Non-English Speaking Webmasters
 

(this might need to be in General Business Knowledge, I wasn't sure)

I see in several link list threads that some sites submitted by foreigh webmasters get rejected for spelling and grammar errors. Why are non-english speaking webmasters trying to sell porn to english speaking people? Are we the only ones that have credit cards? Are there no porn surfers in their own countries? Is the english speaking market just bigger? I was just curious, not bashing anyone at all.

You worry about bis. rivals, don't you.

I don't think thats what he is getting at at all.

I have wondered this too, liek with spanish webmasters if their is a huge market for them to make spanish websites and the same with others.

I personally dont look through the foreign versions of google or search engines, so i dont know if there is the huge amounts like with english sites.

I believe some have stated that not many people have credit cards (at least % wise compared to english speaking countries) therefore they do english sites where the money is greater. Also, some have said it is hard to get quality sites from some of the foreign countries known for scammers and whatnot so the business sin't that great.

Hmmm, good question Licker4U.
I live in a small corner of the world, and total we are 4.5 mill people living here. Take away the people under legal age, and the people not connected to the internet, and we are down to half of that number.
So, let's say there are 2.25 mill people online above the age of 18.
Not everyone are looking for porn, and not all looking for porn are gonna pay for it.... And not everyone got a creditcard.....
If i was planning on making porn for the few people here actually looking for porn and having a creditcard they would use to purcase porn, well, I'd better find something else to do....

And, people here are using english words when searching for porn anyway, so guess I'll be making stuff targeted to the english speaking people instead of writing in my own useless language... :)

That is something that has puzzled me for some time. But at the moment, even more so, since the $ is so far round the U bend that US money is not really worth having outside the America at the moment. I live in England and speak English, which is almost the same language that they speak in the USA, so pushing sites to Americans is easier for me. But at the moment I spend very little time pushing American websites, I live mostly on European sales in £UK and Euros. Used to be that 90% of my earnings came from American porn, but at the moment my $ sales per week are rarely enough to even get very drunk on (and most of those come from eBay-USA, not porn sites). So it puzzles the hell out of me why non English speaking people beat themselves up to struggle with a foreign language when their own language sites should make more money for them.

great input. I didn't even think about the fact that non english speakers would use english search terms. I guess possibly using english keywords, but the content of the site in "language of choice" would be a great alternative, given that those spoken countries use some form of currency and a percentage of the pop. with net access.

Even thought only 1,000,000 people in a certain ""location, language" market might have the funds, availability and access to be able to sign up or buy from a site, if only a couple dozen webmasters are catering to those people then the percentages may be in that webmasters favor.

Being 1 of a couple dozen people with a few sites each going after 200,000 potential customers v.s being 1 of 50,000 webmasters with hundreds of sites each going after customers that are used to mountains of free porn and being catered to foremost.

If i could speak a foreign language well enough i might give it a try. There must be other issues as well, being that some of the biggest sites are run by foreign webmasters. If they could be as successful in their native language, they would probably do that.

hmmm, guess I'll check out a couple of search terms that goes with my useless language, and mite even try building a site using it....
Haven't even crossed my mind to be honest, but can be worth a shot.
But, when it comes to porn surfers my guess would be they do their searching in english.. And most people over 18 where I'm from know english well enough for english sites not being a problem.
And building english sites, I target a lot more people, but sure - the idea of at least try building a site in my own language is kinda tempting, "Don't shoot it if ya haven't tried it" is kinda my motto lol

the trick will probably be finding an affiliate in that language. Building "whatever language" sites to get the surfers that only speak that language will only work if you have a sponsor (or make a paysite) that is in that language as well. Otherwise, if they would go to an english paysite, they would probably be surfing in english. lol, alot trickier than i originally thought when you spend time to think about it.

Might end up just building traffic, be it non buying foreign traffic..

don't think there's a lot of paysites in my language, and even if there are any (have yet to see one) I'd have to use english sites as well.
But, who knows, as a teaser to get them to the tour - in their native tounge, it might work... And when they're looking at the porn, well, sex is worldwide lol.
Every TV show here are in american anyway |loony|

Have you any idea what a goldmine you are sitting on? Even though you have a small audience, if there are not a lot of paysites in your language then it is what marketeers call "Virgin territory". Most businessmen would trample over their own grandmothers for an opportunity like the one you are dismissing !!!!

lol, I'm a newbie in this industry if I ever saw one.
Have lurked around the different awm boards for about half a year, and finally, this week I started doing something.....
Havent even made my first freesite or gallery.....
Yeah, there can be a lot of goldmines out there, but with my experiense, I think I'll stick to start learning by doing first ;)
I will build my evil adult empire one step at the time, starting with the first ones...

