[LowryBigwood]

First of all, I just want to thank you for your reply CD34.

Originally Posted by cd34

What I have seen in the evolution of advertising in adult internet:

Prepay
Pay per click
Pay per sign
Pay per active/Revshare

This evolution has gone from prepay to pay for performance.

You are trying to turn the tide of adult advertising back to prepay. I'm not saying it won't work, but, it seems like a difficult direction to push the industry in. So, taken at face value, can you make that prepaid pixelbar more profitable than using that same space for advertising a sponsor?

Much more profitable if I actually filled the space. The space you see on my site(I admit it is probably too large, and I may go ahead and resize it, so it doesn't eat up quite as much adspace), but as it stands right now, that adspace has the poetential to make 45k (much more than I'd make with a banner that size in that spot for 5 years i'm betting unless I was to get huge soon), at 25 cents a pixel, as the blocks are sold in 10x10 blocks for 25.00 each. This may seem like a steep investment, but when I take over the porn world , in the future, and can send some nice traffic, the investment will pay for itself over time. Ads guaranteed until atleast 2011, so that's a link ad for atleast 5 years, but if i should fill it up, would most likely just leave it permanently.

Originally Posted by cd34

Secondly, you are opening yourself up to two potential issues with Search Engines. First, you now have a page with 300+ exits which diminishes the value of your influence to any site pointed to from that page. Second, you are potentially putting yourself in a 'bad neighborhood' with the search engines.

This does concern me. Do you mean I could be putting myself in a bad neighborhood by having so many exits, or by the pages I link to? All purchased ads have to be approved and published by me before they ever go live, so I have control on who and where I link to from the pixel ads.

Originally Posted by cd34

DangerDave (and Bill has repeated this) has often said, sometimes it is more important who you don't link to than who you do link to. (pardon me if I paraphrased it a little incorrectly)

Yep, and I think that is some solid advice.

Originally Posted by cd34

Now, had you been first on a high surfer traffic page or been able to get the media to trumpet your page to provide good value to your pixel buying clientele, you might have had something unique. However, you weren't first, you can't really get the media support behind it, so, you could be labelled a copycat. Look at why the original page was successful... first, unique, and great word-of-mouth.

I agree with most of this, except the part about possibly being labeled a copycat. The reason I tend to disagree with that, is because isn't that what we all do? Copy a successful biz model and try to make a profit? For example, and this is different, but somewhat the same to me...
1. Who started the first TGP, LL, Blog? They are the originals, and everyone else copied the model.
2. Once category recips hit the scene, they spread like wildfire, now almost everyone is doing that.
3. Sponsors tend to copy the other sponsors as far as types of promo materials offerred, for example, now we're starting to see hosted movies and hosted thumbs pop up. It won't be long before most of them are doing that, with the exception of one program I won't mention by name, that still has yet to provide hosted galleries.

Originally Posted by cd34

I don't know whether it will work or not. It is my impression that it won't outperform sending a sponsor that traffic using the same page real estate that you have committed to the pixel ads.

I don't know either, but that's why I wanted to try it. I didn't exepct to get my ass slammed by other respectable webmasters here. Guess that's the price I had to pay for trying to introduce this.

Originally Posted by cd34

But, I certainly wouldn't be adverse to giving it a try to see how it did. Never be afraid to try something new, but, make sure you aren't throwing more traffic at it than you can afford to lose. A cardinal rule in testing is generally -- never do anything that affects more than 50% of your traffic.

Good luck with it either way you choose to go.

Great advice, that's the 2nd time I've been told not to be afraid to test and try new things today, which is why I don't understand why the idea got trashed so bad. Thanks for the luck, I'm probably gonna need it. Just want to thank you again for actually bringing some discussion to this instead of just trashing me and my attempt at this idea.