New Paysite - Essential Marketing Checklist

FOCUS to your site is the key and know everything

Your list is pretty good actually. The only thing I would say is to research certain things more closely. For example - just saying "produce FHGs" is only touching the surface.
If you send out one FHG a week and send it out with just the link to the gallery you can expect to have very few of your galleries appearing on any affiliate-owned TGPs / MGPs.
You need to make it as easy as possible for these guys to use your stuff - and if you own a TGP then the last thing you are going to do is add one gallery at a time - it's a total pain in the ass and very inefficient. So, wait until you have a good 10+ to send out at a time (even more is better) and then send them out in the format:-
# of items|format (i.e. movies or pictures)|niche|Sponsor name (i.e. your website)|URL|Description
Different TGP software needs different fields but this will give the affiliate a good start on adding your galleries.

Moving onto RSS feeds, it is unlikely a blog owner is going to syndicate your feed if you update it erratically. Yes, they could use a hub blog to bunch your RSS feeds in with others and regulate the postings, but it is unlikely they will go to this effort. The best way to get them interested in your RSS feeds is to make sure you update them regularly like clockwork - whether its every week or every month, make sure you stick to your schedule (obviously every week is better).

The only thing I would add to your list is to make sure there are no traffic leaks on any page / site you expect affiliates to send traffic to. (Basically a traffic leak is a link to anywhere that doesn't earn the affiliate money). But other than that, it sounds like you have a pretty good handle on it! Good luck

Tol, I can give you some pointers. Hit me up when you get a chance. (see sig)

Trraffic is KING, content is QUEEN.

I run sixteen paysites (at the moment; two more on the way) and make my living doing this. Ain't no damn hobby for me. So here's the thing:

Ya never know.

LOL It's true! You can start a paysite, do all you've outlined (and a hundred things more) and you MAY get a TON of sales - or not. There's simply no way to tell until you try (and don't believe ANYONE who tells you X is 'gaurunteed' or X is a 'sure thing'. You simply have to try and see what hits).

NEVER buy traffic to start out. NEVER. Total waste of money. Maybe if you're sending that paid traffic to a landing page loaded with thumbs then MAYBE - maybe - but to a single Paysite? Never. Did I mention never?

TIME will be your biggest firend. That, and effort. At some point tho you must (if you're smart and logical) make a decision whether this 'game' is for you or not. In other words, if you bust your ass for eight months and make 3 sales, well....

Good luck! And never, ever stop working.

I have to agree with what Peabody just said actually. He is quite right when he says that you will never truly know until you launch. And also the traffic thing - DEFINITELY never try to buy traffic to send direct to a paysite. (Note to Peabody - I mentioned "never" as well in case he missed it in your post - lol! )

true it's so important that you love what you're doing, which makes that focus part a lot easier... what used to be your distraction/ hobby now is your full time gig... well hopefully full-time soon

Yes, absolutely, I'm sure there's a lot to each step.. I guess the list is just something you'd tick off without missing anything import, but also not getting side tracked doing too much research

it's little nuggets like this, which can save you a lot of time and get you better results

speaking of TGPs, to find them you'd obviously want to google them, but I've found so many "Circle Jerks", site that will keep you redirecting to other TGPs or other junk you weren't expecting
Is there a short-list of good TGPs you must submit to or do you really have to do the research and find TGPs related to your niche? Probably a combination of both?

yes I can see a schedule is very important, in fact the blog would probably not only be a wast of time, but also bad rep for potential members if not maintained

will add this to the list
how do traffic leaks occur?
would you need to make sure that the links created for the affiliate are correct and don't end up on "no page found"? ... or do you mean the program has to handle the tracking side correctly on that page?... or do you mean it should go to a good sales page, rather then a page with little incentive to buy?

one other thing I was wondering re forums, are they that important that it should be one of the things you should have at release? If maintained they could be a great retention tool of interacting with members, but not sure if they're worth the effort initially? perhpas they should be deployed once the membership is up a little?

yes, been looking at nats... it's kind of hard to miss
one thing I'm hard pressed deciding over is whether to start off on ccbill affiliate program or go straight to nats, cost obviously being one of the major points... right now I'm trending towards nats being a little over kill, so starting with ccbill then moving on to nats once members are up and the additional features can be utilised properly...

Yes absolutely... there's two types, people who go in guns blazing, do every marketing strat, trick, idea as it pops into their head... and then the types which plan but never do, because they're perfectionists, suffer from analysis paralysis or are just plain lazy

whilst the first is definitely better than the second, ideally you'd want to go middle ground and take "planned" action, so to speak

so in line with what you're saying, be focussed, get the site out there as soon as possible *BUT* with all essential marketing strats in place, otherwise the issue of no sales could be a lack of marketing

... but then if it doesn't work, move on

you'd probably want to set yourself some sort of deadline to get the site started by... now that you have a few sites you can probably pump them out in a matter of weeks... but when you started out, what was a good time frame to prepare and release your first site? 1month? 2 months?
and how long did it take till the marketing started to take effect?

Never buy traffic... noted. That is actually something I've found several people on this site saying as well, hence the fact I haven't added any paid form of marketing in my check list. This is likely something you may want to consider doing when you're seasoned, when you know your numbers and business, industry, etc... definitely not when you're the rookie starting out

an off topic question... how does the membership pricing structure work out with adding more sites for the same price? I know so many do it, but how is it feasible?
Is it not just more work for the same gain? or do you update the price with every new site?
or is it just a way to improve retention? or are all the niches so different that effectively one customer wouldn't sign-up for two of the sites anyway?

