You can pull in a lot more profit from your adult web sites when you understand how traffic flow works.
Let's begin with TGP traffic. A large TGP site, such as The Hun or Ampland, can send you upwards of 100,000 visitors over the course of a day or two. The trouble is, if they are coming from The Hun (for example), they already have a list of more free sites than they could possibly visit.
Therefore, for many webmasters, TGP traffic tends to produce very little revenue. It's called "crap" traffic - tens of thousands of freeloaders chewing up your bandwidth, with zero (or nearly zero) revenue. However, when you learn how to use this traffic, there is no such thing as crap traffic.
Simply look at TGP as a traffic source - and if you make a bit of money in the process of collecting the traffic, so much the better. Let me explain.
Let's suppose I create a thumbnail gallery, and submit it to the TGP owner. Thanks to advice from more advanced webmasters, I have met all the written and unwritten rules, submitted to the appropriate place at the appropriate time, and gotten approved. He or she lists it, under the title BDSM Artwork, 10 pics.
Let's look at this situation from the surfer's perspective. He will return to the TGP site (such as The Hun or DrBizzarro) again and again, because he knows that the TGP site enforces a certain quality standard. If the listing says 10 free pics, it will indeed contain 10 free pics. The surfer won't get jerked around too much... yet. As the webmaster, you follow the rules or you won't keep getting listed. You want to be listed, so you can have the traffic. Thus your first "sale" is to the TGP owner: You need to convince him to list your gallery.
Okay, now you have the listing, and the TGP owner is sending you traffic - a lot of traffic. What do you know about this traffic? Quite a bit, actually. Think in terms of the individual surfer. He probably clicked on the link to get to your site for one of three reasons:
Exactly what do you place on your gallery page? How do you organize it, and so on? You can get detailed answers from the VNWR tutorials and from the Newbie message board. For now, let's focus on the traffic flow through that gallery page.
Your first objective is to make an immediate sale. You know the person is most likely looking for something related to BDSM, or to Artwork. Thus you would target your sponsor link(s) accordingly.
But what if they don't bite? You need to give your surfer more options. This serves two purposes:
In other words, if you can't make an immediate sale from your incoming traffic, you want to retain and filter this traffic. You will make very few immediate sales - after all, it is crap traffic! The real reason you want the traffic is to feed large numbers of surfers through your filters into your profit-making machine.
Let's suppose your gallery page also contains a link to The Realm of the Leather Goddess. Not everyone will click here... but let's take a look at those who do. Knowing we got to the gallery page because of some sort of BDSM interest, we now know that interest probably has something to do with Femdom. Now, as it happens, I do not own Realm of the Leather Goddess. So why would I want to send traffic there? I'll explain in the next section.
The Toplist is a great way to filter and target your traffic - even if you don't own the toplist yourself! To continue the current example, we are busily sending surfers from our TGP gallery page along to Realm of the Leather Goddess, which is a Femdom toplist.
What happens when our surfer arrives at the Toplist? Inky's first objective (Inky owns this particular toplist) is to make a sale. Inky has an excellent shot at making the sale, because I'm only sending him surfers known to have a BDSM interest, and probably are looking along the lines of Femdom. My role is to send him as much Femdom traffic as I can... and let him do the next stage of filtering for me.
Assuming our surfer gets past Inky's quick-sale machine, he now takes a look at the Toplist. The Toplist gives our surfer a choice of several sites, each with a one-line listing. Let's assume the Top Twenty Sites include the following:
And, naturally, those two sites are owned by myself. Think about this, because it is a key to understanding traffic flow: The surfer filters himself, by choosing which link to click.
When a surfer arrives at the site Crawl To Me You Worm, I know why he's there. I know what attitude, what fantasy, to portray at that site. By choosing to visit this site, he has told me rather precisely what he seeks. Little does he know he's only three clicks away from whipping out that credit card.
In the same way, Mistress Spanks will carry a vastly different attitude and approach than Worm. I might be promoting the same sponsor, but my manner of promoting will carefully match the fantasy of Mistress Spanks. Incidentally, when I create Mistress Spanks, I create several other sites with a nearly identical theme, but with different sponsors. I invite the surfer from site to site to site, all with similar theme. By this point I know what he's looking for... it's just a matter of keeping him around long enough to find the right product to sell.
Okay, back to the Toplist. My TGP gallery, along with many other sources, is sending traffic in to the Toplist. That traffic is then filtering itself, and only a small portion is finding its way to one of my sites. For example, I might send a thousand visitors into Realm of the Leather Goddess on a particular day, while only fifty visitors visit either Mistress Spanks or Crawl To Me You Worm. That's fine with me; if they don't care that Mistress Spanks, I don't want them using up my bandwidth. I'd rather they went somewhere else.
Mistress Spanks is what's known as a Freesite. Generally speaking, a Freesite will have 20-30 pictures anybody can view for free, along with various attempts to induce the viewer to whip out his credit card. Just like the TGP gallery, there are various written and unwritten rules, as to how to construct a Freesite.
You may, of course, construct a Freesite any way you choose. However, the Freesite's purpose should be to bring in traffic - and to get the traffic you need to follow the rules. You'll find the rules, written and unwritten, available at the VNWR board.
The Freesite philosophy is the same as anywhere else:
If the current Freesite is a Teen site, for example, send 'em along to each of your other teen sites.
When you're sending your surfer somewhere else, bear in mind where they're coming from, and where they think they're headed to. They've already looked through your site without whipping out that credit card, so it's time to get a bit more firm with the opportunity. If you're taking them from one of your sites to another of your sites (or anywhere else for that matter), you'll probably want to run them through a full page ad along the way. The ad could either be a followup to the type of site they just visited, or it could be a pre-sell of where you're sending them.
I call this placement of a Full Page Ad, The Tunnel. They're going from a specific source, to a specific destination, and the Full Page Ad is the only available route to take. In my realm, every route takes a different Tunnel.
Don't forget the exit console! It's one more shot at making the sale, and can aim at a second, related, interest.
Once again, check out the VNWR tutorials for the details and philosophy behind your trap page. This trap page, or hub, is a critical portion of your traffic flow.
Basically, on your Trap Page, you offer the surfer every option you possibly can, for free. Of course what you're really offering them is the chance to either whip out that credit card or go away and quick sucking up your bandwidth - but it looks like you're offering an amazing range of free stuff.
The free stuff, of course, is your filtering mechanism. Suppose, among many other things, you offer an Asian Picture of the Day. If they click on that, you have identified an Asian interest. Let the games begin...
For example, you could start the clock ticking... and twenty seconds later, open up a new window which starts the tour of your sponsor's Asian site. (Again, check the tutorial for details of when you can and cannot do this.) A minute later, pop up a different Asian site tour, and so on.
Naturally, you'll have links to various other of your sites, blind links, and so on. By what they choose, they have filtered themselves, and when they arrive at your site, you already know they are interested in the kind of thing you are offering. Keep that traffic flowing, flowing, flowing... but make sure that every time they click, they do it in such a way that it better tells you what they seek.
You have other traffic sources available: Search Engines, link trades, AVS sites, and so on. Use them all - and from the moment that surfer arrives, keep that traffic flowing.
Copyright 2000 by Old Tom, OldTom@vnwr.com.
All Rights Reserved.