What I've Learned After 2 Days

JustAnotherDude · 2004-02-08, 02:41 AM

I hope this'll be semi-useful for people, especially those in the "Thinking of Starting Out Phase."

1. It's not as easy as you think it will be. I know everywhere says that. But it's true. Read, read, read. And you still won't know a thing til you start doing stuff.

2. Enlightenment may come all at once. I was reading up on AVS sites. And all at once, it clicked. AVS stood for Adult Verification Service. OOOOOOOOOOH!

3. Think simple. I've completely changed my site's design and layout three times in the past two days (for comparison's sake, I've run a few non-adult sites and changed layouts once a year, if that) and am working on the fourth. The first time, it was a nice layout with light-up buttons and that kinda stuff. I was really impressed with myself. And it was an absolute pain in the ass to work with and update and my layout took up a lot of my screen. My new one will be about two graphics. Maybe 3. My best work'll never be seen, but I will hopefully make more money this way. And I'm still embarassed to put the link in my profile, cause it's so newbie and need so much work.

4. Don't be ashamed if you get a thrill when you make your first money. I called people up to say "Woohoo! I made a cent!" I'll listen, if no one else will.

5. Sleep. Sleep is when you are a viking. |viking| It also clears up your brain so you don't make horribly embarassing typos or do things like make the ad link to the picture of the ad on your server. Instead of, say, the site you're pimping. Oops.

6. Remember that this is a business and you have partners and responsibilities and it's a lot of work. A LOT of work. Not something to do on a lark. I've spent most of my time mucking around in HTML and reading sponsorship agreements and even when I AM looking at the naked ladies, it's with a critical eye, like "Hmmm, she has a nice rack, but will she work on the big boobs subdomain? Or should I put her over in that blondes gallery I want to make money on?"

7. At the same time, it's the best business I've been in. People can't get enough of it, want more of it, and will actively seek it out. You can call looking at porn sites "research" and get away with it. Where most advertising has to be "You want this in your life," this is more of a "Come check out all this cool stuff, then go check out THAT cool stuff! WOW! Is that her TONGUE?!" approach.

8. The banana guy dances to just about any song you have playing. Watching him dance to Hey Ya! by Outkast is mesmerizing.

Surfn · 2004-02-08, 03:30 AM

You sound like one of the few newbies who "get it"

And I agree

loves to dance to anything.

JustAnotherDude · 2004-02-08, 04:16 AM

Ah, thank you Surfn.

One more thing, and this is kinda what I was hitting at earlier, this job is a TIMESINK OF EPIC PROPORTIONS.

I sat down 3 hours ago, thinking "Alright, I'll start touching up my index page for about an hour." And then I looked up and boom, it was 4:15.

Because there's always more to do. More pages to make, more sponsors to sign with (and then you have to check their free content and find their free galleries and check them out and decide what you want to link, then link them, then you see they have a really cool site that fits perfectly with your particular niche, so you may as well add that one...you see?), and the tuning and submitting and so on that go along with running any successful website.

Surfn · 2004-02-08, 04:39 AM

I can't tell you how many times I've sat down to do a couple hours work and checked the time and it was 12 - 24 - 36 hours later. When I get in the zone the only thing that brings me back is starvation. lol

MrMaryLou · 2004-02-08, 09:53 AM

Welcome to the wonderful world of webmastering

TrafficFreak · 2004-02-08, 11:19 PM

Ya while webmastering and working for yourself can be a lot of fun you must remember that it is also a lot of work ... This is your business and you only get out of it what you put into it!!!

HarryM · 2004-02-09, 09:27 AM

hi JustAnotherDude and my fellow newbieS
I'm a newbie as well, let me tell some things i have learned in my 2-3 months of webmastering that have worked well for me

submit sites when you have something worth submitting, not just for the sake of submitting something

you have to spend money to make money in any business and this one is no exception, buy your own hosting and content, if your sites are ok you should make that money straight back and with the money you make from your sites, invest it back into your business again until it can stand alone without needing outside funds

dont buy traffic until you know how to convert the various traffic sources... i wasted some money there...

but not very much

If you make free sites, learn html, learn to make whole sites in notepad, you can make an unlimited amount of completely different templates using just tables, learn html

don't sign up with too many sponsors, 10 or so seems ok, thats about 400 sites at least to promote? It just gets confusing, I got booted out of a program for not sending any hits i think, just signing up for the sake of it is a waste of time, forget about doing that and use the ones you have, keep it simple at first

tgp galleries suck for newbies, just fucking suck|skull|

merry xmas

Surfn · 2004-02-09, 09:59 AM

Good post HarryMuff

That's at least two who will make some money.