I've been asking this question for 3 years :D

lol Greenie.
Have seen your replies to some of the posts in the Link-O-Rama thread, and yeah, I actually agree that the grammar and spelling can be horrible..

But for me - a big newbie - the options are limited ...
No link lists are in my language, so could not submit any free sites...
So yeah, guess the english/american LL owners will have to deal with me and my english... Sorry guys |huh lol, but I'm actually planning to have sites listed, and unless every LL start accepting sites written in jibberish, I'll make my freesites in english......

And, as far as I know, there are possible to run a spellcheck....
Not that I'm using those things too often, probably should, but they are there... ;)

Part of being in business is worrying about one's rivals, no matter their language. It would be ignorant not to. But that has nothing to do with the question. (I don't consider anyone who can barely write the language to be my rival.) The issue at hand is why not spend one's efforts promoting pornography in one's mother language? Why aren't MORE non-English speaking webmasters building traffic in their language(s) and developing a wider range of secure payment methods which can be used by those who don't have credit cards?

Years ago I paid a French couple in Quebec to build 100 basic AVS sites for me in French, My wife who is French checked them out and said they were correct in pretty much every French dialect and there are a few of them.
They did OK, the AVS I was dealing with had a French tour which was written in Parisian French which is different in some ways from Quebec French, and not very well written.
The experiment paid for itself over the course of a year, but barely. I promoted a few on French SE's and a couple of French LL's but didn't get much traffic.
I did a couple of Latina sites for the same AVS in English though and promoted on Spanish LL's and SE's and had better results. I think their Spanish tour option made the difference.
I won't mention the AVS's name because they are a bunch of thieving scumbags who buggered off to Panama. Nobody else had multilingual tours so I've never tried it since.

Well... there's approximately 5 million people in the world who speak finnish..and well over a billion who atleast understand english to some extent. That's why *I* do my stuff mostly in english.

Yes, but my point is that there may be 200X as many English speakers as Finnish speakers, but if there are more than 200X as many people pushing English language sites as there are pushing Finnish sites, then there must be more money to be made in Finnish.

If most of the money in this business is in English speaking websites, why does it surprise anyone that people that at least partially understand English try to get a piece of the pie?

If tomorrow, the Chinese Government decided they loved or even allowed porn, you can bet your ass many non Chinese speaking webmasters would attempt to get in on that action.

I read your posts yesterday & it clicked in that if you didn't tell me that English was not your native language, I wouldn't have known. So I don;t think you have too much to be worried about :)

I can understand why someone might think that - and why in some cases it might be true - but I know on my side of things, that has nothing to do with it. Hell, I'm very good friends with 20 or so people that run Link Lists that I am in direct competition with. I also trade links with most of these people :)

The adult business has never really been about rivals - webmasters trade links with their "rivals", sponsors have links/consoles/ezclicks with "rivals", submitters send their sites/galleries to a list of "rivals", etc.

*****

I've said this a million times, but it does fit in with this thread:

I market my sites towards English speaking surfers, because that is my native language. The message board I run is geared towards English speaking webmasters, because that is my native language.

I do not post on (insert non-English language here) boards because I do not speak that language. I do not market to (insert non-English language here) surfers because I do not speak that language.

I took 3 years of Spanish in High School - this does not qualify me to market to Spanish speaking surfers :D

***

I know that Mateusz is on vacation, but I'd be interested to hear from him as well as Fonz on this subject, because those are 2 webmasters that are here on a daily basis & while their native language is not English, if I wasn't told (or had to listen to a Cheeto covered Fonz in Miami :D) I'd have probably never known it.

In my case five reasons:

(1) Although there are more English speakers in the world, there are also more English speaking webmasters, so in the end there are the same number of possible customers per webmaster. In fact from RedGlow's post there is actually a higher percentage of customers per website, so (if you do not speak English) it should be easier to convert sales from your country than the English speaking world.

