Most major companies are aware of the importance of building their brand, but most webmasters only think about the direct traffic they will receive as a result of any marketing they do and don't consider the importance of developing recognition. Brand awareness building is critical, because it helps you establish credibility and that is important whether you sell a product or service and want to instill confidence among consumers or just hope to trade links with some high traffic website owners.

Webmasters are keenly aware of how prevalent cheating and scamming is in this industry, so they tend to be a little more skeptical. Although not specifically brand related, one mistake that many webmasters make, is to use a proxy service to hide their identities when they register a domain name. Although on the surface it seems like a good idea, the fact is that it makes you smell fishy to anyone that is thinking of doing business with you. Even though you may simply be trying to hide your identity because you live in a conservative community, webmasters that don't already know you will make some assumptions if they can't somehow compare your name, phone number or email address with the info in your Whois profile. This is especially true of TGP owners.

Okay, so back to building brand awareness. If you're simply hoping to make a few extra bucks a month for cigarettes or to take your girlfriend to the movies, this doesn't apply to you, but frankly, we don't want you in this industry anyway. For those of you that realize that this is a business and not a get rich scheme or a hobby, branding is important to you whether you run a TGP, sell sex toys, or run an affiliate program. That means it's important for you to be less concerned about ROI and more concerned with promoting and establishing your brand. Obviously, I'm not suggesting that most of you own large companies with logos and corporate identities and have millions of dollars to spend on advertising like Nike does. Building your brand can be something as simple as getting lots of people to recognize the nickname you go by. If you post on the adult message boards and use the same nick on every one, contribute intelligently to the threads, avoid the pissing matches and maintain a good reputation with the webmasters you deal with, you are building brand awareness for that nickname.

Here are some ways that you can build brand awareness for your company, your affiliate program, your persona, etc.

1. Participate on the adult message boards. Be sure to use the same nick on every board and put something useful in your sig.

2. If you have a new affiliate program, sell a product or offer a service, buy advertising in appropriate places and don't concern yourself with the obvious return you get from those banners in the form of click throughs or sales. Consider the fact that if your name is seen often enough, you are still getting benefit from it.

3. Attend the various adult webmaster conventions. If you can afford it, get a booth, or give out t-shirts and other schwag with your name and url on them or wear t-shirts with your name and url on them if you can't afford to print enough to hand out. At the very least, be sure to bring plenty of business cards and don't just keep them in your pocket.

4. Follow up every email you receive with a response and take the time to develop a professional looking signature. Instead of just signing your emails with Sincerely, Bob, add your company name, title and a link to one or more of your websites.

5. Write your url on bathroom walls. Okay, I'm just kidding, but there are offline ways to build brand recognition as well as traffic for your websites. Consider sponsoring a wet t-shirt contest and print the url of your website on the t-shirts. Buy print ads in industry publications like Klixxx Magazine. Pay to hang your banners by the pool at industry conventions, rent a plane to fly by pulling your advertisement or sponsor a party or event.

These are just some of the things you can do to build brand awareness for yourself or your company, but remember, that whether you spend thousands of dollars a month on advertising or just spend time posting on the boards, a certain percentage of that money or time should be used to promote your brand.

I often hear it said that in order to have a successful adult web site, the owner must know HTML and be able to work on their own sites. Although I do agree that it is a good idea to have some basic knowledge, especially for those with a limited budget, I don't agree that it's a requirement.

In my opinion, the number one thing to know in order to run a successful adult web site is marketing. Designing and maintaining a web site is the easy part. Getting paying customers to the door is the hard part.

I think a good analogy to illustrate my point is a real estate salesman. I assure you that the vast majority don't have a clue how to build a house. Their job is to sell them. They need to know the market, have salesmanship abilities, and work their asses off to find prospects, just like we do.

I'm not suggesting that someone can make a lot of money in this business with a TGP or blog without doing any of the work themselves, but you can certainly pay someone to build one for you and then maintain it yourself and do so without knowing the first thing about HTML. The same is true of a pay site where you can use a CMS (content management system) to maintain the members area and the work is all done for you by the software. You simply need to be able to upload the content to your server and input some information in the control panel.

