Lesson #09 Adult Webmaster Terminology
Written By Titmowse

Computers have changed the language of the world. Twenty years ago, if you had said the phrase: "dot com", the closest interpretation would be to communicate with dots.

Now we have all kinds of phrases being thrown about by geeks and the quasi-geeks. Some of them have vague associations with existing words, which only confuses the newbie even more.

To add to the confusion are the assorted computer uses and buzz words involving them. Programmers speak in codes; graphics lovers speak in pixels and masks an Internet types use netspeak.

Adult webmasters have their own secret language and you don't need a decoder ring to understand it. You just need to listen and ask and read this lesson.

It's intimidating enough to ask for help in an adult webmaster chat of bulletin board, but if you don't even know what a bulletin board is, how can you ask questions in one? A bulletin board is a type of conversation and discussion forum for the Internet. You go to the host site of the bulletin board or "BBS" (Bulletin Board System) and you can view different messages and discussions of other adult web professionals. Most of them require that you join the BBS to responds to the messages or ask questions, which is called "POSTING".

You will see (if you read around a BBS) questions and terms posted such as "REBILLS", "CHARGEBACKS", "PLUG INS" and "5:1000 RATIO". What does it signify? Are these bastards deliberately keeping their secrets hidden behind cliquish gibberish?

No. Your fellow adult Internet professionals are just talking shop. Their shoptalk just happens to involve a new and evolving world. If you don't understand that argument about this "SPONSOR SHAVING HITS" or that webmaster "HOTLINKING PICS", you will after a little time.

"NICHE" AND "CACHE" may be synonyms in the regular English language, but in adult cyberspeak, they are almost antonyms. A 21 year old model is definitely of legal age, so why is she considered "TEEN"? A woman may be a grandmother, but unless she's over 60, she's not considered a "GRANNY" model.

A small definition list will help you get started learning the special language of the species adult webmaster:

REBILL
A rebill happens after you have gotten one of your surfers to sign up and pay for a membership at either your paysite or that of a sponsor. The first time your customer pays, their credit card is billed. Each time they pay for an additional month of porn access, their card is rebilled. Rebills are good because most sponsors will pay you a percentage of those rebill in addition to paying your initial sign up commission.

CHARGEBACK
A chargeback is what happens when your customer changes their mind or decides they don't like your product and tells their credit card company they will not pay the fee your sponsor or paysite charges. Chargebacks are bad for everyone concerned because do you not only lose income for the sale, penalties are applied and sometimes they are applied to you.

PLUG-IN
A plug in is a ready-made type of web "CONTENT". Content is the stuff of your site, whether it be dirty pictures or nasty fun games. Plug-In content is pre-manufactured and ready to add to your page with a few HTML links. Many plug-in providers will even host the content on their servers and allow you to change colors and add a logo graphic, so the plug-in matches your site.

5:1000 RATIO
A ratio like this refers to banners clicks and actual sales produced from them. When a webmaster says they got a 50:1000 ratio, they mean that out of 1000 people who clicked on his sponsor banner, fifty surfers paid for memberships. Fifty out one thousand is a pretty high sales ratio. Unfortunately a ratio of two sales out of one thousand is a more realistic norm.

SHAVING HITS
A hit is a visit to your website. A unique hit is when a surfer downloads your page for the very first time. When you place a specially coded ID banner link on your porn page and your visitor moves their cursor to it and presses their button, your banner has just gotten a click. Sponsors pay a webmaster for click impressions. Some webmasters will accuse their sponsor of concealing or eliminating amounts of these clicks from their records in various nefarious ways. They refer to this concealment as shaving hits.

HOTLINKING PICS
Well, pics are an abbreviation of the word pictures, duh. Hotlinking occurs when one webmaster will add pictures to their page by coding in the URL of another webmaster's site where the pictures actually reside. This is as bad as horse theft in the frontiers of Internet porn.

The above terms and phrases are just a selection of the new and fabulous smutty geekspeak you too can learn in no time! Actually, the Internet is full of glossaries and compendiums of techno-computational terms.

For learning the lingo in the adult Internet trade a wonderful place to visit is Cozy Frog's Industry Ebonics page at:

http://www.cozyfrog.com/guides/ebonics/index.asp

To get a little more programming-oriented clarification of computer workings and all that is geek, go to WhatIs. Located at: http://whatis.techtarget.com, they have every computer/Internet term defined in a very good database.