Who here runs successful mainstream sites?
 

- and, how much more difficult is it than succeeding in adult?

Just stay in adult. It's that hard :helpme

too late ;)

Persistance and patience

I started in adult in 1998, then moved to mainstream, I make a living, but I came back to adult because I want some mad money for a rainy day. It's no different than adult though, just section it up into niches and target your niche market.

I've actually put a lot of the stuff to work that I learned from adult into my mainstream sites/campaigns and have done better than you would expect. Especially for what I do (don't ask cause I ain't tellin') :)

The online travel biz is just about as big as adult. If you go mainstream, travel is the way to go.

I have a ton of non-adult sites. Its a cake walk.. if you are smart.

My best mainstream site is one for local movie listings where I live.

I was just thinking to myself 2-3 years ago that all the places on the net to find out what times certain movies are playing sucked ass.

So I made a good one and with 0 advertising it gets around 10k uniques a day now, and since its all very targetted local traffic. I have no problem selling CPM ad spots.

So really my advice is think local and provide a service.

you have to spend money to make money in either, so better to spend it in mainstream as your not fighting with thousands of other extremly smart webmasters.