Starting a site for $500 - need advice!
 

I just quit playing MMORPGs again, so I find myself with a bit of time left.

Since everyone's lately been saying that the adult industry is hurting, I figured I'd test for myself how it would go if a noob with a job (so time is limited), almost no budget, no existing traffic, and no skills started doing adult today.

Here are the limitations I've set:
- $500 initial budget (only money made within the project will get added to the budget)
- 2 hours a day
- no helping myself out with my own traffic/links/hosting
- no extensive coding/designing

Every three months, I'll post here reporting on how it's going :)

So far, I'm leaning towards either a thumb tgp, a blog or a tube site. Any thoughts?

Nope. Good Luck:thumbsup

First up: the thumb tgp.

Upsides:
- fairly simple, tools are readily available
- direct results, no waiting for search engine rankings

Downsides:
- outdated
- low conversion rates
- very little value-building through bookmarkers

Breakdown of costs:
$120 - virtual webair account for a year
$100 - comus thumbs
$0 - arrow trader lite
$50 - template from adultwebtemplates
$230 - traffic from chokerstraffic

Second: the tube site.

Upsides:
- builds bookmarkers fairly quickly compared to a tgp
- tools readily available

Downsides:
- low conversion rates
- high bandwidth consumption
- it's a bloody tube site

Breakdown of costs:
$120 - virtual webair account for a year (should do for the first few months, anyway)
$250 - TEVS
$?? - template
$?? - whatever's left goes into traffic

Hope this helps...
 

Yea, forget about running a TGP/MGP, Blog and or Tube site and focus on using the professionally created associate landing pages and use the html code within a new domain by inserting such code into your index page. Next SEO your index page and use sub domains for the rest of your associate program webpages... Then buy like 100k of dating traffic to your sites. :)

I would love to hear how you did, please post your results...

Since no one posted anything new on the subject, but rather just restate what everyone else is doing I thought to give a likely way for you to earn some money...

I would really like to hear back from you to find out how things went.

Best of luck,

Third: the blog.

Upsides:
- quality traffic
- low startup costs because of free software and templates

Downsides:
- maintaining blogs takes time
- results take a while

Breakdown of costs:
$120 - virtual webair account for a year
$180 - hardlinks
$200 - pre-written blog posts

keep it going

Spending 200.00 on posts would be silly and self defeating. Not to mention if you purchased them would knock out your maintaining argument. You would do much better with self writing and not using RSS and other short cuts. Hell you are willing to devote a whole 2 hours a day to this project anyways. Where else could your time go?

First off, I wouldn't say TGP's/MGP's are either outdated or that conversion ratios are low. Then again, in order to have good conversions you need good sponsors with good content and good FHG's, which may well take you a while to find.

Second, I would NOT pre-pay for hosting for a whole year. I would also not trust my business to Webair, do a search around here and see tons of people complaining about their virtuals and sometimes even dedicateds. I know there are many others who are satisfied, but I would personally not take such a chance. You can get a virtual with say http://www.hosthead.com for the same cost and I doubt you'll ever run into any issues.

Third, don't pay for the thumb script when starting out. Get the free version and upgrade to the non-skim version only once you get enough traffic to warrant it. Otherwise you may well get stuck with a copy of a script you no longer need, if the site never takes off.

Fourth, you also don't need to pay for the design, when starting out. Just make a decent template yourself, with one header graphic using just text and some Photoshop effects. In fact, you can even make it all text, no graphics whatsoever. Most designers have never run a TGP in their life so they don't know jack shit about how to make people click, so save your money.

Fifth, there are more sources of feeder than Choker. Although Choker is a safe choice, it still doesn't hurt to shop around. We provide feeder traffic (http://www.trafficadept.com) as well as Ravo (http://www.buyfpctraffic.com) and Hunter (http://www.traffic-out.com). Another option would be to buy hardlinks on high-traffic sites, this may well prove to give you the most bang for your buck, but it takes time and lots of trial of error funds, both of which you don't actually have. Whatever you do, DON'T buy from trafficholder, you'll get a ton of shit traffic from sites running installs, full of stolen content or full CJ's.