Any newbie lurkers willing to give their insight?

Mental Ernie AKA Hotlinker · 2004-02-09, 10:34 AM

Helpful post HarryMuff, but could you enlighten me on these things please:

Quote:

Originally posted by HarryMuff
dont buy traffic until you know how to convert the various traffic sources... i wasted some money there... but not very much

tgp galleries suck for newbies, just fucking suck|skull|

How will you learn to convert your traffic without buying some to test than? It's not easy to get regular non-payed traffic to just another pornsite on the net. Or so I feel.

and why do tgp galleries suck for newbies?

also, what you said about only sponsoring a limited amount of sponsors, I've always been told that it's in your best interest to advertise a great variety of sponsors, to give surfers lotsa variety.

JustAnotherDude · 2004-02-09, 11:33 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by HarryMuff
don't sign up with too many sponsors, 10 or so seems ok, thats about 400 sites at least to promote?

I think it's gonna depend on the niche you're doing. Some of the sponsors I've signed up with only have one or two for my particular niche...but I really like their sites/free content/hosted galleries/whatever.

It is a learning process, though. I keep finding myself planning to do something new each day (I already know what changes I'm going to make to my site today).

MatrixFan · 2004-02-09, 12:55 PM

Never let yourself get overwhelmed. I first started out and was a little overwhelmed at all the different aspects of this business. I found myself trying to do too many different things at once and getting frustrated. Just my $.02

Another thing, never spend too much time reading message boards. Sometimes I find myself day dreaming of the nice sunny weather Cleo just posted about when I should be working.

TrafficFreak · 2004-02-09, 07:07 PM

I agree with you MatrixFan ... There are so many things that you can find to distract yourself with in this business so you have to remember what you really are here for or you'll get swallowed up in nonsense really fast LOL

Fonz · 2004-02-10, 05:54 AM

Like HarryMuff said, Don't be afraid to spend some money at first. If you handle your business well you will get it back, no worries

Just Thought of something: "You have to invest before you can harvest" |afro|

Surfn · 2004-02-10, 08:19 AM

Come to "On the Bench with MML" Saturday and learn how to make your life a bit easier.

dimsod · 2004-02-11, 09:25 PM

I'm in the same situation as Just another Dude. Been changing my website design over the past week trying to find something I like. Getting it done and then finding out after a few hours sleep that there was something wrong. Regarding buying content. I found a lot of sponsors offering free content so i won't be buying anything at the moment. It's a learning process and one thing I learnt almost immediately was that there is a lot of competition. Regarding investing. Well I invested $790 in hosting and someone called "Venus" who was going to build me a website. That was at the end of November. Now she has pulled the plug on her website and is not uanswering e-mails. The hosting service is still working though. So investing money can be dangerous, even for someone who has been working with free hosting for a couple of years.

Incidentally one of the big advantages of investing in hosting is that they I can use scripts and programmes to build my website. For years I was a cut-and-paste man. Wish I had done it earlier. Remember the $ is cheap!

So I have a site that I am 90% happy with and not I am working on attracting traffic. I bought Chameleon and wnder how I can get surfers to find my site. What do you think of this:
I've seen some putting a copyright line on the bottom of the TGP submission linking back to the website...good idea? or not??

And what is it with link lists?

As you guys mentioned above, there is a lot to learn, its time consuming, and yet enjoyable. I got a great sense of achievement when i finally worked out the scripts produced a website.

Surfn · 2004-02-11, 09:49 PM

Come to "On the Bench with MML" Saturday and get all your questions answered.

dimsod · 2004-02-11, 10:03 PM

I expect its written down somewhere on this board but where are the details of
"On the Bench with MML"

