What does it take to be lucrative in the freesite game nowadays?

[anteyes]

I've just been kinda pondering this lately and I'm curious what everyone has to say about it.

Let's say someone was to start from scratch today and create freesites for a living.

How many freesites do you think they would need to create and submit to start making a decent living? Or are freesites just not enough?

How long do you think it'd take them to start making decent money if they submitted 1 freesite a day, everyday? 1 month, 2 month, 1 year? And what would you consider decent money (being modest)?

Also, would you do movie or picture freesites?

[anteyes]

btw: let's justsay the cost of bandwidth is not factored in and the person is also already skilled at making/submitting freesites and adult marketing.

basically...if you lost all of your websites today and had to start creating and submitting tomorrow.

[Bill]

To be honest, I have my doubts that it is possible these days. Very difficult unless you have enough of a cash reserve to start out with to allow you to spend a year at least pouring your profits back into your business.

A lot would depend on what your budget needs would be. Those living in areas with a low living cost would have the best chance of success.

[anteyes]

Originally Posted by Bill

To be honest, I have my doubts that it is possible these days. Very difficult unless you have enough of a cash reserve to start out with to allow you to spend a year at least pouring your profits back into your business.

A lot would depend on what your budget needs would be. Those living in areas with a low living cost would have the best chance of success.

What avenue of adult would you take if you had to start from scratch?

[Useless]

Originally Posted by anteyes

What avenue of adult would you take if you had to start from scratch?

Stunt cock

[anteyes]

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

Stunt cock

Hey Useless Warrior, could you see just submitting freesites as profitable enough after you have about 90 freesites out there (submitting 1 a day for three months)?

[Useless]

Originally Posted by anteyes

Hey Useless Warrior, could you see just submitting freesites as profitable enough after you have about 90 freesites out there (submitting 1 a day for three months)?

I'm not really the one to ask about making money in this industry. You know how they call James Brown the hardest working man in show business? Well, they call me the laziest man in porn.

Would 90 free sites be profitable? Sure. Enough to live on? Not anywhere near it. I can tell you that months after I stopped submitting free sites, I make more off them now than I did while building them. I hardly ever see immediate sales from the burst of traffic given to a newly listed site. My sales almost always trickle in later after a long time of being listed. So, I couldn't tell you if the buyers are coming through link lists for if I've been lucky with the search engines. My earnings work like this: Some weeks my wife is happy with what I make. Other weeks she comes home from work and asks me if I have thought about getting a job.

In my mind, you shouldn't do just one thing. You need to burn your fingers in whatever fires you find. While you build free sites you need be building and tweaking hubs and search engine pages. I've begun to think that it's the shit we do in the background (SE content pages and the such) that will make the money, not those templated sites we build to get listed. They are still a very crucial part of your empire, but very few people make a living with them. Build sites. Link them to your hubs. Link your hubs to content pages within them. Link your hubs to other hubs and other content pages on other domains. Link your content pages to your free sites if they are of the same niche and use the same keywords. On and on and on.

[Bill]

A lot would depend on how much capital you have to get started.

And on what your skill set really was.

The quickest way to actually make a living income is probably still posting gallerys - BUT - this is also one of the quickest ways to lose all your money if you aren't skilled enough.

This involves having enough money to buy a bunch of posting accounts, buy a bunch of content, etc. Presumably one already has the computer, graphic programs, and so on.

The safest way is to try to bootstrap your way into business - but you have to be willing to live on $600 a month for a year.

If you can ally yourself with a sucessful operating webmaster, and get some paying work in the adult webmaster services industry - doing reviews or otherwise working for someone else doing grunt labor - well, that would be a huge help.

I would say picking the right niches and sponsors to promote would be one of the critical success factors.

I could say a lot more, but it's a complicated subject, and so much depends on factors like how much money you have, how much you need, and how desperate you are...

[anteyes]

Does anyone here make a living solely doing freesites?

Useless Warrior...I totally agree, I still make so many sales from freesites over a year old...and tons of sale from hubs as well.

