CROSSOVER :: Anatomy of a Paysite
by CJ, Purve.com & CelebrityBling.com
WHAT IS CONTENT?
I'm guessing that over half of you have answered this question with "Pictures and Movies" ... this section is designed to expand your creativity, and assist you in developing a unique ENTERTAINMENT EXPERIENCE for your surfer while ensuring the most potential revenue dollars for you.
Loosely defined, content is any entertaining material which keeps a reader/viewer occupied for a certain period of time - more specifically defined to our industry, the content is delivered in an online environment.
Television content consists of sitcoms, news, drama series, movies, advertisements, advertorial, and more. Radio content consists of songs, DJ introductions of songs and 'snippets' about the singers, interviews with bands, talk shows, special feature shows such as 'the morning show,' and countdown shows like Top 40. Magazine content consists of articles, interviews with celebs, advertisements disguised as fashion, make-up and hairstyle tips, competitions, readers' stories, readers' letters, horoscopes and several pages dedicated to celeb photospreads.
It is possible to produce a version of EVERY kind of content I mentioned above in our online medium. Standard content can be presented in non-standard ways, and vice versa - the more creatively you present content, the more unique your site will appear to your members.
Photo galleries or Photo 'Essays'
If you arrange a gallery in order of action (ie, stripping, licking, fucking), extract the 10 best pics and display these on an html page with a title and a paragraph telling a brief story about the shoot... If you *tell* someone the theme of the story or how to interpret the photos, you are personalizing the pics to your site - this sets you apart from the 100's of other sites using the same pics.
Movie clips * Ratings * Reviews
Instead of simply listing movies down the page, write a few sentences to go with each to give meaning to the movie. Often, adult movie clips are poorly edited, and let's face it - most content that is produced in mass quantities is crap...but there is nothing wrong with saying so! We purchased some SobeGirl content once, when it was really cheap. We made a feature called, "The crappiest attempt at porn we've ever purchased" - the members were amused instead of disappointed.
Top 10/25/50/100 Whatevers...
Another creative way to present *any* type of content, from movies to stories, from pics to media events is with a 'Best Of' feature. For example: "The Top 10 Ways To Masturbate To Porn," "Readers Choice - Top 25 Bikini Butts," "The Top 100 Names For Penis/Vagina," "10 Best Cumshots," "Top 25 Sex Positions," and on and on...read any print magazine and you will see a wide range of examples.
Articles * Editorial * Education
This is only for those who could be bothered...writing editorial comes naturally to some, so why not utilize that skill and write about your own personal knowledge about sex in an article, editorial, tutorial, or news item - it doesn't have to be long or complicated, and it can even follow the Top 10 theme above, making it easy to write short, punchy paragraphs.
Random Facts and Jokes
For one of our celebrity model websites we developed a series of cute pink graphics featuring 'snippets' of information about the model with matching icons - for example, "Favorite Iced Cream: Mint Choc-Chip" with an iced cream cone wingding. We randomly rotate about 50 of these using a script, providing a regularly updated content feature to fill spaces throughout the member area. The same principal can be applied in a more simple way, with a database of text snippets or jokes - you can even let your members send in jokes so it saves you researching time!
Readers Feedback and Submissions
This is something the magazine industry has perfected, but Adult Webmasters seem to have missed overall - your members write the most valuable content of all - REALITY CONTENT! Whenever you allow a subscriber to give feedback, they will, but be prepared that it is not often those with positive comments who bother to contact you. Every now and again however, depending on your member volume, you will receive a really detailed e-mail talking about the person's sex life or something personal. In your terms and conditions, add a clause which states, "All correspondence may be published within a future issue of our site" - publish the content in a Readers' Submissions section of your members' area and sign it simply 'sent in via email.'
Presentation Is More Important Than Quantity...
While building and evolving the members' area of our celebrity site, we have learned a lot from the feedback of our members. It doesn't matter how many thousands of photos we put in there if they aren't captioned ........ we consistently get complaints about pics that aren't captioned! If you don't TELL the viewer what to think, they don't understand why they are bothering to view the photo! I have a new rule when dealing with our celebrity members' areas - 10 images accompied by a paragraph of text satisfies members more than a giant gallery full of random pics.
