Money with Free Sites?
 

You regular free site builders, are you making any money? I mean is it worth it? It seems like I suck at selling or my free sites are that bad that I get about one sale every 5 free sites. I do get listed just about everywhere I submit, I do get the hits, but no sales.

How are you doing with your free sites?

I'm doing pretty well.
:)
One sale every five freesites isn't good. Do you concentrate on juicy text, or lots of banners? How many freesites do you have floating around out there in porn-land?
Maybe it's just the sites/sponsors you are promoting?
I've found that some sponsors just don't seem to do well on freesites, but will convert nicely with TGP traffic.

Once a month I check which sites have been converting best for me and focus more on that sponsor for my future building.
I've found that doing this makes a big difference once you've filtered out sites that, for whatever strange reasons, don't convert or suddenly stop converting.

Free Sites are a long term build. They stay on many link lists for a long time and rotate to the top on some days so they make sales in the long run. And with some SEO you can get some decent SE traffic too.

Tek - the whole Free Site niche of traffic is a new venture me as well, and I questioned how it made any kind of $$ as it seems my traffic is slow coming. From what I have read here and other places, and on the lines of what Ramster said... FS' are a good SE tool and once they all start getting picked up by the SE's the traffic is better and the sales are quicker.
What type of traffic are you getting to the FS's...the thing I find with my Free Sites is not getting the raw numbers you need to convert a sale..if I could find a way to get much needed traffic I'd bottle it and keep it for each site I built.

J-

Tek, for me converting freesites is much harder than it used to be. In 2003-2004 it seemed like I usually got 1 sale per freesite on the initial LL traffic. In 2007, I would say my numbers are more like yours. I might get 1 in 5 off the initial LL traffic to my freesites. But, I also get them for freesites I made and submitted many months ago. The more you have floating around, the better chance you have at making an extra sale.

If you do it right, building and submitting freesites shouldn't really take all that much time leaving you free to work on other avenues like your own LL,hub, or blog.

I'll agree with Lowry - I see sales off of older sites more often now, it seems almost as if they have to 'season' before they make a sale anymore :)

I'll notice when I go on a submitting spurt I do tend to see more $$ a couple weeks down the road (then I get sidetracked and don't sub for a week, which sucks lol) I also switched to mainly revshare not too long ago and am very grateful for that now.

I've been doing a lot of work on my LL, and am starting to see revenue from that too, but it's taken me 3 years to get here, so don't get discouraged. Everyone always says it here, but it's true - just keep building stuff and it'll pay off :)

exactly what lowry said, the week of thanksgiving has always been low for sales for me, and look for dec THIS year to really be bad for converts...

If it wasnt for revshare I couldnt pay my bills anymore, and I am loosing trust in the popular PPS sponsors

I'm doing about 1 sale in 2.5 sites but I submit to a bunch of LL’s - and about half of those re-occurring subscriptions so the rev-shares are starting to build. I get more sales when I hit the clubs with one of my models – and I get to hang a sexy girl on my arm and enjoy a beer or two. At least with free-sites, I don’t have a dozen guys wanting to audition so they can get in the models pants.

My sales seem to come in spurts. I'll get 4 or 5, and then have a long dry spell. I've done a few AVS too, without much luck. I've noticed too that some of my submissions do not get listed till weeks, sometimes months after the initial submission which adds more delay to the whole process.

I have thought about going back and doing some mirrors on my old sites to spread them around a little more, since now I have a better feel for where the best traffic originates. Would this be worthwhile?

Thanks to all for the replays. I understand about the long time benefits and SEO, but I was getting worried, thinking that most people get a bunch of sales with the surge of traffic when first submitting the FS.

I still get some sales of the old sites as well.|bananna| And now I feel a whole lot better since it looks like I am doing about the same as everyone else.

I've done this on a few FS's - if I'm not up to creating a new FS, I may just create a doorway page or two and submit it to another dozen LL's.

I believe my sales with freesites are like yours as well TekAngel.

Its hard to say as more and more sales are coming across without a referring url in a sponsors stats. So I never know if those are coming from FS, galleries, TGP, LL, hubs, etc... Which should let you know that FS is only one part of the equation to survival, at least for me.

Keep building. Really you need to do what Lowry mentioned above. Need to get other projects cooking if you want to make some more money. It really is about getting things out there and indexed.

One thing I know is that now that i'm submitting to a bunch of different niches things are picking up with sales from freesites. I'm working on getting even more categories going after turkey day. From there need to filter the traffic off to hubs that contain links to more sites that fit the niche you are driving traffic from. It's a battle for sure, but really it's all about keep building.

I'm not just saying freesites either. Cause if I had to live off my freesite money I would be without a car and wouldn't be going out on the weekends.

