This carries on from the 'why are we afraid to profit from free porn' thread where Nick made a very accurate post about the trends of traffic over the years, but he made a point that I am determined to remove from Oprano's bible!!!!

Ok ... I've worked with several companies, affiliates, programs etc with what I believe to be in the top 20% of traffic volume's in the industry. I started as a designer, expanded into marketing, branched into affiliate management and today do a combination of all.

In my first few years as an employee we worked on the concept 'build it and they will come', because it was that easy. In those days, traffic was king ...

HOWEVER ... as soon as a site would be launched, we would note the conversion, and I would get instructions 'change this to red', 'make this flash', 'move this to the left', and conversions would improve or decline and we would adjust again accordingly.

So, if traffic is king, why do we tweak the *content* to make the traffic convert better (or at all) ?

It takes 2 elements to make a website - traffic and content. 1 without the other is *useless* ... you could have all the traffic in the world, but its not going to convert on a blank page. Even 'click here' is the content of your web page.

Content isn't how many pics or vids you have in your site - it IS your site. Its the design you paid $XXXX for, its the catchy phrases that catch the attention of your surfer, its the lime green blink text you have on your warning page, its the lists of tgp galleries, its the members area ... content is everything that makes up your site. How it all flows together is what makes the surfers experience good or bad - or what makes them spend money or not.

The stat we rely on like oxygen is *conversions* - not how much traffic, but how well it converts. its all most webmasters care about.

Conversion is how well your traffic matches your content ... its that simple.

If you send 10k hits that were looking for surf boards to a site that doesn't have surfboard content of some kind on it, you may get a few luck sales ... but if you send 1k of surfboard traffic to ebay 'surfboards for sale' page or an amazon surf books page, you could get 10+ sales from less traffic.

In Nick's post in the other thread, he mentioned 2 key things. SEARCH ENGINE ***OPTIMIZATION*** & Mail ...

Optimization: The art of intercepting a surfer the moment he gets online and providing him with or onselling him to the service he was looking for.

How can you make any money off traffic, if you don't have or onsell to matching content?

How can one be king without the other?

:pearl:

This is just my opinion and from my viewpoint, others will see it differently.

After running a content site for 3 years and a paysite for 3 weeks I can tell you neither Traffic not Content are King.

Conversions are King.

You can have all the traffic on the net, or the greatest content, but if you can't convert anyone what's the point?

What will bring conversions is an open ended debate, because no matter what you put up someone somewhere will pay for it. The art is in getting as many people as possible who see what you have buy it. Then getting more people to see it.

Getting traffic is easy, let's face it we can go out and buy 1 million hits a day. Getting good traffic is not so easy. So what will get GOOD traffic?

Your own endevours will raise some and then it's down to your own skills to tweak it up. But at some point you are going to have to go out to others to drive it to you and here CONVERSIONS is KING. What brings those conversions is content, the design, layout and navigation of a site and the actual porn on the site.

The good traffic drivers, WHALES, know a bum steer when they see it and all the tarting up and BS in the world will not sway them. It will influence a few kids to drive traffic and some surfers to buy, but the guys who will send a site 10+ sign ups a day will not be fooled that easily.

These guys are the life blood of most sites, sell a site to them and they will work for you.

Some will argue that what ever they do with the content they can never make a huge difference to the sign up ratio and the way forward is to throw more traffic at a site. Well there is an answer to this.

In the 27 years I've been shooting porn I can tell you for sure the picture on the front effects the sales ratio before anything else. Knowing what is good and bad porn is an essential ingredient in making a paysite work. When I meet of these guys who believe traffic is everything, I usually see on his site a lack of understanding of what we are selling.

Obvious one is Teens as dominatrixs, porn stars as amateurs or 25 year olds as teens. This may of cut it 4 years ago, today it does not.

You mean sites with free trials? What about sites without free trials which I think is most these days?

Of course I'm talking about sites without free trials, not even sure what you mean.

What *is* good traffic?

To you, women traffic is probably useless - to me, I can make more per click on it than is possible on most porn traffic :awinky: What is shit to you, is GREAT for me ... not because the traffic is better quality, but because I know what to do with it & have so much content (ie, lots of womens niche websites) that I have something to match what a large portion of that female traffic is looking for.

