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There was a time a few years ago when someone told me that if I became an adult webmaster I wouldn't have to work very hard to make money. Hah! I am just so glad that I was already in the industry and knew that this is one place that you do work very hard indeed because if I wasn't I'd be very disappointed today.

This is a place where you really do have to work hard day in and day out if you want to stay on top of the competition and go on making money. On the other hand you could be like one service provider a friend of mine got an email from the other day. Not only was it spam promoting a good deal that was anything but ... but they also managed to send the email out to every one of their competitors too.

Ah well ... I'm sure that everyone in this industry isn't generally dumb ... or specifically dumb enough to let their competitors know what they're doing. Yeah right!

Seriously though, if you're new to this industry ... or even if you've been in it for a while ... don't be fooled into thinking that everyone that you meet is out to help. This is a very competitive business just like any other so you keep your plans to yourself and don't go blabbing about them on message boards - or emailing them to your competitors.

By all means ask questions on the various webmaster boards; join in the discussions and the fun but keep your business plans to yourself. . You might just be giving away your competitive advantage and that's the very last thing you should do.

Getting Personal
I'm not involved in email marketing in any way at all but I still do read a couple of email marketing lists from time to time because those guys are marketing in one of the toughest environments you can be in. And here just let me make it clear that I'm talking about genuine email marketers and not spammers. Just in case you're wondering, there certainly is a difference and these guys are very careful to stay within the law and not piss off the people that they're emailing.

They're also very careful to stay appealing and relevant to the people that they're trying to sell to. They go to great lengths to personalize the message for each recipient. They use the recipient's name somewhere within the message, they give the user an opportunity to interact with the senders and, despite mass mailings, they try to give each recipient a specific product recommendation that's relevant to them.

Think about it for a moment and you'll see just how focused one of their emails has to be yet it's going out to many thousands of people. Yes, email marketing is a very serious business and I'm sure that there are some valuable lessons for us in the way these guys market their products.

So if there are lessons for us what are they? Well for a start I would suggest that the personalization of the message is something we should be thinking about. Sure, the email guys have names that they can address their emails to while we don't ... but that doesn't mean that we can't personalize our message to some extent.

You can bring your marketing message on a free site down to a very personal level simply by using a few personal pronouns that speak directly to the person who is looking at your advertising. The word 'you' is one pronoun that really brings the message down to a very personal level.

If, as a very simple example, you were to say 'Get the filthiest hardcore amateurs here' the message could be for anyone and there's nothing personal about it at all. It's easy for a surfer to see little relevance in that message for him and he can skip over it because it's not addressed to him ... it's just general advertising hype.

On the other hand if you were to say 'You get the filthiest hardcore amateurs here' and perhaps even emphasis the 'you' suddenly you've made the message personal and when somebody is addressing you ... personally ... you tend to stop and listen; or in this case you would stop and read. The message suddenly has relevance because it's addressed to you and when the surfer sees a message that is addressed to him ... or her ... they won't be so inclined to skip over it and rush on in their search for the hardcore images.

There are a number of other ways that you can personalize your marketing message to and you do need to think about them and start testing which personalized messages work best for you. Once you get into working with personalized messages you'll begin to see that there are other ways of using them that will only increase your sales.

And that's what you want isn't it? More sales for you and more money in your pocket ... right?