Traffic

Adult webmasters use a variety of methods to get traffic. These are:

Search Engines

Search Engines (or SE's) do just that - they search the internet. A surfer types in a keyword and the SE sends out a "spider" (a search program) to look for sites containing that keyword. It then lists the matching sites in order of prevalence. Of course, SE's don't list any old site. They can only look for the URLs in their database, which means that people have to submit their sites to that database before they can get a look in.

SE's are the ultimate traffic generator for adult sites, because the vast majority of surfers use them, and many of these surfers are new to porn, so they are easier to sell to. You can also end up with "curious" traffic, who may not have been looking for porn, but end up there because it's basic human nature to want to perve on sex.

Not all SE's are the same, and the way they search varies wildly. Some spiders simply rank sites according to metatag keywords, while others take relevance scores and URLs into account. Still others rank according to how popular a site is - if many other sites have links to yours, then it's considered to be a much-visited site and therefore more interesting.

Unfortunately, getting search engine traffic is rather difficult. This is due to a number of factors. Firstly, many other experienced webmasters have spent years studying how SE's work, and they know all the tricks that mean their site ends up listed first. They also know how to manipulate the spiders into thinking a relatively benign search is actually about porn ("spamming" a SE). These people make a lot of money, but unfortunately they make it difficult for the rest of us.

The other problem is that search engines themselves have become harder to "bust into". This is partly because the above spammers pissed them off and caused many everyday surfers to complain about overflowing porn, which in turn caused a tightening of submission policies and a change of search methods. It's also partly because so many new sites have emerged in the last year that many SE's are six months behind in their submissions simply due to sheer numbers. Chances are, if you submit a URL to the major SE's now, you won't get ranked for several months.

The latest SE difficultly is that SE's have realised they're not making enough money from advertising, which was the old model for a SE. Now they're charging the web site owner's money (around $200) for priority submission, leaving the old-fashion free submitters to languish for even longer. For an absolute beginner with no money to spare, this is bad news.

One SE I do recommend is Google. This is acknowledged to be the best SE on the net, and they don't take too long to add your site.

To submit your site to multiple SE's, you can use WebOverdrive's SE Tool.
Or you can use Scrub The Web, multiple search engine submission.

The Overture Model. Overture became one of the leading SE's on the internet because it introduced a pay-per-click method of searching. In this model, the web site owner bids for a search term e.g. 10c for the word "cock", and the URL is entered in the database. Then, when a surfer types in the word cock, your site gets priority listing. In return, you pay Overture 10c each time the surfer clicks on your listing. This model has grown to the point that Overtureprovides search results to many other large search engines, and other SEs have taken up using the pay-per-click idea.

It's an expensive way of getting traffic, especially since the BIG words like "porn" and "sex" are worth an awful lot. There's a difference of opinion on whether it's quality traffic - some say the surfers don't buy.

Another problem with Overture is that they've recently introduced a non-refundable $25 service fee before you can start to pay for your clicks. This money is charged before they even look at your site and give it the OK for listing. This means that if you ask for a keyword and they refuse to list your site for one of their myriad reasons, you don't get that money back. Be aware that their "listing guidelines" are in no way comprehensive, and they'll refuse to list your site for something that you thought was OK. They also won't let adult sites use "medical or academic" terms such as clitoris, sexual intercourse, penis and such, which is just downright annoying (suggest to a woman that "clitoris" is merely an academic term and you're in for a thumping). I'm being hard on Overture here, because they pissed me off.

The Overture model has been bettered by Google.

Meta Tags

Meta tags are specially coded HTML text that live at the top of your webpage, out of sight of the visitor. They allow search engines spiders to find and list your site. There are three sorts of metatags: title, description and keywords.

