The key to running an Adult Paysite is true dedication. You must focus on Members, Support, Updates, and Webmasters at all times. This is only the start; we also have 2257 record keeping, extra accounting, taxes, possible staff, extra servers for hosting and a need for improved security, and marketing. So the rule is: Never under estimate the dedication needed to properly run and maintain a single Paysite.

This article will assume that you have the proper skills to open and maintain an Adult Paysite. You either are a Webmaster and have the skills needed to publish and maintain a Paysite. Or you have the understanding, the money, and you can manage the people to make this happen. Paysites are not for the Adult Industry novice.

The quick of what is needed!

The listing below is guideline placed in the order that it should be completed in. You can’t get visa approved without an entire working Website, and you can’t build a design without Content. Steps are important!

• Select your niche: Start with something you enjoy.
• Purchase niche domains: Including the .net, org and misspells.
• Content: Video and Picture for members, tours and promo material.
• Get content web-ready: Either purchased ready or converted for web-ready use.
• Paysite design: Warning page, tours, join pages, and members graphics.
• Promotional material: Hosted galleries, banners, buttons, full-page ads, ect.
• Hosting: Quality servers and bandwidth really makes Members happy
• Content management system: Hand updates or a system to your manage content.
• Password protection: Member auth systems to protect from password leaks and attacks.
• 2257: Before you actually release you need to have your records in order
• Processors: Get your tours, join forms and members area Visa/MC approved.
• Costs: The overall costs of opening your first Adult Paysite.

Let’s get started!

The above list seems nice and simple, until you break it all down. Attention to detail and a vast amount of testing is a major part of setting up and running your own Paysite. The details are very important, even the smallest ones.

Figure out what Niche you wish to target, you can use TubeSites to help find your next Niche. If you already have your own traffic base, this may be a simple answer. If not, just remember that some Niches cost a lot more than others. IE: The Gay-Tranny niche can be rather expensive, then again a glamor site may be cheaper to create but it can be harder to promote.

Once you have a Niche, it’s time to select and purchase domains. Try to find the shortest, easiest to remember domain that you can find. Maybe add a keyword or two related to the niche within the Domain name. Don’t forget to pickup the .net, and if you want the .org and any possible misspells of the domains. Normally I spend about $50-$75 on domain reg fees when setting up a new Paysite.

Quick Tip: Before you spend the money on content production, step back and evaluate your decisions. Start by letting go of your personal feelings and ego, remember we all have created the next best niche and paysite idea. Make sure you aren’t letting your ego tell you what to do!

Content Time

This is the hard part, you may have a deal with someone on DVD content, you could purchase pre-made and net ready content from online producers, or spend the big bucks and get exclusive content made. Either way, you will need about 10 movies and 10 photo sets, with updates, to help get the ball moving. The more you can afford to start with, the better.

This is the hard part, you may have a deal with someone on DVD content, you could purchase pre-made and net ready content from online producers, or spend the big bucks and get exclusive content made. Either way, you will need about 10 movies and 10 photo sets, with updates, to help get the ball moving. The more you can afford to start with, the better.

Non-exclusive / Web ready content can be a great starter point. $1000-$5000 in non-exclusive content can give you 100’s of movie and photo sets, all ready to be uploaded and used, ie: web-ready.

Exclusive content on average costs $1500-$5000+ per scene. Having more or better models, the larger the cock, the more exclusive the niche or the higher quality it is, the higher cost it will have.

If you produced your own content or purchased non-web ready content (a DVD) then you will need to encode the content for Web use. This costs anywhere from $15 to $200 per DVD. The price often depends on how much editing the encoders have to do, a straight DVD to Web burn is cheap, an edited burn that cuts out the trash increases the cost.

Burning and cutting DVD’s in house can be costly. The cost of the machine and burning/cleaning software isn’t cheap. The time it takes to learn it or hire someone that knows it already, isn’t easy or cheap. So paying a company to process the content for you can greatly speed things up and lower your costs.

A different, much cheaper solution is to purchase web-ready only content from online producers when starting out.

