Working Both Sides of the Fence
Posted On: 2007-07-26
Yesterday I talked about building one page wonders to help you build up a network of sales pages and pages that would be attractive to the search engines. I talked about it as being something that was ideal for those of us working in adult but the truth is that it's going to work for you whether you're working in adult or in mainstream.
In fact when I finished the column and sent it off to the editor I wandered into Steve's office and there he was building a one page wonder for one of our mainstream sites.
I find it interesting that so many of us here in adult do work over the fence in mainstream as well. It's also interesting that quite a few successful mainstream webmasters got their start in adult and that leads me to wonder why there is a dividing line. It's not only easy to think of a dividing line, there's almost an outside pressure that makes us think of that such a line exists.
It's like some sort of separation between good and bad but when you've seen both sides of that dividing line you soon realize that the distinction between good and bad is simply one that's promoted by the bad guys who want to appear good. That idea may sound a little puzzling at first but think about it for a moment and you'll see what I mean.
If you can convince the general population that only bad people deal in adult products then by default all those who work over in mainstream must be good right? Of course we know that's wrong - there are probably more scummy low-life operators over there in mainstream than there are here but to the ordinary people out there the good guys are pure white and they all dwell on the mainstream side of the fence. That means mainstream can be trusted.
So when we cross the line and start working in mainstream few of us want to be identified with anything we've done, or are doing, in adult. If we come from adult then we can't be trusted because we're wicked and evil.
There was a time when I was naïve enough to think that it really didn't matter where you came from but now I accept the fact that it does. If we want to succeed in mainstream it's important that we not be seen to be coming from the evil, wicked, black side of the fence and so we try to protect our identities.
But how well do we protect those identities? Do we completely separate our two businesses? If we have had a dedicated server in adult do we go so far as to keep all of our mainstream sites off that server? Do we even move all of our mainstream sites to a completely different host? Should we even be so paranoid as to have one set of bank accounts and credit cards for adult and another set for mainstream?
These are all questions that you need to decide for yourself but whatever side of that mythical dividing line you're working, or even if you are working both sides of that line there's one entity out there that you really do need to protect yourself from and that's Google.
A couple of days ago a mainstream webmaster made a very valid point on his blog when he suggested that Google Checkout was just one more way for Google to obtain important information about everyone who uses the service. His example was of the webmaster that had sites on two hosts. One hosting account was only used for pure white hat sites; there was nothing sneaky or spammy or black hat about these sites in any way.
The other hosting account was used for search engine spam and every nasty black hat trick the webmaster could think of. Of course all the domain information for sites on both accounts was protected so that no one could see that the one webmaster owned the domains on both accounts.
But what if both hosting accounts were paid with the same credit card? Of course there would still be some separation and protection if both hosts ran their own merchant accounts but what if one of them used Google Checkout?
Not many hosts do use Google Checkout but now there's one very well-known mainstream host who is ... and Google Checkout isn't an option with them. With that mainstream host Google Checkout is the only way you can pay your account if you want to use a credit card.
Sometimes a little paranoia can be a very good thing regardless of which side of the fence you happen to be working.