Porn Mobility

With the number of wireless Internet users on the rise and the need for adult webmasters to consistently seek out new ways to promote their products and sites in an over saturated market, porn mobility will become another marketing alternative for adult entertainment businesses around the world.

Although it is well known that the wireless Internet network in the United States is behind the rest of the world in availability and speed, the market is ever increasing with the launch of new mobile products from phones to hand held devices.  Adult Webmasters are just beginning to tap the international porn market with the use of dialers and translation services, but the competition for adult entertainment web site is global, not just from the United States.  So what kind of potential are we looking at when it comes to audience and demographics?

The Landscape
Before we delve into the details of expanding to a new technology, first we need to find out what it’s worth, who will we be marketing to and how accessible is this audience?

As of March 2002, Frost and Sullivan believes that transactions conducted on mobile phones will reach 25 billion (USD) in ¹,  and indicates that mcommerce and peer-to-peer payments are expected to make up the bulk of payments. Of the estimated 544 million Internet users online, there were at least 39 million mobile Net users in the world at the end of 2000, and that is set to increase to about 729 million by 2005 ².Europeis expected to have the highest population of mobile Internet device users, with the North and Latin America in second and Asia coming in third, which I found strange because their wireless network technology has some of the highest speeds and reach in the world.

So who are these mobile users? A survey found that men are almost twice as likely to use PDAs than women so that’s good news for adult webmasters.  96 million US consumers will use mobile devices to access the Internet by 2005, up from 4.1 million in 2000, of which 74.9 million of those users will go online with mobile phones while the rest will use other wireless devices such as PDA’s ³. This means that we are looking at a potential audience of about 20+ million men ages 18-55 using PDA’s to enjoy adult entertainment from the US alone in 2002.  Since this audience has to have the financial ability to even afford such expensive "toys", they probably have the budget to entertain themselves as well. Especially while traveling.

With more options for lower cost devices and new technology expand across multiple platforms it’s hard to say exactly just what the potential is, but no one is denying that it’s there, untouched, unsaturated, and ready to roar.

WAP’s the Difference?
Before I began this article I have to admit I did not know my Palm from my Pocket.  After some research and some help from The Pocket Porn Guru, Steve Tietze "Gateway" of Pocket XXX, I was able to piece together some good information about the mobile market.

When you think of a WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) device think of the screen on your mobile phone; although most web servers will allow you to serve .wml pages accessible from the wireless web, these web pages or "cards" can only contain basic text information, links, and very limited imagery due to screen capabilities and download speed.    Titmowse of Cozy Frog has written an excellent three part article "Pockets of Porn" on how to create these types of WAP pages if you wish to provide adult jokes or textual entertainment, but this technology is not exactly ideal or relevant for the PDA market.  PDA’s are often in color and display a web page similar to how it would appear on the web, including images.

According "Gateway" Steve the easiest way towards getting your wireless adult site up and running is to research and choose what device you wish to target, such as Cell Phones, PDA’s, Palm Pilots, Pocket Pc’s, or other wireless internet devices.  Think towards the future and how cell phones will become more and more like a PDA as new products arise such as the new Sony CLIÉ handheld or the Handspring Treo.

Low Tech Options
Given, adult webmasters have enough to do to keep afloat, learning a whole new programming language and market seems like a big jump.  But if you don’t start learning now, you could be mission out of profits for years to come.  There are some easy ways to get started, in fact, publishing web pages on any device is very similar to publishing an HTML page.  Making your web site both Internet friendly and PDA friendly may only require some minor changes.  Keep your pages small, graphics compressed, and navigation easy. Optimizing Web pages for handheld devices by Marty Kacin is a great article to help you get started.

If you are an amateur web girl looking for more ways to increase your profits, exposure, and traffic, Pocket XXX has a special traffic and partner program for Amateur & Porn Star Webmasters to try out the PDA potential at http://www.pocketgirls.com/webmaster.html. This is an excellent opportunity for webmasters who do not want to get involved with setting up billing mechanisms and user management for the wireless web " Pocket XXX has over 2 years experience.  "We have learned a lot from our research and what our users want to see", says "Gateway" Steve Tietze. "We also have great technology that we have developed to help make it easier for webmasters to convert their site or content into a handheld format. Our experience and name in this field is one the best and well known."

Turning eCommerce into mCommerce
Cross promoting your Internet traffic with your wireless web site is much in the same as promoting any other adult entertainment web site on the Internet.  There are 2 primary ways users can download content to their hand held device. If they have a wireless internet connection the user can input any URL and surf the web in a browser.  The draw back to this real time surfing experience is it uses more system resources (RAM) and requires a longer download time.  The second way is for the user to "Sync" their favorites by downloading updates from the web using their connected desktop computer for browsing at a later time.

Since a wireless connection would be used mostly for the surfing and collection of needed information, promoting your adult PDA or wireless site in a PDA type search engine would be a great place to start.  Also promoting your site using text links mentioning your site is PDA enabled will help to capture the attention of a PDA user.  One of the top WAP adult engines is MoBone. Others can be found at Yahoo. Essentially adding a few extra keywords related to being wirelessly enabled will help bring wireless surfers to your site, the key promotional factors being enhanced privacy and discretion.

New Age Porn
Although there are many challenges when it comes to bridging the gap from Internet to the wireless web, the potential is there and skyrocketing fast.  It’s up to you to embrace or ignore change, HOW you run your business IS your business.  In the mean time do the research, investigate the potential, and make partnerships now.  There is plenty of room for the development and growth of programs and services to help webmasters cross over, but with any boom it’s oftentimes whom gets there first will usually be the last one standing.

Cynthia A. Fanshaw is a guest writer for The ADULTWEBMASTER Magazine. A full time search engine marketer for over 4 years, Cynthia is the Marketing Director at AdultChamber.com and contributing writer for YnotNews.com. Her focus is to help webmasters by developing marketing tools and resources, and to communicate good information about Internet marketing strategies. Thank you to Gateway Steve of Pocket XXX for his contributions to this article.  For more information please visit http://Pocket-XXX.com or read the 411 on PDA Porn.

¹  http://www.nua.ie/surveys/index.cgi?f=VS&art_id=905357769&rel=true

²  http://www.nua.ie/surveys/index.cgi?f=VS&art_id=905357560&rel=true

³  http://www.nua.ie/surveys/index.cgi?f=VS&art_id=905356530&rel=true

Originally Published in The Adult Webmaster

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