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.