How to start a paysite
 

How to start a paysite
Please post relevant links and tips to this subject.

Biggest cost except the marketing for a paysite?

The biggest cost is the time:
learning to generate traffic
learning the basics (html etc.)
building trust among your peers
studying market trends, SEO, legal issues etc.

If you don't have a good handle on all of the above your going to be pissing money away.
Trust me I know because I've been there, done that and even have the fucking T-Shirt :D

I hear it's a damn fine T-Shirt though :D

Pat's right of course...starting up a paysite is no small undertaking. And definitely not one to be attempted by someone new to this business.

http://www.pornmegabucks.com/articles/paysites.htm
So You Want To Start A Paysite by BillPMB

This article is OLD but it's still kinda relevant. I remember reading before I got into the paysite game and it made a big impression on me.

What a great closing statement:

"The smartest webmasters out there have all the traffic and no pictures on their sites, and the best free sites ever designed are the ones where there has never been a single visitor to the second page. ;)"

Gives me something to strive for! |bananna|

EDIT: Oh yeah, great link grandmascrotum. Thanks for sharing. |thumb

Member zone system, hosting / delivery system, payment system should be something easy to outsource to one company.

I would like to handle content and marketing.

You should have at least $20.000 to spend before considering to start a paysite.
Of course you can reduce the needed amount of money if you produce your own amateur content, got camera stuff etc. but most people do not.

Noted. |thumb

i have the same question

It is worth it to pay someone who knows how to do this already. It will be cheaper than paying for all the mistakes you are going to make by not benefitting from someone else's experience.

In the grand scheme of things it is not rocket science. It is very easy to look at successful paysites and work out what aspects are most likely to attribute to that.

Whether it is a porn site or something more mainstream such as ringtones CONTENT is key. If your content is not of interest to anyone then neither is your paysite. Give them value for their money and they will stay. That will increase your bottom line.

Once you have that organized you are going to need a good design. This means that it is easy for your surfers to navigate, and does not ressemble a scavenger hunt.

You will need to work with your processor of choice and your programer in order to ensure that it is able to accept customers, small hint here... the more billing options you have and for the more countries you can include the more you will profit.

Finally you will need marketing tools... a tour that tells people why your content is relevant and gives it purpose is a great jumping off point.

Then you must learn about generating the traffic to the site and in that you should focus on SEO and media buying.

Somewhere in there you need to learn about monetizing the traffic that you do have with exits, cross sells and up sells and above all you will need a good host!

I think that is very simplified but it is a good answer to your question and I should include but I think it is an obvious you will need some financial investment too.

Don't expect success overnight but it is very doable.

Hit me up if you have any more questions.

Takes a lot of money. Unless you're starting an affiliate program or already have a large traffic network, it's not worth it. You're better off spending that money to build tgps, mgps, blogs, etc.

My 2 cents.

Honestly you should seriously learn the business before even thinking of touching a paysite. There's a ton of shills and charlatans in this biz and no matter how big of a nest egg you start with you can soon find all that money gone and very little results to show for it.

I mean I could write out the simple steps of it all, but each step a long the way is loaded with people that will pick your pocket at any given chance.

Some people have started with paysites and I know a few post on this board....I think Sirmoby did it that way if I'm not much mistaken, but for every one success you see, you can probably chalk up 20 failures.

So I don't know how long you've been in the biz kindasecretatm, but make sure you have some understanding of it.

Don't let the guy next door or your own mind fool you. It's an industry just like any other. Just cause everyone and their mom thinks that if you open an adult site you will be rich in a few years, don't make it so. Like any other real life business you need to know it before jumping in. People get attracted to adult on the web cause of the mis-taken low cost start up. Sure that could be done 10 years ago, but now in order to really compete and make a living you need $$. How much? Well that all depends on your skills, for everything you don't know how to do, expect to pay for it. Remember you get what you pay for so pick your sources well. I would honestly have to think that in order to stay alive with a pay site for 6 months you need 20k if not more. If you get lucky and start making big $ really fast you can find yourself in over your head with no life vest. In situations like that all it takes is one mistake and your done. We have seen some new program owners come on this board, start out making friends then fuck it up when there is a misunderstanding. They start flamming, bad mouthing etc all the while not fully understanding what's going on. 1 month later they wonder where all their traffic went and why no one is sending sign ups. By the time they realize who, why and how they fucked it up, it's too late to fix the program. Just read, start with some free sites to get your feet wet, the more your in the business the more you may decide a paysite might be a fun thing to own but not worth the headache. You won't find many self made millionaires running around on the web anymore. Most get tired of the biz and sell off the site.

+1

Last time I checked, it's a lot less expensive to buy non exclusive content than producing your own.

LOL...
 

I need to write a book how to do this... I would make more money than I do from my site I reckon :D

If you could make more money on writing a book about how to start a paysite than from your own paysite, you don't know how to write the book.
|couch|

I could write a few pages based on my experiences, but I will leave it at one point which i think will help you the most.

Have your own traffic first. If you don't have enough traffic for at least 3-5 sales a day and are just hoping that affiliates will find you and promote you then you have a surprise coming. There are more programs than affiliates who send sales, so don't put all your effort into a paysite and pour money into it in the hope affiliates will fall over themselves trying to promote you :)

Thats the best advice I can give :)

Mind if I write that one down and use it now and then?
:D

Having just launched a paysite myself (the first one I've done completely solo for a couple of years) a lot of the info on this thread rings true for me.

Basically my new site is very softcore and was cheap to shoot - I think I spent about £1000 ($1850) in models fees to get enough content to launch, with some updates in the bag. I already have good quality cameras and editing equipment so that wasn't an issue, but the kit I'm using is worth maybe £7000 ($13000) in all. You could do it with cheaper equipment of course but you need to really know what you're doing with it if you want quality content.

