How I think I screwed myself - newbie experience

CalModels · 2005-09-04, 01:01 AM

OK, so I guess the first lesson I learnt is I know squat...

It all started with an unfortunate combination of two things... I own share of a webhosting company, and I like taking pictures of women (as a hobby mostly) so being the genius I thought I was, I said to myself "why not start up a free lingerie models website?" and without really researching the hows or whats, I got some opensource software together, and put up a gallery of lingerie models...

Now this is 100% custom content, not found anywhere else, and I think I did a fairly decent job as far as the actual design goes, but you can judge for yourself here:

http://www.CalgaryModels.com

And I figured, "you know, I should upload some of these pictures to the newsgroups and pretty soon people will be flocking to the site" so I made my firt mistake and posted some images to a bunch of newsgroups, and sure enough, the traffic started trickling in... but in my idiocy, I included my real email address in that post and now I have more spam than I have warts... and I am loathe to spam newsgroups so I posted about 30 pictures and gave up on it incase someone starts cursing me for excessive posting...

Now the next step was getting affiliates that I could advertise, so I came here, did a bit of reading (and not enough reading I soon realised) picked a bunch that people seemed happy with and signed up with them... that gave me all their banners I could advertise... and lo and behold, I went overboard with the number of banners (as in REALLY overboard) thinking if I fill up the pages with banners then someone will buy something and I make a bit of cash and sure enough two days later people just stopped coming... well anyway, I dialled down the number of ads I had on the site a bit after I got some helpful feedback from a couple of visitors, and I think its at a decent enough level now... but then again history has taught me I am frequently wrong so maybe they are still too much...

Once the number of banners went down, I read that I should now submit the site to link lists, and promptly began submitting to a few... but rapidly realised that a LOT of the link lists wanted recip's on the index page, and had rules that simply didnt apply to me, because my site is a little different in the sense that its not a pay site, its free, but the content is not stock hosted galleries etc, and realistically, I cant link a recip on my index or warning page (mostly because I do have a main page but not really a warning page except for a short blurb on the main page) so I am not really sure where to put the recips... I have a "Links" page I have been putting the recips on, but a lot of the link lists say they want it on the main page and not on a links page, which just isnt possible (unless there is something else I dont know aboutthat I overlooked)...

So anyway I submit the site to about 20 or so link lists that did not seem to mind being on a Links page, and out of the 20, its been three or four days and I have been listed on two.. and as for traffic, it just isnt coming...

So short of desperation taking me back to spamming the newsgroups (which I really really dont want to do) I am at my wits end... how do I get traffic? Are there specific things I could do? Not just in the generating traffic part, but maybe even in the site layout (part of me thinking that maybe its the layout that link list owners dont like?)

Being the noob, I'm hoping you guys may help me point myself right side up again.. please please please??

SortLinks · 2005-09-04, 04:10 AM

may be the reason was your pages (where they recips are) isnt static?
http://www.calgarymodels.com/index.p...&id=6&Itemid=3

if you are willing to add link to sortlinks.com or to other sites in my sig on
http://www.calgarymodels.com/ (or nice static page)
I would be grateful and 'll list your site

Halfdeck · 2005-09-04, 09:10 AM

Hi CalModels,

I would strongly recommend reading more threads in this Newbie section, specifically about free sites. It's tempting to ask a ton of questions and be showered with silver-bullet answers from the adult webmaster gods...All the information you need to make money is already here, you just have to do a little digging around so you can save yourself and others time.

The term "free sites" have very little to do with a site being free. The term refers to a specificly structured site made up of 4 pages: index.html, main.html, gallery1.html, gallery2.html. For more info, you can run a search here for "Free sites," or cruise over to Link-o-rama.com and look around at tons of free sites there. You can also check out one of my old free sites here.

Free sites aren't the only way to make money in this biz but they'll teach you about building traffic and other webmastering fundamentals so I would recommend you at least giving it a try for a few months.

In terms of getting traffic:

First, I would stop spamming newsgroups.

Second, I would SE optimize the site and do some linktrades with other site owners to get some traffic from Google/Yahoo.

