how have your sites/marketing evolved?

[basschick]

my partner and i came to the internet from print media and cable tv ads, and if there's one thing i've learned, it's that things change on the web a lot faster. news gets out incredibly fast, but marketing trends are almost as quick, and they change surfers tastes and expectations in ways that can leave us marketers breathless.

that being said, some businesses overall don't seem to change their marketing. DVD companies come to mind. with all the details and reality text out there, they still tend to send their distributors short, non-descriptive text about their products that wouldn't sell well on a site.

there are plenty of examples of sites, programs and marketing techniques that haven't changed in ages, but instead of focusing on them, i thought we'd look at the other side.

how have your sites and/or marketing changed over time? or are there other sites or programs that have made big changes to keep up with the times - and with the tastes of surfers?

[abostonboy]

Basschick,

Good question. In my own job as an affiliate I have had to bump up my quality. Both in videos and picture size.

BLAKEMASON has done the same, now offering DVD quality downloads and no DRM!

I know there are free site builders and bloggers that say, "don't give away too much, but fuck it, you need to just to get more than two page views per user."

[RottenRay]

how have your sites and/or marketing changed over time? or are there other sites or programs that have made big changes to keep up with the times - and with the tastes of surfers?

Basschick -
I got into this mess (buiding freesites) back in '01, and the one thing that has most certainly changed is volume. Things "age out" much faster now, because how much more often directories update, and how much more often paysites update.



Good question. In my own job as an affiliate I have had to bump up my quality. Both in videos and picture size.

Horns of a dilemma here.

I've bumped up the quality a tiny bit as well as image size - but I can tell you there is point of diminishing returns here. If you work the "60 picture" market, you need to be very careful about not giving away the farm. I've been able to track this based on sales - too hot = fewer sales. Still gotta build the urge to see more.

(And yes, BM offers most excellent vids - easily the best in the biz.)


....

[basschick]

i've mostly worked the gallery market, not the freesite market, and there was a definite improvement in sales by raising pic quality.

of course, there are other big changes that changed the way adult webmasters make money.

in 1996 and 1997, using the words "free porn" - or probably free anything - would make you money all day long. no one needed to work niches at all as general porn, gay or straight, would sell easily. paysites mostly only offered pics because dialup was slow and members didn't yet see the possibilities of video. and of course, bandwidth was very expensive. as bandwidth went down in cost, videos became common in paysites, but we were almost all on dialup, so the videos were crappy and small. a lot of members ignored the videos in favor of the pics, which were better quality and didn't make you wait.

and programs could pay per click because they made enough money per click that they could afford to. we'd get 2 - 3 cents per raw or up to 16 cents per unique.

one of the biggest changes i went through was having to move from pay per click to pay per sale. i hadn't been trying to make sales - i was just trying to get the surfers to click. our links were not site specific, so they didn't lead to great sales. "click for big dicks" might have made people click, but it sure didn't lead to stellar ratios. i had to rethink everything at that point.

that was only one of the ways i had to evolve in adult marketing, but it was a BIG one!

[Fister]

I've bumped up my thumbnail size for gallery pages about a year ago. I'm still using up some photo content I bought two years ago for making free sites/galleries, and I cringe at the poor quality of some of the photos. Even for amateur content, I'll be demanding decent pic/vid quality from now on.

[marcjacob]

If you work the "60 picture" market, you need to be very careful about not giving away the farm. I've been able to track this based on sales - too hot = fewer sales. Still gotta build the urge to see more

Im still so confused about this. Im sure if you dont show enough the surfer is savvy enough to go find what they are looking for, but how much is too much? Are we talking certain sex acts (blowjobs are ok but not anal, anal is ok but no money shot?) Where is the line drawn.

Ive been showed sites by sponsors Im working with that apparently get great sales ratios, and show the cum shot.

I was always under the impression that you size down images in free sites, now the consensus seems to be give away big images and show the surfer what they will get inside the paysite.

All this leaves me in a permanent state of confusion im afraid.

One thing I do know I need to adapt and improve on is my text links. What Basschick was saying in her posts. But thats very tough for me as writing good text is not exactly my forte, but its probably one of the most important aspects to making sales (from what people are telling me at least).

:bang::bang::bang::bang: <-- me