I'm not trying to talk anyone out of learning HTML and doing all of the work themselves if they want to, but if you're the type of person that is better at selling than manufacturing, you can hire out the grunt work and concentrate on what you do best and still make a lot of money with an adult web site. You won't be able to call yourself a webmaster, but Donald Trump doesn't call himself a carpenter either.

If you have a TGP and trade traffic with other TGPs, you're most likely doing that via a script and the links to those trade sites are generated by the script. However, if you're trading links with other sites with the goal of increasing your PR, which is an important element if you're hoping to get a good Google SERP position, then it's very important that you make sure those sites are linking back to you with a hard link.

For those of you that don't understand the difference, a soft link might look something like this, http://www.theirsite.com/popit.php?link=http://www.yoursite.com, where a hard link would be something like http://www.yoursite.com.

It's also important that the site is linking to you via a text link and not a banner and the text for that link should be descriptive of your site's content. For example: Click here for lots of free blowjob pics and videos

by KevinG

There has been debate among webmasters over the Alexa toolbar and ranks since it's inception. I have mostly defended Alexa as a useful webmaster tool, albiet, with a built-in "fudge-factor". Others have asserted that it's usefulness is limited because it relies on numbers based on surfers that have the Alexa Toolbar installed. Further, these numbers can be skewed towards webmaster sites, as webmasters are more likely to have the toolbar than surfers. Therefore, webmaster frequented sites will have a better Alexa rank than a surfer site with the same amount of traffic.

I am wondering if Alexa's usefulness is declining, or perhaps the scale has just shifted and I need to get used to it.

Alexa attempts to rank a web site based on traffic. The Alexa rank is a number that implies where a web site sits on a list, with #1 supposedly being the site with the most traffic. For example, according to Alexa, Yahoo is the number 1 site. Google is #2, MSN is #3, MySpace is #4 and eBay is #5. The implication is that the lower your Alexa number, the more traffic you have.

What has recently caught my attention is seeing web site traffic increasing, while at the same time the Alexa rank has changed to imply the opposite. I had a site go from 4,000 uniques a day and an Alexa in the 40,000's to 6,000 uniques a day and the Alexa rank change to 90,000. I have experienced the same on more than one site.

My guess is that the reason for this trend can be two-fold.

1. The new visitors to these sites are surfers that do not have the Alexa toolbar installed.

2. Since the Alexa rank is a comparison, there could be other sites that are increasing their visitor base that has the toolbar, thereby pushing down other sites that may have not even lost traffic, and possibily even gained traffic.

For me, as a person that has followed Alexa ranks since the beginning, it makes it harder to judge a site based on this number. About 3-4 years ago, in one of my marketing articles, I wrote "A site with 5000 unique visitors per day can have an Alexa ranking between 10,000-16,000". That was based on my own personal experience at the time. Now, my experience shows that a site with 5000 unique visitors can have an Alexa rank of 90,000.

My opinion is that Alexa's usefulness to a webmaster for judging another site's traffic has continued to decline. It is useful, imo, for judging very high traffic sites and very low traffic sites. Everything in between has a high level of ambiguity.

Kevin provides services in web development, online marketing and search engine optimization. He can be reached at kevin@cigar-review.com, or by icq: 271024660

By Grimfang

Every week, I hear from several new aspiring webmasters who are looking to strike it rich in this business. Their stories are usually pretty similar. They all have either a certain level of the technical skills needed to create a site and keep it running, or they have some sort of limited experience in the industry. And they always tell me that they have 'done all the research.' And the ones planning larger operations usually declare they will surround themselves with 'qualified people.' And many times I hear my all time favorite statement: 'Money is not an issue.'

These people simply do not know just how much information they still lack. They do not know what they do not know.

Technical skill is a very valuable commodity that cannot be overlooked. But you need to have the skills and experience that will relate to the industry needs. Many times new webmasters create sites loaded with spectacular visual effects and graphics. What they do not realize is that all their wonderful additions to the website only slow the site down and serve as a distraction to the actual goal of making a sale. The creation of a quality adult website is a delicate process with its own unique technical demands. Much of that can only be learned from experience and following the advice of others.