Thirdly, if your goal is to sell paysites like First Time Videos, etc, I would build free sites, or TGP galleries instead of just slamming a banner on your page. If you're getting decent pornstar traffic already, a banner might work, but otherwise expect it to just sit there.

I'm not sure what you're trying to make money with. Are you hoping to turn your lingerie site into a paysite eventually? Are you using the lingerie pics to just get people to click on your banners?

If you're planning to turn it into a paysite, I would remove all of the banners.

If your goal is to have people click on your banners... then I would still remove most of the banners because they're not effective without decent amount of relevant traffic and to build that traffic, you're better off building free sites or galleries for a particular paysite you're trying to sell.

reb · 2005-09-04, 12:41 PM

Hey ther CalModels
Welcome to world of being a newbee.
I jumped onto this stuff headfirst myself without having a clue what I was doing. Been searching the forums and like this one the best.
Traffic as I can see is a never ending battle but I'm hoping to learn from the people that know what they are doing in this forum.
I get to Calgary quite a bit in the winter. Maybe we can get together for a beer sometime.

CalModels · 2005-09-04, 01:20 PM

Thanks for the feedback guys, much appreciated..

SortLinks,

problem is, I am running the site on a CMS and the actual content is dynamic... there are a couple of ways to make the link itself appear more SE friendly, but it will still end up looking like http://www.calgarymodels.com/com_content/3/4/ or something like that... would link list owners accept that? Basically at the end of the day it will still be a dynamic URL its just a matter of getting Apache to rewrite the URL at runtime... I have been planning to work on that anyway when I got some time, I guess now I have to make it a priority??

Halfdeck,

first is already done. I felt really bad when it did do it, and I have stopped, cuz I figure it will backfire if I overdo it... Second, the SE's are crawling the website like nuts pretty much every day, infact Yahoo was the first to crawl and on average I am getting about 250 unique visitors a day and pretty much all of them are from Yahoo (google listing does not show up yet)... about number three, what I was looking for is to use the pictures I have as the draw for the site, and then hopefully someone clicks on the banners and buys something... I do not have intentions to make this a paysite at any point, my custom content will always be free to view (except for the topless pictures which will need a free registration) and the hope was people come for the content and possibly click on the sponsors... surprisingly enough, with 250 visitors a day I am still getting atleast one sale a day (all different sponsors there is no consistency) and from reading the other threads, that really good apparently for the amount of traffic I have?

reb,

that would be great.. let me know the next time you plan on being here and we can grab a cold one...

Lemmy · 2005-09-04, 02:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CalModels

surprisingly enough, with 250 visitors a day I am still getting atleast one sale a day (all different sponsors there is no consistency) and from reading the other threads, that really good apparently for the amount of traffic I have?

Obviously you're doing something right!

If you can figure out exactly what the formula is and add some volume to it you've got a gold mine. Good luck!

Wazza · 2005-09-06, 11:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CalModels

with 250 visitors a day I am still getting atleast one sale a day

1 sale from every 250 visitors, not click throughs to sponsors, is a number that most of us would give our right arm for. So yes you're right that is a shit hot set of numbers.

It could be the yahoo traffic (usenet traffic won't be worth shit), it could be the discrete 'free join' link (meaning they're using the pin method), or it could be just plain old dumb luck (no offense meant - we all have dumb luck days and love em!).

Free Site traffic is not as potent as SE traffic, but it's generally better than hardlinked TGP traffic, then CJ (circle jerk - blind linked - trade script controlled) TGP traffic, free for alls (link dumps), forum, and usenet traffic.

The longevity of listings at Link Lists generally means that Free Sites get their own trickle of SE traffic too (some get a lot - but they're few and far between).

SirMoby · 2005-09-04, 08:11 PM

1. Don't share too much information about your search phrases. No offense to anyone in this thread but there are plenty of people that will spam Google and Yahoo for 250 hits. Yes, my dyslexia brings me some nice SE traffic.

2. You will need to create some static free sites for submission to link lists. No way around it. Those sites can then link to your dynamic pages in many ways but you have to submit something static.