(Its 4 am in Europe and my brain is tired)
Thanks for the help

Surfn · 2004-02-11, 10:16 PM

All the info is right here

T Pat · 2004-02-13, 09:10 PM

Great thread after my week from hell
What I've learned in the last six months the hard way is to back up. I bought a expired domain name after getting a heads up from my hosting provider (He warned me that he was leaving the site on the same server and I needed to change the password) I didn't the old owner went in and deleated everything ( there went one of my hubs and a couple free sites). Last month I got a virus that screwed my system up so bad the tech had to reformat my hard drive and that computer is still not recognising my USB ports, ( I need a USB port for my internet connection) so it needs to go back in the shop.
Last Saturday I woke up bright and early to a hard drive failure on my back up computer. Goodbye 15 free site templetes and all the work I had put into rebuilding my hub, Photo shots I had taken of a couple girls and not added to my site yet, passwords, programs etc. So I missed on the bench becouse I was out buying a new computer Jims newsletter tip on saturday was on backing up (timely). Tuesday My father in law showed up there went the Green Guy and Jim show. I live on a boat and he decided the forward stateroom was to confineing and he would prefer to sleep on the couch. I have gotten into a routine of starting work around 4 in the morning (can't do that with someone sleeping in the same room). Then wednesday night the wife and I took her dad to Tijuana to show him that the red zone is safe and to get more photos, A couple of the girls in my favorite cat house were royaly pissed at me. One of my members printed out all the pictures of the girls off my website and was passing them around in the cat house (turns out they don't mind guys seeing them naked but not the girls they work with (now I have to find a script to keep people from printing photos off the site).
Father in law leaves tomorrow so I can get back to my routine.
Oh and I'm a back up freek now.

JustAnotherDude · 2004-02-13, 09:58 PM

I've had the hard drive crash from hell, too. One of the few things that have EVER sent me into a panic.

Which reminds me, I need to backup things tonight.

Alphawolf · 2004-02-13, 10:20 PM

Regarding the HD failures you may want to check out:

http://www.softpedia.com/public/cat/13/8/13-8-52.shtml

http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

http://www.benchmarkhq.ru/english.html?/be_hdd2.html

http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads8.html

2004-02-08, 02:41 AM	#1
JustAnotherDude Are you sure you're an accredited and honored pornographer? Join Date: Feb 2004 Posts: 68	What I've Learned After 2 Days I hope this'll be semi-useful for people, especially those in the "Thinking of Starting Out Phase." 1. It's not as easy as you think it will be. I know everywhere says that. But it's true. Read, read, read. And you still won't know a thing til you start doing stuff. 2. Enlightenment may come all at once. I was reading up on AVS sites. And all at once, it clicked. AVS stood for Adult Verification Service. OOOOOOOOOOH! 3. Think simple. I've completely changed my site's design and layout three times in the past two days (for comparison's sake, I've run a few non-adult sites and changed layouts once a year, if that) and am working on the fourth. The first time, it was a nice layout with light-up buttons and that kinda stuff. I was really impressed with myself. And it was an absolute pain in the ass to work with and update and my layout took up a lot of my screen. My new one will be about two graphics. Maybe 3. My best work'll never be seen, but I will hopefully make more money this way. And I'm still embarassed to put the link in my profile, cause it's so newbie and need so much work. 4. Don't be ashamed if you get a thrill when you make your first money. I called people up to say "Woohoo! I made a cent!" I'll listen, if no one else will. 5. Sleep. Sleep is when you are a viking. \|viking\| It also clears up your brain so you don't make horribly embarassing typos or do things like make the ad link to the picture of the ad on your server. Instead of, say, the site you're pimping. Oops. 6. Remember that this is a business and you have partners and responsibilities and it's a lot of work. A LOT of work. Not something to do on a lark. I've spent most of my time mucking around in HTML and reading sponsorship agreements and even when I AM looking at the naked ladies, it's with a critical eye, like "Hmmm, she has a nice rack, but will she work on the big boobs subdomain? Or should I put her over in that blondes gallery I want to make money on?" 7. At the same time, it's the best business I've been in. People can't get enough of it, want more of it, and will actively seek it out. You can call looking at porn sites "research" and get away with it. Where most advertising has to be "You want this in your life," this is more of a "Come check out all this cool stuff, then go check out THAT cool stuff! WOW! Is that her TONGUE?!" approach. 8. The banana guy dances to just about any song you have playing. Watching him dance to Hey Ya! by Outkast is mesmerizing.

