Just Think of Water
Posted On: 2014-01-21
Ok so we had a crazy start to the week when absolutely nothing we did went according to plan. It was a crazy time and it showed me that my business has some issues that we need to deal with if we want to survive.
One of the biggest issues we have is that we're getting overwhelmed by requests from our clients for work that we're never going to get paid for. Of course the simplest solution would be to learn to politely tell these people to go away ... but I'm a sucker for anyone who needs help and most of the interruptions that led to the craziness earlier in the week came from people who needed help ... for free.
I think that most of them don't understand our role in growing their business and so they expect us to do far more than other web designers would normally do and I guess I just have to get tough with them.
If I don't then we're eventually going to fail because we'll be too busy to be actually making any money and that's not the way to go if we want to beat our competition.
Of course you guys ... as adult webmasters ... face a lot more competition and if you can't beat them then they're going to beat you. You're competition not only comes from other webmasters ... yes, all those guys you talk to on your favourite webmaster board are your competition ... but it also comes from all those free porn sites that are out there. You know ... the ones who give absolutely everything away for free.
And of course those guys are more your competition than anyone else ... so how do you compete with the likes of Porntube and other free sites that give everything away for free?
I guess the very first thing you need to do is to look at your competition and decide whether you really can compete with them. Are you promoting sponsors who have a better product than what people get for free? Do your sponsors provide a better experience for their members than they might get on a free site?
Now those are questions that you can dismiss quite easily because you may think that your sponsors don't deliver a better product or better experience ... and if that's the case then you better start thinking of finding another way of making money because you're never going to be able to sell enough porn memberships to make cab fare.
But if you're serious about making money here then those are questions that you are really going to have to find a positive answer for. You're going to have to dig deep ... you're going to have to spend some time researching and thinking about what porn surfers want and what might encourage them to part with their money.
You're going to have to think about what motivates people who buy porn memberships ... you're going to have to think about the psychology of selling and what you can do to promote the right sponsors that will make you sales.
And when you think you have the answers to those questions you're going to have to do some experimenting ... some testing ... to see if you have the right answers and if you're marketing the right sponsors in the right way. You may find that everything works the way you want it to ... you may find that you have the right products but your marketing sucks ... you may find that nothing works and you have to start all over again.
It's hard work if you want the rewards that you think you deserve and it's so easy to do no thinking ... no testing ... just survive on a trickle of sponsor payments. But if you really do want to make money here you have to work for it.
You simply must spend that time thinking and testing because you'll never be able to beat the competition if you don't. The competition is starting from a position of immense strength ... they're giving everything away for free ... but if you know how to compete ... if you know what will encourage people to buy your product ... then you will be able to compete ... you will be able to survive.
And if you don't believe me just look at the bottled water industry ... you turn on the tap and you get it for free but those guys in the bottled water industry have people lining up to buy what they could more easily have for free.
Think about how they do that.