It's Brain Doodle Time
Posted On: 2007-08-08
It's been a while since I had a brain doodle ... well actually it's not ... Steve and I often kick a few way-out ideas around just to see what looks interesting. But today Steve's not around so I'm turning an odd idea loose on you guys and you can decide whether there's any merit in it or not. You never know, you might be able to develop it and make some money out of it.
The trigger for this brain doodle was something I was reading about local search and the way it's driving offline transactions. Now while you're holding that thought in your mind here's another one for you; are we using geo-targeting to its full potential?
And while you're holding those two thoughts here is a third - is there a way you can monetize all that traffic that's hitting your adult sites but not actually buying anything?
Right now about the only use of geo-targeting that I see on adult sites is for dating and a few other sponsors who are trying to suggest to surfers that the next update in their reality sites might include some chick from the surfer's local area. Now that's fine but the dating market has to be reaching saturation point and if your traffic isn't buying memberships to your sponsor then suggesting that the next girl could be from their area is probably going to be of limited value anyway.
So could we be using geo-targeting to be selling something else?
I think we could and it might be a way to monetize some of that traffic that's only hitting your site for the freebies and has no intention of buying a membership in any of your sponsors' sites. At the moment, if you're using the usual affiliate marketing model on your site it doesn't matter what your sponsor pays and it doesn't matter whether it's pay-per-signup or rev-share. If your advertising doesn't convert a surfer into a paying member your advertising is totally wasted.
But what if you could make money out of ever surfer who hit your site? If you could do that ... even if it was only a few cents per surfer ... it wouldn't take long before you could be making more money doing that than you would getting $35.00 for every membership you sold.
So what's my twisted brain doodling about here? Well what if you could find a business that would buy your top banner spot for so much per thousand impressions?
Of course you're going to be wondering what business would want to advertise on an adult site but there are plenty. Adult businesses out there in the real world are always looking for places to advertise. Strip joints, brothels - where they're legal - and other adult related businesses want to get their message out but the places they can advertise are limited.
However, if you've got a lot of traffic hitting your sites you can offer those real-world adult businesses somewhere to advertise and you can make it economic for them by geo-targeting their ads - an increase your advertising rates. That means that if a club in New York wants to advertise on your site only surfers who come from that area would be shown the ads while people from other places would see your normal affiliate advertising.
Setting that up isn't difficult. There's a great free piece of software that can handle all that for you. It used to be called phpAdNews but recently underwent a change of name and now it's known as known as Openads and it's a great way to keep control of your advertising. Not only will it rotate advertising but it also has a great tracking system that allows you to set the number of times a particular ad will be viewed.
Take that piece of software, add in some geo-targeting, and you've got a great way of making more money from more of your surfers. They don't even have to click through to the advertiser for you to make money.
Obviously you're going to have to go out there and sell your sites and your traffic to the people who may want to advertise with you. That's going to be quite a learning experience for you but once you've worked out the glitches, and you know how to pitch the value of advertising on your sites, not only will you develop another income stream for your sites but you'll also have the experience to be able to broker advertising deals for other site owners.
One hurdle you would have to overcome is the perception many people have of porn surfers. Lots of people - even those in the adult industry in the real world - see porn surfers as those who hide away and do their surfing in private. If that's how you see it too then go and have a look at your server stats; you might be surprised to see that a lot of your traffic is coming in during working hours and that will be a great selling point.
There's a lot of scope to develop this idea further so in a quiet moment why not let your mind do a little bit of doodling to see where my thoughts might take you.