Ditto

Tell me about it. :D

I'm still receiving nice monthly checks from a sponsor I no longer build for, it takes time and a lot of sites out there.

Hey Tek, how long have you been submitting? I'm coming up on six months and about 99% of my sales have been in the last two months. Time does seem to be my friend at this point..hard to fight off discouragement, though...

Certain sponsors will convert during the rush of traffic on a new site, others won't. Finding which will convert quickly is a trial and error effort. Bookmarker traffic, which can be a big part of that initial rush, has seen it all and though they do buy, it takes that special something to convert them to the sale. (Think nasty, exotic, different.) SE traffic is better, assuming the surfer can actually locate the item they searched for buried somewhere within a link list's listings. SE traffic directly to your free sites is ideal, but it's really goddamn difficult to compete with older sites in the SEs.

(I reserve the right to modify and completely disregard these opinions depending on my mood and what the voices tell me.)

To keep this going...Do webmasters in general create more FS's then they submit? I mean do they create 20 a week and only submit the limit which is 1-2 FS's a day depending on the particluar rules of the LL and then add those 5 plus the "extras" to a hub or their own mini link list?

oh man, I wish :D

I just don't have enough time in the day. Sometimes I get on a roll & can crank out one per day for a week or so, but it's so easy to get burned out on freesites too that I have to take a break or things get stale. I wish I had the time & discipline to do that :)

I do have some submitters that do seem to have it down, though. One every day, pretty much no fail. I gotta admire that!

What she said...|potleaf|

I can do that with AVS's but not with free sites, I'm pretty much always sitting on 10-20 AVS sites that haven't been submitted to any LL's. I find it much more time intensive to build a free site, but I'm thinking that's probably just me.

No I have to agree. I find it takes me much too long to make a decent free site. I try to keep it clean as possible, keep the design fresh and not duplicate color/layout, etc too much. MML offered some advise on another thread to make 30 templates so that you're switching out every time you make one. I know I did that with TGP Gallery pages and it works well. Saves time and keeps my site slooking different when I can submit daily. I made 8 templates so that Im never using the same layout on the same day for the most part. Using 8 always offsets the days I use a certain design. Im sure it works much like that with Free Sites/ Avs sites etc.

J-

No shit :D

I've been good the past few weeks and have been submitting 4 sites a week which is about my max. I don't do this every week because of my life offline, my LL, my two hubs...|dizzy| I too believe I could make much more money if I was more consistent. Just seems like something always comes up to throw me off track to often.

Most of my sales come from my free sites though. I have tons of them listed on line in the 3 years I've been doing this. Sales come from old and new sites. The past few months I have been seeing sales from my other projects which is encouraging. |thumb

Time is on your side TekAngel...:D

Thanks to all of you, this is just I needed, maybe it does not sound like encouragement to everybody but it does to me. I guess I will just keep on going like the Energizer Bunny. :)

Tek,

It's 4:35am Thanks Giving morning - you must be the Energizer Bunny.......

And that makes me????????

Freesites make up about a third of what I do in adult (which is about half of what I do online ;)). If you're looking to build a solid revenue stream, you have to have variety, and you also need to give it time.

I try to produce 5-10 new pages a day in my evergrowing porn empire and promote them or other pages too. Freesites get worked into that, but are not the only thing.

I have to say, I have yet to see the amazing SE benefits of Freesites. I have no problem getting SE traffic to sites, in fact, SE's are my forte, so to speak, but freesites only do so-so on SE's, at best, for me.

free sites are a great thing if you keep on doing them.. week after week :)
you can get a great revenue with time.

I'm starting to see the benefits of SE on the hub where the free-sites sit and for the LL's that list the free-sites but not much for the free-sites themselves. My LL is #2 on Google for the search term Colorado amateur porn –

About ¼ of the remaining 1st page results are LL’s that have listed my free-sites.

We're doing very well on sales within Colorado... Most off my free-sites.

Freesites are a very good addition to your daily routine, but shouldn't be the only thing you do if you want to earn good money in this biz.

Benefits of freesites:
Fantastic tool for honing your sales text - with 2 pages at least that are content-less, you need to get the surfers attention, fast, and get his/her 2 most erogenous (sp) zones - brain/naughty bits going.

The two pages at least of advertising before even having them freeload

The (for the most part) eternal listing on LLs, often rotated so very old freesites still hit the top of the category listings

Good targetted SE traffic that LLs bring in

Relevant, authority links to your freesite(s)

SES picking up your freesite(s) and in some cases giving you very good serps

Downsides of freesites:
None really, apart from the slight monotony of building them.

