When Reality Strikes
  Written By Raven

Allow me to create a scenario:

You've heard about the adult industry. You're a surfer by night or on your off time. Nowhere else can money be made so fast and so easily than in the adult market. If you know how. At this juncture, you know how to surf the web. You know what you like. You want to join the millions who think website creation is simple and salesmanship is a mere matter of showing nekkid ladies to horny men. It won't take long for you to retire to that island in the Pacific you've dreamed about.

When you're home, you wolf down your pizza or TV dinner and sit at your computer. You're set. Freeware is all over the internet. Download some trial version or demo versions of graphic creation software, HTML editors, etc. Add to that some free hosting and free sponsor pics. There are adult resource boards available. You can literally enter this business without a dime. The computer you're using is your gaming/MP3 machine. You don't have any worries about bandwidth. You're not paying for it. Let the TGP galleries and free sites begin.

In your ideal world, you create your first site and make a sale. Life is good. You create another site and make another sale. Life is improving. Three months later, you've made sales all over the place and you're ready to quit your day job and be a full time webmaster. Your free counter is clicking merrily away and you've told your boss you quit. It's a liberating feeling, the notion that you can make a living, sitting at your computer all day. Get up whenever you want. Stay up all night. Find the MIRC chats. It's party time.

Disaster strikes. Suddenly, your sales dry up. You have no idea why. You've quit your job and the rent is due. There's no food in the house and your woman is screaming bloody murder, if, indeed your woman is still there. With all of the hours you're spending on the computer, she's been gone for a while and you haven't noticed.

What did you do wrong? Where to start, where to start!

Instead of berating your sense of poor, prior planning, let me, instead, give you a list of things to think about before you plunge into an industry you know nothing about.

Don't quit your day job. You will need to stay there until you're established. Expect to work very long hours. Every new business person has to pay their dues. Success is measured in very small steps. Plan on this endeavour taking at least eight months to a year before you can even consider working as a webmaster full time.

Save your pennies. Buy a computer that's suited to be a workstation. The prices of computers have dropped drastically in the past few years. There's a difference between a computer designed for work and one for games.

Put all of your extraneous software on your old system. Games. Music. Anything that has nothing to do with work.

Save more pennies. While you're saving, search for every newbie resource board there is. Read every article. Attend every learning chat. Introduce yourself to everyone you meet that's a part of this business. It's called networking, an integral part of this business. You never know who you will meet that can help you succeed.

Research the software. Learn basic HTML. It's the foundation for site creation.

During your off hours, visit libraries. Learn about sole proprietorship, taxes, incorporation. There are reasons people incorporate. Find out the tax structure of your state. Make sure you understand the federal tax system. You WILL not escape the IRS for long. There are ways to pay Uncle Sam as little as possible and still stay legal; but, if you don't know about 1099's and deductions and business licenses, you'll end up in a world of hurting.

Keep saving your pennies. You're going to need a host. Learn about bandwidth. Remember. You get what you pay for. Your hosting service should be up all the time, not six months out of every year. Not 20 hours a day. If your host is down, that means your site is down. If your site is down, there's no chance of making money.

Buy your own domains. There are very good registries who are inexpensive and very competent. Resource boards are a font of information about hosts and domain services.

Know the law. I cannot stress how important this is. Only take the risks for which you are prepared to pay. If you know nothing about obscenity laws in your community, you could find yourself in jail.

There is no such thing as "public domain" content. Copyright laws ARE in effect and other webmasters WILL sue. There are companies who have employees paid to surf the web, looking for content being used that is not licensed.

Buy your own content. This is not a stab at sponsors who provide free pics for your use. Generally, the market is saturated with them. There are content providers who sell sets of pics and it won't cost you an arm and a leg. Make sure you read the licensing agreement. There are licenses that allow you to use pics anywhere you choose. Others are more restrictive. If you don't read, the license provider has a little clause that says they can take back their pictures. Worse, they can sue. And, often do. Stay legal. Stay on the good side of webmastering. A bad reputation takes no time at all. Building a good reputation as an honourable business person takes time.

Choose the niche/genre/fetish you think you can sell. Usually, that's the one that rocks YOUR boat. There's a good reason I recommend this. It's much easier to sell something, with which you're familiar than to try to sell something you know nothing about. Then, look for a sponsor. Take their tour. Write to them for a temporary user name and password. Look around the member's area. Make sure they are offering what you're going to sell. Read their Terms of Service and Rules. Follow them. There's nothing worse than being terminated by a sponsor. They WILL keep your check. Break the rules. Lose your money.

Search engines offer the best traffic source. Optimize your sites with good meta tags and keyword rich pages. Research the engines and then submit. Get yourself a stats program and check to see which engine has spidered your site. Check often. Keep in mind, engines can now take from one week to a year or more to spider your sites. What you build today is for your future. There is no such thing as immediate gratification. Build every day. My recommendation is to build one, tweak one, build more.

Learn basic marketing and sales. When they bury my poor, tired bones, there will be my final whisper that we are all sales people. That's what we do. We sell. If you don't know who your audience is, you will fail. If you don't learn marketing text, you will fail. Miserably. Research the niches/genres/fetishes out there. Figure out which one you think you can sell and then research some more. Remember the surfer. He's your target. Manipulate him. If he doesn't have a hard cock, he will not click to your sponsor. He will not buy. The internet is not as new as it was. There's a whole group of savvy surfers who understand how the system works. here are generations of surfers coming of age who don't have a clue. Porn, like prostitution, will always be around.

Don't get discouraged. Keep your expectations in line with reality to avoid disaster and you have a real chance of success.