(2) Thanks to the chimp you currently have running your country, the US dollar is pretty worthless compared with most other countries' currency. This means that if you live outside the US and get paid in $US, you have to sell twice as many memberships to make your money as you would if you sold them in your own country's currency.

(3) I live in Britain, and I speak English, which is nearly the same language as is spoken in America, so it is easy for me to design sites for American audiences. But for the past few years I have been mostly concentrating on British sites, and only pushing my American sponsors when I have some spare time because (mostly due to the last point) it is a lot easier to make money in UK£ and Euros than it is in US$ sites.

(4) American law is changing fast, and although I know most of you like to try and ignore this or pretend it is not happening, in a few years it is going to be close to impossible to legally make money from Internet porn in USA. If you are American you have no choice but to deal with the problem, but if you are not American you can (and should) be building up your business outside the USA for when the shit hits. Otherwise, when it does, you will be starting from scratch again.

(5) George W. has basically been gambolling with your economy. What he is trying to do is working at the moment, and might continue to work for a long time. But it is more likely to end in a God awful financial crash. This will no doubt affect the entire world, but it will start in the USA, and if your money comes mostly from non American people you will have three to twelve months grace to gather what you can when (if) the crash happens. If most of your money comes from US porn sites you will have no time, so unless you already have enough in the bank to see you through a depression you will be screwed.

[quote=ecchi;335668...in a few years it is going to be close to impossible to legally make money from Internet porn in USA.[/QUOTE]

That's absurd.....

Yeah, and a year ago people running gambolling sites thought it was absurd in their area too. Now look how many are filing for bankruptcy.

Actually that is a good example of what I was saying. A lot of European companies jumped on the 'online casino' bandwagon, and hit the American market because it was the biggest. Now most of them have gone from multi million dollar profits to bankrupt almost over night, and those that have survived are those that concentrated mostly on their own country.

And an even more frightening point for European webmasters: Some of the Europeans who ran casino sites aimed at American customers are fighting extradition proceedings, and will probably end up spending time in American jails. Take Licker4U's post as a warning. As far as I am aware his opinion is the rule, not the exception, most American webmasters are proudly refusing to believe the signs. In America they still respect their politicians (even when they know they are incompetent crooked assholes), they will not put up a fight until it is too late.

I was actually told at a legal seminar that our industry had 1, maybe 2 years left before the Gov't stepped in & shut us down....that was in 2001 :D

I'm starting to become a thread spammer here lol
I did have french at school, for 3 years, but that's a long time ago.... Wouldn't even think of marketing anything in french, simply because my spelling and grammar would make everyone close my site.
If you don't know a language, it's silly trying to compete with the ones who do.
But, to go from there to say that everyone should be marketing in their own language..... that's a big step. As long as I can look at what I've made and tell myself it looks good, the spelling included, that's all I aim for.

Phew, guess I'll try submitting freesites to Link-O-Rama then, with the language issue out of the way, it just comes down to my missing ability to build those sites |jester|

I have actually spent four hours now, checking keywords for my sites..
And I tried to find good sex-related keywords in my own language.....
Think the average search was 200 in January, with 10000 matches on google... For the phrase "free sex pic"/"free sex picture" there were 0 people searching for it, and 69000 matches.....
Nawww, think I'll drop that for now lol, it's easier for me to adapt to english than it would be to change the way people here actually use the net.
So, for me, the problem would be too low demand for what I'm offering.

But, found plenty of great keywords to use in english, with only 20-80 K hits on google (yeah, people do actually search for those words and phrases, many of them did have twice as many searches in January as there are matches on google for them)
As long as I try do things the smart way, and not go for the overused words, I guess my SE traffic will be better with my pages written in english than in my native tounge.

Gotta jump out of this thread now.

Christ Greenie, I was asked back in 98 when I thought it would be over. I answered the question the same way Marilyn Monroe answered when she was asked what she thought about sex. She thought for a minute and said, "I think it's here to stay". As long as people are interested in sex, making money from it is here to stay.

I agree with Licker4U in one point. To compare online pornography to gambling is absurd and you are comparing apples and oranges. Gambling is not protected by the the 1st amendment. Online Pornography is protected and has been proven to be protected many times.

Hell, look toward your own government as far as trying to stop porn. Wasn't there a Lord that was called Lord Porn because of the way he tried to stomp out porn in the UK? And wasn't he laughed at by his counterparts and dismised as a joke?

