Let’s face it, running an adult site is tough work. After the expense
and hassle of creating a design, site identity, niche, domain name, buying
content, and setting up hosting and billing, many webmasters forget the
driving factor behind what will make the site profitable. Traffic.
By the time webmasters
get their sites up and running, they are then smacked in the face by a
whole new set of challenges. Oh Marketing! "You mean that doesn’t come
with my hosting package?" Finding a good traffic source is like finding
a diamond in the rough these days. TANSTAAFL (There ain’t no such thing
as a free lunch) as Robert Heinlein would say. But how is one supposed
to create a living by scraping off the bottom of the barrel? It takes
money to make money and it takes traffic to generate traffic, so how are
low-budget webmasters supposed to survive?
This is a question
I am confronted with by webmasters daily. "Where I can find free places
to drive quality traffic?" Below I have outlined a few possibilities
every webmaster should try at least once. "Different strokes for different
folks", what works for one site may not work for another and it is an
important learning experience to try, measure, tweak and develop the right
system of marketing habits that are manageable and profitable.
Adult Search Engines/Link
Directories
Submitting to adult search engines and link directories is a good way
to start bring your site some free exposure. There are many benefits
to this marketing tactic. Traffic results are a lot faster than mainstream
search engines, hits often resulting in days rather than weeks. Many
require reciprocal links that helps your site to establish link relevancy,
popularity, and allows you to interact and establish relationships with
other webmasters. If you have more than one site you are promoting, it
helps to use a resource that lists adult search engines so that you spend
more time submitting and less time searching for engines to submit to.
However, searching for sites that rank high for keywords related to your
site or finding niche directories can help you attract more targeted traffic
to your site. Find a huge list of adult search engines at http://Adultchamber.com/engines
, http://www.trafficmatrix.com/adultses.html,
and http://www.webmastervault.com/se-a.shtml,
to name a few.
Banner and Exit
Exchange Networks
Banner exchange
networks are good because they allow your banners exposure on sites that
they otherwise would not appear on, so it's a good idea to participate
in 2-3 different exchange programs. However don't trade those money making
banner spots and try out a few programs to see which one best works for
your site. This is not a traffic solution, but an addition. The same is
true with exit exchange networks however be careful that the sites in
the exchange network are not "pop-up hells" sending surfers into circles
of pop up windows. Also consider programs that provide link codes that
allow no "exit window" to open when the user clicks on a link to enter
the site rather than go back.
You can find a listing of adult banner and exit exchange networks at http://adultchamber.com/members/banner.htm,
http://www.perl-princess.net/Site_promotion/Banner_Exchange/,
and http://www.hcontact.com/webmaster/search/Banner_Exchange.html
TGP & TGP2
TGP has come under some heavy criticism over the past year, and for good
reason. TGP’s are not a good way for low budget webmasters to promote
their sites due to the usual amount of high bandwidth usage (and bills)
as well as the notion that the more free porn provided on the net, the
less profits in your pockets. TGP2 programs were created to help webmasters
counter some of the negative factors by limiting the number of clickable-to-full-size
images (5-10) and suggest only posting softer-core content. But with
the difficulty of maintaining multiple galleries, each only good for posting
to 2-3 TGP posts, tracking expirations, moving images, preventing hot-linking
and content theft, etc.. well TGP’s are, for more many webmasters, more
of a headache than a help. If you want to give TGP’s a shot and learn
for yourself, you can find TGP and TGP2 resources at http://adultchamber.com/members/tgp.htm,
http://adultchamber.com/members/tgp2-resources.htm,
http://www.tgp2.com,
http://www.setgo.com/resources/traffic/tgps.html,
and http://www.adulttoolkit.com/tgpsubmit.php.
Pic Posts
I’ve always
been a big fan of pic posts. They are faster and easier to create than
a TGP gallery, are easy to maintain and manage, and can double as doorway
pages for search engine marketing. A pic post page usually consists of
banner, image, link, banner down the page. If you pick a short description
of the image like "Blond girls xxx upskirt pictures" and copy and paste
that into the title, description, keyword, alt tag for the image, link,
and in header font at the top of the page, ranking is cake! Include a
soft-core image, banner for your site and a banner for a sponsor as well
as reciprocal link as required and start submitting. Sites like http://www.adultmarketers.com/
and http://www.cozyfrog.com/listings/traffic/picposts.asp
are great resources for pic post submission.
Newsgroups
Newsgroups are a pain in the you know what but they do drive some
traffic and it is worth a shot. I don’t know all about subscribing to
newsgroups and such, but I do know you can register and submit free at
Google http://groups.google.com/.
I’d say submit 2-3 per day and see what happens. Don’t spend all your
time on one thing, an even spread is ideal. Getting stuck on one thing
that works or one traffic source is a common mistake many webmasters make.
Since anything can happen, it’s good to build up a multitude of traffic
sources for good year-round business. Advertising-Link.com
offers very affordable newsgroup advertising services that are definitely
worth exploring if you want to give it a shot but may not necessarily
have the time, resources, or knowledge to do it properly.
TopLists
Toplists
are a good option for niche and fetish sites, but do not seem to work
as well for general hardcore sites. Amateur sites seem to do well also.
Toplists rank listings by counting the number clicks coming from your
site to the top list and the number of clicks from the top list to your
site. Usually the top 10-20 sites will have their banner displayed so
again, it is a good, free way to get your site exposure to a cross market
of traffic that would otherwise never see your site. I recently discovered
http://nichetop.com/ and http://www.porn-toplist.com/webmasters.html
that are good resources for finding niche toplists to try out.
And finally we all
know about search engines. It takes major time, research, and skills
to learn, but they cannot be ignored. It’s best to learn search engine
marketing over time by reading engine FAQ’s and articles about writing
copy, choosing keywords, and optimization tricks. Since there is no "magic
formula" many webmasters give up in frustration, but essentially the main
idea is to be consistent when writing text content, creating page titles
and writing keyword rich content in sentence form. The rest falls into
place over time.
I hope you find these
tried and true strategies refreshing, and give each a fair chance. Once
you begin to stream in steady profits then focus on member retention and
paid listing advertising strategies. Remember to always reinvest your
profits in new ways to drive more business, and you will be in business
for a long time to come.
