New webmasters often consider making adult sites but aren’t sure if it is a good idea. There are definitely good things about adult sites along with some bad things.. I hope to cover some of those issues here which can help you decide whether or not you want to get involved with the adult industry

Good things about adult sites

• Sex sells. Porn sites, adult dating sites, sex toys, movies, etc are a HUGE business. People buy these products.
• Lots of Affiliate programs - There are a lot of good adult affiliate programs, and people can do very well promoting these products.
• Many Niches Available - There are a lot of niches relating to adult sites since there is a wide variety of fetishes and other things people are into sexually. Using these niches you can carve out your own little piece of the web and do very well for yourself if you can pull it off.

Bad things about creating adult web sites

• Legal issues - As laws change you could find yourself needing to make changes to your site to keep it legal
• Web hosting - Most web hosting providers don’t allow adult content. Many of the hosts that do are low quality.
• Bandwidth use - Movies and pictures use a lot of bandwidth, which can cost a lot of money. You have to be careful to optimize your advertising and subscription services otherwise you may not be able to turn a profit.
• Lots of freeloaders - If you have image galleries hoping to get subscription signups you will find that you have huge number of visitors per signup compared to non-adult products. Most people like free porn and don’t want to pay for it.
• Highly competitive - There are a TON of adult sites out there. It is a highly competitive business and you will have a difficult time doing well unless you find a very specific niche to fill and focus on. There are a lot of multi-million dollar companies out there that can afford to spend a fortune on advertising without thinking twice. You have to be smart about it to beat them.
• Shady Webmasters - There a lot of less than ethical webmasters out there in the adult industry. They resort to black hat tactics and cheat on link exchanges. See my link exchange pitfalls article for more information about sleazy things you will find people doing when exchanging links.
• More difficult to promote - You will find yourself being extremely limited in who you can exchange links with. Most web directories don’t have adult sections. Even sites that are somewhat related to your adult one may not exchange links with adult sites. The other problem is you’ll be asking for links from your competition (those shady webmasters mentioned above), so they are often not really interested in cooperating with you.

I made what I feel was a mistake by having my first “making money online site” be an adult one. Since I didn’t know nearly as much those years ago as I do now this site took a very long time to take off. I have recently started up other (non-adult) sites and had them surpass the revenue of my oldest site after only a couple months. I do however plan to expand my adult portfolio in the near future.

It is a lot easier to create a non-adult site when first starting out, and branching out into adult content once you are comfortable with what is involved with web site creation and promotion. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t do it. If you are really motivated and want to create an adult site, by all means get started right now. Don’t let me change your mind. I just want you to know what you’re getting yourself into so you aren’t surprised.

~Wealthy Webmaster

Technorati : adult affiliate, adult webmaster, adult websites

It has been speculated that at some point links from directories would be discounted by Google. Many of my sites don’t have many other links besides directory listings, and they all got a decent PR boost during the last update. This proves to me that directory listings are still passing pagerank to other sites, however it can’t be proven whether they actually help for SERPs or not. Directory listings are a great way to get your site spidered and indexed faster, and also a good way to build permanent incoming one-way links. Just be careful not to rely on them too much in case Google does take action against them sometime in the future.

~Wealthy Webmaster

Google finally updated in the past few days and the PageRank of all the sites out there has been recalculated. I wish I could tell you that it made huge difference but in reality it didn’t do much of anything. All of my new sites that were PR0 hopped up to either PR4 or 5, but I did not see any difference in traffic whatsoever. It is widely accepted that pagerank has very little to do with where your page shows up in a list of google search results. I have not noticed any difference or large variation in my search result positions.

The only real use I see for PageRank these days is a currency which you can use as leverage when trading links with someone. I have seen many link exchanges out there that require your site to have a certain PR before they’ll link to you, or for your links page to be at a certain PR.

I have not yet decided what I am going to do with all my new-found PR. I may sell some of it in the form of directory listings, maybe sell some permanent links (unlikely, but possible). I will probably use this to sell some listings on a couple of my directories, but for the most part leave my normal sites unmolsted other than using this new PR as leverage for link exchanges.

If you are one of those people whose sole purpose is to increase your pagerank, STOP! It doesn’t do nearly as much as people seem to think. Spend your time building a nice quantity of quality content on your site and users will find it via search even if your site is PR1.