I usually laugh when I hear someone tell me that they can run a successful site because they 'have experience in the business.' In most cases, it just means that the person was either a stripper or a DJ in a strip club somewhere. It rarely means the person knows how to market a website to the general public, how to generate traffic, or how to manage the financial end of running a business. It certainly does not mean the individual knows how to obtain quality content and how to present that content to customers. True, they know a bit about interacting with the public and convincing them to spend money. But there is a difference between making a sale in a face-to-face setting and making a sale on a website. There are no second chances on a website. You either make the sale right away or the chance is lost. They don't hang around for a few more drinks while you try to change their minds.

In many cases, I hear the phrase "I have done all the research." Whenever this is said, it seems to be said in self-defense rather than as a statement of fact. My question is this: Just what exactly did this research consist of? Did you read a book on 'How to be an Online Porn Mogul'? Did you find a website that told you 'Everything you need to know'? There is no single source for all the information you will need. The truth is that it is really difficult to do all the research needed before jumping into this business. For example, Have you learned what is the most effective way to win back customers who have cancelled their membership? The list of questions could go on forever. You actually need to do research just to discover out what research you still need to do.

I often hear people tell me that they 'will surround themselves with qualified people' who will help them get things right. My question is this: If you are lacking the qualifications to do the job yourself, what means you know how identify a truly qualified person? Odds are you will be hiring someone based upon a recommendation from somebody else. You might even be presented with a list of credentials for that person. Credentials are easily exaggerated. It takes experience to be able to identify a person who possesses the skills and experience you will need.

Out all the declarations a newbie will make, the one that I love the most is "Money is not an issue" Bullshit. Money is always the issue. That's why we are in this business. That's why it is called a business; otherwise we would call it a hobby. If you don't care about how much money you spend, then just go out and buy an existing successful website. Why waste your time struggling to create a site from the ground up, when you have just told me that you can afford to throw endless sums of money at the situation? You would not need to bother with SEO tactics because you could just pay $5 per click and guarantee top spot. And you would never have to worry about content because you could always afford custom videos and photos from every Jenna in the industry. Well? Now tell me again that money is not an issue.

My point is this: In order to survive in this industry, you first need to realize just how much information you still do not have. You have to figure out what questions you have overlooked, then find the answers. And we all have more to learn, because the industry is constantly evolving. Nobody has all the answers. The trick is to find the answers to as many questions as possible.

Grimfang
Porn Defender
Helping Adult Webmasters Defend Their Rights

This isn't going to be a long drawn out list of things to look for because depending on what type of websites you plan to run, and whether you need a dedicated server with lots of bandwidth or can get by just fine with a small virtual account, your needs will vary. However, I think there are some major things to look for once you've narrowed your choices.

1. Don't buy hosting from a reseller, buy it from an actual hosting company. In many cases you won't be able to tell so you'll have to do some checking. I just don't see the point in dealing with a reseller that either offers no support, refers you to the support department at the host he is reselling for, or attempts to handle support issues themselves.

2. If they don't offer phone support (preferably toll-free), I don't even consider them. I also expect that support to be available 24/7. There's nothing worse than having to send in a 'support ticket' and waiting hours or days for a response, especially if your sites are down for some reason.

3. Be sure they offer Linux servers in most cases. Some hosting companies offer both Linux and Windows servers, but I would never recommend choosing one that used strictly Windows.

4. Make sure they provide things you'll need like the ability to run scripts, PHP, MySQL, etc. You may not need it now, but if you need it later and they can't support it, you're screwed.

5. Look for a good deal with plenty of storage space and bandwidth, but be aware that no host can provide you with 1,000GB of bandwidth for $10 a month without cutting corners somewhere or throttling the flow somehow. If you need the hosting for TGP galleries and will be using a lot of bandwidth, you'll be very disappointed if you go with a host that offers what seems to be an amazing deal. Remember the old adage, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

6. A few last things that I would suggest checking for would be a good control panel, access to the server logs with some sort of stats program and the ability to move up when the time comes. You may only need a basic virtual account with 50GB of bandwidth now, but down the road if you need more and outgrow a virtual account, you'll want to be able to move up to a managed dedicated account with the same host, because moving a large site is a major hassle.

