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Last week I started a short series aimed at getting you thinking about what you're doing to make money in this industry and what's going on around you that may be impacting on your ability to make money and I want to carry that on today.

Lies, damn lies and statistics
When I first started in this industry the standard advice from all those who took it upon themselves to look after newbies was to never let yourself get bogged down in statistics. Sure things like click thru rate and the hits we were getting to our websites was of some importance but we were told that we should never waste our time and spend too much time looking at those figures.

At the time it sounded like pretty good advice but now I'm beginning to wonder if those of us who keep on telling newbies to focus totally on building and submitting and forget about the data that we can get from various sources might not be doing those newcomers a disservice. These days we need to know how to read that data because it tells us if we're wasting our time or not.

Obviously the amount of money we're making ... or not making is an indication of whether we're wasting our time or not ... but using the level of our income as some indicator of whether we're on the right track or not can be misleading.

So if you haven't learned how to do so yet then it's time that you learned how to read the data that your sponsor, your server and analytics programs like Google Analytics are giving you. If you're relatively new to the business then start by looking at month by month figures but as your time here grows longer move on from short term comparisons to longer term.

Don't compare one month to the month before ... compare now to the same time last year and even compare year on year and you will start to see trends far more clearly.

Selling is changing ... are you changing your selling techniques?
Early next year we have a meeting with a client's sales staff to talk to them about how to sell online. These are guys who are great at selling face to face and they have products that just about sell themselves but none of them have any experience at selling online.

One of the things that we'll be telling them is that the way they should be selling their product online is changing. In the past it was quite possible to sell something online simply by building a website to promote the product and that still does work ... to some extent.

But now ... more and more ... you've got to be prepared to get into a conversation with the people you want to sell too. You have to be prepared to go social and be ready to talk to people when they want to talk to you. One of the strategies this business had wanted to employ was to get someone to post something on their Facebook page once a week and never go near the page till it came time to post something else.

We're fast reaching the point where that approach is just not going to work for mainstream businesses and we have to be aware that maybe it won't work for much longer for those of us who sell adult products.

What will your approach be if selling our products becomes more about talking with people than talking to people?


Why are we missing the easy sales?
I hope you realised that every time you make a sale you gain a customer ... and there is a cost involved in gaining that customer. What do you pay for every surfer that you turn into a customer?

Over in mainstream there are still plenty of people who totally miss ... or just fail to understand ... that concept that every customer comes at a cost. They also miss the fact that it costs less to sell something to someone who is already a satisfied customer so they do nothing to nurture a relationship with their customers.

When you think about it that sounds like us over here in the adult online industry. Most of us here do absolutely nothing to nurture relationships with our customers ... we don't see it as important ... we don't realise that we can save money by building those relationships.

So what are you going to do to cut down on your expenses and actually save money by selling to people who already know that you're not going to rip them off?

And that's it for me today ... I won't be back till after Christmas so I hope you and yours have a great Christmas and I'd urge you to step away from your computer for at least one day and spend it all with your loved ones.