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Gack ... I really do dislike early morning meetings. They just throw my nice daily schedule and routine right out the window. Right now it's 9.15am and I'm only just getting into things that I should have finished over an hour ago.

Working in this industry seems to get you into a routine that becomes kind of hard to break out of after a while ... and I bet you thought that working here in adult or mainstream online you could forget all those daily routines that you were stuck in when you worked for someone else.

Oh well at least the meeting was profitable and interesting and has given me and my business another challenge and I find that when you run out of challenges life becomes rather boring.

So what are these three tips that I've got for newbies?

Discover who sends you real traffic
In this business it's important to know who sends traffic to your sites and who doesn't. Whether you're submitting free sites to link lists or galleries to TGPs it's important to know early on which sites send you the best traffic.

Of course other webmasters will give you advice on which ones send traffic but don't rely on what other people tell you. Use analytics software that will show you which sites are actually working for you.

Once you know which link lists and TGPs work best for you then you can concentrate on those particular traffic sources. But at the same time I wouldn't stop using link lists and TGPs that only send you small amounts of traffic ... every visitor can be valuable.

And you might also find that some traffic sources that you thought would send you bucket loads of hits aren't sending you anything. Before you drop them though it might be a good idea to spend a little time looking at why a major traffic source isn't sending you any traffic even though they might be listing your sites.

You may discover that the lack of traffic is not the fault of the link list or TGP but may indicate a problem with the titles or descriptions that you're giving your sites or galleries.

Identify who makes you jump through hoops for little return
This tip is really a follow-on from the previous one and it's worth thinking about in conjunction with that one when you know who is actually sending you traffic. Every link list and TGP has a set of rules for submitters to follow ... some of the rules are easy to follow and many link lists and TGPs have rule-sets that are quite similar.

However there are a few traffic sources that have rules that require a lot of extra work if you want to build a site or gallery that complies with those rules. By all means build a few sites that comply just to test the traffic but if you find that those lists or TGPs that require you to jump through extra hoops aren't sending you much ... if any traffic ... don't be afraid to drop them.

Time is money and there's no point making an extra effort to comply with the rules of one potential traffic source if they don't actually send you any traffic.

Where are people looking on your site?
It's important to understand that people who visit your website are not going to look at every part of each page on your site. In fact there are going to be some places on each web page that very few people take the time to look at and the last place you want to put a call to action is on one of those spots that people just don't see. That's why eye-tracking studies are important.

Now you don't have to go and conduct your own eye tracking studies because there have already been plenty of them done over the last five years or so. What you so have to do is to start searching for those studies and reading them because they have a lot to teach you about where a person's gaze falls on each page of your site.

When you know where people look you'll be able to use those spots to your advantage. You won't only use those spots for calls to action ... you'll also use them for text that will fire up a visitor's imagination and get them in the mood to buy what you're selling.

And that's it for me here on Rated Hot for another week. I'm off to think about display advertising and something that's close to a video business card.