3. Soem of the hottest strippers I've ever seen were in Calgary and I've been to clubs 30+ countries and probably 60+ cities.

4. 4.5 years ago I came to a Green Guy board and had to admit I didn't know squat. I've been full time since then so I think you're on the right track.

Wazza · 2005-09-05, 03:09 AM

You're far from screwed - you've got assets that many would give their right arm for (the ability to take nice photos, and access to some pretty girls).

Yes - do the mod rewrite to make dynamic pages look static (it will ride with the SEs, LLs and other link traders). As long as it looks static it doesn't matter if it's actually dynamic. What they don't know won't hurt em as long as you play it straight.

Do the free site and gallery thing and submit them to link lists and tgps - put it on another domain perhaps - and make Cal Models your "sponsor" that you're advertising. Two girls - 10 pics of each [for FS, 1x15 for galleries] - and it'll be sweet.

On Cal Models itself - I'd make the "join" links vastly more obvious... on every page... bigger... bolder... that discrete "click here if you haven't got a pwd" link simply won't do.

CLICK HERE NOW TO JOIN CALGARY MODELS FOR FREE!
No dirty tricks, no Credit Card required, join with your email address only, no spam guaranteed.

If you're not doing double opt in with TOS/TAC that allow mailings already I'd change that on the double.

Don't give up - you're well and truly unscrewed

CalModels · 2005-09-06, 01:46 PM

SirMoby & Wazza thank you very much for the encouragement.

Wazza, the join link has been changed to something thats more obvious (and its now red he he)..

also, I am trying to read up a bit on this whole free site thingie and get a couple done with maybe 30 or so images and submit them to the link lists...

One question though, and this came about in my head while I was thinking about free site traffic (and I know thinking is dangerous for me)... I would think that the conversion rate for hits from link lists would be lower than from SE's? Would that be a fair statement?

I mean, if I am surfing for porn, I would be going form site to site and be exposed to a lot of banners etc and the tendency to click on a banner and actually buy something (in my mind anyway) would be lower, when compared to a guy (say in my case) who stumbles on to a site from Google or Yahoo and sees banners, may be more inclined to click them?

After reading the previous posts and others, I am thinking maybe thats why my conversion is so unreasonably high? Is because of the fact that almost all my traffic to date has been Yahoo and some people from usenet?

2005-09-04, 01:01 AM	#1
CalModels Trying is the first step towards failure Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 122	How I think I screwed myself - newbie experience OK, so I guess the first lesson I learnt is I know squat... It all started with an unfortunate combination of two things... I own share of a webhosting company, and I like taking pictures of women (as a hobby mostly) so being the genius I thought I was, I said to myself "why not start up a free lingerie models website?" and without really researching the hows or whats, I got some opensource software together, and put up a gallery of lingerie models... Now this is 100% custom content, not found anywhere else, and I think I did a fairly decent job as far as the actual design goes, but you can judge for yourself here: http://www.CalgaryModels.com And I figured, "you know, I should upload some of these pictures to the newsgroups and pretty soon people will be flocking to the site" so I made my firt mistake and posted some images to a bunch of newsgroups, and sure enough, the traffic started trickling in... but in my idiocy, I included my real email address in that post and now I have more spam than I have warts... and I am loathe to spam newsgroups so I posted about 30 pictures and gave up on it incase someone starts cursing me for excessive posting... Now the next step was getting affiliates that I could advertise, so I came here, did a bit of reading (and not enough reading I soon realised) picked a bunch that people seemed happy with and signed up with them... that gave me all their banners I could advertise... and lo and behold, I went overboard with the number of banners (as in REALLY overboard) thinking if I fill up the pages with banners then someone will buy something and I make a bit of cash and sure enough two days later people just stopped coming... well anyway, I dialled down the number of ads I had on the site a bit after I got some helpful feedback from a couple of visitors, and I think its at a decent enough level now... but then again history has taught me I am frequently wrong so maybe they are still too much... Once the number of banners went down, I read that I should now submit the site to link lists, and promptly began submitting to a few... but rapidly realised that a LOT of the link lists wanted recip's on the index page, and had rules that simply didnt apply to me, because my site is a little different in the sense that its not a pay site, its free, but the content is not stock hosted galleries etc, and realistically, I cant link a recip on my index or warning page (mostly because I do have a main page but not really a warning page except for a short blurb on the main page) so I am not really sure where to put the recips... I have a "Links" page I have been putting the recips on, but a lot of the link lists say they want it on the main page and not on a links page, which just isnt possible (unless there is something else I dont know aboutthat I overlooked)... So anyway I submit the site to about 20 or so link lists that did not seem to mind being on a Links page, and out of the 20, its been three or four days and I have been listed on two.. and as for traffic, it just isnt coming... So short of desperation taking me back to spamming the newsgroups (which I really really dont want to do) I am at my wits end... how do I get traffic? Are there specific things I could do? Not just in the generating traffic part, but maybe even in the site layout (part of me thinking that maybe its the layout that link list owners dont like?) Being the noob, I'm hoping you guys may help me point myself right side up again.. please please please??

