Country snapshot : AUSTRIA

http://www.xbiz.com/articles/profiles/83033

Landlocked in central Europe and bordered by eight other countries, Austria has a population of 8.1 million with Vienna being both its capital and largest city.

Often overshadowed by its larger big brother Germany next door, the Austrian market is an attractive one for webmasters for several reasons.

For starters, webmasters are not legally obliged to stick to the stringent child protection laws of its big brother.

Austria is a sexually tolerant society, with hardcore pornography being freely available at every newspaper kiosk in the shape of the popular ÖKM magazine, which proclaims itself to be Europe's favorite.

It is also the home of several key niche websites that cater for the Austrian's seemingly insatiable appetite for all things fetish ? fetishes which, rather conveniently, are more often than not shared by their kinky neighbors next door, who even more conveniently, just so happen to share the same language.

Translating your tours and join pages into German with therefore not only help convert surfers from Austria, but also the 85 million or so other German speakers in both Germany and Switzerland.

More than half of Austrians are online, and according to Internetworldstats.com this market grew by 121.4 percent since 2000.

Credit card growth in the last five years has also been slow. This is because of a number of factors including a culture that is adverse to debt and promotes work, discipline and saving.

Furthermore, poor credit card penetration and a reliance on the German economy, which has performed particularly badly in recent years, has hampered growth in this area, with Austrians often reluctant to use credit cards online with fellow Austrians ? yet alone foreign porn merchants based in the USA or elsewhere.

On the other hand, Austria is the world's most attractive pay-per-call market since it allows you to charge ?3.63/Minute for content via its "09" premium rate prefix. This is why we pay a full $10 per password sold in that market.

Furthermore, thanks to their careful and conservative attitude towards money, chargebacks from Austrians who pay you this way are practically unheard of.

Phone billing should therefore be included in your billing armory if you intend to make more Euros from this market.