Go to any country in the world, walk up to someone over the age of 18 and say one of the following phrases.

fuck, blow job, ass to mouth, tits, pussy, hardcore, lady boy, porn, sex, ...

English is the language of porn just like the rest of the world uses English words to describe technology.

While I'm sure that some people are looking for porn on the Internet using Spanish, French, German and Portuguese, the bulk of those native speakers with credit cards are probably using English words to find it.

Exactly and thank you for getting back on topic. Nobody can blame anyone for attempting to go where the money is.

He was laughed at, but he got a lot of companies closed down, a lot of stuff banned, and a lot of people sent to jail.

Until a few years ago we had very strict laws over here. Up to about ten years ago it was still a serious offence to even put a link to a porn site, let alone run one. Even if you ran a non-profit making blog like site where you just talked about your boring life, pets, favourite bar, etc. and one day mentioned a porn site you had seen (and been disgusted by) on the net, you could go to jail if you put a link to it on your site.

And it is only about two years ago that it ceased to be an inprisonable offence to display a photo of an erect penis.

That is why I am so certain America is heading for 'porn prohibition', because the way the American press and politicians are talking is the way our press and politicians were talking in the early 1980s, before we got our seriously draconian anti porn laws.

When I started in online porn I spent a lot of money setting up a fake Japanese identity for myself, so the 'Japanese me' could take the blame. If you don't do something now, you will soon have to do a similar thing. If you sit there saying "We got freedom of speech/it won't happen here" then it will happen. As someone once said "democracy is not a privilege, it is a duty", you want to still be in this business for the foreseeable future, you have got to start fighting to keep that right to free speech now.

But I am getting way off my original point, which was not what Americans should do (its your country, none of my business how you run it, I don't live there). Originally I was saying why I thought it was a mistake for European webmasters to invest more time and effort in American based sites than in sites aimed at their countrymen (my answer to a question posted by Jim), and asking why they did it (sort of repeating the thread's aim).

But can you blame reviewers for getting upset when they see sites with text like this?



This is actual ad text taken from the main page of a free site that was submitted to LOR over the weekend.

That one made my day.......
Don't use Babel Fish Translation |banghead|

Damn it, I just deleted my last post because Redglow said the same thing as me, but got in while I was posting. And when your script brought me back to the thread it dumped me on the first page. For a moment I thought I had deleted the last half dozen posts in the thread !|hotjump|

I can see the frustration but you can't just use a big brush to paint all non-english speaking webmasters. I wish I could remember the name of ultracash's best webmaster...I should. But, he was from a non-english speaking country. He alone sent more good signups each day than the next top 3 combined.

All I am saying is that by excluding all webmasters because their english "ain't as good as ares are" is leaving a ton of money on the table.

Tell me seriously. Do you really think people click on your free site links to read the text?

*chuckles*
Bet your heart skipped a couple of beats there.

oke ofcourse i am non english speaking (and still cant write it properly after almost 6 years) the reason why i do not focus much on my own country has alot of reasons:
1: i believe english is the nr1 language of the world so you will reach a much bigger crowd then only the dutch people (holland 16 million of people living there of which i think at least 4 or 5 million are people from other countries who dont speak our language)
2: Holland isnt a country of creditcards, if you ask in my town who has a creditcard you can cound them on one hand. Most of the porn here always went thru thru phone thing.
3:Most of the Dutch sponsors i dont trust :D
4: dutch porn text.........very rude and still alowed by the dutch sponsors, i think porn oke, but it doesnt have to be insulting for the persons who are with their pictures on the site.

Now phonesex will do very well in holland, specially the 06 numbers and i have phonesexsites, i started this bizz in english only because one nutty aussi guy gave me an offer to learn me the bizz ( he still regret he took the time for me because i drove him nuts and i still do:D)
But if you check the dutch sponsors now then you will see that they all focus on the other countries, they will try to hit the biggest part of the world with their english.
I would prefere that more sponsors can offer the same sites in different languages like sexmoney did and there you will see the same issue english speaking people have with foreign people but then the otherway around, because if you look at the text of those sites in dutch, spanish and frenche etc etc, you will find alot of speling mistakes and even text lines which make you think Huhhh???
On this moment i cant even write properly dutch because i write english dutch but still i manage to explain people what i mean..........oke sometimes then:D

Actually the US $ has been trending weaker against most other currencies for the past 20/30 years and has nothing to do with GW.