2005-09-04, 04:10 AM	#2
SortLinks I saw weird stuff in that place last night. Weird, strange, sick, twisted, eerie, godless, evil stuff. And I want in Join Date: Sep 2004 Posts: 458	may be the reason was your pages (where they recips are) isnt static? http://www.calgarymodels.com/index.p...&id=6&Itemid=3 if you are willing to add link to sortlinks.com or to other sites in my sig on http://www.calgarymodels.com/ (or nice static page) I would be grateful and 'll list your site __________________ submit sites to : SortLinks Free Porn Reality Porn Blogs Blog Link List

2005-09-04, 09:10 AM	#3
Halfdeck You can now put whatever you want in this space :) Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: New Haven, CT Posts: 985	Hi CalModels, I would strongly recommend reading more threads in this Newbie section, specifically about free sites. It's tempting to ask a ton of questions and be showered with silver-bullet answers from the adult webmaster gods...All the information you need to make money is already here, you just have to do a little digging around so you can save yourself and others time. The term "free sites" have very little to do with a site being free. The term refers to a specificly structured site made up of 4 pages: index.html, main.html, gallery1.html, gallery2.html. For more info, you can run a search here for "Free sites," or cruise over to Link-o-rama.com and look around at tons of free sites there. You can also check out one of my old free sites here. Free sites aren't the only way to make money in this biz but they'll teach you about building traffic and other webmastering fundamentals so I would recommend you at least giving it a try for a few months. In terms of getting traffic: First, I would stop spamming newsgroups. Second, I would SE optimize the site and do some linktrades with other site owners to get some traffic from Google/Yahoo. Thirdly, if your goal is to sell paysites like First Time Videos, etc, I would build free sites, or TGP galleries instead of just slamming a banner on your page. If you're getting decent pornstar traffic already, a banner might work, but otherwise expect it to just sit there. I'm not sure what you're trying to make money with. Are you hoping to turn your lingerie site into a paysite eventually? Are you using the lingerie pics to just get people to click on your banners? If you're planning to turn it into a paysite, I would remove all of the banners. If your goal is to have people click on your banners... then I would still remove most of the banners because they're not effective without decent amount of relevant traffic and to build that traffic, you're better off building free sites or galleries for a particular paysite you're trying to sell. __________________ Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.

2005-09-04, 12:41 PM	#4
reb Rock stars ... is there anything they don't know? Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Canada Posts: 14	Hey ther CalModels Welcome to world of being a newbee. I jumped onto this stuff headfirst myself without having a clue what I was doing. Been searching the forums and like this one the best. Traffic as I can see is a never ending battle but I'm hoping to learn from the people that know what they are doing in this forum. I get to Calgary quite a bit in the winter. Maybe we can get together for a beer sometime. __________________