I often get affiliates say to me 'i have good traffic, Xc per click' ... and I say 'good traffic for what, where do they come from?' and rarely get a straight answer.

Since I started working with mainstream stuff, I no longer see traffic as good or bad ... I see everything in terms of portals with gateways to other sites and traffic as a moving freeway with cars (surfers) occasionally taking an exit (clicking a link) when they see something of interest.

I don't think there can be such a thing as bad traffic ... its usually poor marketing to potential customers.

How does content and "the actual porn on the site" bring a conversion when the surfer doesn't see it until they are a member?

I agree that even very good traffic is worthless if a tour just doesn't work. I have sent traffic to a site in beta before, and the creatives were getting 1:4 CTR (very nice), but when they hit the tour NO-ONE bought it. Zero sales!

The 2 do need to work together to achieve the best results.

<!--QuoteBegin-cj
How can one be king without the other?[/quote]
In my opinion, traffic would still come out as king. You can have the best site in the world, but with no traffic, nothing is going to happen at all. Or you can have traffic, and a page with a text link saying "Super secret members only hardcore!" on there, and the chances are you'll get at least one person who's intrigued enough to buy blindly ;)

Yes, having that text link is technically content, but anyone is capable of making simple content such as that (at no real cost). Getting all the traffic in the world is not so easy :ph34r:

CJ obviously the traffic hitting your site is only good if it suits what you have.

That would be what the tour is about.

OK, so you mean the content presented in the tour and the advertising of "the actual porn on the site" bring good conversions.

Sort of the difference between a Pepsi commercial and its actual taste.

Age old question - Which comes first ? the chicken or the egg. :o

A goregeous, great selling site is worth nothing, if it gets no traffic - just expense.

A site that gets great traffic is useless if it doesn't have good content & converts. - just expense.

(For anyone). If someone offered to give you a paysite that converts 1 in 100 or 100k daily se traffic, which would you choose? (is that a fair comparison?).

I would choose the se traffic, hands down.

How well would a paysite have to convert to be equivalent to that traffic? (say teen traffic).

I too in my short time, have always felt that content is under rated!

I mean sure traffic is a given necassity, but CJ raises a terrrific point, the days of just build it and it will sell are long over, and the content of the site is increasingly impportant!

Oh, I DEFINITELY think content is important. That's a completely different discussion to me than conversions - unless you have a free trial, of course.

Colin Im with you. Of couse I will qualify htat. I want to know what keywords are driving the surfer there from the SE's. Thats where analysing your logs comes in handy. Then you redesign the fucking tour.

Good thread.

Oh, I DEFINITELY think content is important. That's a completely different discussion to me than conversions - unless you have a free trial, of course. [/b][/quote]
But not completely different with CJs definition of content. <_<

That phrase is a :pearl:

I found that tragic.
10 joins a day is a whale????


back to the subject..


I'd take the SE hits anyday.

Content is and always has been the lowest factor of production.

Content Kings do not make a million net a mth.

Traffic Kings do.

Give me $50 bucks for an ad in a local paper , and $1000 and I will have enough content to build the bollocks frontend to convert mail or SE traffic , once they join most if it will be underconstruction ;-))

HOWEVER , if in the members area there is tons of good upsells like Http://www.almightycontent.com I would say it will retain nearly as well as a real content rich site.

Because , lets be absolutely frank here as well.

As far as recurs goes in most paysites , we rely on the member forgeting to cancel

Unless you are a traffic broker, mailer, or type-in domain owner you absolutely need content. There are ways to not have to give a damn about content if you are one, or a combination of, those three types of business structures.

Unless you are a traffic broker, mailer, or type-in domain owner you absolutely need content. There are ways to not have to give a damn about content if you are one, or a combination of, those three types of business structures. [/b][/quote]
Of course.

But the content necessary to gain the sale is a minimal cost.

it IS all about traffic, but yes, it's up to you to work it to make every penny you can.

You're looking at this from only ONE point of view however. With all of those three methods I described above unless you are sending to a rev share, and most of the people that use those methods won't do that, all they give a shit about is the initial sale. With all of that the content on their site is minimal at best, or none at all when it somes to mail traffic.