I know this has been asked a lot, but are freesites a better time investment than avs? I've done a few Cyberage sites, and enjoy the change o pace, still freesites tend to be more profitable for me.

Jeeze, you've done 10 or so AVS sites with one AVS company. I'm not surprised that you're not rich off of them.
I know from looking at my wm referral stats that I'm not the only guy making money. But I'm not preaching anymore.

Build and promote 50 AVS's with more than one company, then compare the income. It's at least as hard to learn as the free site trade, and the only way to learn is by building.

A story.
I hated the whole concept of free sites and TGP's, still do, I still think we'd all be richer if surfers had to pay to see jerk-off quality porn, but when I got my mojo going again and started on my comeback trail I figured they must be cool, so I built 50 of them to check it out. My first 10 sucked, but I got better at it, and appreciate the money. I fuck around with galleries for TGP's as well, it's not a perfect world so you've got to work with what's there.

I'm as good as I'll likely ever be with them though, and the bottom line in checks cashed is that AVS's convert better up front and retain members better than paysites do, and with AVS I can still sell paysites.

On the plus side for free sites, they send more traffic to my LL, which exchanges traffic with submitted AVS sites and free sites, and gives me hits to cam babes, sponsor galleries, etc.

On the plus side for AVS is they make me more money, but I'm not preaching anymore.
I'm just going to keep doing what works.

I'll also say that most of my sales comes from freesites, but right now, i'll slowing them down. Trying to do about 2-3 per week ... trying is the key word right there.

Im finishing up on my hub and thats held my attention for the past few weeks right now, sadly put off freesites/avs sites in that time but about to rev it back up to about 5/week.

I do want to do more avs...I wish i would make things happen faster, but with the job (aka "goddam fucking job" as it's known i my house) it's hard to squeeze it all in.

There's still a lot to learn on my part doing avs, but I do want to get there eventually.

Don't quit preachng Sheepdude, you've helped me, and i'm sure others quite a bit..

I think I got it now. You have to start your empire by building Free Sites, AVS, hubs etc. and get as many as you can out there. Keep building and in the long term will all pay off.

The problem I had and I think a lot of the new people just getting started have is that in the beginning, it is all a bit overwhelming. What should you do first, how do you promote the sponsors and which sponsors do you use. Until you get a balance and a system going it seems like a bit of a struggle, not unlike any other business. I for example I feel like I got to be good enough at making free sites and I just kept making them, where the AVS model it still is a bit of a struggle, where SheepGuy has the AVS down and it takes him longer to make a free site. I think a balance between AVS and free sites would be ideal, so therefore I will try to make an AVS for every two Free Sites I am making from now on, until I can make one or the other just as easy and who knows, maybe one day I will make more AVS sites than Free Sites.

The point, I think, is to keep going and try some new things until you get good at just about everything.

Sorry about the long rambling. |deadhorse

Hey Sheepguy, don't start preaching, if it weren’t for you I would not know what an AVS site is. Thanks for all the help and inspiration.|thumb

Good strategy there, TEK, and also try to add other sites to the combo, would be my advice. See how blogs work for you, maybe try your hand at niche portals/SEO sites, maybe even a fake TGP or something, I don't know, just try out stuff, see what works for you.

The important thing though, is to promote the sites. With FS it's relatively easy, since the LL's provide most of the traffic and backlinks, with other types of sites, you need different strategies, but don't forget the promoting, just as important, if not more important than building!

TekAngel,

My advice is to build at least 1 freesite a day, and don't get caught up in the "i need nice graphics" trap. mix it up. make a lot of very plain ones, some with nice graphics if you can. and pick content and the niche wisely, try different ons. keep building and submitting, and take a look at the linklists, for example if link-o-rama says the are looking for more "tranny midgets on tricycles" for the god's sake submit those, look at niches that don't have 80000000 sites listed, make a lot of those, so when someone clicks on a category, and then a site, chances are its yours.

just my 2 cents

Thanks spookyx, that is some great advice.

I do. I build freesites pretty much all year but when I'm on I am kicking out 5 a day which is rare these days. I am still submitting freesites from which I built in the first 3 months of this year. |thumb

Very informative thread.

Lowry, thats what I figure, I mean it can only help. Even if only to fill a hub page quicker. and you'll always have fresh sites.

Thanks
J-

The great thing about building free sites as that they keep working for you. I run a few yahoo groups from years ago and checked in today as there were messages pending and someone was sending out a link to a site I built probably 4 years ago.

I regularly see my free sites on forums, news groups etc. You just have to keep at it building up to 3 per day.

I wrote this and posted it in another thread but I think it is relevant here.

www.blueplayers.com/tutorial.rar

It is a Tutorial on how I used to work 24/7.