I use several different hosting companies and they're all good (otherwise I wouldn't be using them), but I highly recommend ATCI Hosting. They provide top quality service and support and I have been extremely pleased with them.

by Raven

The view I am about to express may not sit well with parental units, who believe children must, at any cost, be protected from the unpleasantries and realities of the journey we call 'life'.

Delivery systems exist for one reason; and, that is to get the music, the games, and the porn to the buyer, the consumer. When it was announced that mobile porn was one of the future's bounty, webmasters and financiers were ecstatic. Here was another opening, a delivery system by which porn could be placed in the hands of the over 18 crowd, the ones with credit cards. Venture capital has flowed, so those who can, will ensure anyone over 18 will be able to directly bill to their phone, watch porn, masturbate, share with friends. The possibilities for advertising and spam are endless. And, profitable. Sony Playstation and Microsoft XBox offer systems for gamers. Each generation of gaming devices offers more and more bells and whistles. The software developers increasingly push the 'violence' button, as the games portray stark and ugly realisim. Now, there's news that porn can be viewed on PSP's and XBox's. To those of us in the know, this comes as no surprise. Big money in porn. The more highways built to get the porn to the consumer, the more money there is to be generated. Now that we live in an increasingly mobil society, marketing research has uncovered the fantastic news that the target market is buying (in vast numbers)cell phones, iPods, Playstations and Xboxes. Huge conglomerates are putting vast amounts of money to get porn to the people.

BUT. There's a catch. And, it's a HUGE catch. The very same buyers who are targeted to receive porn in vast quantities, include children. Herein lies the rub. How does one protect the children? This is an age-old question, starting with the computer that lives in most homes. Parents are purchasing gaming stations and cell phones and iPods for their children. The number of kids with cell phones is staggering. A great majority of homes have at least one of the popular gaming stations and many have mp3 players. The very problem that has plagued the adult industry with the Internet has now moved to other areas.

Personally, and this is most definitely a personal opinion....children cannot be protected from porn. We try. Warning pages, ICRA, labels, electronic signature and birth date software -- those of us who feel responsible for keeping kids off our sites are making a brave attempt to stem the tide. The Internet, however, has no boundaries. There are no fences, no locked doors, no way to keep the underaged off of our sites and away from that which they are too young to see. On the other side of the coin, there are too many kids who 'borrow' credit cards, learn how to hack into sites, go onto MySpace type sites and trade 'dirty' pictures. Seemingly, explicit porn cannot be stopped, and the expectation that children can be protected, even with the most diligent of parental guidance, is akin to using toilet paper to plug a dam.

Going back to the days of print mags, I hear stories of boys finding their father's dirty rags, from Playboy to Penthouse to Hustler. Kids have been reaching puberty, which is accompanied by raging hormones, since the days of primitive erotic art on cave walls, compelling boys and girls to search out and find the very thing we're trying to prevent them from finding. Clever are the children whose need to masturbate transcends law and societal protection.

Is there an answer? Certainly, the government knows little to nothing about how the Internet works. More importantly, from a psycho-social view, the government and parents continue to deny the existence of hormonal growth of young lads and ladies who are so curious, they are willing to risk the wrath of parents and legislative officials. Parents have shown their own particular brand of ignorance because they actually believe the government should and can step up to the plate to stop the nasty pornographers from creating websites that show nudity and/or hardcore sex images.

I'm here to tell you it cannot be stopped. Not by the government and not by parents, especially the ones who do not have a clue about computers, iPod podcasting, Xboxes, and Playstations. The cry for help is loud and clear. There just aren't any clear answers, other than throwing out the televisions that show late night porn ads. What parent can resist buying their children a gaming device? Mothers and fathers who work want their children within some soft of reach; hence, the reason young kids are receiving cell phones. i-Pods are so popular, along with other mp3 players. So, what is a parent to do?

