I've been having this discussions a lot lately with people looking to start celebrity membership websites. While the niche really doesn't matter, from adult, to celeb, to anime, podcasting, doesn't really matter. The dedication does. If you do your updates daily/weekly, and know anything about SEO, and promotion angles. You should be able to easily knock back XX,XXX a year or more. Contrary to popular belief. Few people, even in adult, are knocking back a mint off a single site. Most have a program of 10-100 niche sites, and sure... with that many WHO COULDN'T make millions.?!?!? Especially with affiliates! You are not reinventing the wheel, nor are you going to be as popular as MySpace. So those are the first misconceptions. Is it possible? Sure. Realistic? No. So stop sweating it and make some money. Why do I prefer membership sites over all other forms of revenue? Because to some degree (once large enough) you are on auto pilot. I have a site I haven't updated in TWO YEARS and it still make me $2700 in 2007!! Also, when you have a down week on new sales, or you are on vacation, busy, whatever.... who cares! You have recurring memberships billing. So you still make your money. There are no 0.00 weeks because you couldn't run your adwords campaign, or were out of town, whatever. Membership sites are not as hit and miss as some of the other avenues. Plus you can always mix in link trades sales, affiliate upsells, and a like. You can work it six ways from Sunday! Over yen years I have tried many different ways to make money. However, I started with a celebrity membership site, and built more along the way. Mainstream, and adult. People really fail to think like a surfer (i.e. laziness). That is one of the hardest things for people to grasp. Everyone thinks like a webmaster when you are in this business. You start thinking of how YOU do things, or would. Not how some Joe Blow who's on the net an hour a day to check mail, and MySpace does. Better yet, some AOL user. It isn't that difficult. You need some content. Preferrably a nice CMS script to get started with an export for spin off sites later. Then you need a processors. While you could do PayPal. I do not recommend it. You do not need to pay the $750 VISA fee either, or have a merchant account. There are so many misconceptions when it comes to membership sites that it's unbelievable. But if you want to get into the online business full time. You want to be able to live, and make some nice money. MEMBERSHIP is where you want to be. While I could go on and on what I've learned over the years. I will give you some basics. 1. Content and lots of it. You do not need to open a site with all of it. 2. CMS script (content management). Ease of updates, and navigation. 3. Solid webhosting. Enough with these $9 host plans. Get at min. semi dedi. 4. Payment processor. Not paypal. Many out there. I recommend Verotel. You obviously want to set your CMS the best for SEO. Fairly simple, but many forget to do it right. I would also recommend something that lets you do it in advance. So you can schedule a few days, week, month in advance if you like. You may have to have a custom one done (approx $1500) but worth it. The most important things are navigation, and speed. Period. 5. Stop thinking like a webmaster. Talk to your friends outside of this business on how they use, and surf the web. It's much different. Stop ASSuming people's behavior. 6. Stop believing that because someone else was out there doing it before you, that you can't compete. 7. Use creative ways to work your membership site (advertising) into your other ventures. Banner placements, links, SEO, and so on. It's not that difficult, and you'd be surprised at some of the results. Those the tips of the iceberg. I am not going to give you the keys to the castle, but hopefully for those interested. It will show you the door. I do online full time. I have for over 4 years now. I did it part time for years while working in telco after college. It was a nice source of extra spending money then. If you know the fundamentals. You can make some nice money. Stop trying to break the house on red and black playing the adsense game. Who wants to work for crumbs? Put your efforts into something that will REALLY pay off in the long run. 2 cents.
I love the line at the end about not working for crumbs. That's what I've been telling people about adsense forever. You get a penny a click, and they get 20 cents off the same click. I'm interested in how you do not pay the $750 visa fee. You later mentioned verotel as a processor. Do they cover this fee for you?
Good thread, i have to agree with you on all points talked about. I have a few adult sites myself but never made the leap into pay sites, there are plans in motion to do this however and with the slant you've put on things it will help, the biggest things i needed was a payment processor, i couldnt decide who would be the best, but now i will be looking more carefuly. If it would be possible, if i have any concerns or questions during my process of creating my first paysite, could i drop you a private message and see if you can shed some light on whatever the problem may be. I understand if you are too busy, but id appreciate it as im sure i will run into issues ive never dealt with before. Thanks again.
I think its the cost of setting up a paysite in the first place that scares people, isn't it? Content isn't cheap and you need unique content regulary updated with new stuff.
It kills me when I read the mainstream boards and see all of these posts about people clamoring for crumbs (adsense) on these websites. I can't imagine working for a $1/5/10 a day. If you use their ticketsclub option, you do not have to pay it. This is mainly dealing with processing VISA cards only. You can then add in CCBill as a secondary processor. Doing this means no $750 fee, but offers multiple payment options just in case. Plys some will recognize, and trust CCB more easily. However, if VISA is their only card. You do it through Verotel. I like them more because they offer ACH payment versus $15 per wire (CCB).
