I've got a domain, content...now what?
 

I've been a photographer for some time, and I recently started working with a couple of models to create a website for them. I got the domain, photographed them (doing things that I'm pretty sure would be illegal if we were in Utah), had their friends come over and do more of the same, got a credit card processor, built a great looking site and have it all ready to throw out there.

But now I have two questions:

• What's going to happen
• What should I do to make it work?

I made a ton of money on the internet in the late 90's, but that was selling real products. I have no idea what's going to happen when I put a website out there that basically has some hot girls banging each other and their friends. This is not at all like selling widgets, or at least I'm guessing it's not. Just 'cause a girl sticks her finger in her butt 9or someone else's) I'm not sure someone is going to plunk down their hard earned money to see it, when I can surf the net and find tons of it for free.

Which brings me to another question...why are so many people giving it away?

anyway, as far as content, I told them we should concentrate on video clips, because I figure that's what people want to see more. But I really have no idea. We shot lots of pics as well. What's a good ratio of pictures to videos? I was even tossing around the idea of no pics at all, and having ONLY videos.

I suppose at this point it's a learning process, just as it was when I started my first internet venture in '99. I was nervous about it making any money then, because I had a ton of investment. This time there is less up front, but I have no idea where to go from where I'm at.


Any suggestions?

You are set, all you will need now is traffic. Start a affiliate program and everything should go according to plan, may take a while before you see good roi, sounds like you are on your way.

About the free stuff, giving it away.. well it was a total mistake in the adult industry.

gl hf

a url helps.

I'm not really an expert but if you've made money online you probably know somethig about getting traffic/seo/etc

I guess that should be your next step.

I sold car parts. I bought my advertising from automotive forums where people talked about their cars and how to make them faster, and I bought from national print magazines.

But where do I advertise that I have nekkid girls that want you to come look at them?

You see, this is part of my problem...I don't even know what an affiliate program is, or why I need it.

Not only do you need a URL and traffic but I would make sure you get a lawyer to protect yourself and make sure your credit card processor is good for online transactions and adult material.

Is your processor from your auto parts? if so they'll want you to apply for your new business venture.

Contact Mark over at CCBill....that's a great place to start, if you have ICQ, contact me and I'll help you out.

Well, there's nothing there to see, but the site is Dirty Midwest Girls

No, they don't want any of my "porn money".

I can't understand why they don't. At it's peak I was doing over $100,000.00 per month in online transactions.

well, not advice, just opinion...
just slow, start to promote and there you go, i wish i have enough of my own material to start pay site
I recomend you CCbill, it's good for beggining and if you have small site like you

I would start by finishing the site and tour. Fill up your backend then think about promoting it.

The site is finished. The tour pages and member pages look fantastic, very well designed and are user friendly. They just are not uploaded yet. We were looking to get all of our ducks in a row before we put anything out there. We don't want to lose any potential customers because we were not ready for them yet.

So right now we are working on building some more content to have ready for updates, which is another issue. I don't see a problem with having content to update every week. I was thinking two photo sets and one video every week. Probably even doing the updates through the week, say monday wednesday, friday, instead of all on the same day.

We're thinking that we we will launch the whole thing at the end of this month. That way we have enough content to hold us over for a bit, and get us into better weather for this part of the country so we can get out and do some outdoor stuff as well.

Well, my question to you is HOW do I promote it??? You see, if I could I'd just buy a TV spot, but I don't think the stations would let me air one... so where do I promote?

Where is my promotional money (and valuable time) best spent?

• Buying traffic?? If so, from whom?
• TGP websites? Do they really work?
• ???

So you have checked to ensure your site is cross browser compatible etc?

Promotion would depend a great deal on your budget of course. People have mentioned an affiliate program already. This is where other webmasters promote for you for either a percentage of sales and rebills (typically 50%) or on a pay per signup basis.
There are a wide varity of people that sell traffic, I suggest searching on the board and check refrences and any board feedback regarding them.
Yes tgp sites do work, though it really helps to know what your doing. You can however submit to some for no costs. Also getting some FHG's out to the owners of tgps would help (again affiliate program).
You can also start to build search engine friendly free sites to promote your paysite. This takes time, though it helps to have everything up and ready or you are wasting traffic.
Basicly there are nearly an endless ways to promote sites.

I can help. damagex @ ************ or ICQ 1566665 for contact.

cool splash page

Have a feeling he may not know what icq is. www.icq.com *lots of us use this.

Thanks, good call. That's why I also posted e-mail though. :)

With the spaces I really did not notice it until after I made the post.