Content is important for sure but it's only RELEVANT when you have the traffic feeding it to make having to spend the money on getting it and maintaining it profitable. You can have all the content in the world and it won't do you a darn bit of good unless you have the traffic to send to it to justify it's cost and then make a profit off of it.

Therefore TRAFFIC is a FAR more powerful element because even with little to no content you can make big bucks but you cannot make big bucks off off great content without good or great traffic.

Well I have done both... traffic and content. I just found it is just impossible to try and do both at the same time.

At one point a few years ago I was up to over 50 signups a day just pushing traffic... then my traffic source went to shit and the sponsor I was using got saturated.

I made up my mind 2 years ago that I was going to become the best camgirl on the net and train other girls to do the same... and I've been pretty sucessful at that. Its what I am REALLY good at. Trust me when I say that you can not just stick any old girl in front of a cam and she'll make you money.

I've tried a few things in the 5 years I have been in this business... and I've made money with them all... but some things just require too much time for the return.

The worst business thing I have ever done is run my own amateur site. Yes, I did make money with my old sexwithsabrina site yes (compared to what many amateur girls can do on their own)... BUT... I would spend all my time marketing and getting traffic to the damn thing that I just didnt have the time to really focus on my members and get the maximum revenue I could from them.

I am totally happy to have Interclimax take a big cut from the revenue I produce for them... 100% of nothing is NOTHING...


Sabby:)

I don't think this is a chicken and egg discussion at all, because there is another factor entirely that nobody's mentioned.

The most wonderful content on the web is nothing but a server bill without traffic (not much bandwidth expended if nobody comes to look at it).

Traffic from the best sources going to the the most wonderful content on the web is going to increase the bandwidth on your server bill if you can't sell.

I listen to people bitch and moan about [inser your least favorite sponsor].com's plain, ordinary cookie-cutter sites that look like shit, have ugly skanky crackho models, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. Go to any board, or review your ICQ conversations from last week, and you'll probably find and example.

Go back four years, and you'll probably find an almost identical rant about the exact same company. How are they able to make the initial sale and retain folks long enough to enable the rant to reoccur?

The difference is presentation - marketing or salemanship or whatever you want to call it.

to be honest, this is one of the dumbest threads ive seen on oprano. everyone here should know any point that has been made in this thread. we are not here to educate newbies, and if we were, it'd be on dead ears because newbies don't last here anyway.

:pearl:

I don't consider this a dumb thread ... I think it is interesting to see the different perspectives people have.

Sometimes, as my old baseball coach used to say, it's useful or necessary to "get back to da got-damn fun-da-mentals."

I'm with PD. I think it is interesting to see the different perspectives people have and there aare some very interesting perspectives in this thread.

:okthumb:

I think it is obvious that a lot of the Old school who were resting on their laurels , myself being one , are doing exactly that.

And even my old stick in the mud ideas are slowly changing and though I do not prize anyone aspect of this business above traffic the importance of good content is rising IMHO>


sabby,

You are a very rare combination.

Smart content ;-))

Oh great tits too , but that is neither here nor there. ;-))

So this leads to the thought that maybe the time is right for Traffic Kings to partner up with Content Kings/Queens.

I love threads like this...

It gets everyone rethinking as PD said the fundamentals.

I couldn't disgree with you more. This is a great thread and I have no problem educating newbies. The newbie that reads this thread and gets it (BTW_ there is MANY different things to take away as a learning experience from this thread) is someone who I may hit up a year from now to advertise on this board, do a traffic deal with, or any number of things. We're HAPPY to have people here that want to discuss the business and learn about it because the smart people here at Oprano will find a way to make it profitable for them down the road to have done so.

well sorry I mucked up the thread a tad, my traffic working ego is high and this is all low level news to me.

Bullshit...it's absolute idiocy. I hate to agree with pushpills & that old hippy, but I do. This chick is dumber than I thought.

Traffic rules...you have it, someone wants it. Mainstream or adult - period.

You have potential customers, someone wants the chance to pitch them.

Bullshit...it's absolute idiocy. I hate to agree with pushpills & that old hippy, but I do. This chick is dumber than I thought.

