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Do you ever stop to think about the sales you make? Were they made because you showed a surfer something he couldn't resist or do your sales just happen for some reason that you simply don't understand?

If you've made a sale because you showed your surfer something he couldn't resist then why aren't all your surfers seeing something they can't resist? Why do some sales happen and so many more don't?

It's an interesting question and one that you really should begin to think about sooner rather than later in your career as an adult webmaster. I know that there are lots of webmasters out there who don't give it much thought but do still make a living here but those guys play the numbers game. If you throw enough traffic at your sites then sooner later you're going to get a sale and the more traffic you throw at your sites then the more sales you're going to make.

That certainly seemed to work in years gone by but I wonder if it's something that will continue to work in the years ahead. These days, traffic numbers to galleries and free sites are dropping and if you're playing the numbers game then sales will be dropping too. If you haven't got much traffic to start with then you won't be making the sales you need to survive ... unless of course you start to think about why some people buy and some people don't.

There are lots of experts in this industry that suggest that buying a membership in a porn site is an impulse buy. According to them most surfers don't plan in advance on buying a membership in a porn site but then maybe many do ... otherwise why would review sites be so popular?

But regardless of whether the surfer is an impulse buyer or one who likes to look around and do a bit of research before he makes a purchase there are things we should understand about him and about the buying process. Once we understand them we might be in a position to make more sales with less traffic.

Making a purchase requires a person to make a decision and the medical profession has already found that decision making seems to occur in the left side of the brain but other parts of the brain and body can influence the decision making too. A good salesman knows how to appeal to those other parts of the body and focus them all on the decision making part of the brain.

Instead of forcing someone to make a purchase a good salesman gently persuades their target to buy whatever it is that they're selling. They influence, they persuade, they don't just try and ram it down the throat of the would-be purchaser. They influence and persuade by pushing the 'buttons' that are pre-programmed into every one of us.

If I want to get Steve worked up about something I know the right 'buttons' to push and they almost never fail. The same goes for me, I'm sure there are 'buttons' that are pre-programmed in me that send me from zero to bitch in the blink of an eye and Steve knows how to push them.

So what 'buttons' do your surfers have that you can push? What can you do to influence your surfers and persuade them to buy what you're selling? Good sales people can pick up on those 'buttons' and activate the responses they want and the person they're selling to, won't even notice what's happened.

But identifying those 'buttons' when we can't even see the person we're targeting isn't easy. You really will have to stop and think about the sort of person who hits your sites and what it might take to influence and persuade them to buy what you're selling. It might not even be just one thing that will influence the sale ... it might be a combination of things.

It could be colors; it could be certain words or fantasies that those words conjure up. It could be attitudes and, just as those things might influence the surfer to make a purchase, any of those things could do the exact opposite and turn them off completely. So it's something you need to think long and hard about and experiment with.

You need to step back from your sites and look at them as a surfer would see them. Is the work that you're putting into your sites persuasive and likely to influence a surfer into buying something or is it too blatantly hard-sell and more likely to turn people away than turn them into buyers?

I can see a time when webmasters who have the ability to influence and persuade will be making more sales than those who simply play the numbers game. In lots of ways it's another example of the need to work smarter rather than harder.