Educate. Life is filled with trauma.... from the time we are born until we die. Preparing children for what they will experience, see, and hear is essential -- or the child will never be prepared for the seamier side of life. Instead of hiding it, legislating against it, or playing ostrich, parents simply must educate themselves first and then teach their children coping mechanisms for when they run across their first porn site. Put the computer in the living room and watch your child. The same day you teach your young son not to play with his dick in public is the day you teach your kids there are places they are not quite ready to see. But, if they should see a porn site, rather than react hysterically, calling for government intervention, take the mystery out of porn. Talk about it in a way that prepares the kid. Teach your child how to surf in a responsible way. Instead of pretending cruelty, degradation, visually explicit images, and other life changing situations don't exist, make sure your child knows the world is not just another pretty face. There ARE traumatic events that WILL occur, sooner than anyone wants. There ARE events we do not ever want our children to see; but, they will and we have no control over when it will happen, just like no one can really predict death. We simply cannot control what others do. We are fortunate if the toothpaste we desire is in stock. Safety is an illusion. Rather than continue to delude ourselves that we can keep our children safe, teach them that trauma does, indeed, exist, that there are people out there, putting enhancers into products to make children eat more, there are pharmaceutical companies who push pills that turn our kids into zombies, AND there are major conglomerates who are turning innocent looking games into pornographic adventures, who will fund the adult industry with large sums of money to deliver porn to a target audience that happens to include kids. There is no possible way to prevent. There IS, however, the responsibility to teach. One house at a time. Go to any webmaster conference/convention. We constantly share stories about our friends who have no clue, so we give them clues. WE give our friends and families the answers as to how to deal with filters and anti-spam software. WE are the ones who have come up with ways to monitor our children. If we can do it with our own kids, we can teach others on a grass roots level. That's our responsibility to our children and their friends. That is how we sleep at night, knowing what we know and sharing the information.

Self-delusion and ostrich behaviour will not work. Children are sexual creatures and WILL discover sex a lot sooner than any parent wants. Deal with what is, not what should be. Reality dictates that we prepare our children for adulthood, not prevent them from coping with what we know is down the road.

As I stated earlier, this is my opinion. It's not a very popular one and I can see why. When a child has to experience ugliness or pain or violence or disruptions to the idyllic innocence we call childhood, we as parents, cringe. I don't want anything to touch my child that might make him or her cry. I never want my child to see a dead body or smell a dying person or watch a video that is sexually explicit. There is a part of me who wants to lock my kid up, put blinders on, move to an island, build a wall around my home....but, the sane part of me knows that's not the answer. My child will see the nastiness of life. He will hear things that are unpleasant. Death comes to all of us. There is no prevention and damned little control....the only tool I have is the ability to influence before someone else does and hope that my words, my teachings have enough resonance that he realises I give him, at the very least, truth.

Raven
Financial Consultant
ICQ: 27331641
Email: raven at sin-text dot com

There are many ways to generate traffic for your website and some are better than others. TGP traffic is probably the easiest to get but also very low quality. Search engine traffic is typically the hardest to get, but along with paid advertising, is usually very high quality. Everything else falls somewhere in between. One of my personal favorites is toplist traffic.

The quality of toplist traffic is actually close to or equal to that of search engine traffic, in my opinion, but is much easier to get. Unlike TGP surfers that are primarily looking for free porn, toplist surfers tend to be a bit more discriminating and similar to the search engine surfer, are usually looking for something specific. I'm not suggesting that toplist surfers are all sitting at their computer with their wallet lying next to the keyboard anxiously looking for someplace to use their credit card, but you will find that a higher percentage of them will end up paying for something than the typical TGP or link list surfer.

Although you will not get anywhere near the sheer volume of traffic that you will from TGPs and link lists, toplist traffic can be quite substantial if you find enough good ones. The trick is making sure that your site is high on the list at all times.