It's easy to publish to the Internet compared with the other mediums, so there will always be an abundance of rubbish...which is why it's important for you to present a higher standard and overall *appearance* of quality, especially if you are charging money for your material.
DELIVERY METHODS
We've covered the definition of content, and the diverse delivery mediums such as TV, Radio, Magazines and the Internet. The best thing about the Internet is its ability to deliver a range of interactive, user-controlled multimedia content in a single browser...so why are we still building generic templated adult sites with dull galleries and trashy movies that would never even make it to 4am cable TV or a below-average DVD?
Depending on the type of content you have developed for your members' area, you may have a range of delivery methods open to you other than the formula we've used for so long - subscription paysites. There are two areas here which define the perceived value (it's all that counts!) of your content to your potential subscriber - 1) How you present the subscription purchase, and 2) How you deliver your content.
Presenting the Purchase
A 'membership' can also be called a 'subscription,' or a 'pay-to-view' ... the terminology of what you are selling them defines what they are expecting inside. Your wording should match the price, and you should SELL your price as if it's a positive, not a negative - so a '6 month subscription for $39.95 - THAT'S A 50% DISCOUNT!' or '6 month subscription - prepay two months and get four free!' sounds better than '6 months - $39.95.' It may sound obvious, but how many of you do this?
We changed the wording of our six month membership option on our celebrity sites to the second example above, and these 'subscriptions' now account for 5% of overall purchases - that means $39.95 up front, almost $20 instantly to webmasters, plus the potential of future re-bills.
Delivering Content
We recently ran an experiment with ten of our exclusive Purve erotic stories repackaged into an E-book creatively entitled, "Purve Erotic Collection - Volume 1" charging $6.95 per download of the E-book. So far, the advertisement for a single e-book has converted better than the subscription paysite.
Not only have E-books become an additional revenue stream for Purve, they also give us additional 'products' to offer our subscription customers to increase their 'perceived' value of the membership. "Download and Keep your free copy of the Purve Erotic Collection - Volume 1, with every membership!"
NICHES and CONVERSIONS
What are Niches?
I work mostly with a handful of closely related niches, such as sites for women, gay sites and licensed paparazzi celebrity sites. While we consider all of these areas to be niches within the adult industry, I consider them to be markets bigger than the adult industry...you could say 'adult' is a niche of the celebrity business, 'adult' is a niche of marketing to women, and 'adult' is a niche of the gay market.
I prefer to think bigger than the adult industry because there are more customers if you work this way...I've chosen three target markets - straight women, gay men, and readers of tabloid magazines/fans of celebs. For each of those target markets, I've chosen the adult 'niche.'
When I market to women, I market to the following niches: adult entertainment, shirtless hunks, naughty products, sexual stimulants, e-cards, etc.
When I market to gay men, I market adult entertainment, shirtless hunks, naughty products, sexual stimulants, e-cards, etc.
When marketing celebrity products, we are marketing public flashing, nipple slips, paparazzi pics, Hollywood hunks and hotties, DVD sales, astrology, gossip and news.
How do I make the most of Niche Marketing?
Look at the products you currently have in your collection. Include every single site you have in two categories 'for webmasters' and 'for surfers.' Include links such as link list submission pages for webmasters, or sponsor products for surfers.
Write your list in two columns, and start to draw lines between the products that are relevant to each other. You'll notice seven degrees of separation eventually - every niche relates closely to another!
Instead of trying to cover every niche and doing a poor job, pick the ones you do best and advertise your own products in the most relevant locations. If you have already done the work to get traffic that is looking for a certain thing, why not keep sending them to different versions of that same thing until you make the sale?
A site converts because the surfer has been sent to a site containing material which they are looking for, or because you have convinced them it's what they are looking for.
CJ started in the industry in '98, launching Purve.com, the first adult subscription site for women, over 6 years ago. Since then CJ launched and managed the affiliate program SexHit for 2 years, and has since used her affiliate management skills to crossover into promoting many products ... from Casino's to Paysites, Bra's to Vitamins. Most recently CJ launched CelebrityBling.com and a network of celebrity paysites designed to bridge the gap between adult and mainstream.
|
Printer
Friendly Version