Buying Content: First thing, make sure you get the 2257 records and the producer is American, just to save yourself some possible issues. Then secondly, make sure you can use the content in all areas, like Members Area, Tours and Promotional Material. Anyway, the Content Blow Out is always a solid buy. They offer several content heavy packages that are cheap and 2257 compliant.

Don’t get stuck in the Content Rat Race, the ‘net is filled with great-affordable content producers just waiting to work with you! So have a look around, ask some friends, post on adult webmaster forums, etc.. You will quickly get bombarded with every Content Special you can imagine with just a little effort.

Tour & Members Graphics

Now that you have content ready and a domain, it’s time to get a design. If you can design everything yourself, that’s money saved. You don’t have to spend a ton of money on a design to make a Paysite convert, actually a simple and fast loading design often does better.

If you need the works, warning page, 2-3 tour pages, and a join page and members header design. It could cost a fair amount. From $400 to $2000+ could be spent.

For the Webmaster skilled, you may be able to duplicate and complete many of the pages yourself, like extra tour pages. So a simple header and a few body images might be the only needed graphics. This could range from $200 to $800, again depending on the amount of extra graphics you need.

Several design companies have packages, which can range greatly in prices. These packages can include all needed pages, warning and join pages, some banners/ads, and sometimes Hosted Galleries. If you plan on spending the money then take the time to talk the design companies and see what special packages they can create for you.

The different pages you may need to create:
The Paysite design / layout may not seem like much, but once you break it all down the overall size of a paysite, outside and inside, is staggering.

• A Warning Page
• Main landing-tour page and other content pages.
• The Join Form and Design, with proper Processor/Visa Details.
• The terms and conditions, privacy policy and disclaimer.
• A customer support section, contact forms, password lookup.
• Members Login Page, StrongBox.
• Error Pages, like 301 failed member logins and 404 file not found error pages.
• Exits or chains of exits, if any.
• The members area, a header, footer, and menu graphics. Depending on the complexity of your members design, it may require much more.

With a 3 page tour, a single Paysites ‘outside’ pages could consist of 15+ different unique Web pages. CCBill and Epoch both offer customer support, password lookup and other support pages that you can link to, cutting down on the total amount of pages you need to create.

Hosted Galleries

Hosted Gallery costs is rather hard to gauge. If you have hookups you can get galleries, with text, and thumbnails for $10 each, if your new into the game and can’t buy in bulk, it could cost as much as $30 for a fully web-ready gallery.

Starting things out you can purchase 20 total galleries, 10 to open with and 5 weeks worth of updates with 2 new galleries a week. 20 galleries X $20 average per gallery is $400 total. Hopefully these are web ready for that price.

Banners and Advertisements

Banners, buttons, full/half page Advertisements aren’t really that expensive but you should shop around. Often you can find package deals that include several different advertisement sizes for a lower packaged price.

Paysite Hosting

The Online Adult Industry is filled with several honest, experienced, reliable and cheap hosting companies. If you are just starting out then it should be very cheap for you to setup and build, under a $100 monthly. Don’t be suckered in by super cheap hosts that promise the world though.

Members Area and Content Management

While you are waiting on Design work to be completed it’s time to get the Members Content in order. This can be done by hand, and starting out that is fine. However if you ever want to go on vacation and not worry about updates, then I recommend you pickup a Content Management Systems (CMS).

Either by hand or through a CMS you need to get the Members Area and Content online. Don’t start off by publishing all your movies and photos at once, save about half for future updates. If you have a CMS, this can easily be scheduled in each week, otherwise create all your updates now so you don’t have to worry with them later.

Password Protection for Members

This is an important step, and one that both CCBill and Epoch setup for you, if you give them FTP access. It’s fine to allow them to setup a simple auth to quickly get VISA approved, but after that you need to beef up your Members Area Protection. If you use a Standard Auth Protection, without anything to protect it, your Members passwords will quickly be blasted all over Password trading sites and your bandwidth bills will quickly increase.

2257 is a BITCH

Old 2257 law or the new 2557 laws, who cares. If you are an American, you best keep your records. It’s a pain in the ass, but a simple excel sheet with each models record and a binder with the model records, listed in order gets the basics covered. Opening a Paysite isn’t a game, and if you plan on lacking on paper work, a Paysite isn’t for you.

