I had some bigger ambitions on some additional pay sites, a possible program, among other things I was considering with content and site development. Testing some other markets outside my own. However, I have opted to instead focus on some other things I am more passionate about. There are only so many hours in the day.

I will consider some various options on what to do with this. I have not made any decision one way or the other on which way to go. But there are a lot of resources that someone could be banking with and I simply take a cut of the action.

Available Assets:
* Between 3000-4000 Scenes of Various Niche Content. Mine + Licensed.
* Unlimited MechBunny CMS.
* Link Organizer Script.
* Ad Rotation Script.
* TGPX Server Edition.
* Access to Much More Content @ Discounts/Payments.
* Access to Designer(s) @ Discount Rates.
* Web Hosting @ Steep Discounts.
* Celebrity CMS (custom build) & More.

I am not interested in running any type of program myself. I also am no longer interested in running 5/10/20 pay sites outside of my core niche(s). I really prefer to focus on my core product. However, I have access to make assets that would be useful to others in regards to making money.

While I have some ideas for consideration, I am looking to see what else is out there as options. If someone has the experience, and money to put behind it, by all means give me your sales pitch.

Serious inquires only please.

For the past few weeks I have been launching a bunch of websites adding to my traffic network.  They are a mix of blogs, membership and tube sites, forums, TGP’s, landing pages, among other things. I integrated my Smart Spots ad script, as I talked about the other day, and replaced my OpenX.

I have 80% of my sites running with the new ad rotation script and I notice some changes. While my celebrity sites, blogs, forums and other things are doing really well with their CTR (click through rates) my tube sites were not (To be fair, I have not intalled the Smart Scripts on my tube pay sites. Their CTR is typically much higher) the tube sites were terrible.

I have years of tracking data from my OpenX, and normally the sites all have CTR ratios of less than 1:250, and tube sites typically are more like 1:500 or less. But the traffic tubes were running like 1:1700 in a week’s time of installing the new Smart Spots. So I am thinking, that can’t be right!

I only had a half dozen banners in rotation at that time, so I figured I would add in a few more sponsors, and also  change things up a bit with some simpler banner ads. In two days time that CTR on the tube sites had dropped down to 1:746 and keeps falling. I now have around 18 banners in rotation, but have switched up almost all of the ads. Some banners I made myself because I did not like theirs.

So in 2 days times, with tens of thousands of impressions, a couple of quick simple changes and that CTR was cut in half. It simply goes to show you that simple is sometimes a better solution when doing affiliate ads, and marketing techniques. Also, that you need to always be tweaking, tracking, and changing things up when they do not work.

Do not be afraid to try a new trick or two. Just make sure you have something in place to track those changes. Otherwise you are going about it blind and will struggle much more than you need to.

This is a two fold lesson for the newbies out there.

Yesterday we were working with a client who was trying to edit some videos on his server. He could not figure out why he could not see them in his FTP clients, but he could see them in his SSH access. What he was trying to do initially was simply change the permissions on the clips, as required by the script, to chmod 777 so he could encode them.

He submitted trouble ticket after trouble ticket asking us to change this and that on permissions, usernames, among other things for an hour. At first he could see them and not edit them, and then next time after some permission change he could no longer see them in FTP. It should have been a very simple persmissions issue, IF that would have been the case.

After an hour of him bombarding us with trouble tickets, him, support, myself all logged into his server to see what was going on and if it was a server issue, or a user issue. After all, we could see all the videos in SSH. Meaning they were there. We all could also log in just fine. However, we were able to duplicate his issue. In about 2 minutes I figured out what his issue was. He was not using SFTP.

He had a home version of his FTP client programs, and that was his issue. He did not have SFTP, nor could select it.

Home versions typically do not support SFTP. Which is something that most, not all,  web hosts use. He, and you, should have as a business owner, and webmaster. SFTP is a more secure way to access your server. It is preferred for that reason over a typical FTP connection. With some web hosts, you will not be able to access their server without it.

It cracked me up. Between the client submitting the different changes, and the tech guys going nuts figuring it must be some bigger issue as the tech guys typically do, in the end it was something so simple as a USER issue and confguration problem. He upgraded his CuteFTP Home t o CuteFTP PRO which is a better program and also allows faster file transfer, and he was happy as a clam.

When you are looking at web hosting plans, a lot of times people get confused on the difference between the pipe and what you are allowed. Depending on who you talk to, it can fluxtuate a little based on if they are conservative or not but a good rule of thumb on your bandwidth conversion goes something like this…

Roughly, 1Mbps = 290GB, 1500GB = 5Mbps, 1Gbps = 291TB/mo. in bandwidth. 5Gbps would = about 1.45PB. However, nobody sells metered bandwidth in that sort of volume. You always measure it in Mbps/Gbps terms.