Grrrr... :helpme

Well, It's compatible with IE and Mozilla. I have seen a couple of issues when viewing from a MAC, but they are small.

Is this a gallery that is hosteed on my server, with a link from their page so that surfers can see a few free pictures? If so, this is one of the things I think adult sites do that is crazy!!! I can understand a link that brings a person to your tour pages, but giving out free samples...bad idea. In a brick and morter business, it's fantastic. The person shopping get's a little taste, then maybe they buy. To get a taste from another vendor they have to get in their car, drive across the street and go inside another store. But in the internet world, the shopper get's a little taste, then clicks again and gets a little taste, and clicks again to get another taste from someone else. Why buy when I can get so many free tastes??? It's like my college roomate at Sam's club on a Sunday...he just grazed the store for an hour and then he had no need to buy anything because he was full!!!

Now, I see where this helps the TGP owner, because they get more hits because they have more freebies to give away. As a general rule, I think everyone would be better off if they stopped doing this practice all together. If it all dried up at once, I think sales would increase, becasue it would be harder to get the free stuff. But I suppose the cat is out of the bag and will never be put back in.

This was similar to something I saw often in the auto parts biz. Since it was online, every now and then a small guy would come along, most likely a gearhead that wanted to get his car parts cheaper for his racing habit, and he would start up a little site selling parts WAAAYYYYY cheaper than any serious vendor. And our customers would call and want us to match the price. Usuall we did, sometimes we told them to order over there, because we didn't need the headaches on a $150 purchase to make $5 in profit. But, in time, that guy would learn that he couldn;t stay in business because he was too cheap. He learned that he was spending too much time to make that $5, and they would usually fade away. Since we were bigger we were able to just weather the storm, so to speak.

Anyway, I'm rambling.

I know what ICQ is. I'm not a retard. I just don't keep it on my computer because it interferes with my AVID Mojo

Check to make sure it works with firefox as well.

As for the freebee's well I agree with you but alas that just umm isnt reality and without freebee's you do not get the traffic from other sources.
You can take this stance of course, but I hope you got enough funds to be buying lots of clicks and the ability to make very strong text based SE free sites.

Not assuming your a retard at all. Lots of people who first come here have no clue what it is. We were just covering the basis.

No, I'm sure tons of people don't know what ICQ is. It's old school, I know that. I remember when it was actaully just like some college webcam thing a long time ago.

Anyway, I'm not saying that I won't use the FHG, I just think they are a bad idea in general. If that's where the customers come from, that's where I'll go to get them.

By the way, what is it that you do in this business?

Run paysites, run some free sites, partners with a dvd production company, have shot content before, etc.

Here's an interesting note...

I just clicked on the link there in your signature and went to that page. when I looked at the sites that they have there is one called "Dirty Carrie"... I talked to her about 3-4 months ago about building her a website. She's a dancer at a local strip club here in my town. I found her to be a bit unreliable, but I guess somebody got her to show up to work!

I just handle the affiliates for the owner of those sites, not the day to day operations. I know each girl basicly runs her own site in the network of sites though.

Thanks. I try.

After I spoke with her, I believe she started working with a guy who I know, because I saw she was a part of his network of sites...but now she is with a different bunch. Must have been trouble in that camp!

Some Ideas
 

Dear Hollywood,

it was really enjoyable for me to read your words. Sorry I'm not native english and my grammar is really bad but I think we will understand together. I did other business also before I joined to the adult industry - 6 years ago. I just laughed at the beginning I didn't understand why ANYBODY pays for porn on the internet - when so much free content is available for anybody... Later I figured out. Your members wants quality. Updates. Their favorite. Comfort.

The most important things when you design / build your site:

- Affiliate System. I prefer NATS (www.getnats.com) from Too Much Media. The system has a lot of bugs, I think it's a public beta version, but there is no better on the market todays. This system will handle both your resellers and members and also it's an abstraction layer to connect your system to more than one Payment Processor at the same time.
- Exclusive content. One of the most important things.
- Daily updates. If you can do that. A new set every day to be in the front line as a content provider / publisher.
- Easy navigaton. Don't put flashy vaginas to everywhere, just easy-readable text / graphics
- Friendly Customer Support. Don't looser your members.
- And finally: Get some Traffic

...and 42 other things.

Of course the working things always what you believe in. (But that's not a guarantee!) :)

Yeah, what a money pit that Wal-Mart is.

In all seriousness, there is a reason the grocery business established that selling technique. It works. Granted there are some free loading losers like your old roomate, but in theory, they sample the Eggo Waffles and then buy a 12 pack. Same theory with adult.