Processors CCBill and Epoch

Just before your Website is ready you will need to start the Processor Contract process with either CCBill and/or Epoch. This can take about a week to fully complete, so save you some time by starting early.

Visa and MasterCard Approval

Now that Paysite is ready and we have the Biller Contracts started, you can register your personal, business and website information with VISA/MC (US or EU). VISA/MC have strong Chargeback and Refund limits. A lack of knowledge or focus can put you within danger levels very quickly, an area you do not want to play within. If you lose your VISA/MC account, you will have hell ever processing with them again.

It costs $750 to setup a VISA/MC account through CCBill and Paycom. This is per master-account, per-processor and not per-website. Normally it takes less than two weeks to get approved, but it can take much longer. Each following year costs $350 per master-account, per-processor.

Once you submit your Websites to be approved it is very common to have compliance email you back with simple corrections that need to be made. These can often be missing 2257 or Terms links or other basic billing details that they require. Either way, make the changes and email them back.

Quick Tip #1: Before you submit your Paysite for Approval you can email the Processor Support Centers and have them review your Paysite for you. Rules change, often, and having a quick one over from the Support Staff can save you some time with possible compliance issues.

Quick Tip #2: If you are going to be opening several Paysites you can create a mock tour, join form and members area (with content). This mock up covers all the basic VISA/MC Rules. Using a mock up design can greatly speed up the approval waiting processes. Once you publish the real Paysite I recommend you follow the first tip to make sure your new design is still compliant.

What does everything cost?

The cost of a starter Paysite isn’t all that bad. This guide is lower end of the Paysite food chain. Some Adult Paysites spend $20,000 – $30,000 a Month in exclusive content. Startup costs for large Paysites can easily reach $50,000 – $100,000. The largest “Single Paysite” investment I have heard of is about $3 million before launch.

Domains: $50 : The .com, .net, .org and 2-3 misspelled-related domains.
Content: $4000 : Content Package, web-ready, 20 movies and 20 photo sets.
Design: $700 : Basic warning page, tour, join form and members header graphic.
Hosted Galleries: $400 : 20 web-ready galleries at $20 each, if we get lucky.
Ad Material: $500 : Basic banner/button package from several Adult Design Companies.
Hosting: Starts off cheap, as low as $100 monthly. It can quickly reach $500 monthly when traffic and sales kick in.
StrongBox: $100 : Members area username/password protection system.
Visa/MasterCard: $750 : Per High Risk Processor (CCBill & Paycom)

If you can design or have a designer and have a content deal for web-ready content, you could open with as little as $1000.

Not bad! Looks like we could start our first decent Paysite for under $7,000!

Meum Cerebrum Nocet!

Welp, that about wraps it up, other than a few personal experiences to mention. I spent about $15k-$20k to open each of my Paysites, this includes 1-2 years of fully web-ready, exclusive content. My most expensive Paysite to open cost about $45k in non-web ready content. The biggest key to keeping costs down is the content. Find a hookup, a friend, a partner, someone that can help cover the costs and give them part of the pie! The overall idea is to keep all costs as low as possible, if it’s content, design, whatever it may be. And remember, every service and price in this business can be negotiated. Use that to its fullest advantage to really help save yourself some money!

Credits

Much thanks for The Doc from The Doc Blog for writing this article.

Joining an affiliate program for your favorite niche market is very easy. You just plunk into their form, all your personal information, choose a password and you’re into the back room. You have just gained access to a virtual marketing office. You have been hired to advertise to all the ‘netizens, convincing them to follow you to the door of their adult sites. Your job is to design advertising copy, in the form of Web sites that energizes the prospective members and prepares them to purchase.

Seems a simple task, as your new employer is all geared up to pay you for every sale you generate and hands over to you, every marketing tool they have. There will be banners, free content, picture of the day content, preferred text links, full page advertisements, 404 traps, e-mail programs, pop-up consoles and your link codes. You will also see the sites listed that are available for you to market, in your new job as Marketing Affiliate.