People sometimes ask me why I have so many different web sites instead of focussing my effort on just one. The answer is simple. Diversity. It is far easier to make 10 sites that make $100/month than it is to make 1 that makes $1000/month. By creating more sites you can also move on to work on other things while search engines “catch up” to work you just did on a site.

I regularly make major changes to one of my money making sites, then move to the next site on my list that needs updating. This also helps negate the effects of the Google sandbox (if it truely exists). I often buy a new domain, build a site fairly quickly, then let it sit and build links for a few months. Then I go back to it later and make any changes I’ve thought of while working on other things. This usually includes content to add, SEO that needs to be done such as title, meta, and other content modification, tweaks, etc.

By diversifying your portfolio of sites in this way you can also avoid major fluxuations in revenue due to changes in search engines. People often cry that their big site fell off the first page of Google and suddenly they’re making no money. Personally I try to keep it so that no one site of mine is making more than 2/3 of my total revenue. This is similar to how you wouldn’t want to have all your money invested in a single stock. Of course if a single site suddenly goes above 2/3 of my revenue I won’t try to slow it down, I just focus some extra effort on other things and let the successful site ride. By doing work on a site that is doing very well it is entirely possible to make a change the search engines don’t like and end up worse off (falling down in the SERPS due to keyword density changes for example).

If you focus too much time on a single site you may find that you get “stuck” waiting for work you did to get a reaction. It can take search engine spiders weeks or longer to index all of your new content if you add a lot during an update. Google also takes a very long time to update the backlinks pointing to your site, which means you can do a ton of link building but may not see any results from it for weeks or even months.

If you’re waiting for pagerank to update you’re going to be sitting there for a long time. Google only updates the toolbar pagerank a few times per year. Many people argue that PageRank isn’t very important these days in determining search results. The unfortunate truth is that people use it as a currency to judge the value of paid links on their site, who to exchange links with, etc. You can have a great site but if that green PR bar says 1 or 2 you’re going to have a hard time getting someone whose site is PR5 to exchange links with you. Working on multiple sites at once can also help you benefit from the “few times a year” Google update. I’ve built 5 or 6 sites at least since the last Google update (I’ve lost count honestly). They all show up as a pagerank 0 since they are new, but when Google updates I’ll gain a nice stash of PR4-5 sites all at once, and with that a lot of additional link negotiation power.

Changes in law and other factors can also play a large role in a site’s success. If Google decided that it wanted to penalize or ban certain types of sites (tobacco, gambling, travel, etc) your entire business could be wiped out in one fell swoop if it is your only site. My sites cover a wide variety of topics so something of this nature is never going to put me under.

Get Motivated to make things happen!
Are you making money online yet? If not, what are you waiting for? The longer you wait the harder it will be. Every day hundreds if not thousands of new webmasters start up sites in an attempt to get rich online.

A lot of people I talk to want to make money online, but they just don’t know where to start. Most of the others are lazy and unmotivated. They’d like to make some money online but instead spend their free time watching tv, playing video games, drinking, smoking, etc. The next day they are no closer to becoming financially independent, and the cycle continues.

I made a decision a while ago that I was going to use a portion of my salary from my well-paying day job to finance some online ventures to increase my wealth.

After reading the Rich Jerk last year I realized that I wasn’t taking this business seriously.  I got motivated and kicked myself into gear and have been working hard at building my business ever since.
Be Realistic
You can’t expect to make millions of dollars overnight unless you have an incredible and original idea that will spread like wildfire on its own (such as the million dollar home page). These things take time. It takes a while to build traffic to a web site, and at first it seems that you’re doing a lot of work for nothing. The first month might bring in only a few dollars, the next month a bit more.. then suddenly after a few months you’ll stop and say “whoa” suddenly realizing that the money coming in is no longer insignificant. A short time after that you’ll have a bunch of money rolling in with very little maintenance work required on your site(s).

Nobody else will do it for you
If you’re sitting around waiting for someone else to make you rich, you’re going to be waiting forever. If you want to make money online it doesn’t take much to get started. Do some research, and think of something that interests you to work on. When the money starts rolling in you’ll be glad you did.

~Wealthy Webmaster