Webmaster Failure Tale!
  Written By Raven

Once upon a time, there was a surfer, who loved looking at naked women. He loved the wide open vaginas, the models posing in a variety of positions. Sexuality, for him, meant hours on the computer, wandering around the Internet, mouse in one hand, his manhood in the other. Life was good.

Our surfer's life was ordinary. He wasn't married, had no girlfriend. His job was one of those dead end positions, for which he had some security of a weekly paycheck, but nothing exciting. Three times a week, he'd have a few beers at the local neighbourhood bar, which was the extent of his social life.

The event which changed the course of his life happened on a Thursday. Nothing prepared our surfer for the conversation he was about to have, in a familiar bar he'd frequented most of his adult life.

There was a stranger in the bar that night, who was with a friend. They were talking about their sites, their adult sites. Intrigued by the conversation, our surfer offered to buy them a beer. Fascinated, he wanted to hear more. The dialogue changed his life forever. They regaled him with their stories, their pimped out cars, parties, and fast women.

It was on this night he decided to enter the world of pornography. After all, why not make scads of money and do what he loved, at the same time.

Here's where the fairy tale ends and I realise now why so many new webmasters fail.

Reality is this.

I don't know one single webmaster who enjoys the tedium that goes along with earning money. I've not yet met anyone who loves putting alt tags on every image. What looks to be simple involves coding in a language which is unforgiving. Building a gallery looks easy and effortless; but, building a money making gallery is not. The traffic pump, which is essential for ongoing revenues, involves time and effort. There isn't much fun in learning how to lay out a free site, choosing the content, learning Meta tags and search engines, finding the link lists whose rules you can follow, who will even deign to list your site. Just the notion of choosing a niche can be overwhelming. Our surfer loved looking at naked women, gymnastically performing feats of sexual prowess. As a looker, his only job was to masturbate. As a webmaster, he has to convince the mirror of himself to buy that which was free.

Suddenly, he has no words. He's not a writer of marketing text, so he has no clue how to entice, spice and tease. He's not a designer, so he looks at his blank page. There are laws and rules to follow, whether they are federal, state, or those of his favourite TGP.

The world, which seemed so safe and carefree, is now fraught with danger. Since all webmasters are sales people, he now has to worry about being pitched by the pitchers. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone wants the surfer to buy. He easily resisted when he was on the looking side of the mirror. Once he crossed over, the details of building an empire became work, not pleasure.

He thought he'd die a happy man, masturbating himself blind. Now, he finds himself going blind from sitting at his computer, day in and day out, hours and hours going by, as he tries to figure out his HTML editor or Photoshop or the script for his link list or top list or TGP.

What kills the new webmaster?

I'm beginning to think that tedious, boring, mind-numbing grunt work may be the ultimate reason for the failure of most newbies. Once the thrill is gone, and it does go, all that's left is work. And, then more work. There is no more time to gaze and drool. The luxury of looking at porn, for the sheer physical pleasure of looking, has been replaced by programs, content, hosting, legalities, tags, submissions, traffic, and all the other anal details involved in site building.

Instead of collecting a weekly pay check, our surfer-turned-pornographer lives as many live. Week to week. Suffering through holidays when no one buys to the dreaded summer slow down, which does exist. Instead of having weekends off, the webmaster works twelve to sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. There is no rest, not until that first sale is made. There's no rest after that, because one sale does not a webmaster make. It's ongoing, forever and ever.

I've heard that 99% of those new to this industry fail. I believe it. How many are willing to put themselves through the isolation of being a webmaster in an increasingly hostile world, having to build for a surfer he cannot see or know?

We talk about the target audience; but, in reality, even with research, it's an educated guess. Mostly, it's reading and searching and researching for that day when it all comes together.

Internet time isn't the same as real time. Patience, while a virtue for others, doesn't seem to exist in the world of webmastering; yet, this is where patience is needed the most. Building the traffic pump takes time and it's not exciting; yet, I hear newbies complaining, that, after two weeks, nothing is happening, so they move on to something else. By the time they quit the industry, they are left with bits and pieces. The network of sites, which is built one piece at a time, is fragmented, broken, disconnected. Just like the business plan of our surfer who thought he could be a pornographer.

He made several major mistakes.

He thought it was easy to be a successful adult webmaster.

He thought money fell from the sky with a single web site.

He didn't make a plan, nor did he follow through.

He lacked the patience to build the foundation.

Our surfer is no longer in the industry. He has fallen into a pit of his own creation, of failed wannabe entrepreneurs, piled amongst the others who wore rose coloured glasses. The dreams of fast cars and faster women have faded into the distance and he's back at his dead end day job, scratching out a living, leading his ordinary life, disillusioned and thinking there isn't any money to be made in porn.

How wrong he is. There is money. For those with a solid business plan, follow through, hard work, there is money!