So for example if you are looking at a dedicated server  plan and they are offering 10Mbps (290GB x 10=) , you can do simple math. It really is not that complicated to figure out if it is not listed.

It amazes me still today when the subject of doing TGP submits comes up that people say it’s not worth the trouble, it does not get you traffic any longer and tube sites are the way to be. Well, some of that is partically true I suppose, however TGP Submits should not have been just about traffic from the get go. You should have been optimizing your submits all this time.

Individuals who are doing affiliate marketing in the adult industry have been doing TGP submits for years.  For those who do not know, a TGP is a Thumb Gallery Post for short. It looks like THIS and a gallery would be something similar to THIS. It would be 12-20 pictures of a gallery and it is submitted to a TGP for inclusion and possible traffic. One of the biggest TGP’s historically is thehun.com. While I could write on this subject for hours, I am going to stick to the point of SEO on tgp submits for now.

When you are submitting a TGP gallery to TGP sites you want to take those extra couple of minutes to make sure that your gallery has a good description with keywords relevant to the content. You also want to make sure you are using your meta tags, and page title tags. These will help you develop long tail traffic and SERPS (search engine ranking position) over time.

When you are doing your submitting, depending on niche, you are firing that gallery off to say 300-1200 TGP’s for inclusion. If even a fraction of them include you, and have including any type of archive, you will get links back to your site. The more links back with relevant keywords, the more it will help you game the SERPS.

You have to do a lot more than that to get good search enging rankings. But over time all these little things will add up. Especially if you are doing submits on a regular basis. Even today, I still do submits 5 times a week. I do not count on it for traffic any more, although some TGP’s still trickle in some traffic, I really use it more for SEO purposes. It takes me roughly 10-15 minutes a day to do, and is more a less a fire and forget in the daily routine.

Whether 10, 5, 3, 1 year ago I still can find affiliate programs and affiliates who do not optimize their TGP galleries and it’s a damn shame. Honestly, it’s no wonder that a lot of people struggle in getting decent search results for their sites or building long tail traffic and SERP results. If you rush through everything, and do not make the most of your galleries and submits.

You want to make sure than no matter what you are doing you pay attention to your page title tags, meta tags, and good keyword descriptions on the page. On submits, you would also want to switch things up. Not use the same description all the time. Otherwise Google may start lumping your things together as duplicate content. I have a list of say, 20 KW, and I will alternate them on each new submit. So that I am targeting different KW over time.

A lot of these little details will be what makes or breaks you in the long run.

For years I had used PHPAds/OpenX as my advertiser rotation platform. It did the trick but was overly complicated and a major resource hog. Sometimes on the higher traffic sites it would slow everything down waiting to load which was a major pisser to myself, and to members. I had asked around on some adult WM boards and found others had the same experiences. Some went custom, some still used a version of OpenX, some made modifications.

Yesterday I switched to Smart Spots.  This was some script I had never heard of to be honest until a helper recommended them. I checked it out, and thought it may be overly simplistic for my needs but for $50.00 would give it a whirl.

It was easy to install. I had it up and running literally in minutes. It was a vast departure from OpenX to be sure. The back end was not all nice and pretty like OpenX if that matters. But it also was not insanely complicated either. After a quick skim of their help guide I knew what to do, and within 5 minutes I was cutting and pasting the code into my websites.

I like selling ad spots on my sites. Even if for a few bucks here and there $25-100.00. a month. It’s easily money and I do not have to do anything. You just have to remember to do it while building your sites up over time. As it is a major pain in the ass to go through a 50+ site network to swap out ad code!

One thing I did not like about Smart Spots was having to duplicate banners over and over for campaigns. The admin recommends you set up your ad spots by domain. So in my example, I would have had 50+ domains in there. Wrong. I do mine by grouping. So for one niche, all of those sites have the same code. Second group or niche, same code. This bunches like sites and traffic together for ease of reporting. Which is what I prefer. However, it also keeps banner duplication to a dull roar.

All in all it is a good script IMHO. It is very simple to get up and running, as well as get your ads in place and posted on your site(s) in minutes. It is a very stripped down compared to others, but most do not need anything fancy. I recommend it, and will add it to my list of preferred scripts on www.vicevalley.com.

This is a question I get asked all the time on board, forums, and pretty much when anyone finds out I work on the internet or online. The story starts in 1997 and I have had a lot of experience in just about every segment of the online adult industry. In 13 years, you can imagine just how many successes and failures you can rack up over that time. It is much too long to put in a single post, but I will occasionally talk on the timeline for those interested.

So int 1997 was when it had began for me. I was getting out of college, and had entered the real world. While in college, I had spent a lot of my free time looking around the internet for fellow foot fetish folk like myself. There was not even 1% of what is available today, but there were a few people who had gotten in on the ground floor. Some doing celebrity feet, others basically copying old Leg Show pictorials and using them for content on foot fetish sites. A lot which I recognized from my collection and chuckled.

