Whats the one thing you wish you knew when you started?
 

For those of you the have been doing this a while whats the one successful thing in promotion or working on a site for visitors that you have learned and wish you knew going in?

How to block password sharring, it put me out of business when I first started with high bandwidth bills.

Also how important hard link trades are.

Promote the unique niches..more obscure the better

Ugly pages sell.

All the beautiful graphics are there for one reason only : Impress the TGP owner.

Alot. But you live, you learn. It's all trial and error....

^^^^^^ :1orglaugh

And hotlink protection. Holy piss-bags!

How much longer this bitch is going to take till she cums.

I actually started advertising adult sponsors in 1999. I only knew one sponsor, that was CyberErotica (before CEcash). I had some lame ass freehost and didn't know what to do besides put up a few pictures and throw up some ads. So I did. I just left it there. I never got traffic, noone ever knew it was there (besides myself and a few buddies). Hell I barely knew how to use a computer.

I don't know if Jim (from GG&J) was working there or not. I wish I knew him. I would have stayed in the biz. Because I never got anyone to my site, I just never persued it, let the account die and continued to be a surfer.

Even if it weren't Jim, I would have liked to have known any one of the CyberErotica staff. Or at least someone else in the biz that DID know what they were doing. I returned back to designing webpages after I trained myself how to code HTML and use PS. This time 2001, got my first domain in 2002. I have MANY people to thank for everything I have done and earned from hard work and dedication. Many many great webmasters have helped me out so much.

And to think I STILL have so much to learn.

that i had to work to make money.

when i started, i was getting loads of cash doing very little. that really affected the way i thought.

How to find good converting traffic.

that you can afford.

wish i had learned earlier what sponsors do the best for me :)

dont go domain-buying-happy, stick to one or two & learn from those first.

heh... i know how you feel... i did adult 97-00 then left and came back in '04... thinking how easy the cash was then and expecting to come back to something at least similar really messed me up :Oh crap

would of had upsells in my site early and would had wts for checks

wish I would have got into se quicker

how valuable domain names would be.

to trust no one in this industry.

how to use photoshop...
9 years of designing porn sites, and have yet to use PS for any of them.
kinda makes me wonder what happened to all those other designers that told me i needed to get ps, or i won't last in this biz....

AMP uses Fireworks and his stuff is pretty good :)

never really used that much either.

Ain't that the truth? I just had to pretty up a gallery so ugly it was a guaranteed hit with the surfers... just because I realized no one would list it. :D

Which end of the camera to point at a model.

I guess it was so long ago I can't remember.

My main fuck up concerning the Internet was not starting to sell on it earlier.

Some good responses, I notice when you work you make money, when you dont... well....

not to stick with one niche. i stuck with celeb the first 5 years of doing this and it was very profitable at first but i think niche porn is more profitable now, if you can get the surfer interested enough.

also most important, never stop building! this was my biggest mistake. once i was making 10k a month i just sat back and took it easy. big mistake. i should of kept making site after site after site. if i would of kept it up i'd have 1000's by now and some very nice recurring income.

ugly pages sell
and how important is to understand each niche before you try to sell it to someone

To keep the number of open projects to a minimum. Finish your current idea before starting in on the second, third, fourth, or fifth.
Hire people to do as much repetitive stuff as possible.
Do not believe the "do not start a paysite" propaganda.
Do not follow trends and just stick with your current agenda despite the webmaster marketplace.
Bad PR is bad PR no matter what anyone says.

... that I would still be doing this shit! LOL I would have taken more days off.