I don't fault the poor bastard...he had about $250K in student debt at that time...but now he's a cardio-thoracic surgeon.

I just hope your 12 pack analogy works the same for this!

all of the content was shot by me, and I don't plan on selling it anywhere. The navigation is designed to get you where you want to go, easy and not confusing. I'm planning 3x weekly updates, so I hope that is enough to start with.

But then again, maybe we do just want to sell the content??? Would it pay off to just sell the content? It gets rid of the hassle and headache of keeping up a website, but I'm thinking that it must be better to own the content and sell it over and over to your customers, rather than once to someone else.

What do people pay for a series of pictures?

I find this entire thread hysterical, because this guy has been approching women for at least 3-4 months, got a site design, paid for processing etc. and he is clueless... cart before the horse? lol... don't mind me - continue on "oh wise ones..."

:glugglug

something smells........

I never approached any woman. She called me. I'm a well known photographer where I live. The girls who asked me to build this site were girls that I photographed for some Hooters promotional thing. Plus, they knew how much money I made from my first internet company.

Now, I admitted that I was clueless in the beginning of this post. That's why I am here. What I didn't say was that I'm clueless about photography, web design (I've built many) or business in general.

I'm curious as to why you would post as if you knew more than anyone else here without putting information in your post that would benefit - not just me - but anyone who would read this thread.

I was under the impression that this was what this board was for. I have no doubt that I can succedd in this business, or any business. Business that I have created (for myself and others) have grossed into the millions of dollars - and still do.

What I was looking for was knowledge from those who may already have it. I'm guessing you do not, or you just don't want to share it. If that's the case, why are you here?

Agree
 

Good questions, Hollywood, if you see my posts number you will see I'm new also to this community as an acitve member (but I knew this forum years ago).

I'm trying to figure out what is the goal / usability of this forum... it's look like a huge annoying flashing banner contest in the signatures for me yet.

I see your point.

There does seem to be little going on but people acting like carnival barkers trying to get me to have my weight guessed... (It's more than I'd like it to be, by the way.) There do seem to be more posts and interest in threads that are discussing why fat guys are better at sex than there are about the busines of internet sites. What I was hoping for was some useful information by possibly asking the right questions.

But let's not let that take away from those who do post useful information! For those of you who do post with useful information, THANK YOU. I did the same for others in the online auto parts biz years ago. Of course, I was carful not to tell them too much if they would be competing with me directly, but vendors that were selling stuff I didn't...Hey, tell 'em how. It comes back to you later. (Karma)

Read this blog entry.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think I'm going to put it out there and make a zillion dollars for doing nothing. I understand what it takes to make a business work.

My question to a guy like you who has been shooting since '97 would be "what does work and what does not?"

hey there... if you do have questions i would be happy to try to help, hit me up(icq) if ya want... BTW... this board is called... go fuck yourself...

you shouldn't have invested so much time & money if you didn't know how to get traffic.

How come nobody has mentioned Flapjacks to this guy yet?

Easily the single most important piece of software to be on your server. Without it, you are at risk of loosing too much money.

What he said. :thumbsup

I haven't invested much at all. Pretty much everything about this so far has been cheap. Nothing has been suprisingly costly, at least in my opinion.

I have looked around, and I see what the folks who are trying to sell their products say... the guy who sells traffic says his stuff works best, the TGP's say they are the best...yada, yada, yada.

I was looking for some person who actually knows what works.

For example, as I stated earlier, I advertised both in online automotive forums and in national print media (car magazines). The web advertising was cheap, about $200 per month. The magazine ads were about $1200-1500 per month. Now, 90 percent or more of my business came from the web forum advertising, so guess where I decided to spend more of my ad dollars???

That's the kind of real world information I am looking for here. But it doesn't seem that any one has it.

I haven't invested much at all. Pretty much everything about this so far has been cheap. Nothing has been suprisingly costly, at least in my opinion.

I have looked around, and I see what the folks who are trying to sell their products say... the guy who sells traffic says his stuff works best, the TGP's say they are the best...yada, yada, yada.

I was looking for some person who actually knows what works.

For example, as I stated earlier, I advertised both in online automotive forums and in national print media (car magazines). The web advertising was cheap, about $200 per month. The magazine ads were about $1200-1500 per month. Now, 90 percent or more of my business came from the web forum advertising, so guess where I decided to spend more of my ad dollars???

That's the kind of real world information I am looking for here. But it doesn't seem that any one has it.

good point.

And then maybe we can go snipe hunting! useless