Making Money Online ...
Posted On: 2008-07-24
... it's not as easy as it looks and it's still all about traffic.
If you've been in this industry for a while you will know exactly how true that statement is. People from outside the industry seem to think that working in adult online is the way to guarantee a huge income with a very little amount of work but of course it's not like that at all.
Even people over in mainstream seem to think that it's easy to make money in porn. Many of them face the same difficulties that we face day after day ... they struggle for traffic ... they struggle for good search engine placements and they struggle to make sales.
But somehow they seem to think that over here in adult it's just not the same. They think that traffic is easy to come by over here ... they don't seem to think that search engine placement is all that important in an industry where link lists and TGPs abound and they don't understand that sales are just as hard to come by here in adult as it is in mainstream.
Obviously those that do cross over to what they consider to be the dark side do discover that it's no easier to succeed here than it is over there. They find that all the difficulties that they faced over in mainstream are waiting for them here too. So if you're in mainstream and thinking about how easy it is to succeed in adult then perhaps you need to take a serious reality check.
For those of us here in adult who think it's easy to cross over to mainstream perhaps the same reality check should be prescribed. Over in mainstream you'll struggle for traffic and you'll struggle for search engine placement just as you do here and as for sales ... well let's just say that you're not going to make a fortune on the low commissions on offer in mainstream.
So what's the solution? What is a good way of making money online whether it's in mainstream or in adult? Well the answer to that question is something that I wrote about years ago but back then I don't think I ever really understood just how important it would become in the future.
Way back then I talked about the people who ruled the industry and I suggested the people who controlled the traffic were the ones who were at the top of the pile. And if you wanted to make money back then you had to build up a network of sites that would attract traffic. And these days that's still true ... the people who control the traffic do rule the industry and they are the ones who can make money ... especially in mainstream.
Sure, over there in mainstream the commissions absolutely suck. A commission that's a single digit percentage of every sale doesn't add up to much but there's something else that can make a webmaster a lot of money if he or she controls a lot of traffic and that something is advertising. Believe it or not, advertising space is becoming scarce over there.
It's not the advertising the a webmaster might display for his sponsor or merchant that can make you money, it's the advertising that you might display for businesses that just want to get their name out there in front of surfers. It's the businesses that will pay per impression or pay for a banner placement for a week or a month. It's the advertising that you see on online newspapers.
It's those businesses that can help you make money ... just so long as you have the traffic to justify paying for advertising on your sites. While that kind of marketing isn't big in adult yet I think that the day is coming when sponsors will be looking for the opportunities to advertise on websites that have a lot of traffic rather than to let others sell their product on commission.
But if you want to take advantage of those businesses who are looking to advertise on websites there's the catch. Whether it's mainstream or adult, you've got to have the traffic to make your sites attractive to those who want to advertise. At the moment over in mainstream businesses are looking to advertise on websites that have big traffic numbers but those sites are limited and soon they'll be prepared to look at smaller, more targeted sites with lower traffic numbers.
So what traffic do you control? What sites do you have that could be making money by selling advertising? Do you have niche sites that could attract advertisers willing to pay for a banner spot on your site? And how can you increase the amount of traffic flowing to those sites so as to make them even more attractive for advertisers?
Those are the questions that you have to answer if you want to make money online these days. And really, those are the questions that you've always had to answer if you've wanted to make money online. It's still all about traffic so what are you doing about it?