2005-09-05, 03:09 AM	#9
Wazza I'm a jaded evil bastard, I wouldn't piss on myself if I was on fire... Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 808	You're far from screwed - you've got assets that many would give their right arm for (the ability to take nice photos, and access to some pretty girls). Yes - do the mod rewrite to make dynamic pages look static (it will ride with the SEs, LLs and other link traders). As long as it looks static it doesn't matter if it's actually dynamic. What they don't know won't hurt em as long as you play it straight. Do the free site and gallery thing and submit them to link lists and tgps - put it on another domain perhaps - and make Cal Models your "sponsor" that you're advertising. Two girls - 10 pics of each [for FS, 1x15 for galleries] - and it'll be sweet. On Cal Models itself - I'd make the "join" links vastly more obvious... on every page... bigger... bolder... that discrete "click here if you haven't got a pwd" link simply won't do. CLICK HERE NOW TO JOIN CALGARY MODELS FOR FREE! No dirty tricks, no Credit Card required, join with your email address only, no spam guaranteed. If you're not doing double opt in with TOS/TAC that allow mailings already I'd change that on the double. Don't give up - you're well and truly unscrewed __________________ I sale Internet My sites have no traffic and no PR - let's trade - PM me

2005-09-04, 01:20 PM	#5
CalModels Trying is the first step towards failure Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 122	Thanks for the feedback guys, much appreciated.. SortLinks, problem is, I am running the site on a CMS and the actual content is dynamic... there are a couple of ways to make the link itself appear more SE friendly, but it will still end up looking like http://www.calgarymodels.com/com_content/3/4/ or something like that... would link list owners accept that? Basically at the end of the day it will still be a dynamic URL its just a matter of getting Apache to rewrite the URL at runtime... I have been planning to work on that anyway when I got some time, I guess now I have to make it a priority?? Halfdeck, first is already done. I felt really bad when it did do it, and I have stopped, cuz I figure it will backfire if I overdo it... Second, the SE's are crawling the website like nuts pretty much every day, infact Yahoo was the first to crawl and on average I am getting about 250 unique visitors a day and pretty much all of them are from Yahoo (google listing does not show up yet)... about number three, what I was looking for is to use the pictures I have as the draw for the site, and then hopefully someone clicks on the banners and buys something... I do not have intentions to make this a paysite at any point, my custom content will always be free to view (except for the topless pictures which will need a free registration) and the hope was people come for the content and possibly click on the sponsors... surprisingly enough, with 250 visitors a day I am still getting atleast one sale a day (all different sponsors there is no consistency) and from reading the other threads, that really good apparently for the amount of traffic I have? reb, that would be great.. let me know the next time you plan on being here and we can grab a cold one...

2005-09-04, 08:11 PM	#8
SirMoby Jim? I heard he's a dirty pornographer. Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Washington, DC Posts: 2,706	1. Don't share too much information about your search phrases. No offense to anyone in this thread but there are plenty of people that will spam Google and Yahoo for 250 hits. Yes, my dyslexia brings me some nice SE traffic. 2. You will need to create some static free sites for submission to link lists. No way around it. Those sites can then link to your dynamic pages in many ways but you have to submit something static. 3. Soem of the hottest strippers I've ever seen were in Calgary and I've been to clubs 30+ countries and probably 60+ cities. 4. 4.5 years ago I came to a Green Guy board and had to admit I didn't know squat. I've been full time since then so I think you're on the right track.

2005-09-06, 01:46 PM	#10
CalModels Trying is the first step towards failure Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 122	SirMoby & Wazza thank you very much for the encouragement. Wazza, the join link has been changed to something thats more obvious (and its now red he he).. also, I am trying to read up a bit on this whole free site thingie and get a couple done with maybe 30 or so images and submit them to the link lists... One question though, and this came about in my head while I was thinking about free site traffic (and I know thinking is dangerous for me)... I would think that the conversion rate for hits from link lists would be lower than from SE's? Would that be a fair statement? I mean, if I am surfing for porn, I would be going form site to site and be exposed to a lot of banners etc and the tendency to click on a banner and actually buy something (in my mind anyway) would be lower, when compared to a guy (say in my case) who stumbles on to a site from Google or Yahoo and sees banners, may be more inclined to click them? After reading the previous posts and others, I am thinking maybe thats why my conversion is so unreasonably high? Is because of the fact that almost all my traffic to date has been Yahoo and some people from usenet?