
to appear on the right hand column of results for selected keywords. Simply
create and deposit funds into your account, and Google automatically deducts
from your balance as your ads are shown. "Google positions your ad
based on how many users click on it over time. Current rates are $15,
$12, $10 (per thousand ads shown) for positions 1, 2, and 3 respectively,
and $8 per thousand for positions 4 through 8. Accounts are opened with
a credit card and no minimum deposit is required." https://adwords.google.com/AdWords/Welcome.html
Other paid placement
options are with Yahoo!. Adult site submissions (Business Express) cost
$600 per site and rules must be carefully followed to be listed. If you
want your site to result for keyword phrases, make sure they are included
in your title or description when you submit. Search engine placement
services are available and never cheap. Do-it-yourselfers tend to have
better results when it comes to search engine marketing, and taking the
time to inform yourself will help you make better decisions when you analyze
your stats. If you notice you site receives a large number of visitors
but low sign-up's, you may want to re-think your traffic sources, weigh
the effectiveness of your site design, or double check the operation of
your forms.
Regardless of how
you choose to market your new adult site, taking time to legally protect
yourself and your investment should be your first concern. Don't choose
to market your site in ways that will result in short term benefits and
long-term headaches. Utilize the free resources and tools that are available
to you to test new ideas before sinking time, talent, and money into what
may be a good idea today and a bad one tomorrow. Talk to other webmasters,
weigh your options, and formulate your own recipe for results. Ultimately,
if your adult pay site becomes too much of a burden there are places to
turn such as AVS programs, affiliate programs, or willing buyers who do
not want to start from scratch. This is a profitable market that can have
great returns if you manage your adult site with business in mind.
Originally Written
for and Published in Klixxx Magazine, November 2001