So, what is the first thing you do when you start a new job? You familiarize yourself with the company. This is very true for niche affiliate marketing, because often you will have found some smaller affiliate programs with owners new to the adult web and/or new to pay-site ownership. It is a good idea to investigate the affiliate company in order to determine your comfort level in working with them. Check with other webmasters and even send off some e-mail questions to the contacts found on the affiliate site. You do not want to change out 5000 links or make 100 new sites using a brand new company, unless you are sure that this niche will work well for you, and the company is worthy of the risk you will assume. There are difficulties in commandeering a brand new adult pay-site/affiliate program, which places the new programs into the “proceed at your own risk category.”

VISIT AND TAKE NOTES

Next, familiarize yourself with the site you are about to promote. If you have not already done so, visit the tour and scour it for things like “what is the visual impression a surfer will get regarding what is inside this site.” If the site has a generic name, but in visiting the splash page you see six pictures of blowjob babes, you will instantly see your angle in advertising this site. In addition, you can grab many text links from their tour. Do not hesitate to ask for a pass to the member’s area. Remember you are now their best marketing affiliate and there is no reason for them to refuse.

Advertise yourself. Now that you have your adult themed site, designed with all the latest in marketing tools, you have to begin to market it. Your site has to be optimized for, and placed in the search engines. You should consider some traffic trades, and you can even pay for surfer clicks. Again, it seems a simple task, but you can either proceed looking like the realtor who simply hangs a for-sale-sign out on a lawn, or you can go one step further by advertising an open house, or placing write-ups in ingenious places. All it will take is a few minutes of surfing your new niche, to determine what has already been done by other webmasters, and get ideas of how you might do things better, or at least differently.

Joining alternative Affiliate Programs. Unique problems come with the alternative niche markets. I have ventured into a market with my site Couples Sex that has not been approached yet. My site is highly unique in that I attempt to include in the membership area items of interest not only to both sexes, but also to couples. I expect two surfers using one membership, and I hope that they end up very distracted by something as juicy as a passionate romp on the living room floor. My angle is to enhance the sexual experience of the new age surfing couples, and even to be a sex- and relationship-positive adult site. The problem with innovation, is effectively training my new marketing affiliates. I always let a new affiliate inside the member’s area, and I always spend time with them to explain the goal of the site.

DO YOUR HOMEWORK

You need to research, if you are working in a niche with which you have no personal experience. I find the Gothic sites to be fascinating, yet I know nothing about goth. In order to market it, I would have to do some intensive study as to what is appealing and sexy about the gothic niche. I cannot write effective advertising copy for a niche I have no clue about. Now it becomes very important for me to see the inside of the sites. I must understand the turn-on factor.

Keep in Touch. Before you decide to give up on a sponsor, contact them with your questions or concerns. It is very important for new and niche site owners to get this kind of feedback. This is similar to an exit interview with real world employment, only you initiate it. In an exit interview, there is a free exchange between the employee/employer, and it is meant to be a discussion covering experiences while working at the company, and as a last chance to share your opinions and ideas about the company. Hopefully you have already done your best to communicate some of your concerns or desires regarding your new marketing affiliate experience, before you decide to quit. When it becomes obvious to you that this partnership is not working well, then it’s time to move on. Take this opportunity to let the site owner know why you are going. Done with tact it can be meaningful feedback and could help the pay-site owner to understand a differing perspective on their site. You will find that the time spent is worthwhile, because you have made a professional contact, or you may even convince the sponsor there’s a need for a change.

JUMPING ON THE BRAND NEW NICHE WAGON

Many webmasters look for that late-breaking niche and want to be the first on board. It is a gamble but often well worth the effort. There are questions that must be asked first:

• is there content readily available for this niche?
• are there content providers willing to regularly produce fresh content?
• can you produce your own content in this niche?
• is the target market large enough?
• is there enough variation in the keywords you will use?

Do this research before you start to work in a new niche. Remember there are solutions to each of those problems if you are enterprising enough. Possibly you can you strike up a business relationship with the pay-site owner, in order to have unlimited use of their content. Maybe you are quite energized by the idea that very few are marketing to this niche. Be well informed before investing your time and money.

