Lesson #24 Common Paysite Mistakes - Part #1
Written By Titmowse

At Cozy Academy we feel obligated to warn any adult webmaster to stay away from opening a paysite until they’re ready for the task. It costs a lot of money to create a paysite. It takes savvy to make it profitable. Nevertheless, a time will come when you feel you’re ready to take that big step. We provide for you a compendium of common mistakes made by previous paysite operators.

Examine them and avoid them and you too will enjoy paysite success:

1. Too Much Free Content.

You will naturally want to use sample images/content in the promotion of your paysite. Some of it will be used as galleries for TGPs and single shots for Pic Posts. The most important place you will incorporate free content is on your tour. There is a fine line between enough and too much when it comes to how you display images/video on a paysite tour. You want to tease the surfer. You want to entice them. What you don’t want to do is satisfy them with tour content.

If you’re selling a story site and post a sample story in your tour, don’t post the whole story. Post the portion of the story, which leads up to the ‘good part’. Then inform the surfer they must buy a membership to your site in order to read the rest. If your tour images show genitalia or penetration, consider covering those naughty bits with star graphics or censor blocks. Use text either as is or embedded in graphics to describe/advertise the features of membership to your paysite. Do not give the surfer enough porn in a tour to bust a nut.

2. Not Enough Member Content.

People want a return on their investments. Used to be an adult webmaster could slap up ten or so galleries, stick a shopping cart in front of it and make a killing on the net. Those days are no more. You have to give the people a substantial amount of member content. You have to provide enough goodies to justify the price of your service. There is no standard count on what is an adequate amount of content for an adult paysite. An absolute minimum suggestion would be anywhere from 5 to 50 gigs of files. Some paysites make as go with even less. Others contain hundreds and hundreds of gigabytes in content. You have to determine the happy medium.

If your content is highly unique and/or rare, then you might not need to store as much in your member’s area as the general-purpose paysite. If you want to charge members a hefty price for access, you better have enough stuff to keep them happy for at least a month.

3. Inadequate Customer Support.

Imagine if you had purchased a suit from a clothing store. Then imagine the first day you wore the suit in public, the sleeves fell off. You would absolutely either be on the phone or in your car on the way to deal directly with the store about their faulty product.

What if the phone kept ringing? What if the store was closed when you got there? What if you were a member of your paysite? Would you want to be left in the dark if something went wrong?

There’s a lot of automation on the web but customer service should never be so clinical. Answer emails promptly. Provide a customer support phone number and man that phone. Post help files and contact information in visible locations on your member’s area. Be prepared to handle complaints and questions. You won’t satisfy all grievances with patient, informed support. But you’ll definitely keep cancellations and chargebacks to a minimum with competent customer support.

4. Irregular/Inactive Updates.

Return customers are the best customers. The best way to insure your paysite garners repeat customers it with regular content updates. The basic formula is give them enough content to keep them busy for at least a month with the promise of more the next month. Some paysites update once a month. Some update weekly. Others update daily. What’s most important is to update according to stated regularity. If you tell surfers your site updates once a week, then do so. If you promise monthly additions, then provide them monthly. Don’t be late and always update.