Understanding Where You Fit In
Posted On: 2016-09-21
Right from when I was a teenager I always considered myself to be something of a rebel ... rules were nice but many of them weren't written for me.
I'm sure that if my mother were alive to read that last statement she would be totally amazed because I didn't make a big deal out of being rebel. I didn't do crazy things with my hair and, unlike my sister, I didn't date the wrong sort of guy but ... well ... I didn't really live by the rules unless it suited me.
That attitude carried over into my adult years and even governed my career path ... and even then I didn't make a big deal out of what I was doing. To most people I appeared to be totally respectable and even my friends didn't know what I got up to.
Just recently I mentioned to one of my friends that I'd been featured as the centerfold in a men's magazine and I could see that she had a real problem believing me. She always thought that she lived on the wild side but getting her clothes off and posing nude was not something she would ever contemplate. Yet there was her rather reserved friend doing things far more wild than she would ever do.
But then, isn't that like so many people you know? So many people like to think that they are really living on the wild side of life and yet, underneath that facade, they are very conservative and they like to fit in.
Oddly enough, that's not such a bad approach to have to life if we want to make a living as adult webmasters because we do have to be able to fit in and not rebel about our place in this crazy world.
Unfortunately, it took me a little while to realise that the adult industry really is conservative and there are rules that anyone who wants to make a living here must live by. Being a quiet sort of rebel I didn't say much when I began to feel constricted by those rules but I did try to find ways to work around them.
These days though I am prepared to fit in because, while rebellion in the real world can be fun, rebellion here in the online world is not very rewarding at all. If you want to make money here you understand that there are rules, there is a hierarchy and you need to understand where you fit in.
So where do you fit in?
Well, if you're doing affiliate marketing you fit in with the rules applied by the websites that you choose to promote. You understand that you really are at the bottom of the pecking order and, while you may not like the treatment you get from those websites, you suck it up or you move on.
And that is something that applies across all adult webmasters. It doesn't really matter if you are a sponsor's best source of traffic or their worst; if they choose not to pay you then there's not a whole lot you can do about it.
Sure you can rant and rave on places like GFY but that probably won't get you your money. You could even threaten to change out all your links but, if you're churning out lots of galleries and sites, everyone knows that's just a hollow threat.
Changing links is about as close as it gets in this industry to shooting yourself in the head because your traffic sources usually don't allow you to do things like that and if they catch you they won't list you anymore. No listings equals no traffic and that equals no money.
Of course link lists and TGPs are not the only source of traffic but, even if you're doing really well in the search engines, you still have to understand where you fit in. Basically you're nothing to Google ... even some of the biggest brands in mainstream are nothing to Google so why would it be any different for you? If you try to game Google's algorithm it is inevitable that you will get caught and smashed.
So you have to understand that you take what you can get from Google and be happy. It's the same with Facebook too. You live by the rules and possibly make money or you die by the ‘Delete' key and watch your cash flow dry up in a matter of hours.
If you want to play at being a rebel, then you'll make a lot of noise about how bad ass you are ... and you will have to be prepared for the consequences when you get caught.
If you want to be a real rebel, then you won't make so much noise about it; you'll be discreet and find ways to keep the "rulers" of this online world happy while still having fun and not getting caught.
And that means that you will need to understand where you fit in ... and what you can do to get out of the mold.