1. Hits programs – An inexpensive way to get exposure

2. Banner Exchanges – A free way to expose your site to others

3. Adult Search Engine listings – An essential, but requires a reciprocal link on your site

4. Thumbnail Galleries – Generates great traffic, but requires a lot of work

Other marketing techniques include email, newsletters and opt-in lists, radio advertising, and newsgroup exploitation. All of these elements need to be incorporated into a website marketing plan and properly coordinated… centered around a good traffic program.

Hits or traffic programs are the least expensive approach to getting your site unveiled. If you want the greatest number of exposures for the least investment, this is the best way to go. You will be exposing your site, however briefly, to prospects you can’t otherwise reach.


Hits programs operate in two ways:

1. Pop-unders or pop-ups of the website URL or advertising URL behind existing adult thumbnail galleries, adult search engines, or other adult sites. The exposure is normally five to ten seconds including loading time. The site advertising has to quickly catch the eye and get the visitor to take action. If not, the surfer clicks away your marketing opportunity. Then, once inside the site, everything depends upon the conversion-friendliness of your site.

Primarily you are exposing your site to thumbnail gallery visitors who are looking for free stuff. These prospects have a great resistance to whipping out their credit card. If you don’t have a strong advertisement leading to a strong-converting website, you won’t get sales.

2. Abandoned Adult Domains are the second resource. These are normally adult sites where Webmasters had good traffic but the sites failed to convert. Since they generated no income, site owners let the domains expire. Usually these sites are heavily bookmarked. Traffic managers pick up these expired domains and post subscriber URLs on them. Visitors coming to these sites from bookmarked locations are more likely to buy than the thumbnail gallery visitor. However, this process is slower because of the hits generator of waiting for visitors to come to them via bookmarked sites. Often your website may be found on over 100 domains at one time. This delivers high quality traffic that is not generated using SPAM or excessive pop-up windows

Statistically, hits generate a response rate of .25%-3%. This is about the same as email or banner exposures. 100,000 hits to an effectively designed website should generate 2,000-3,000 leads. These prospects have already demonstrated an interest by entering your site or clicking on a banner. While targeted banner impressions or email services often cost in excess of $15 per thousand, hits programs cost $3.50-$5.00 per thousand for the same response rate.

Surprisingly, most Webmasters simply request traffic be sent to their main page (despite the fact that this is often a warning page). To get the most benefit from hits generation, you need to understand you are in the advertising business. Begin by thinking like a surfer or a “couch potato” television viewer. Does the advertising or website want to make you see more? If you saw a TV commercial that showed a picture of a storefront, would you be motivated to buy? Good TV commercials are short, and quickly grab the viewers’ attention. Most important, they subtly ask you to do something … buy, visit, or call.

The website advertising page must be uncluttered and motivate the surfer to take action. Does your page grab the surfer’s attention? Large letters, specials, stars, attractive images, and catch phrases are common techniques to get surfers to check you out. Never get too cluttered or busy. Use only a few words of text. Remember adult surfers don’t read... they want flesh!!! Begin selling immediately before they leave your site.

Your advertising should also contain some sponsor banners and/or banner exchange banners. Why should you advertise other sites? Simple, it gives you two or three shots at grabbing revenue. If your site doesn’t appeal to the prospect, perhaps one of the other banners might. Most importantly, it’s a way to subsidize your advertising costs.

While banners complement your marketing efforts, popups can be your nemesis. The surfer will accept your advertising as a resource, but if it’s accompanied by multiple pops, you have just alienated any chance of getting business. In addition, most of the traffic publishers will freeze an account with popups and their Terms of Service agreement provides for no refunds. Therefore, popups can be very risky for no return.


Traffic Specifications

Here’s some “Do’s and Don’ts” for buying traffic:

1. Stay away from Chinese traffic. How are they going to buy from you? Most credit card companies won’t process Chinese purchases.

2. Buy unique visits whenever possible. One visit is counted every 24 hours (normally) based upon the IP address. Otherwise multiple page accesses or returns to the website will be counted as visits. 1,000 visits can be one person loading 1,000 pages, or 1,000 surfers loading one page. You have more opportunity with 1,000 surfers. If uniques are purchased the IP address is only counted one time in the specified period. It may cost more, but you get more opportunity for your investment.

3. Make sure the Traffic Service evaluates your site. They may not know the conversion ratio for websites, but they do know the good, bad and ugly of websites.

4. When dealing in the adult marketplace, how familiar is the Traffic Service with adult websites? Marketing of adult sites requires a familiarity with techniques and approaches.

5. Website counters often don’t correspond to hits delivered. Many counters don’t count until the page is fully loaded, another link is clicked, or the counter image is loaded from a remote server. That’s why it’s important to monitor the raw clicks on the server hosting the advertising URL to get an accurate count.

While traffic is one of the least expensive marketing approaches, the adult Webmaster should not stop there. Make sure you actively participate in banner exchanges. Banner exchange programs are free advertising. In exchange for placing an advertisement on your page, you get exposure on other sites... usually at the rate of one exposure for every two you provide. Some adult marketers actually place multiple banners on an advertising page and buy hits programs to deliver the hits required for effective banner exchange use. If 100,000 hits are targeted to an advertising page with six banners, it’s possible to earn 100,000 free targeted banner impressions from your banner exchange services. At $15 per 1,000 banner impressions, that’s equal to a $1,500 investment.

How effective are hits programs? Without them, your site isn’t exposed. Will you make sales from them? Perhaps, if your site and advertising are good enough. But the likelihood that your website has been bookmarked by surfers increases significantly, and if it is used in combination with banner exchanges, and other marketing, your selling opportunities continue long after the traffic program is over.

Remember... “If they don’t know you are there, how can they buy your service?”

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Bob Rogers is Managing Director of Profit Associates, a small business management and marketing consulting firm. Profit Associates owns http://www.easyhitz.com/, a major traffic generating website, http://www.lust-locator.com/, an adult search engine, and in excess of 30 adult websites.

In Rogers’ 35-years of consulting, he has provided management and marketing advice to over 3,000 clients. He can be reached at bobrog@profit-associates.com.