Misconceptions. I started my all original site with $3k from a business partner. I used that to buy a camera, and some other minor things. Then shoot some content. Knowing what I know now, I could do it for half that. However, since you are not going to produce it yourself, you can still buy in bulk, and rebrand it. Then it falls on your marketing savy.
Excellent post. I think that SEO is probably some obscure black art to most newbies. You see all sorts of guides out there, but again they're written by people who think that you know how to write script. I have never found one that went step-by-step. Also, the world of TRAFFIC might as well be an alien universe of spaghetti. Most don't know how to get it and end up buying a package of trash traffic that doesn't do a damn thing but look good in the logs. In case you haven't figured it out, I've been a cranky newbie. I'm still a newbie, but less cranky. I have been fortunate enough to have found a couple of mentors (epic1231 and farkedup) who have started me on my way. Once I learn more, I fully intend to get into the paysite market, so I think this post is one of the best I've seen. My only suggestion: Perhaps links to some resources (hosting, verotel, content providers, etc.) might be helpful. Keep up the good work! SG
Very true. Do not assume a programmer knows about SEO. While there are 'some', most have to be told what they need to do when you are having a custom script done. Here's a tip.... description, or name in page.html Indeed. Do not waste your time buying junk. Anything worth having you build yourself. While traffic is key, and very important. CONVERSIONS are what pay the bills! If you are selling cookies. You do not buy a bunch of porn traffic. The odds are none of them give a crap. They are looking for cookies. Sure, your site's traffic may only be 100 uniques a day, but if 1 in 10 convert. THAT is what you want. Who wants to spend all their money on bandwidth to get 1,000,000 hits to inflate your e-ego, and convert at 1/10,000??? We were all newbies once. In some markets I probably still am a newbies. As I'll never understand the domainer, and PPC game. But we all have our niches, and markets. Thanks for the kudos.
Intresting article. Memberships definatly take alot of dedication and hard work. I have owned my own for almost 5 Years now. You have to enjoy what you do and if at all possible origional content is the key. I create all of my Graphics in my membership. Very intresting read, Maemae
The can depending on the site. I agree. But I have come across people running 20-100 sites trying to make a living in the online world. I would have to say that it would take close to the same amount of time to realistically maintain that many sites. I would rather put in 3 hours a day to make $50,000 a year on a site, versus 3/6/9 hours to maintain 100. There is a cliche I had heard somewhere about doing one thing REALLY WELL, or a hundred things half ***ed. As I mentioned, I have dabbled in almost every venue... membership, traffic, affiliate, etc. But I find a good membership site, with recurring billing to be the best return on my investment of time and resources. Hands down.
barefootsies: how would you suggest getting started? find a niche adult market? like "naked girls playing pingpong" or go for a broader market? how do you get the content for the sites? just snagging pics online, wouldnt there be TM issues doing that? is there any way to see a sample of a site like the ones you are talking about?
Honestly,... you would want to find a micro niche. The mainstream hardcore is played out. Plus you would have a lot of competition. Fetish, or off the wall niches have the best loyalty and retention. Plus, less competition. Most importantly, pick something you like or understand since you will have to look at it all the time. You could go in bulk, where you buy huge amounts of content (mixed) for a few hundred or thousand dollars. Then put it into niches as a super site. If you go that route, I would recommend sitedepth as your CMS. You can put all the content in a central site, then make a bunch of spin offs for niches. This would allow you multiple sites, all running off the same content. i.e. more of a web presence, and allow for multiple traffic streams to your network of sites. You wouldn't want to just take from the web. While possible, at some point you will get hit with a C&D. So you would want to buy in bulk first from someone who's selling their content off (closing their site) or someone who is selling a ton of it off. Once you start making money, you could buy semi exclusive, or make your own all depending on what you want. Make sure you get the 2257 docs though!
Barefootsies, I am struggling to find a place that sells adult media, images, videos etc. I found 1 or 2 places, but the variety of sets is severely lacking. If you have any suggestions, please enlighten me Thanks again
Just so I follow you,.. Are you looking to buy content then? Any particular niche, or are you just looking for bulk?
For my first venture into adult paysites, i diddnt want to commission the sets directly. I was looking at buying sets, one of the micro niches i was looking at is girls in lingerie, thongs bra's etc, quite erotic stuff, no serious hardcore in there. I would like to either find a source that has new sets updated reguarly or as you say, buy in bulk and slowly release each set on a weekly basis. Obviously you have mastered this already, my budget isnt what you would call "huge" as im doing most of the work myself besides the actualy content, which will by far my greatest expense. However, i am also open minded for the future and if the return was worth it i would look into other niche's and areas of adult entertainment so any "quality" adult media retailer would be good to look at, for future reference. Thanks again.
Well, honestly, it depends on what you are trying to do for different reasons. I just switched to SiteDepth. The reason I like it is because I have one site that has ALL CONTENT, then I have some sister sites with niches. But the script allows me to upload everything to the one central site, then I go in and config from there for the sister sites.
I presume your asking about content managment, if so he already said he would suggest "sitedepth cms"