The bottom line is this: the reason that non-english speaking webmasters target english speakers is the fact that most english speakers have higher disposable incomes and present alarger more viable market.

If China or India suddenly became receptive to porn wm - I doubt whether there would be a rush of wm trying to get into China or India - these people just don't have disposable incomes at this point in time

I was not trading outside Britain 20/30 years ago, so I cannot agree/disagree for certain but, yes I think it was stronger back then. However it took another nose dive a few years ago and has been incredibly low since then. This did happen on George W.'s watch and it is his fault. He not only admits it, he claims (probably honestly) that he did it deliberately. His theory is that if the US$ is this far down the toilet, Americans will not be able to buy foreign goods, thus improving the balance of payment. The problem is that if Americans buy foreign goods anyway (eg oil) then it has the reverse effect, and recession happens. That is why it is a gambol.

I agree. I have no facts to back it up but I would think english speaking people tend to have a higher disposable income. What's the price of petrol (gasoline) in the UK? Here it's around $2.30/U.S gallon, give or take a little. I hear in Italy it's around $6.00/gallon. What's the average income in non-english speaking countries. When you have lower average income, higher costs for goods and services, there isn't much left for porn. |cry|

Edit: I guess Mr. Spock and I just answered my original question in this thread :D |jackinthe

btw i did forgot to tell that i can make a ton here in holland with the forbidden niches , well the niches which are forbidden in most countries...so even when or if i would use that:D i would still use the english language and believe me they wont read the text because if you want something as a buyer and you cant get it in your own country you will get it elsewhere, its all about the niche you promoot on your site, the banners and content. At sexmoney i promoted the gyno niche...free sites where in english (ofcourse my bad english),the paysite link would show up in the language of your country it didnt matter if they where in english, germany or dutch, even i tried to hit the usa, most of my buyers where people from france and germany, so i keep saying the sites have to be in english language its a world language and maybe just because not all peope speak english they will understand the bad english more then the good one:D heay when i go for an holiday to Mallorca i wont speak spanish either, i will speak my evil dutch english...the only thing i know in spanish is: una servesa ...or something like that:D

na i dont believe the income has something to do with it, i do believe the way how they can pay for porn has to do something with it. to my knowledge the usa is the country where all can have several creditcards, here in holland it doesnt work that way, yes you can get a credit card but isnt easy, so several creditcards..you can forget that part only if you are a millionair you get that deal, this is done to prevent to get people in money trouble. And paying prn by check.....we dont use checks in holland:)

lol stuveltje, thats the one thing I can say in spanish too, well, that and asking for the bill.
Some of the richest countries, and with the people having most money, in the world are non english ones...
Talking of petrol, try 7.2 US $ a gallon...... and yeah, we have much higher income than US, so there's money for porn.
Even if everyone here got "at least one creditcard", it doesn't help as long as the people talk english when searching for porn..... They have to .....
As a customer, they want variety, and they wouldn't have that if they were looking for "lokal porn" We just don't produce what they want...
Guess that english is the main language for porn, so anyone looking for it would search in "pornish" aka english ;)
That's the way they get to find something they want to pay for, and after all, it's all about the money...

If you were a customer, and you were talking a language that you shared with 4.5 million other people.... That's not more than a big US city.... Would you trust in those 4.5 million others to produce the exact porn you were looking for? (EDIT :: make that 2.25 million, lots are under 18, or just too old and so on)
Or would you have to add american porn as well to be happy with the "total package"?

Another thing to think about is this: I live in a country where noone will get out of bed in the morning for less than 20US$/hr, most people with some form for education makes a lot more...
What do you think the cost of making a lot of content here would be, with people born here, speaking the language fluently, used to be paid a lot for anything they do...
The customers would have to pay more for their porn (it is supposed to pay off for the actors, the contentproviders and the sponsors AND the affilates, and basing all that on the total of 200 000 customers would be risky business...)
Don't think a lot of people here would pay at least three times as much for the same product just to have it in their own language... At least when thinking of the fact that most of them understand english very well. (And... it's not the talking that's most important for them either)

So the problem isn't only the places where people have less money for porn, and no creditcards.... Everything has two sides, most things have more.....