If you're just starting out then the CCBill Affiliate Program will be fine for now. Going from never running a program before to using NATS would be a big step - PLUS you need to build up affiliates' trust really before opening your own program - the CCBilll program already has that trust.

A traffic leak is basically any link which allows a surfer to be directed away from the intended page and doesn't earn the affiliate money. Basically affiliates work hard for their traffic and if they send you a hit for example, they want to make sure that hit has the best chance of earning them a sale. So all the links on the page they send the traffic to have to have some way of retaining their affiliate code.
An example of a traffic leak is if your home page has a link at the bottom of the page to a Toplist. The surfer would go to your site from the affiliates efforts, see the Toplist link, click on it and head off elsewhere, thereby destroying the affiliates efforts to make a sale. Yes the surfer may revisit you at a later date but he may no longer be carrying the affiliatest tracking code. Traffic leaks are a surefire way of losing affiliates very quickly. Just make sure that whatever you have on the pages the affiliates are sending traffic to, earns them money if it converts - it's only fair as they have got you that visitor.

Don't forget to submit to http://www.whopaidme.com when you launch

yes that clarifies it, thanks, basically no external links on landing pages

yes, came across your site already and definitely on the list for submission

I forgot one major item, which is a mailing list/ newsletter. If I'm not mistaken that's pretty much essential.

so the final list, pretty happy with it:

So here's the checklist I've researched so far:
1) seo
1.1) seo optimised site, site submission
1.2) blog
1.3) submit to TGPs/ tubes/ directories
1.4) submit to review sites
1.5) forum

2) affiliate program with good payout structure
2.1) fhg (free hosted galleries)
2.2) banners
2.3) rss feeds (for affiliate blogs)
2.4) no traffic leaks

3) mailing list/ newsletter

I wouldn't say a newsletter is that important. I tried it once and found it to be a total pain in the ass in terms of the amount of time it takes to maintain a good one - AND the amount of sales it generates you.
If it was a toss up in terms of what to spend time on I would go for an RSS feed over a newsletter every day of the week.

that's interesting, maybe it's different for adult, will make sure RSS is on top of the list

I suppose Newsletter is not really a traffic tool, more of a retention tool, to keep members reminded of updates, etc and stay with you. I've noticed retention seems to be a big issue with adult?

I wouldn't say retention is a big "issue" - the word issue suggests its a massive problem which I wouldn't agree with (certainly not for my sites anyway).
Obviously, rebills are VERY important because it costs a heck of a lot less to keep a customer than to replace them with a new one - so you are right to make sure that the sales you do make, enjoy your site and stay a member for as long as possible. I have a forum on my sites and I think that certainly helps for retention because people start to feel like they are part of a community rather than an adult paysite.

The problem I had with newsletters was that to make them look good they had to be sent out in HTML format, which means every week someone has to create a webpage specifically for the newsletter - not to mention the fact you have to use a proper newsletter server or service to maintain the list. You really need to offer double opt-in at the beginning AND an easy way for them to unsubscribe at any time, so you're not looking at just putting an e-mail form field on your site and doing it all for free - get e-mail marketing wrong and you will get into hot ater very quickly.

Sorry, I've been away for a bit. But yes, you're absolutely right: DO something, anything, it's better than not but doing EVERYTHING at once isn't smart, either. So yes, somewhere in the middle: have a (flexible) plan, make adjustments as you go along, try new things but do 'the basics' (which you've outlined) all along the way.



Well, when I started (about three years ago) I tried many designs for my new sites until I settled on my current designs. These days it can take as little as two days to get a tour together and perhaps two-four for a member's area. Being a Network I try to walk that fine line between uniformity and having little differances so every site doesn't 'feel' the same. Also, I 'build' all my sites by hand (in Notepad) and don't use a WYSIWYG editor like Dreamweaver. yes, they look kinda nineties-ish BUT I'm selling to a (mostly) 'amateur' market so this approach works. Besides, nearly every damn site you site is all gloss and flash and 'pretty' and, to me, look the same so I just tune them out.

But the key is to GET STARTED - with anything. Tweak as you go along, as you get experience and wisdom under your belt (meaning: what works - for you - and what does not).

How it took 'the marketing' to kick in? Well, some traffic osurces are 'immediate' - meaning, you post a picture, you get traffic that same day, etc. Maybe a week or so after you submit some pics, perhaps longer. TGPs and Gree Sites can take longer to manifest themselves. But things like SEO and link exchanges, etc CAN take several months to appear. Blogs show up on Google quicker for some reason so if you don't want to wait a few months for Google to pick up your site, try creating a (simple) blog asap and you'll get bumps from that. review site traffic et al can also take a little bit of time but, in general, the traffic sources that take longer to 'kick in' are also the traffic sources that tend to have 'legs' - they last longer.

You also mentioned something about price points for memberships. Seeing as all my sites are inter-cinnected then I kinda have to keep all membership options the same, otherwise the smart surfer would join the cheaper priced site. Now, if you have sites that do not share passwords, or are not a 'network' of sites and just have individual sites spread all around, then yes, playing with the price ponts can be crucial. While one site may convert at, say, $24.95 per month, another may convert better at $19.95 and so on. I DID 'play around' with my prices to see if more people would join or less but I found that it didn't make any differance at all if I charged $29.95 or $24.95. Again, it may be differant for you if your sites are not all connected like mine are.

GREAT good luck to you! But hey wanna know the KEY or SECRET to REAL success? here it is, write it down then memorize it and live by it every day:

Never stop.

:0

Amen to that - couldn't agree more!

wow

What a brain fart.
awesome post buddy
we need more like you here

Yes, well, my brain farts smell like roses.

Buddy.