[Magnoody]

So much info from UW and Bill

- How much you are willing to start with.
- Select the right niche.
- Find a good reputable sponsor (and try new ones every here and there)
- Trying new things
- Analyzing, analyzing and analyzing <<<< THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT Factor in my opinion.where u are getting the most traffic.which traffic converts best.which paid spots returns the best roy. etc etc etc

[BlackCrayon]

im sure those who have been submitting since day and actually kept doing it are making a living off it. just imagine if you've submitted for the past 7 years daily, that would be over 2500 sites.

i hope to be making a couple grand a month after a few months doing this but maybe that is too optimistic. i remember submitting a few free sites to greenguy back in 98 but things were different then. i was making 7-10k a month off just 2 big free sites that i kept working on, instead of making new ones daily.

i guess i'll see how it goes. its somewhat discouraging tho. freesites, galleries, mpgs: these are all things people say you can't make a living off of anymore. seo is lucrative but i've never been able to figure out google and when i did, it never lasted long until things changed again. what other areas of adult are there for long term income?

makes me wonder how many people really make money in this biz, or just talk like they do.

[ponygirl]

ok...I've been doing freesites for a year now, but only full time for about the last 5-6 months and not one a day, either. Right now, I make enough most weeks to pay for itself & my groceries (I have 2 boys, if that gives you any idea what my groceies cost lol). If this was the only source of family income, we'd be dumpster hopping

BUT...I see the potential. If I have just over 100 fs out there right now & I'm making $xxx, then double that, then triple it, you get the idea. I have my LL that I'm constantly tweaking, and as soon as I have some time I'll be buying more domains & doing more of the same. I sub galleries once in a while to a couple of high traffic places & get some quick sales off those, but as UW said, a lot of my fs sales are from older sites.

It is possible to make a living, for me, anyway. It takes a hell of a lot of time, patience, and learning, but it is possible imo.

Ponygirl

[anteyes]

Originally Posted by ponygirl

ok...I've been doing freesites for a year now, but only full time for about the last 5-6 months and not one a day, either. Right now, I make enough most weeks to pay for itself & my groceries (I have 2 boys, if that gives you any idea what my groceies cost lol). If this was the only source of family income, we'd be dumpster hopping

BUT...I see the potential. If I have just over 100 fs out there right now & I'm making $xxx, then double that, then triple it, you get the idea. I have my LL that I'm constantly tweaking, and as soon as I have some time I'll be buying more domains & doing more of the same. I sub galleries once in a while to a couple of high traffic places & get some quick sales off those, but as UW said, a lot of my fs sales are from older sites.

It is possible to make a living, for me, anyway. It takes a hell of a lot of time, patience, and learning, but it is possible imo.

Ponygirl

Do you do anything other than freesites? How often do you actually submit?

[ponygirl]

I mainly do freesites, that is where I'm getting the sales. I get the odd gallery listed too, but the freesites are what I focus on. I also have my hub turned LL - this mainly sucks time & doesn't return anything yet but it's got good pr & it's for the long term, while the freesites are mainly to get some fast cash.

Up till March I was working ft outside the house, so 2 freesites/week was good for me. Now I try to do 5/wk, but mostly end up with 4.

As you get better & faster at it, you will start to see more traffic, then more sales. I'm sure what I'm doing and making is piddly shit to a lot of people in this biz - in fact, I know it is but I'm not necessarily looking for the big bucks, just to make a living, like I would anywhere else. If that's what you're aiming for then I think it's possible, even probable, unless you give up too soon, or just totally suck

Main thing I have learned is that you have to have LOTS of patience - just like any other business, the first year is going to be the worst, you'll lose money & think of bailing every day, but get over the hump & it gets better.

well, that's my story & I'm stickin to it

EDIT - oh ya, and TIME - your family will hate you & complain they never see you, you will not sleep, your eyes will go buggy and your hands will cramp - just be prepared

[Linkster]

I can tell you that there are two pitfalls a large percentage of people fall into when starting with freesites - they try to use sponsor content and they go with the cheapest lowest bandwidth host they can.
While these sound like good ideas they have caused more problems for free site makers in the last two years than any others.
First - the content(free hosted stuff that is) - while its free and readily available - it (in most of the larger programs out there) has been used so many times that its just not going to get approved at LLs - or at least the LLs that will send sales - they want quality content for their surfers and you should want quality surfers - so I would recommend spending the 5 or 6 bucks it costs these days for a set of content per site and it will pay for itself in the long run

Second - the host - every day I look at 404s and "exceeded bandwidth" pages when Im checking my links - and all because the submitter wanted to shave 5 bucks off the cost of the hosting a month - it is in your best interests to always check around (pretty easy to do here with the amount of posts on the subject in the past) and pick someone thats not going to go out on you in 2 months.

