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- - What was your big turning point? Story Telling Time :) (https://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=1117492)

Quote:

Originally Posted by johnnyloadproductions (Post 19747698)

Not sure if serious...

Is Shap a music friend? Did you meet him in that diner that closed suddenly, or are you just fucking around?

State your case kind sir...

A little hyperbole meant to draw Shap into giving me the secrets of his success. LOL

He did give me some great tips once concerning billing that helped my business grow tho.
Thanks Shap!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shap (Post 19746492)

Hi Guys! I have to write up a brief history of my business (hence why i'm on GFY --> procrastination). Anyhow in doing so there is always one moment that I felt was a huge turning point in my business. It was completely out of my control and it changed everything from that day forward.

This is back in 1997 or 1998. I was running my own free sites and moved to Lake Tahoe to work for Xpics for the summer. While there my buddy Kevin who ran all the media buys was telling me at lunch (probably at Killer Chicken) how he just killed it. A client of his was going to be on Dateline in a few days. The client was Wetlands. I thought to myself
"HOLY SHIT i used to have a link trade with them. I need to hit him up to see if I can get that going again."

So later that day I hit them up and not only did I get a link trade but he put up my banner right on his main page just above his enter button. I think I was getting 50,000 uniques a day to my site back then. When Dateline aired HOLY SHIT! I got so much traffic from that one link. I think it may have hit 250,000 uniques. All I know is that in the days after that I was able to sustain the growth in traffic and where I used to get 50,000 uniques I was now getting 125,000 and growing fast. From that point on business never stopped growing. That little bump was exactly what I needed. Thanks Wetlands!!

Anybody else have a story about a turning point that changed their business forever?

Yeah I had a similar big break that got the ball rolling. Got a listing on SublimeDirectory directly to my site, not a gallery. It stayed there for several weeks and was the most traffic I had ever had. It allowed me to do link trades and grow.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drake (Post 19747848)

Getting a listing on those big sites back then was the perfect way to really catapult a site

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shap (Post 19748919)

Getting a listing on those big sites back then was the perfect way to really catapult a site

Mh if you think it well.. in 1990's there was those few big tgp's as thehun, much like today there's those few big tubes as xhamster. Just in 1990's there was less third world countries traffic, and more buyers.

Back in 1995 or 1996, the Usenet groups were really starting to take hold and there were some guys scanning Playboy NSS and posting them. Some of you older guys might remember people like Scanmaster, PixelMaster, Skunk, etc. I watched at how popular these guys were. They had a real passion for it. It wasn't long before the Playboy legal team started sending threats of litigation to all the guys there posting their scans.

I still have that notice on some CD somewhere where one of them posted their "resignation" along with the Playboy notice scanned.

Anyway, I thought to myself I could build a site and use authorized content in exchange for traffic. So, off I went to contact every Playboy model agent I could find and pitched them on the idea of let me promote them in exchange for traffic. This took literally months. I get content, they get traffic. At the time, and few exceptions aside, this was basically unheard of with the Playmates. It was their own content, not Playboy's.

Anyway.. everyone turned me down... I mean everyone. After about 3 or 4 months of rejections, out of nowhere, Alley Bagget replied to me directly and said, "sure, why not". After that, the floodgates kind of opened. Doors were opening that were never opened before. I had all the content I needed and now the Playmates were contacting me and calling me at home, etc. all wanting to give me content in return for promoting them on our site.

The second step to the process was with Ynot. Back then, Ynot was basically a toplist and links list. Anyone remember "Wutz New" and Superlinks? :)

I submitted my site, full of all of this newly added authorized content and they turned me down for "unauthorized content". I quickly replied and then Lisa Boyle, who was an official member, vouched for me and then a moderator named "Khan" (from Khan's classy babes) wrote me a nice email explaining that it was a unique circumstance that someone had all this authorized content and they immediately just assumed it was from ill-gotten means. And then they featured my site.

The big traffic spike came when models mentioned us on Howard Stern, and one model, I **think** it was Kelly Monaco, mentioned our site on Entertainment Tonight (Television show). Our hosting provider turned us off for excessive traffic within hours of that. I forget the bill, but it was huge.. back then it was 7 or 8 bucks a GB.

But things happened quickly. By 1997 I was doing this full time and enjoying life. I just never spent it all on cars and such. I bought real estate, land, mutual funds, etc. and just flew under the radar. Heck I still do. I come online, get my work done, log out and go enjoy life.

Life is good.