There are a few toplists that base your position in the list on the amount of traffic your website gets, but in most cases, your position is based on the amount of traffic that you send to any particular toplist. Depending on what type of website you have, sending traffic to toplists might be as easy as including their links along with links to galleries and other websites. With other sites, like pay sites, or any site where you want to avoid traffic leaks and keep your surfers focused on your site, it gets a bit trickier. In those cases I find it best to place links to the toplists on a links page or some other page on your website that is somehow separate from the main tour. One trick I like to use is to put links to toplists on an exit popup, in which case the surfer won't see them until they are actually leaving my site anyway. The thing to remember is that the traffic you send to the toplist must come from the same domain that they are sending traffic to, but it doesn't need to come from the same page they link to.

A big factor in the results you'll be able to achieve from toplist traffic will be in getting listed on the right toplists. First of all, you'll want to make sure it really is a good toplist and the best way to do that at a glance is to look at the in/out list. If you see that most of the sites in the list are getting close to or more than the same amount of hits they are sending in, that's a good sign. You should also check to see how often the toplist resets the in/out numbers. If they update once a week and the numbers are still high, that means they probably get a lot of traffic. If they update once a month or more, you'd expect to see much higher numbers than if they update weekly and if you notice that they're last update was 4 days ago and the number one site in the list has only gotten 15 clicks, chances are that toplist doesn't get enough traffic to make it worthwhile.

Another important thing to consider is how targeted the toplist traffic is for your particular niche. There are toplists that focus on most of the popular niches and the more closely your site fits the target audience of the toplist, the better your results will be. For example, if you have a gay webcam site, you won't find any better quality traffic than you'll get by listing your website on gay webcam toplists.

Although you will never see the huge traffic numbers from toplists that you will from TGPs and link lists and you'll find that the conversion rate will be much higher, you should carefully consider where you're sending that toplist traffic. Certainly, a thousand hits a day sent directly to pay site or webcam site will produce far better results than sending that traffic to a TGP or another toplist, for example.

One of the nice side benefits you'll find when you get listed on several toplists is that the traffic will actually feed on itself and multiply. Let's say that you're listed on 10 toplists and you get 50 hits a day from each of them. If you are creative with how you link to the toplists, what will happen is that a certain percentage of the surfers from toplist 1 will click on the link for toplists 2 through 10 at some point -- hopefully when they are leaving your website -- surfers from toplist 2 will click on toplist 1 or 3 through 10, and so on. Out of those 500 hits a day you would be getting from those 10 toplists, a good number of those hits will end up clicking on one of the other toplists and the more clicks the links get, the higher your position on the toplists, and the higher your position, the more traffic you get.

Just like any source of traffic, you'll need to experiment, but with enough trial and error and tweaking, you will eventually get excellent results.

by Titmowse

The following is a letter submitted by Titmowse to ICANN in opposition of the .xxx TLD.

I have been employed for the last five years as a writer for the adult Internet industry. One of my main duties is to "feel the pulse" of my peers. I do this by reading message boards, analyzing news reports and researching technologies and standards that affect this business.

I have observed the debate over the .xxx TLD over the years and I can guarantee ICANN that as a majority, adult webmasters DO NOT SUPPORT this foolish band-aid of a solution.

I have read ICM Registry's first and second proposal and while it looks noble on the surface, I fear that ICM Registry is more interested in financial gain than actually protecting underage exposure to adult material. Why will this domain cost $60.00 per year? Who are these unnamed members of IFFOR? What does Jason Hendeles, of ICM Registry mean by his statement in this interview (http://www.thewhir.com/features/hendeles-eagle.cfm):

"ICM Registry has projected that once the value of registering has been demonstrated successfully, domain registrations may reach or exceed 100,000 domain names within the first year of operations."

Does Mr. Hendeles have his eye on protecting minors or on garnering profits?

Another thing I don't understand is why IFFOR requires that sites label with ICRA. ICRA is already an established, voluntary labeling system that works in conjunction with their free filtering software. If adult webmasters label their sites with ICRA, why do we need ICM Registry and IFFOR? It appears to me that ICRA is and always has been the better solution.