Take advantage of the free in-service training. Anyone who has worked in the real world knows the value of continuously learning and advancing your knowledge, no matter how many years you have been in the business. Often you will see the new webmasters frequenting the chats put on by sponsors that are not only networking opportunities, but free, knowledge sharing forums. Your new employers are sending you on staff development courses. Show up and pay attention. Most of the readers of this column will be surfers who have been around a while. If you are an experienced surfer, don’t think that the informational chats are not for you. It’s good to keep an ear to the ground about late breaking adult webmaster news, and networking and boards are very good for this. If you do not sharpen your skills by listening to those around you, then you are going to be missing out.

There is a community of webmasters marketing to women that have started their own chats on Wednesday nights. The purpose of the chats is to provide a learning forum that allows for networking and sharing ideas and concerns. Our numbers are very small because there are not many 4women marketers. We can therefore have the big sponsors chatting with new and seasoned webmasters. The productiveness of these chats is amazing. In the very least the participants go away very energized and full of ideas. The possibilities of these free exchanges are endless, from the free flow of ideas between the people responsible for the partner programs to announcements and even some affiliate marketing training.

THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX

Think about what you are marketing through the eyes of the surfer, and you have what it takes to make it big in the adult affiliate marketing arena. You have to do things differently from the others. You have to make your own advertisements, not simply put up banners. You must know what the adult surfer wants, and promise it, but DO NOT deliver it. Instead you must effectively deliver them to the tour of the right sponsor, the sponsor who pays you for the adult surfer you have managed to guide to them with credit- card in hand. Do the tease, do the promising and tell them where to go. The adult ‘Net has begun to look like a bazillion mini pay-sites with all the hardcore readily available. It doesn’t take Wankers long to know that with a little work they can find everything they need without paying for it. If webmasters keep this up we should be getting into the ISP service provider biz, because they are the only ones making any money from the free-sites we see out there today.

In summary, remember when you get that new adult affiliate marketing position, that these companies are hiring you for your marketing skills and not your entertainment skills. Most webmasters have to continuously “dummy down” their graphics skills and even their conversation skills. Most content comes with series sets that go from softcore to hardcore penetration, and these have to be censored or not used at their full quality level, to allow a preview, but also to be able to effectively promise “the good stuff” at the sponsor.

Are you multilingual? If you are multilingual you have an advantage in adult affiliate marketing. If you think of it, every niche is wide open to many languages. Let’s say Russian is your second language. Make some feeder sites in every niche, use their search engines, and make cash telling them what they can find inside the big-guy pay-sites. This is where you can really sharpen your marketing skills. You almost teach the foreign surfer about the site you are suggesting to them. You teach them, and walk them to the door.

Joining an affiliate program is very simple but you are being given keys to the office, shown your new desk, and left to go at it. Only self-starters need apply. Be ready to consider yourself back in school. Consider that you are self-employed, yet you have a symbiotic existence with the sponsors. Its like doctors and nurses, we cannot have hospitals without both groups. Feeder-site webmasters and affiliate programs also have this kind of relationship.

Put your feet up, grab a coffee and get ready for your new career. Bring all your skills, go back to school, learn to network and listen to others, and trust your instincts. Make long-range plans for an entire empire of sites, and get to work. Once you have been here a while you get the pleasure of watching your statistics, finding those great money- makers and reproducing your efforts with those sites. There is a saying, “build it and they will come,” but that saying is flawed, as we don’t want them to just come burn our bandwidth without making a sale. I would like to parody that saying, “figure out how to sell, and they will buy.”

Credits

Thank a lot to Denise Cooper from Klixxx.com for writing this article.

Many people over the years have come to think of micro niches are mainly associated with fetishes but that isn

We all know that nobody would ever do this in our Industry! And back to more honest topics, the below paragraph is pulled from the Forbes Article

Now, many have argued that thumb site traffic converts poorer that text site traffic. While I do not have a 100% explanation to this, I can provide some speculation and somewhat qualified opinions.

First things first. Put it any way you want, there

Getting Started

1. Buy yourself a domain. Buy one that has something to do with Porn and play with the words. Do not register with Go Daddy or other cheap places! Register with the big companies. They charge more but you won

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