Traffic rules...you have it, someone wants it. Mainstream or adult - period.

You have potential customers, someone wants the chance to pitch them. [/b][/quote]
Well, it didn't get any better after you came and said the same thing that has already been said multiple times in the thread already.

http://www.linkification.com/linked/Circle.gif

Sheer genius. "This thread is absolute idiocy. By the way, here is my opinion .. *restates what others have already said*" - aeon

Well, it didn't get any better after you came and said the same thing that has already been said multiple times in the thread already.

http://www.linkification.com/linked/Circle.gif[/b][/quote]
You obviously didn't have the ability to state the obvious, but thank you for your support none the less. I appreciate it.

Btw - anyone with half a brain would choose legendarylars.com for their cam upsells - they do co-branding to as well. :okthumb:

LegendaryLars is an affiliate program. We're paysite content. You'll find our feeds in Adult.com, ARS, CyberErotica, Flash Cash, Gamma Cash, Maximum Cash, Penthouse, Platinum Bucks, Porn Mega Bucks, Shaw Internet, Silver Cash, TrafficCash and so on.

Our video is free and we have free hardcore shows. That's part of what makes us membersite content and why the top sites use our feeds.

They are also two completely different models. secretfriends.com is a group chat. The cost to the end user is only $1.

I completely respect Lars and his program. Great guy as well.

lars' program sucks.

DISCLAIMER. Almighty Content does not endorse the following statement. Despite his signature, pushpills is independent of the Almighty Content company and its subsidiaries. Any opinions expressed are his and his alone.

I can skim this thread because it's very simple

Nothing happens without traffic

The most beautiful site, best laid mousetrap - Worthless without traffic

First you get the traffic, then you tweak it with the right site content

DISCLAIMER. Almighty Content does not endorse the following statement. Despite his signature, pushpills is independent of the Almighty Content company and its subsidiaries. Any opinions expressed are his and his alone. [/b][/quote]
:lol: :lol: :lol:

:lol: :lol: :lol: [/b][/quote]
I love pushpills. Any guy you have to follow around with disclaimers is alright with me.

is this like 'there is no money to be made in tgps' Vick?

So first you get the traffic .......................... then where do you send it? You just said yourself 'tweak it with the right content'. If traffic could work by itself, without content, why did your sentence have a second half?

Its funny how so many of you need to jump back to your old argument 'traffic is king', and yet you immediately follow it with 'then you tweak the content to make the traffic valuable' :rolleyes:

Not 1 of you has said ANYTHING that proves traffic (without content) is king. Lots of 'but its easy to get cheap content' or 'anyone can make a page' ... lots of 'if i had 100k se hits and 100k in content i'd choose traffic' blah blah

Note, I never said *anything* along the lines of choosing between the 2 ...

So effectively, the argument is traffic is king ... as long as you send it to the right content?

So how important are the subjects and bodies of the messages you email people? I know you've become a master over the years and can write the copy in seconds, but it probably has to be tweaked regularly to keep up with filters and trends?

Deliverability relies on what's in your message, so how are you going to GET the traffic without the content?

So what is written on a spam email is content?

Getting a tad tenious now...lol

Grogan,

The day you think you are too smart to revisit the basics is the day you stop learning.

Unless you convert all your traffic at 1/1, you still have something to learn. Every one of us can still learn MUCH about managing the relationship between traffic and content.

Let me give you an example of some of a classic.


Subject : George Bush is dead (make it dynamic with a few thousand celeb names)



set against you joing this site!

Click here!


....so that now is content?

ok. point taken. its a dumb thread.

good luck with getting that 100k in targetted se hits without treating every word on your site as content :okthumb:

Grogan,

The day you think you are too smart to revisit the basics is the day you stop learning.

Unless you convert all your traffic at 1/1, you still have something to learn. Every one of us can still learn MUCH about managing the relationship between traffic and content. [/b][/quote]
That is a good post!


However comparing my alledged mail to content is a little weak lol.

I supose 5 million dynamic and cloaked SE pages are content too?

;-)))

CJ,

The accepted definition of content in adult is:


Pictures
Video
Stories
Games

ok Nick. as I said, good luck to you generating 100k se hits if you think content is pics, videos, stories and games :okthumb: