The European Marketplace
by BennyB, www.sexmoney.com
In "THE LANGUAGE OF THE WEB IS CHANGING" [Klixxx Magazine, January 2003 - SEE ARCHIVE], I addressed the fact that the majority of American Sponsors and Webmasters are still offering their sites exclusively in the English language, and the International Traffic is usually just dumped on a dialer. Throughout the article, I highlighted the negative consequences, and recommended you use a more effective approach for converting this resource.
In this article, I'd like to take the opportunity to furnish you valuable information regarding the present market situation, and developing Adult Internet Business in Europe. Many of you might ask yourself how the business is handled abroad? What is the preferred content of the respective regions? More importantly, how can you participate in the profits generated by the booming international market?
I will try to answer all the questions on your minds! Lets go back in time, and we will describe how the Adult Online Market developed in Europe over the years. This will furnish you with a better understanding of where the market is today, and perhaps you will find some parallels to the American market of a few years ago.
The market of Adult offerings, supported by telecommunication systems such as phone lines, started in the early nineties with premium rate numbers (900-numbers). TV-spots and print advertising promoted respective audio recordings, and later those recordings were gradually replaced by online call centers. Local phone companies, who kept a certain percentage of the generated revenues, exclusively conducted the billing.
By the mid nineties, the first Internet solutions appeared, and the traffic was almost exclusively directed towards the dialer. Here again, the billing was handled by local phone companies, and throughout the years a lot of fraud was committed by companies dropping hidden dialers on the users' hard disks. Those criminal offences resulted in extensive phone bills for the surfers, and countless lawsuits flooded the courts. With the increasing number of violations, several phone companies were not willing to carry the additional costs of charge-backs anymore, plus the expense of collection agencies and legal bills. It even went so far, that several countries, including Sweden and Finland, prohibited premium rate sex-numbers completely. Due to the declining acceptance of premium numbers, the market adapted, and alternative billing methods such as direct debit, credit card, Web call, wireless billing and prepaid evolved. On the flipside, paysite providers started to focus on the sale of membership packages in order to increase retention, which laid the foundation for recurring billing. This development didn't mean the end of the dialer business. On the contrary, we see that in eastern countries such as Russia, where credit card restrictions hinder business expansion, the dialer is still a very common billing method. Another big factor in the choice preference of surfers is the anonymity provided by the dialer.
As the online population of non-English speaking users on the Web rapidly increases, the European market itself is furnishing huge potential to American Sponsors and webmasters. Some European Adult Programs have already established a strong presence within the European Adult Internet Industry, and are profiting from the booming Adult Internet Market. Big Sponsors are signing more than a thousand new members a day, and they are making between $150.00 and $200.00 in lifetime recurring. The memberships vary between $25.00 and $35.00 a month, and trial memberships start at $3.99. Various upgrade possibilities within a membership, and the purchase of tokens for live shows, are generating additional revenues. Practices such as traffic transfer among Sponsors, and cross selling, are not conducted at all up to this point.
The webmaster market is pretty much equivalent to the American market. However, some Sponsors have even started to establish Webmaster Academies, through which the know-how of sponsors and experienced webmasters is transferred to newbies. This approach proved to be quite successful, since the invited webmaster newbies started to identify themselves with the hosting program, and the aggregation of know-how helped to maximize profits for everybody involved.
Premium SMS (Short-Message-Service) is another rapidly increasing market, through which TV-Spots and URLs are promoting certain premium-numbers, and the customers are stimulated to chat with lonely housewives for example. In this service, the chatting is not conducted via voice, but by sending short messages through a cellular phone to a premium number. The messages are directed to a call center which is responding to the messages received. Users are paying between $0.39 and $3.00 for each dispatched message. There are certain systems by which the user is even charged for the text message that was sent by the call center.
Meanwhile, Pasite providers are featuring content from all over the world. International live cams are providing the possibility to the user, of interacting with Cam Girls on a global level. Trying to answer the question, what content will be the best to offer to the respective regions, is vitally important to know. For instance, American adult celebrities such as Jenna Jameson are pretty much unknown to the European market. In fact, European adult celebrities haven't really used the Internet as a medium to market themselves. However, celebrities within the American music industry are very well known, and also popular in Europe as well. This is due to the fact that the American music industry has a quite dominating impact on the European mainstream music industry. TV-programs such as VIVA and MTV are making sure- on an international level- that European kids are cheering for the same stars as the American kids. But lets put the focus back on European likes and dislikes in respect to adult entertainment. It is extremely important to understand the specific culture of the targeted region.
Europeans, for one thing, like to see and interact with women from their own countries. This becomes especially obvious within niches, such as voyeurs and amateurs. Here the users are interested in seeing a girl from next door, instead of watching somebody from far away. On the other hand, there is a strong tendency to go to the extreme opposite direction. Male Italians for example, have a big thing for blond women. A great number of German and Spanish males love hot-tempered mulatto girls from Brazil. Trying to answer the question of why Japanese males prefer teens in school uniforms, and why South American and Mexican males consider girls with a Spanish background hot and sexy, is a consideration that goes deep into the social structure of the respective culture.
So, how do you go about participating in the European market? How is it possible for you to overcome language barriers and certain billing restrictions? First of all, it is essential to realize that Europe isn't just one single country. Europe consists of 48 countries with different languages and cultural backgrounds. The majority of the citizens form countries such as Sweden and Norway speak pretty good English, and in Italy it is more common to speak French or Spanish as a second language. This shows you how essential it is to sort your International Traffic by IP-detection and browser language. Factors such as language barriers vary among European countries. When you ask yourself, do I need to translate my site into a different language, you should first know what kind of nationalities are hitting your site. Translating your site into a different language is an absolute no-no if you plan to use common translation programs. Use of automated translation programs will result in incorrect translations, and cause major misunderstandings, not to mention destruction of your credibility with the surfer. If you decide to translate your site, use a native speaker who knows the language, and the appropriate slang words. Keeping the focus on Europe, you have to bear in mind that you are dealing with many different languages!
As we all know, there is more to this business than just translating your site into different languages! Take a look at this chart depicting the credit card penetration of several European countries. It is not hard to notice that Europeans prefer methods of payment other than the credit card. In order to conduct successful business on an international level you have to be able to offer different methods of payment. Furthermore, you have to know the specific search engines, webmaster resources, advertising portals, AVSs, TLDs and top-lists. This means you must spend quite some time researching the relevant market. If you have the resources and the country-specific know-how- DO IT!
I personally think you are better off seeking international partnerships with affiliate programs that know the international market, the languages in the regions you are targeting, and who are able to offer local payment methods. The know-how of the maturing American market, combined with the international and cultural know-how of the European affiliates, will lay the ground for profitable business for all, on an international level.
BennyB holds an MBA in marketing, and is the CEO of Cyberservice's affiliate program, SEXMoney.com. For more information on identifying and converting your international traffic, visit SEXMoney.com, or contact Benjamin at: sales@SEXMoney.com.
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