Of course having your own traffic from the word go is vital, so while I was shooting I made some traffic generation sites like blogs, toplists, and a review site for other sites in my niche.

I'm now concentrating on building links on my traffic sites and type-in tour, and getting my affiliate program built up with promo tools. Tonnes of work but very rewarding when the sales come in :)

My advice to newbies is to forget about paysites unless you know for a fact you have a killer product - learn how to generate traffic and make sales first, save money for the best equipment you can afford, and lean all the technical skills yourself or find people to work with who you trust 100% to get the job done.

Thats good information
thanks

I'm building my first one for myself right now, but I have built them in the past for Playboy so I have an advantage. You need the following to do it right
a good Content Management system
A good design
Tracking software for affiliates
Billing system that works with your tracking software
a good server.
And good content

then you need to build things on the site that will bring them back
upselling on your site where you can
and there is alot more, but thats just the start of it

|spam|

Yep what they all said! I started my first pay site in 1996 and still have to work at almost every day. Its fun.. I shoot my own content (have had fun with that). You have to have a passion for the bizz now days or it will seem to hard., And you have to keep a good attitude and laugh at your self when you make little stupid mistakes and not let it get to you. Just learn and move on.

I was shocked when I first opened this thread and saw Mr.Yum and TPat, two people I hadn't seen in forever. Then I saw the date of the original post. :) All still good advice.

Ill contribute that even if you have 7 years worth of content shot and in the can youd best have a sizable nest egg to pay for CMS, processing set up fees, design work and traffic before you start.

And to do it right takes a lot of frustrating time.

Realize this is an old thread, but curious about this paysite thing. Is there any point to creating a paysite by way of AVS these days? I've actually been playing with the idea of a paysite lately only cause I'm sick and tired of doing months of work only to get screwed by a sponsors who don't pay or change their links and don't credit you for your old links to them and etc. etc. There are still a few decent sponsors left but, I'm paranoid they'll just end up getting bought out sooner or later by "you should know who" and then they go to shit.

Anyway, my curiosity to AVS is that I don't believe I will be able to create enough product to do my own site that will convert by itself. Is this outdated thinking and should I just hold off. I'm thinking with AVS I will invest less time and money and be able to get going. Not expecting much on my first attempt anyway except to learn what to do and not to do. Probably go with something like 3D or something of the sort since I've been becoming a bit obsessed with it lately and it's actually eating into my work time, and I'm actually needing store files on a removable harddrive just to make space.

Anyway what are the pros and cons of AVS verses just going at it on your own? Seems like anyone who knows what they are doing doesn't do AVS any longer (from lurking various places) and I was just curious why?

Thanks

Wow this was a long winded post |loony| apologies

Paysite right now in this maraket without much experience or content is a bad idea.

However an AVS is probably a good idea. Very little investment and within the AVS network there is usually a lot of content to keep the person rebilling. Plus you don't have to worry about processing or anything like that.

AVS is old school and so it just can't work anymore. The only way to make money is with a tube site. Now where is that sarcasm smilie.

I have a dozen AVS sites that I run as mini paysites. The good news is that you do not have to worry about a back end to keep members rebilling like a paysite. The bad news is you are still trusting the AVS sponsor not to screw/shave you like other programs.

Like everything else, some sites will sell better than others so start with one that you have traffic for already and convert other sites with.

Porn in general you mean? Not sure how I would get experience without trying it and screwing up

Does this mean you're basically a glorfied affiliate doing more work? This is sort of what I want to avoid. Does it at least pay better and cut down on some of the screwing? Can you take it out of the AVS system if it starts doing anything?

probably I should just toss up something shitty and cheap just to go through the ritual and get a little bit of knowledge expecting it to be an expense.

Yes, you are a glorified affiliate doing more work.

If other programs retained as well I probably would not of tried AVS. SheepGuy convinced me to try it and I thank him for it.

At NV, $3 for 7 day trial, $15 for full month, $22 on rebills plus they just upped payouts to $17.50 for upsells to their own program. About 15% of my members are rebilling at $39.50 a month. You can also upsell within your members area but that really only turns into an extra couple of sales here and there, for me at least.

It's your site, so if you want to pull it and turn it into a paysite, go ahead. Probably better to leave a smaller softer members area as AVS and then upsell your bigger better paysite if you decide to go that way.

I have been on the fence about turning mine into paysites for over a year now. Having affiliates does not guarantee more sales if you can't get the ones that actually sell to promote you.

Probably the cheapest way to see if you can sell your own site, especially if you have content laying around not doing a damn thing. All my sites started that way ;) I always start with a couple thousand pics or more but you only need like 400 to start one.

Then again, this is old school stuff so it just can't work anymore :D

Thanks I appreciate the info. I like old school stuff. The new schools have been costing me an arm and a leg LOL.

So you start these things only with pics? No clips?

What I meant is to go out and invest in content to start a pay site in this market (many people think the paysite model is slowly dying) would not be wise. At least not wise to invest a lot of money.

And of course it ALL depends on what you open. Open a general big boob pay site and forget about it... there's 100 of them now. Open some niche without much competition then you have a better chance at success.

Doing an AVS site is easy.

Doing a paysite? Everything you need costs you something! CMS, billing, more hosting, designs, much more content than needed in an AVS.

Wasn't sure if you were talking about a particular niche or the paysite thing in general. Thanks.

I'm just sick and tired of promoting other people's crap cause most of the affiliate managers are glorified used car salesmen who don't even have their own license. |banghead|

Not sure I'll go this route, but I might just for shits and giggles. There are still some good program sponsors I still like, but I want to start at least figuring out a way not to depend on others while I still have my head above water.

|headbang|