Finally, there are better boards to network on and get advice from, when it comes to running a TGP. GFY is the biggest adult webmaster board but, unfortunately, it rarely offers any specific expertise on specific business models.

I also think you may need a bit more than 2h/day, at least initially, in order to get the site off the ground. You'll need to fiddle a bit with learning the scripts, tweaking them, making them work together properly, importing galleries, cropping thumbs, etc.

Regardless of which choice you make for your venture, take some time initially and PLAN. Break down the process into minor objectives and set out to achieve them one by one. Remember to be specific about them and in the planning stage write things down as detailed as possible, in terms of how you intend to go about solving each individual issue. If possible, also try to estimate the time each step will take you and at least set a goal for how much it SHOULD take you. Otherwise you can well end up winging it and procrastinating into the next century.

You're right, but...

Since I'm doing this mainly for fun, I don't want to spend my time doing something I seriously dislike :1orglaugh

Porn simply doesn't interest me enough for me to able to write about it extensively without wanting to bang my head against the wall repeatedly.

Then perhaps cross that off the list.

How about a virtual account, a domain, and then just make free sites 2 hours a day? Sure results may take awhile. Also if your smart and make it dynamic from the get go you could at least end up with divertable traffic at some point.

$500 isn't enough to do anything with a TGP.. You either have to use free scripts and spend the money on traffic, or buy the scripts and have no money for traffic. Regardless $500 isn't enough to buy much traffic to grow it to any decent size. Much less deal with hosting.

I say build 10 to 20 blogs and work on a schedule so they are updated every three days. If you build 10 then split them into 2 niches if you build 20 split them into 4 niches. Add a free trade script to each and trade clicked traffic with your own blogs via toplists.

Then build a old school toplist for each group of niche blogs or just do a multi-category top list site or two and trade by niche. You can then use the top lists to trade traffic out side your network to filter it back to your blogs, so it works as a hub site. (maybe use $100 for feeder to the toplist but if you do make sure you have trades set up that can send back good traffic)

Then take the rest of the money left over from buying hosting/domains to buy some PPC traffic sending it directly to sponsors. Just keep tossing the money earned back at the PPC and keep updating the blogs and reinvest everything back into the PPC campaigns.

Lets the blogs build their traffic as it comes in, just keep updating them and the traffic will come. You will be earning more money this way than trying to start a TGP with only $500.

Good input :thumbsup

The reason I figured webair would be a good choice is that in the past, their dedicated boxes have always worked perfectly for me. Since I don't have any experience with their virtual accounts, I suppose they could be a bad choice for that.

As for the thumb script... 3% seems like a fair bit when you're talking about something similar to compounded interest. It seems to me that it would cut into growths margins rather severely, and $100 is... well, a single bottle of good wine.

With regards to boards, I think you've just proved yourself at least partially wrong :winkwink:

Free sites definitely work great. They're how I started out in this business, and have made me loads of money.

Having worked with those for nearly a decade, though, doing all that again isn't particularly interesting. Plus, it wouldn't be enough of a challenge.

Note to real noobs, though: definitely give free sites a try, if you want to make very good, reliable money. (just don't go for the typical porn freesites with a fontpage, mainpage, 2-3 galleries - instead, mix it up a bit, play with specific niches, get some branding done, add blog/tgp elements to some, make others larger than usual and all about a specific niche or girl, etc.)

No, I didn't. :)

Notice the rarely in there? :winkwink:

Since you're here anyway, and I know that you're quite knowledgeable about tgps: would you agree with crockett that $500 is far too little to get one started?

I know I started fairly successful TGPs about 6 years ago with less of a budget, but I have no idea how much it has changed.

I think you can still start a TGP with pretty much zero cost, except for hosting. It WILL take time though, although you will likely see more immediate results than by say blogging.

I'll go with the TGP, then. Seems like the most fun option :)

Good luck in finding good trades with your TGP ;)

Shouldn't be much harder than finding that last guy with 1800+ healing for the nightly raid :1orglaugh (wow geeks will know what I'm talking about)

Subscribing to the thread.

Alright, next step: a niche.

I'm torn between chubby and trannies right now. Probably going with chubby, since it should be easier to find galleries for. Trannies would probably convert slightly better, but looking at the ugly ones would be much more annoying.

Decided on the "chubby" niche, got a domain and hosting. Waiting for DNS updates before I can get started.

Gonna do some actual work now, will update this thread when the site is up and running :)

what about the website ? :)

Wow people suck at spending $500.

I vote for blogs too

i agree!

how are we doing?!

Websites, plural. $200 spent, made about $400.
Simultaneous mainstream $500 project, half the time invested: $20 spent, made $1.5k.

I'm somewhat tempted to drop the adult $500 site project and pick up wow again. Adult seems to be about as big a waste of time, at least with something you're starting right now.

My old mainstream projects make far more money than my old adult ones, but I thought that perhaps it was a difference in my own focus, not a difference in potential. Now, I strongly suspect that I was wrong. Mainstream has smaller startup costs, better resources, more unsaturated niches and less competition.

In adult, it's virtually impossible to find a decent-sized unsaturated niche and build something that beats the competition in quality/price ratio in just a few weeks. In mainstream, it's easily possible.

Actually, that would depend on whom you view as competition. I won't go into details here, but if you feel like chatting, hit me up on ICQ, 1566665.

What are the best one's now?

With my added free time, and winter months coming up. Other than working out, I need a new cold weather vice.

I've played most ofem, it really depends on what you like. WoW is still the best if you like things on easy mode which most people do.

If you want to try a cool but extremely hard one give Eve Online a try.

http://upload.0x1011.org/files/LearningCurve.jpg

I have not played MMORPH for a good 5 years. Basically since going into online full time. I used to play EQ a LOT back in the day for years. But once the mass exodus began, you could literally run from one end of the globe to the next and not find people.

Except on the moon or bazaar.

:disgust

You won't find a good mmorpg like eq now. uo,eq,ac were kickass unique games. Most of the ones you see now just feel like copies, boorring. Although Anarchy Online, and Eve online are cool mmorpgs, they are kinda old though. But... AO is suppose to have a major graphics update in 09 sometime.

Waste of money.



Here's what I'd do:

1. Make a blog
2. Write good content posts
3. Optimize a bit
4. Trade links (don't bother with blog directories)
5. ...
6. Profit.

That's a damn shame.

EQ was the shit back in the day. I remember my computer would almost crash going into EC (before bazaar) and some of the other main common areas. You would also have to actually search for uncamped areas, or wait to get on a group.

Made a lot of good friends and fun times. Sounds like those days are gone.

Yeah I got a mistell from some girl breaking up with her bf in eq. I was like WTF, can't you at least call the guy??? lol :upsidedow

Any blog you spend 2 hours a day on should be successful if pick the right niche.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Yeah. I remember meeting some people who referred to, and always played with, their online hubby/wife/bf/gf. It made me laugh.

I could always picture some online Xfiles beardy and I wouldn't hazard a guess on what she looked like.

**cackle**

:thumbsup:thumbsup

webcams.com blog or tgp/mgp content
 

There are valid arguments for either, and it's a shame that you can't just do both, but understand that cost is an issue for you.

But if you need content, our RSS feeds for blogs come with plenty of text. Here's a couple of examples:

http://www05.webcams.com/misc/chris/RSS-for-blogs.jpg

We got feeds in different niches as well at Webcams.com Affiliate program.

Hit me up if you need anything.

Chris
ICQ 406-094

I would spread that budget on other brokers ...

You forgot 5.1 - wait 6 months to get decent traffic