Anyway, after I finished school I wanted to do a site like others. I had not intention of reinventing the wheel but there were around 3-5 differnet celebrity foot fetish sites that all had some admirable qualities, but did not really have everything I wanted in one site. My idea was to take the best things from those sites I liked, and just make ONE SITE that had it the way I LIKED it. One problem… I did no know HTML, web design, etc..

So I went to Barnes and Noble and picked up a book on web design. Back then you did not have the programs you do today. Today you can get WYSIWG (what you see is what you get) editors that make it so simple a monkey could do it. However, I learned some basic code and web design and was off. I basically self taught myself how to do things over time.  In hindsigtht, I would recommend someone take a basic HTML class at their community college. It will teach you 80% of what you need for basic web mastering. But I digress….

So I started with a basic web page back then. I made every mistake you could have. Music on the page, all those glittery shit gifs and animations, it was a mess. Back then I thought it was lovely, as I had never done something like that, but over time I was unhappy with the design compared to competition. So I was always working on it. I worked full time in telco, and then would come home and work another 4-6 hours on my celebrity site.

Keep in mind, this was all static HTML pages and coding by hand back then. Today, you can get automated scripts that will do almost everything for you. So you can cut down a lot of webmastering tasks via server side CRON jobs, automation, content management scripts, content spiders and so on. Which gets your actual work time down to an hour or less a lot of times depending on the site.

Over time, the site started to take off. As shitty as it was, although I was always improving it, the site started to get a lot of visitors. So in no time the bandwidth was climbing up on the site. I was spending money out of my pocket to pay for that bandwidth bill as the advertising and other things I was trying at that time did not bring in enough to cover it. Bandwidth was much more expensive back then, and was costing me $500-900.00 a month. Something had to change.

I looked around the web and saw a lot of adult membership sites that charged a monthly fee for their site. I thought, this was a good idea. I would not charge $30.00 or whatever they had been charging. But I would charge enough to help pay for the bandwidth. After all, I was doing this site more out of my own passion then for money to start. I would charge $14.95 a month and if only a handful of visitors paid. I should be ok.

The concept worked. Although I had a lot more than a handful. The site actually paid for it’s bandwidth bill and then some. It was nice to actually be able to collect a modest pay check for the endless hours of time and trouble to collect and hard code a site for myself, and now others. So on top of my telco money, which was already a good living, I was making a few grand off this celebrity site per month. I looked at it as a hobby with a paycheck!

On this site, it did not matter if I made money or not. I was doing it for the passion of it. Which is something that I have come to find over the decade plus. If you truly are passionate about your site, your content you are producing, it does not need to be the best. My foot fetish and tickling content I have produced myself for my own sites was not the best. Camera shaking, girl next door types, no break out hotties, no males, no nudity. But when it came to sucking feet. The girls did it like I instructed and cha-ching! The money came.

I will pick up phase two on the journey at a later time. Hopefully you enjoyed part one.

I get a lot of questions on the celebrity niche, and how you can make money, if you can make money, how easy is it to make money and so forth. So I am going to give you a crash course in celebrity sites. But before I get started, let me explain a few things.

If you are worried about DMCA and other celebrity issues, this is not a niche for you. Many people are too scared to be in this market. So do not bother reading any further. Secondly, if you are one of these people who think anything remotely along the lines of, “Why would people pay when everything is free on web”, or, “Why would people buy porn when it is all free on torrents, tubes, etc.”, do not bother me. You have the wrong mind set for an online business, and should head back to your fry vat. You will never make money if that is your thought process.

Alright, now that those people are out of the way. First things first. I am going to briefly touch on some of the things, especially western world, people need to concern themselves. However, I am not going to go in depth into them. That is what you pay CONSULTING for.

1. Set up an LLC ($350-500).
2. Set up business bank account. ($25)
3. Get/buy/license some
4. Get/build/buy a celebrity site CMS.

I personally have two CMS’s I have built, and a few variations of them. One of a base line CMS that will do a pay site ($500.00), allowing previews of your membership area. It allows the first 24 hours free, and then after that, you have to pay. Clicking on an archived image will only get you the join page.

I have a second celebrity CMS that is a tube hybrid pay site script ($1500.00). This would allow for celebrity videos. This works the same way. You get the first 24 hours preview free, and then after that you have to pay or you will get the join page.

You can tinker with the settings, and have the sites auto shuffle via a cron job if you wanted, or are a lazy fuck, and do not want to update daily. However, I do actually update daily.

5. You need a processor. Not all processors will work with celebrity sites. However, Verotel (14%) and Zombaio (4.9%) both will. Better yet, you have no VISA ($750-1500.00) fees. You can opt for check, ACH, or WIRE to your business bank account.

6. Setting your site up correctly for SERPS. This is the folly for most people. Not setting up their site correctly from the get go. People think you need 100’s of links, and all this other bullshit. Wrong.

Here is one, of many, examples where an old (sold) site that is not even being actively marketed. I have spend NO time promoting the site, nor have I done much linking of any kind. I do not buy traffic, or links.

SKIN SERPS

Now this is a site that I have not done any promotion on. But it is a good example of how proper page set up can make a huge difference in getting you some decent SERPS and traffic to your site. I have some blogs, and other sites that are doing the same or better examples as this and I have never actively promoted them in ANY way.

Good keywords, proper page set up are KEY to getting you good results. If you want to spend your time, money, and energy further promoting the site with mainstreams traditional methods to increase SERPS. Have at it.

7. Type of site(s). You can take your vast content library and do a number of sites. I typically only do pay sites. That is my forte. However, you can do blogs, use for image hosting, do survey sites, among countless other things. You can do one, or all, and over time be the celebrity king.

Ok. So next, how do you get some members to your site(s). Again, I am not going to go into all of the various methods in detail. However, I will list some ideas for you.

Examples:
Image hosts. Forums. Sigs. Blogs. Fan Sites. PPC Ad buys. Buy traffic. TGP Submits. Free Sites. Link Network. Banners. Among many other things.

8. Picking a price point. If you look around the price on celebrity membership sites varies. Many of them are charging more money… $30-50 per membership, however, I have always been around $10-15. The reason for this is, I am not looking for massive charge backs. I am also not looking for affiliates. So I do not need to have a huge price point since I do not have that overhead. Because of that, I have never been over the 2% charge back imposed by processors. In fact, I have never even been over a half a percent in over a decade in the celebrity niche!

Keep those things in mind when you are setting the price for your site, and what your short and long term goals are for the site(s). You are better off doing a smaller price point, and then doing the marketing yourself then having to deal with massive charge backs or fraud.

One of the best things about celebrity sites is that you have so many marketing and traffic options available to you. Which is very nice if you have some money to spend. It will NOT circumvent you building traffic yourself, but you do have some options available to you that not all niches will.

9. Use your content library to build a network. Yes, this will take some time to build and set up your different sites and link them, get traffic and so forth. But over time, you will build yourself a nice little traffic generator. Just because content is on one site does not mean you can’t use some/part on another. There are many ways to monetize this business model.

10. Install OpenX or an ad server. Make sure that ALL your sites on your network are running ads. Preferably centralized. This can be done many ways, from links to ad rotation and so on. You do not need to stick to just one. You can try many different ways to do it. Whether you start selling ad buys on the boards for $50-100 a month, or you simply want to use PPC or some other company to sell your ad space for you (typically taking 50%). It is another revenue stream you should not forget about.

This is just a short overview, of course, as this is typically what I give those who ask me about the celebrity sites and market. The rest you either need to do yourself, or pay someone. Realistically, you can easily get 200+ member in a short period of time to your site, and most will rebill for a number of months. (Keep in mind, this is subjective on your offering and price point as well)

ex: $12.00 (after processing costs) x 200 = $2400.00

I have been in the celebrity niche since getting out of college in ‘97. For me, it is a labor of love. I have always enjoyed the niche, so it is not that hard for me to put in a couple of hours a day, M-F, collecting images, and updating my site(s). However, like with ANY membership site. You need to put in the work and effort. Motivation and consistent work ethic is what will make, or break, you.

This was my first interview with Sin2.0. Check it out.

Chris “Barefootsies” Marcus shares more than his fair share on setting up a niche pay site. He gets down to brass tacks fast and shares some great answers to frequently asked questions about choosing a niche and running a pay site. GC and J-SiN cover the news and pick their “bad idea” for the week.

www.Sin20.com

I had the pleasure to be interviewed a second time by www.Sin20.com for my thoughts on adult industry. Here is the details and link to that interview.

Chris Marcus, also known as Barefootsies, is like most of us in adult. He started as a consumer and then graduated to the other side of the table when he thought he could create and sell something better suited to his own needs. Now, recognized as the “Foot King” and operator of websites like www.ViceValley.com, he is well positioned to intimately cater to a niche market that he is also a member of. But its not all as easy as that. How do you stay in touch with what the consumer wants after you become the provider? How do you use the modern feedback mechanisms afforded by the internet to produce the content which is actually craved by your consumer base? How do you know when researching your competition is a worth while endeavor or just an example of the blind leading the blind? These are the questions we delve into during this great interview. We also cover how personalization may be the cure for the current glut of free porn; How to know the different between a good idea and just good marketing; and Chris’ thoughts on the most misunderstood aspects of a surfer’s motivations.

www.Sin20.com