POed-poster

Cool thread. Makes me feel a little less stressed over it all. I don't need 10k a month, at least right off the bat, but it is good to know that it is still possible in this day and age.

My old 'empire' did pretty well even years after i stopped actively working it. I never spent more than 4 hours a day working on stuff and was still able to generate more than enough $$ to support myself in grad school. But I made a lot of mistakes too, like starting out with a pay site. I spent a shit-load of money on content and software and graphics (in the late 90s content was massively expensive). That first paysite was a TOTAL failure, but I was fortunate enough to hook up with a couple of models, who lived out of state, and was able to do quite well with them. If I ever decided to do another pay site, it would be with a local model and I would shoot the content myself.

I also ran link lists and TGPs, which took time away from building and submitting free sites and galleries. I also overpaid on my hosting, running four dedicated servers when I only needed two, stuff like that. I knew how to make money, but I was very lax when it came to reducing expenses, which is foolish. A penny saved IS a penny earned, as they say. Another dumb thing was using a registrar that charged twice what other charged for the same services. I knew about the better deals but chose to stay with my current registrar out of some misguided sense of loyalty. This experience has taught me that you reduce expenses as much as possible.

I have been looking at servers and am blown away by some of the unbelievable prices. Phatservers, for example, sounds almost too good to be true, but they seem to be highly recommended here.

BTW, some questions for gallery submitters - what kind of traffic are you getting and how many galleries do you submit a day, what kind of ratios do you get, what are your best sponsors, and, most importantly, what are your top pics for TGPs?