Below is an example of the meta tags used for this site:

<title>Absolute Beginners Guide to Adult Website Creation</title>

<meta name="description" content="How to create an adult website from scratch, and how to become a webmaster. Tips on sponsors, hosting, web page creation and traffic generation.">

<meta name="keywords" content="porn, websites, webmistresses, webmasters, traffic generation, HTML, sponsors, affiliates, advertising, content, hosting, free hosts, free porn, smut, adult industry">

This information must be placed between the <head> code at the top of each page.

The title succinctly describes your site, and should be reasonably descriptive. Search engines pay a lot of attention to titles, so make sure they make use of some good descriptive words. Don't go overboard, however. It's a title.

The description is a more verbose way of saying what's in your website. You can use sentences and construct good slogans within the description meta tag. Some search engines bring up the description in their search results, and it can be critical in getting a surfer to the site. They're usually more likely to respond to a sentence like "Come inside for hot pics of gorgeous naked women having sex with garden furniture!"  than a jumble of words.

The keywords are more specifically targeted towards search engine spiders. When a surfer types a word into a search engine, it then trawls the millions of metatags and picks up the ones with that keyword in them. Keywords have a comma in between each of them.

It's a good idea to pick one or two words that really pinpoint what your site is about, and use those words in all three metatags. Some search engines use "relevance" searches, and consider a repeated word to be an indicator of a highly relevant page. Thus, my metatags have used the term "adult website" as a major set of keywords. To really ensure a big score on the relevance scale, make sure that these keywords are also used several times in the main body of the site.

Do NOT overload your metatags with only one word e.g: "porn porn porn porn porn etc". Search engines are becoming increasingly intolerant of this form of "spamming" and will leave you out of the index. Similarly, don't use words that have nothing to do with your site at all e.g. don't use the word "buffalo" on a she-male site; again, it will be seen as spam. Of course, if you can find some way of mentioning buffalo within the main body of the site, therefore making it relevant, go ahead. In fact, this is one of the new ways of trying to drive traffic to your site - roping in people who were looking for something else.

It's also inadvisable to use trademarked names in your metatags. Playboy recently successfully sued a site owner for illegally using their name, so keep it all generic if possible.

If you want to check that you're using your metatags successfully, visit Monster Submit.

Directories

Directories are similar to SE's in that they list sites, however the method of selection is more finely tuned. Usually, a person (often a librarian) visits each site to see what it's about, and to make sure it's not a misleading or useless site. They then give it a subject heading, their own description, and sometimes a rating. This way, similar sites are clumped together, and the hapless surfer doesn't have to rely on slapdash search results, many of which have been fiddled with by devious porn webmasters. The idea of a directory is that you get quality results.

Directories are notoriously difficult to get into simply because of this human element, weeding out the trash. Many will only list smut sites if they have a decent amount of content, or something new to add to the scene. Several directories refuse to handle any porn at all.

If you want to get listed in a directory, you have to build a high quality porn site, with minimal advertising and excellent content. If you're simply throwing together a quick freebee banner farm, don't waste your time with them.

The main directory for porn webmasters is DMOZ. It accepts porn submissions, and the results are used by many other SE's and directories, including Google, AOL Search and Yahoo. It should be a main priority, after uploading your site, to submit the URL to DMOZ.

Link Lists

Link lists are privately run web sites similar in layout to a directory. They operate by providing links in categories after the URL has been submitted by a webmaster. In return, many link lists require a small text link or graphic be provided on the index or main page of the submitted site. This way they receive traffic as well as sending it. Thus, you'll often see an index page with about 10 small links underneath the warning.

Because link lists are also run by people, they tend to expect a certain level of quality. Some don't accept sites on freehosts, others don't like free content. The standard that seems to be emerging is for sites to only have 3 banners, 1 console, at least 10 pics, and a general smattering of interesting content. Even this may not be enough to guarantee a listing; some of the larger link sites are run by notoriously moody people.

Link lists are a great way to get traffic in the first months of your website's life, because your listing is usually up within a week (at the latest), and they sometimes list you as a "new site" so regular link list surfers check you out. They do, however, have a number of disadvantages. The reciprocal link is often a "traffic leak" i.e. you lose potential customers on your first page when they click on the snazzy linklist graphic.