2004-02-08, 09:53 AM	#5
MrMaryLou i fucking told i type to fucking fast wtf Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: New York Posts: 11,247	Welcome to the wonderful world of webmastering __________________ <a href="http://www.greenguysboard.com/onthebench/">Join Me For On The Bench </a>

2004-02-09, 12:55 PM	#11
MatrixFan I've always wondered if there was a god. And now I know there is -- and it's me Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: The Beach Posts: 321	Never let yourself get overwhelmed. I first started out and was a little overwhelmed at all the different aspects of this business. I found myself trying to do too many different things at once and getting frustrated. Just my $.02 Another thing, never spend too much time reading message boards. Sometimes I find myself day dreaming of the nice sunny weather Cleo just posted about when I should be working. __________________ Submit to XXX Super Links - <a href="http://www.xxxsuperlinks.com/links/rules.html">XXX Super Links</a> Submit to XXX Adults - <a href="http://www.xxx-adults.net/rules.html">XXX Adults</a For quality link trades email me at matrixfan at gmail dot com.

2004-02-09, 07:07 PM	#12
TrafficFreak If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: USA Posts: 37	I agree with you MatrixFan ... There are so many things that you can find to distract yourself with in this business so you have to remember what you really are here for or you'll get swallowed up in nonsense really fast LOL __________________ Please Re-Read The Rules For Sig Files

2004-02-10, 05:54 AM	#13
Fonz Former pr0n slinger. Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Antwerp, Belgium Posts: 7,932	Like HarryMuff said, Don't be afraid to spend some money at first. If you handle your business well you will get it back, no worries Just Thought of something: "You have to invest before you can harvest" \|afro\| __________________ See how I abuse little trees on my Shumi no Bonsai Blog

2004-02-08, 03:30 AM	#2
Surfn If you don’t take a chance the Angels won’t dance Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Earth on occasion Posts: 8,812	You sound like one of the few newbies who "get it" And I agree loves to dance to anything.

2004-02-08, 04:16 AM	#3
JustAnotherDude Are you sure you're an accredited and honored pornographer? Join Date: Feb 2004 Posts: 68	Ah, thank you Surfn. One more thing, and this is kinda what I was hitting at earlier, this job is a TIMESINK OF EPIC PROPORTIONS. I sat down 3 hours ago, thinking "Alright, I'll start touching up my index page for about an hour." And then I looked up and boom, it was 4:15. Because there's always more to do. More pages to make, more sponsors to sign with (and then you have to check their free content and find their free galleries and check them out and decide what you want to link, then link them, then you see they have a really cool site that fits perfectly with your particular niche, so you may as well add that one...you see?), and the tuning and submitting and so on that go along with running any successful website.

2004-02-08, 04:39 AM	#4
Surfn If you don’t take a chance the Angels won’t dance Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Earth on occasion Posts: 8,812	I can't tell you how many times I've sat down to do a couple hours work and checked the time and it was 12 - 24 - 36 hours later. When I get in the zone the only thing that brings me back is starvation. lol

2004-02-08, 11:19 PM	#6
TrafficFreak If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: USA Posts: 37	Ya while webmastering and working for yourself can be a lot of fun you must remember that it is also a lot of work ... This is your business and you only get out of it what you put into it!!!

2004-02-09, 09:27 AM	#7
HarryM No offence Apu, but when they were handing out religions you must have been out taking a whizz Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Australia Posts: 285	hi JustAnotherDude and my fellow newbieS I'm a newbie as well, let me tell some things i have learned in my 2-3 months of webmastering that have worked well for me submit sites when you have something worth submitting, not just for the sake of submitting something you have to spend money to make money in any business and this one is no exception, buy your own hosting and content, if your sites are ok you should make that money straight back and with the money you make from your sites, invest it back into your business again until it can stand alone without needing outside funds dont buy traffic until you know how to convert the various traffic sources... i wasted some money there... but not very much If you make free sites, learn html, learn to make whole sites in notepad, you can make an unlimited amount of completely different templates using just tables, learn html don't sign up with too many sponsors, 10 or so seems ok, thats about 400 sites at least to promote? It just gets confusing, I got booted out of a program for not sending any hits i think, just signing up for the sake of it is a waste of time, forget about doing that and use the ones you have, keep it simple at first tgp galleries suck for newbies, just fucking suck\|skull\| merry xmas

2004-02-09, 09:59 AM	#8
Surfn If you don’t take a chance the Angels won’t dance Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Earth on occasion Posts: 8,812	Good post HarryMuff That's at least two who will make some money. Any newbie lurkers willing to give their insight?

2004-02-10, 08:19 AM	#14
Surfn If you don’t take a chance the Angels won’t dance Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Earth on occasion Posts: 8,812	Come to "On the Bench with MML" Saturday and learn how to make your life a bit easier.

