How many times have you heard someone say, or wondered to yourself whether they or you should switch sponsors because your conversions aren't what they used to be, or thought about promoting a sponsor's site, but were worried that since it was such a popular site and had been around a while that it probably wouldn't convert as well as you'd like?

We all hear the expression and I use it quite often myself... 'think outside the box'. I'm sure we all know what that means, but I wonder how many people really understand how that philosophy works when you're thinking about marketing an adult website. In "Climbing out of the box - Part Two", I'll tallk about ways to make money with mainstream products and services on our adult websites.

Please note that the following technique will only work for those webmasters that are proficient at doing their own design work, although for those that aren't, you can always hire someone that is, because I think the expense will be well worth it in the long run.

Let's suppose that you're promoting a sponsor's website that just isn't performing like it used to, or that you're considering promoting a website for a good sponsor, but the site has been around awhile and you're concerned that it's been overexposed because you see it promoted on all the TGPs. What can you do?

Build your own tours and banners.

Think about it for a minute. Yes, there are lots of sites out there that have been around for years and have tons of great content and retain members like a mother, but the problem is that every webmaster that promotes that niche is probably already promoting that sponsor, using the same banners and free content as all of their other affiliates, and sending everyone to the same exact tour, so naturally, conversions will be low.

But, if you build your own tour and banners, using the free content that the sponsor provides, no one will have seen the banners on your site before and if they click on the banner or a text link, they won't be landing on a tour they've possible seen before either. Even though the name would be the same, they won't recognize the tour and it probably won't even register that they've heard of the site before. The only thing you need is the ability to build a halfway decent tour which you would link to that site's join page.

I do particularly well using this method to promote a webcam site that has been around a long time and lots of webmasters promote, but instead of doing what almost every other webmaster does and sending my traffic directly to that site's tour, I register my own domain names and build my own webcam sites, covering all the popular niches and then linking to a somewhat generic join page that that particular sponsor has, so unless the surfer looks closely at the fine print, they think they're joining a webcam site they never heard of before.

Keep in mind that these tours don't need to be splashy, uber professional tours like the sponsor might already be using, and to be honest, they might convert better if they aren't. An excellent way to use the idea of building your own tours would be to focus on one particular model for example, and then list that small site on toplists that fit the niche. Since you won't simply be trying to list a site using the sponsor's url with your aff code, but will be listing a site with it's own domain name, you shouldn't have any problem getting sites like this listed in places that don't normaly list the large sponsor sites.

Another benefit might be focusing more tightly on a particular niche with your own design than the sponsor's site does. For example, if you want to promote a fetish site for a particular sponsor, but their own tour features a variety of fetishes, why not focus on just one, like feet, and build a small tour using foot fetish pics? Now, when you promote that site using pay-per-click sources, you will be promoting a very specific niche to a very targetted group if you focus your marketing strategy on 'foot fetish' instead of just 'fetish' in general.

NOTE: Be sure to check with your sponsors first to make sure they will allow you to do this and I'm sure they'll want to approve the tour you create before they allow you to use it, but I'm sure you'll find that this will work with most sponsors. I'm sure some of you promote sponsors that have a BYOT program and perhaps you just never knew what that meant before.