The other problem is the amount of time and maintenance they require. It can take up to a day to list your site with all of them (each requires a form to be filled out with name, email, site url, description etc). Many require the reciprocal link to be up before they visit your site, which means you have to spend time adding the link to your index page, and then uploading it. Then, about a week later you need to spend time checking that they have actually listed your site, and removing the graphic if they haven't (cursing them all the while for wasting your time).

What I tend to do is have FrontPage and my freehost FTP or file uploading page open at the same time. I then open another browser and visit each linklist in turn, submitting my site and then adding the graphic/text link to my index page. After about five submissions I upload it, to make sure the links are up before anyone else gets to it. I also save each linklist graphic to a separate file for later use. This means that after the first time you do this, you need only copy the graphic over from your own hard drive.

You tend to develop a liking for some linklists over others. After your first couple of sites, you may decide to only submit to your select few, and have those graphics pre-uploaded for when you submit.

The Gatherers is a very handy multiple submission tool that allows you to visit thousands of different link lists through one site.

Below I've listed a number of linklists which I've used in the past. The sites listed in pink are "For Women" link lists only. The sites in bold are the major linklists, with whom it is very important to list.

Counters

Ostensibly, a counter simply measures the number of visitors to your page. In the adult business, however, a counter is a little more complicated than that. On porn sites, counters are the explicit search boxes found at the bottom of index pages. They keep track of that site's traffic, where it came from, where it goes, what the average number of visits are, and other statistics. The counter is also a guaranteed listing in the counter company's corresponding search engine - if you have a counter, your URL will remain active in the database. Thus, it sends you traffic as well as keeping track of who's visiting.

The trade off is that the counter is often explicit and leads directly to the counter website, so it's a traffic leak. You cannot remove or change the counter, or you will no longer be listed.

Sextracker has superior statistics and also offers free hosting and some free content.

Xcounter is a subsidiary of Sextracker that is worth using, as it displays your traffic count on the site itself, which can save time. 

Thumbnail Gallery Posts (TGP's) and Pic Posts

Thumbnail Gallery Posts operate on a basic principle: they bring the surfer straight to the pictures without having to wade past other pages. The webmaster that uses TGP's has to make up quick galleries of at least 10 pics and submit them at least once a week, using a description of what the pics are about e.g. "blonde Russian in threesome with Stalinesque gentlemen and happy-go-lucky Westerner". You submit them in the hope the surfer will either be fascinated by an ad, or will want to see another of your free sites, the latter being the best bet.

Pic Posts are similar, except you submit single pictures only.

This method of traffic generation is problematic for a number of reasons. You need a lot of content to start with, so you can churn through it each week. You also need to be prepared to spend a lot of time submitting and promoting the gallery. More worrisome, however, is the general consensus that TGP and Pic Post traffic is "bad traffic" i.e. a lot of people visit, but hardly anyone buys. The reason for this is simple: why would Joe Surfer want to go to a paysite and get out his credit card when there are hundreds of free pics right in front of him?

For a newbie freehost user such as yourself, TGP's may also be inaccessable because many freehosts do not allow TGP use. The reason for this is that TGP traffic uses a lot of bandwidth, and the freehost doesn't want to pay for crap traffic. Indeed, if you are paying for the hosting yourself, you don't want to pay for it either.

Of course, there are some who can get TGP's to work for them. My best guess (and it is only a guess) at making it work is to include some fascinating links on your TGP page - a sentence or link that makes them really curious, and interested enough to abandon everyone else's free porn in favour of your exciting free site. A humour site may well be the way to do this, or something so bizarre they'd never see it elsewhere.

The Basics

Page Creation

Simple HTML

Hosting

Affiliating

Content

Traffic
Search Engines
Directories
Linklists
Toplists
Counters
Banner Exchanges
TGPs

AVS Sites

FAQ

Glossary

Resources

Websites for
Women