How to convert Spanish language traffic?

Webmaster Discussion
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#1

I was a little shocked today when I realized that my Spanish porn blog, Machos Calientes, now has more organic traffic than rawTOP.com! (Panda 4.0 seems to have given a boost to the site). Mind you, Google has a literal love/hate relationship with it…

All those spikes and drops are thanks to Google. But (fingers crossed) it seems maybe they might actually like the site now.

Problem is, I don’t see many sales coming through with Machos Calientes campaign codes. I’m not exactly sure why they don’t buy. My top theories are:

  1. …that they can’t afford paysite memberships. Machos’ visitors are coming mostly from Mexico and Spain, with Argentina in 3rd place, Columbia in 4th place, and the US in a distant 5th place. Mexico is a mess right now (if you haven’t seen Narco Cultura - watch it on Netflix - it’s disheartening). Spain’s economy is still pretty depressed (did you see the episode of Top Gear where they drove through Spain and the country was practically deserted?). I employ a couple guys in Columbia - they have a middle class lifestyle on what would be well below poverty wages in the US. $30/month for a porn site membership is out of the question on those wages.

  2. …that Spanish speakers get put off or confused when they go to a paysite and see navigation and join pages in English.

At the end of the day I wonder if I’m providing a public service for horny Latin Americans or if Machos will ever be a viable income generator. I did it as an experiment. I’ve proven that I can get traffic, but it rarely ever converts.

What do you guys think? A lost cause? I know some sponsors have regional pricing - does that ever result in substantially lower membership costs for places like Latin America or is that just a way of getting even more money from European customers?

How can I convert Spanish and Latin American traffic? Ideas?

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#2

Re: How to convert Spanish language traffic?

It’s probably a combination of several factors / reasons.

Like you mentioned: $30.00 is a lot more money for people in Central- and South America and even in Spain. Have you also checked out what payment methods your sponsors offer. Not sure about Mexico, but I know that credit cards are not that common in Spain. They use debit cards and local payment systems.

They might be confused when they land on an English site. Also, maybe they are not really looking for international sites. There are local porn sites, which might be more popular than international sites (in their own region).

Also, in those countries the social life usually takes place outdoors. On warm evenings, people come together in the streets. Maybe this has something to do with the porn demand as well.

As for how to monetize the traffic… have you tried promoting sites that offer a Spanish version of the site? Linking directly to a Spanish tour would be ideal, but even if they see a red and yellow flag, they know where to go to. I know KristenBjorn and Staxus have a Spanish tour. I am sure there are more.

#3

Re: How to convert Spanish language traffic?

Back in 2003 I started Universal Bear and I had several pages translated into Spanish, German, and Polish. (The latter mainly because I knew someone who spoke Polish.) I ended up with number ones for “hombres peludos” and other things, as well as good ranking for German phrases. But like you, I sold very little.

MANcheck was the main sponsor for that site and they had join pages in Spanish and German, so that’s one hurdle taken care of. A year’s membership was $20 and the rebilling option that got thrown in was $40 a month. That was a lot of money.

I think, as you’ve pointed out, it’s a matter of economics. Actually, it would be interesting to see a $24.95 membership indexed for a dozen countries around the world, i.e. a $24.95 porn membership purchased in Columbia would be the equivalent of two day’s wages, for example. (Just throwing numbers around, I have no idea.)

I have a similar problem with Joe Spunk. For some reason I have become the go-to site for closeted Middle Eastern and Arab men. I have large numbers of men visiting from Saudi Arabia, Dubai, etc., but obviously, no sales. I just shrug my shoulders and hope I’m getting karma points for “helping” out my brothers in homophobic countries.

I think if you continue to offer Spanish language pages, you’ll continue to attract more traffic obviously because it’s always preferable to surf in one’s own language. But I think it’ll end up being a community service type of project.

I mentioned indexing earlier because it’d be interesting to see if you could do an experiment with a sponsor who was willing to do some geo-IP tracking and offer memberships to Spanish-speaking countries for maybe half or a third what they sell for normally. I don’t think there’s much you can do to boost sales to a population of surfers who just don’t have $24 to spend on a porn membership.

You may want to talk to Hard Kinks or Fucker Mate, both sites are located in Spain. They might have some ideas, solutions. But also, they might be sites that don’t market to their own people, but to Americans or Europeans who buy porn.