I cannot predict the future. I cannot claim that if ICANN passes the .xxx TLD, the US government will then force all adult sites into a domain ghetto. However, the possibility is there. The probability that adults in the US will be disallowed from viewing adult content through legislation and IP blocking is not out of the question. The chance that we will all suffer the scourge of censorship is authentic. What sites will pass the muster of IFFOR? What help and information sites will be swept under the .xxx rug?

I stand with the consensus of my industry. The .xxx TLD is a bad idea.

As an ending statement I give you the opinion of Ian Jacobs. As ICANN is aware, Mr. Jacobs is the head of communications for the World Wide Web Consortium. His opinion on the .xxx TLD and filtering can be found here: http://www.w3.org/2004/03/28-tld

From the opinion, Mr. Jacobs states:
1. TLDs Do Not Allow Effective Filtering
2. TLDs Created for Filtering are Harmful and Burdensome
3. TLDs Created for Filtering are Unnecessary

Sincerely,
Titmowse of CozyFrog
http://www.cozyfrog.com
AKA: Blogslut
http://www.blogslut.com

If you own or are contemplating starting an adult website, chances are good that at some point you're going to need to acquire content. If it's a pay site, you'll need content for the members area as well as the tour, and if you're promoting a sponsor's website you'll need content to build TGP galleries, freesites, etc. There are several ways to acquire the content including shooting it yourself, paying someone to shoot it for you, buying it from a content provider, or getting it for free from the sponsor you are promoting.

I doubt if I've made any dazzling revelations so far, but I think the point where many webmasters run into a problem is when they need to decide what type of content will work best for them, so today I want to focus on those of you that build galleries, freesites and other small websites designed to promote a sponsor's pay site.

The free content that is provided by sponsors has it's uses, but for the most part, is not going to work well for freesites and galleries because potentially thousands of webmasters will be using the same content and a TGP or link list owner is not going to accept your galleries or freesites -- in many cases -- because of that fact. Of course, if you're promoting a sponsor that has exclusive content, you probably don't have a lot of choice, but if it's a typical niche site, you do.

If you buy content to build your galleries and freesites with there is still a chance that other webmasters will be using the same content, but unless it's extremely old content, there will be a much better chance that you will at least be the only one submitting a site with that content this month.

Some of you might now be wondering why I would recommend buying content when in all likelihood that content won't actually appear in the members area of the pay site that you're promoting, and that would be a valid concern if like I said before, you were promoting a site that featured 100% exclusive content, or if the sponsor did not permit the use of content they did not provide. However, the majority of the time it will simply come down to making sure to use content that is appropriate for the site that you're promoting. For example, if you're promoting a MILF site, you'll want to be sure the content you purchase features a woman in her 30s or early 40s, or if it's a hirsute site, you'll need to be sure the models don't have neatly trimmed pubic areas.

I've heard some webmasters argue that they feel like it's false advertising to use content to promote a pay site that may not actually appear in the members area and that the surfer will be pissed when he can't find that particular model. In some cases it's possible that could happen -- especially if it's a single model site -- but here's how I look at it. If you're shopping for a car, you'll probably have decided what model you want from commercials you've seen on TV or in magazine ads. So, let's say you see a car in an ad and you say to yourself, "Damn, that's the car I want." You hop in your old car and haul ass down to your local dealer and wallet in hand, run up to the first salesman you see and tell him you saw the exact car you want in a TV commercial and want to buy it. Is that how most of us do it? I don't think so. The more likely scenario is that once you decide what kind of car you want you head down to your local dealer and look for one that has the options you want, is hopefully the color you want and is the price you want. If you can come close on most of those, you'll probably buy the car. It's probably not exactly like the one you had in mind when you left the house, but you're still happy with it when you pull out of the dealer's lot.

Using my car buying analogy, I'd say that the average surfer is not going to fall in love with the exact big breasted hottie you featured in your gallery, but likes girls with big boobs in general and is excited enough by the girl in your gallery to pull out his credit card and join the site that you're promoting. When he gets to the members area and can't find the exact girl from your gallery, chances are good that he'll have no problem falling in love with another babe with big tits.