Lesson #25 Common Paysite Mistakes - Part #2
Written By Titmowse

In the previous lesson we covered some of the mistakes webmasters make when they get into the paysite game. Is it really accurate to call them mistakes? Some would say the above mentioned points were more a matter of apathy/neglect on the part of the paysite operator. It’s easy to believe and allow our software to automate things for us. It’s normal to try and cut corners with discount pictures or cheap plugin feeds. It’s common to care more about the sale than the customer. If existing members don’t re-up after the first month, it’s no big deal as long as enough surfers become new members.

This crazy numbers system of traffic generation, webmaster affiliation and member gathering can be dizzying. So many paysite owners get swept up with covering costs and accumulating profits they lose sight of what they’re actually doing. The anonymity of this business takes so much of the humanity out of the experience. Probably the most common mistake made when one runs a paysite is the lack of human input/output.

5. Email is Not Enough

Even a shoe store has a manager. Say you purchased an item from a catalog. When the item arrived it was broken. Odds are that you would be scanning your receipt for a phone number within a minute. Can you imagine if there was no phone number? No manager? No complaint department? What’s worse, say you find a phone number, call it and receive only recorded messages with no option to speak to a human. Doesn’t that piss you off? You would probably make a point to never shop from that catalog again. You’ll tell your friends about your awful experience. You might even go as far to launch a complaint against the company with the Better Business Bureau.

A simple thing like no phone number to call will hurt your customer base. Go ahead and post email forms on your paysite for members to contact you. Just don’t forget that will be a good share of customers who will need a little more support than some cold mail link on a deeply buried page. If you’re unwilling to take calls yourself, farm the job out to someone who is willing. It’s not always agreeable dealing with patrons but a few spoken reassurances from someone in charge works wonders and retains members.

6. Small Print is Not Enough

Earned or not, the adult Internet has a reputation for scamming surfers. There’s no more fraud in the adult Internet than any other form of e-commerce but tell that to the news media. Anyone who’s tried to cancel a free-trial from a certain nationally known Internet service can tell you the concept of automatic rebilling is pretty darned irritating. To cancel that free ISP trial, you have to jump through a lot of hoops they don't tell you about in the commercials. It’s sneaky little tricks like this that work for a while but after a point people catch on. A more solid concept would be to inform your potential customers exactly what they’re getting for what you want them to pay.

If a product is good then it stands alone on its description. If you’re using free trials or mini-membership passes to reel in new members, be up front about the pricing schedule. Don’t bury Terms of Service pages in hard-to-find locations. Don’t let bland, unreadable disclaimer text protect you. Speak frankly and carry a killer commodity.

7. Plugins Are Not Enough

If you believe that you can throw up a couple of gigs of low-grade content, a few cheap plugins and some bargain basement stories and call it a paysite; you’re living in 1996. You don’t have to provide the moon to your paysite members but you should provide content that’s worth the price.

A prevailing paysite mistake is when the operator spends more time on making the tour sell than they spend on making their member’s area deserving of the subscription fee. If you’re going to charge people forty bucks a month, make sure your member area is appropriate to the cost. You can mass manufacture template paysites with the same old shit concealed beneath different tour graphics. Just don’t expect people to pay very much for access to them.

Internet shopping is different than brick and mortar or even catalogue shopping. You will probably never see any of your customers in person or might never hear their voice on the telephone. Nevertheless, you are still a merchant in the public services trade. People find your sites, trust your sales copy and buy from you. Don’t get slack. Don’t be sneaky. Don’t let them down.