#4

Re: How to convert Spanish language traffic?

Michael - Another problem with geotargeting is that there are so many different Latin American countries, each with their own currency. If a sponsor supported Mexican pesos that’s not going to help someone in Argentina any more than USD. Of course Spain is on euros - so that’s good - presumably a lot of sponsors take euros, but they’re probably hoping for the rich German as a customer, not the poor Spaniard. I can’t see them having two prices for their site - both in euros.

Dennis - When I first set up Machos I fussed a bit about whether sponsors had Spanish landing pages, etc. Given all the times since then sponsors have redesigned their sites it would be a continual challenge to make sure they still supported Spanish after each redesign.

The bottom line for me is that I don’t want to make a big project out of it. Yes, I’ve spent a fair amount of money having guys write the blog posts, but I don’t want to have it consume more of my time than it does already. In other words, unless I see the possibility for substantial payoff, I don’t see the point. I mean if the economy in Spain suddenly started booming - maybe then - but what are the chances of that?

I’m tempted to just stop work on the site. I’ve seen moderate success in terms of traffic, but can’t think up a business reason why I’d continue to pay someone to write blog posts, tweets, etc. Just seems odd to give up on a site when it has traffic.

#5

Re: How to convert Spanish language traffic?

[QUOTE=rawTOP;149444]I was a little shocked today when I realized that my Spanish porn blog, Machos Calientes, now has more organic traffic than rawTOP.com! (Panda 4.0 seems to have given a boost to the site). Mind you, Google has a literal love/hate relationship with it…

  1. …that they can’t afford paysite memberships. Machos’ visitors are coming mostly from Mexico and Spain, with Argentina in 3rd place, Columbia in 4th place, and the US in a distant 5th place. Mexico is a mess right now (if you haven’t seen Narco Cultura - watch it on Netflix - it’s disheartening). Spain’s economy is still pretty depressed (did you see the episode of Top Gear where they drove through Spain and the country was practically deserted?). I employ a couple guys in Columbia - they have a middle class lifestyle on what would be well below poverty wages in the US. $30/month for a porn site membership is out of the question on those wages.

[/QUOTE]

The world’s richest man is a Mexican. NorthStar Mall in San Antonio sells a VISA Credit Card financed for people from Mexico. Somehow, the visiting population from Monterrey can afford to buy all the stuff at Macy’s and Bloomingdales.

Steve

#6

Re: How to convert Spanish language traffic?

The top 1% has money in Mexico - that’s hardly a news flash. It’s been that way for decades. Mexico is a country of a few “haves” and many “have nots”. What we need for robust sales is for the middle class to have plenty of spending money.

I’ve pretty much decided to shelf Machos. I told my guys to stop blog posts (I’ve got about 3 weeks worth scheduled already) and tweets will go down to just a few per week. It just doesn’t make sense to put the time and effort into it. I give up.

#7

Re: How to convert Spanish language traffic?

It’s too bad. I know it “hurts” making decisions like this, no one likes investing in a project that just doesn’t fly.

I still think it boils down to sites offering a $5.95 monthly membership to those parts of the world where that price point is reasonable and affordable. But then a 50% cut isn’t really worth the effort, not unless your selling hundreds of them a month. And as you pointed out, there are issues around IP tracking and all of the different countries speaking the same language.

I sill think it’s worth trying to talk to a couple of those Spanish sites I mentioned. They may have some insight about the porn-buying habits of their citizens.

#8

Re: How to convert Spanish language traffic?

A month from yesterday will be 4 full years of trying to get it to work (though there were times when I neglected the site pretty badly). Over that time my guys have done 419 blog posts (with 10 more still scheduled), and we got 1.9M visits to the site. They did 1914 tweets but we only managed to get 239 followers.

In other words - a fairly big investment - but it’s just not worth it IMHO.

It would be nice if sponsors would consider a cheap membership outside North America & Europe where the user only gets SD quality video (say a max bitrate of 768 Kbps to 1 Mbps) - paid in local currencies. That way people from other areas won’t try to cheat to get the cheap membership.

Generally my feeling is that I don’t want to take on a sponsor just for Machos. Part of the logic of Machos was that I’d put up scenes that I was working on for other blogs. It seemed cost effective - crop, rate, tag once and use in many places. These days I can’t be bothered with sponsor sites unless I know (or am reasonably sure) they’ll convert well. I’ll experiment here and there with new sites, and I have my personal favorites that get thrown into the mix (like Latin Boyz), but generally I just go for sites that are money-makers.