2004-02-11, 09:25 PM	#15
dimsod Internet! Is that thing still around? Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Switzerland Posts: 9	I'm in the same situation as Just another Dude. Been changing my website design over the past week trying to find something I like. Getting it done and then finding out after a few hours sleep that there was something wrong. Regarding buying content. I found a lot of sponsors offering free content so i won't be buying anything at the moment. It's a learning process and one thing I learnt almost immediately was that there is a lot of competition. Regarding investing. Well I invested $790 in hosting and someone called "Venus" who was going to build me a website. That was at the end of November. Now she has pulled the plug on her website and is not uanswering e-mails. The hosting service is still working though. So investing money can be dangerous, even for someone who has been working with free hosting for a couple of years. Incidentally one of the big advantages of investing in hosting is that they I can use scripts and programmes to build my website. For years I was a cut-and-paste man. Wish I had done it earlier. Remember the $ is cheap! So I have a site that I am 90% happy with and not I am working on attracting traffic. I bought Chameleon and wnder how I can get surfers to find my site. What do you think of this: I've seen some putting a copyright line on the bottom of the TGP submission linking back to the website...good idea? or not?? And what is it with link lists? As you guys mentioned above, there is a lot to learn, its time consuming, and yet enjoyable. I got a great sense of achievement when i finally worked out the scripts produced a website.

2004-02-11, 09:49 PM	#16
Surfn If you don’t take a chance the Angels won’t dance Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Earth on occasion Posts: 8,812	Come to "On the Bench with MML" Saturday and get all your questions answered.

2004-02-11, 10:03 PM	#17
dimsod Internet! Is that thing still around? Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Switzerland Posts: 9	I expect its written down somewhere on this board but where are the details of "On the Bench with MML" (Its 4 am in Europe and my brain is tired) Thanks for the help

2004-02-11, 10:16 PM	#18
Surfn If you don’t take a chance the Angels won’t dance Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Earth on occasion Posts: 8,812	All the info is right here

2004-02-13, 09:10 PM	#19
T Pat You can now put whatever you want in this space :) Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Paridise Posts: 3,244	Great thread after my week from hell What I've learned in the last six months the hard way is to back up. I bought a expired domain name after getting a heads up from my hosting provider (He warned me that he was leaving the site on the same server and I needed to change the password) I didn't the old owner went in and deleated everything ( there went one of my hubs and a couple free sites). Last month I got a virus that screwed my system up so bad the tech had to reformat my hard drive and that computer is still not recognising my USB ports, ( I need a USB port for my internet connection) so it needs to go back in the shop. Last Saturday I woke up bright and early to a hard drive failure on my back up computer. Goodbye 15 free site templetes and all the work I had put into rebuilding my hub, Photo shots I had taken of a couple girls and not added to my site yet, passwords, programs etc. So I missed on the bench becouse I was out buying a new computer Jims newsletter tip on saturday was on backing up (timely). Tuesday My father in law showed up there went the Green Guy and Jim show. I live on a boat and he decided the forward stateroom was to confineing and he would prefer to sleep on the couch. I have gotten into a routine of starting work around 4 in the morning (can't do that with someone sleeping in the same room). Then wednesday night the wife and I took her dad to Tijuana to show him that the red zone is safe and to get more photos, A couple of the girls in my favorite cat house were royaly pissed at me. One of my members printed out all the pictures of the girls off my website and was passing them around in the cat house (turns out they don't mind guys seeing them naked but not the girls they work with (now I have to find a script to keep people from printing photos off the site). Father in law leaves tomorrow so I can get back to my routine. Oh and I'm a back up freek now. __________________ How To Keep An Asshole In Suspense I'll Tell You Later

2004-02-13, 09:58 PM	#20
JustAnotherDude Are you sure you're an accredited and honored pornographer? Join Date: Feb 2004 Posts: 68	I've had the hard drive crash from hell, too. One of the few things that have EVER sent me into a panic. Which reminds me, I need to backup things tonight.

2004-02-13, 10:20 PM	#21
Alphawolf Don't come to Florida for vacation. We're closed. Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Orlando, Florida Posts: 1,874	Regarding the HD failures you may want to check out: http://www.softpedia.com/public/cat/13/8/13-8-52.shtml http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm http://www.benchmarkhq.ru/english.html?/be_hdd2.html http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads8.html __________________ Regards, AW Weekly Pay. Sites That Convert. Start Pimpin' Today!