Lesson #03 Paysite Laundry List
Written By Titmowse

To open a paysite, a general idea of start-up costs will prove worthwhile to you. In this lesson, we will provide you with a laundry list of basic requirements and their possible costs.

Content

Pictures, video, stories or games. Content can be easily obtained through the many providers in the adult Internet.

Since you want your paysite to get new customers, you should try to find the newest and best-quality content you can afford. If you have the money, you can even get some providers to make create content that is exclusive to your site and your members. Most paysites are a portal-type effort and feature many different member benefits. You won’t get far with a few hundred still images. You will need video, webcams feeds, live chat, adult games, leased plugins and updated erotica.

You want to make sure you have something in your bag of tricks that will attract a good bit of your intended market. At Cozy Academy, we have a Library area that will point you to the different content providers and their pages of products and prices. It is not uncommon for a paysite owner to buy $1000 - $10,000 dollars worth of content for a new venture.

Hosting

A paysite must be on it's own host. To host a paysite on a free host is not only ridiculous; it's against the terms of service for the free-hosting provider. The amount of money hosting will cost you depends on the amount of traffic/bandwidth you use and the amount of files you have stored on your host's server. You can open a paysite on a virtual server account but it’s best to pay for co-located or dedicated hosting. Transfer is the traffic on your page including the downloading of content to your member's browsers. You can pay as high as $400.00 or more per month for your hosting, depending on the flow of customers to your site. Add on the setup fees and you are looking at a starting cost of at least $500.00 dollars just for basic dedicated or co-located hosting.

Marketing/Promotion

This is an elusive cost. There are so many ways to market an adult paysite and you need to use all of them. It’s just not enough to get a good search engine listing. You have to buy ads and undertake site trades. You will want to buy paid gallery listings at prominent TGP sites. You’ll want to buy traffic. You will want to invest in email marketing. You’ll need to find every possible venue for promoting your paysite and use it. That’s why many paysite owners turn to marketing experts. However, you must keep in mind that just because you buy marketing, that doesn’t mean you’re going to get more business. It’s an inexact science.

Merchant Account/Credit Card Processing

Naturally, you need to have a way to accept money from your members. The instantaneous method of payment for you is the credit card. Many times, you find a service that will let you accept checking account payments as well as credit card payments. You can even set yourself up to be a credit card merchant.

The simplest way to accept payments is through an Internet Payment Service Provider or IPSP. IPSPs have their own merchant accounts and shopping cart software. They also handle the ugly issues of credit card chargebacks. They can do this for you because they charge you roughly 15%-30% on each sale. You’ll also be required to pay a VISA fee for high-risk payment processing. That fee is $750.00. As you can see, it costs a lot of money to open an adult paysite. The above checklist is but the tip of the iceberg. We haven’t even mentioned lawyer fees, accountant fees and the costs of incorporation. We haven’t told you about unexpected costs and all the various miniscule costs that add up to a pretty hefty tally.

Granted, regardless of the costs, it’s still less expensive to open a paysite than it is to open a brick-and-mortar shop. Just the same, you have to spend money to make money and if you want paysite money, you’re going to have to pay some money.