I’ll contact those guys and see what they say. I’m not hopeful, but who knows - maybe they’ll put me on the right track.

#9

Re: How to convert Spanish language traffic?

I didn’t necessarily mean to pick them up as sponsors or try and sell them, but a brain-picking session. But either way, good luck.

#10

Re: How to convert Spanish language traffic?

In the middle of writing emails to them it dawned on me that both of their site names are English, not Spanish. So even though they’re in Spain, they’re focused on English audiences.

I just had my assistant in Chile check out the sites…

FuckerMate is completely in English - even when coming from a Spanish-language browser from Chile. The price was €10 recurring, €15 non-recurring.

Hard Kinks did present a Spanish interface. The price was €19.95 for the first month, recurring at €12.95.

So neither site bills in Latin American currencies (or in USD for that matter). That means neither has regional pricing - I saw the same prices and currencies as my guy in Chile. But FuckerMate has a price point that Latin Americans might be able to afford, but their interface is in English, not Spanish.

After seeing that I’m going to skip the emails. If sites located in Spain don’t bother trying to get Spanish-speaking customers, why should I?

#11

Re: How to convert Spanish language traffic?

Yes, I guess that tells you all you need to know. If Spanish sites don’t even try to sell to their own people, they know they’re not buying.

#12

Re: How to convert Spanish language traffic?

[QUOTE=rawTOP;149530] If sites located in Spain don’t bother trying to get Spanish-speaking customers, why should I?[/QUOTE]It depends…

They may be going after lower hanging fruit (no pun intended) and may be doing well enough elsewhere not to bother with the work and the headache of setting up a second language version, translations, alternative billers, etc. - Same logic you yourself have for not wanting to bother with it.

The problem, as you already touched on, is that it’s purely speculative. It’s a catch 22. You won’t know the value of that traffic unless you take the steps required to convert it. By doing that you might end up one of a few people converting a majority of traffic from specific countries. Or, you could end up conducting an expensive experiment at a loss.

Maybe there’s a happy medium when it comes to finding out. What if you create a short tour (or even just a landing page) in Spanish and a join page with an alternative biller like http://global-access.com ? Might be a justifiable amount of effort to at least find out what that traffic is worth.

#13

Re: How to convert Spanish language traffic?

[QUOTE=AJ Hall;149555]They may be going after lower hanging fruit (no pun intended) and may be doing well enough elsewhere not to bother with the work and the headache of setting up a second language version, translations, alternative billers, etc. - Same logic you yourself have for not wanting to bother with it.

The problem, as you already touched on, is that it’s purely speculative. It’s a catch 22. You won’t know the value of that traffic unless you take the steps required to convert it. By doing that you might end up one of a few people converting a majority of traffic from specific countries. Or, you could end up conducting an expensive experiment at a loss.

Maybe there’s a happy medium when it comes to finding out. What if you create a short tour (or even just a landing page) in Spanish and a join page with an alternative biller like http://global-access.com ? Might be a justifiable amount of effort to at least find out what that traffic is worth.[/QUOTE]

I’m an affiliate, not a sponsor. What you’re suggesting only works if I were running a paysite.

#14

Re: How to convert Spanish language traffic?

[QUOTE=AJ Hall;149555]It depends…

They may be going after lower hanging fruit (no pun intended) and may be doing well enough elsewhere not to bother with the work and the headache of setting up a second language version, translations, alternative billers, etc. - Same logic you yourself have for not wanting to bother with it.

The problem, as you already touched on, is that it’s purely speculative. It’s a catch 22. You won’t know the value of that traffic unless you take the steps required to convert it. By doing that you might end up one of a few people converting a majority of traffic from specific countries. Or, you could end up conducting an expensive experiment at a loss.

Maybe there’s a happy medium when it comes to finding out. What if you create a short tour (or even just a landing page) in Spanish and a join page with an alternative biller like http://global-access.com ? Might be a justifiable amount of effort to at least find out what that traffic is worth.[/QUOTE]
we tried this with Spanish, French and German… negligible change from just the English tour/landing pages, certainly not worth the effort in maintaining it all in different languages