Last - do I think its possible to make a living from free sites alone - not a chance - but then my idea of a living is probably different than yours - if you want to be making $1000 a week in a year - yeah thats very possible with free sites as long as you learn traffic routing and filtering, listen and read everything you can on this board, and do some of the tricks already posted here where you set up hubs of your free sites and work towards your own network of sites that "captures" surfers and builds their traffic.

[MrYum]

What a great thread!

Nice contributions everyone

Got into free sites a couple years ago...as the previous model had stopped working entirely. Won't even go into the sordid details of that

As others have stated...frequently, free site sales come much later down the road. That said, if you can find something fresh that's not overexposed yet...new sites can generate nice sales too. Just ran across one of those site recently...nice to see those quick sales and low ratios again!

Again as others mentioned, it really depends on what you need to live. Unfortunately, because of how and where I choose to live...this biz doesn't pay my bills. Fortunately, I've made some other decisions that have kept things alive.

And I'm constantly adapting what I do to streamline processes...find new traffic streams....grow the business. Not really any 'easy' roads in the biz these days, but at least it's a fun journey...and it's not boring!

There's always something new to learn...something new to try...that's actually one of my favorite parts of the biz

[Surfn]

I agree with Linkster. Dedication and perseverance and you should be earning $1000.00 per week in a year.

Like any business the more you put into it the more you get out.

[ponygirl]

where I live, $1000/wk is a decent living indeed
that's pretty inspiring coming from a couple of very respected & experienced folks here

guess I'll get back to work

[Bill]

C'mon, guys, it's not nice to taunt people.

I'd agree it's just barely possible a skilled businessperson could start with nothing and be making a kay a week in one year. But even that person, if they couldn't call on contacts for help, would be hard pressed.

For most people, that's just not possible anymore.

It was possible from the early days to about 2002. Now - not so much.

And by just _submitting_ freesites? I just don't see it. Where are all these people, if it's so easy?

I don't think anybody could do it from freesites alone, not from scratch, today.

[Linkster]

Bill - with perseverence and using good content, researching niches that convert as opposed to just doing general teen submits, I truly believe - and have seen proof of - that someone who worked their ass off for one year should be able to make that at least.
Granted it takes getting into posting on boards like this to do the networking thingie and getting some free help along the way (which also happens with the networking aspect) and researching the heck out of a niche - Ive seen it happen in the last year for some people - so its a reality in my mind

Your question about where these people are - they are few and far between - cause most people starting out just dont have the dedication to stick to it

[2msacras]

I've been doing free sites off and on for the past few years - semi steady since April of this year - but most of my sales come from other methods but I think freesites are always there with steady sales.

[ponygirl]

Originally Posted by Linkster

Your question about where these people are - they are few and far between - cause most people starting out just dont have the dedication to stick to it

I think that's a very big part of it - people seem to think porn is easy money and it's quite discouraging when you have a terrible week or even longer. I didn't say I thought it was easy, I don't think I will be making 1k/wk anytime soon

What I do believe is that if you are persistent, determined and don't give up, you can make a living from any business that you put your mind and skills to, in this biz or any other.

At least that's what they taught us in business school

[Surfn]

Originally Posted by ponygirl

I think that's a very big part of it - people seem to think porn is easy money and it's quite discouraging when you have a terrible week or even longer. I didn't say I thought it was easy, I don't think I will be making 1k/wk anytime soon

What I do believe is that if you are persistent, determined and don't give up, you can make a living from any business that you put your mind and skills to, in this biz or any other.

At least that's what they taught us in business school

If it was easy girls would be doing it

[ponygirl]

Originally Posted by Surfn

If it was easy girls would be doing it

oooooh....someone's feeling brave tonite

[Surfn]

Originally Posted by ponygirl

oooooh....someone's feeling brave tonite

On a serious note, if you treat it like business, work at it everyday, learn to network, learn from your mistakes, ask questions. You will be there.

The only limits are the ones we place on ourselves. There is a ton of money to be made. Granted it isn't as easy as it once was, but then neither is life.