How Much is Enough? by Titmowse, CozyAcademy.com
By Titmowse
 There's
a famous fast-food chain with a simple, effective slogan: Find one
thing and do it right.
They appealed to our desire for their tasty food by pointing out the
weaknesses in offering too many menu choices. They told us their chicken
was best because chicken was their only dish. They stressed how quality
decreases in relation to quantity. The more you offer, the less time
you have to perfect each product. It's a brilliant marketing campaign,
because it degrades other fast-food companies while elevating this
particular chicken shack beyond the level of common take-out meals.
Of course they did sell other things, such as side dishes and desserts,
and their chicken came in many incarnations. There are very few businesses
that can stay solvent by selling only one product item. The small
brick-and-mortar merchant is always concerned with the size and variety
of their offerings and inventory. If they stock too much, then they
may lose money on unsold units. If they don't stock enough, they lose
customers to other merchants who carry ample amounts. If something
new and popular comes along, they weigh the profitability with the
wholesale costs and purchase only as many as they believe they can
sell. In contrast, the huge mega-mart carries so many products even
the sales clerks are unfamiliar with the merchandise. At the same
time, the mega-mart features discount prices and selection than no
mom and pop store could ever offer. The mega-mart can do this because
they buy in such large quantities, and have so many stores; their
overhead becomes ridiculously low. How much you stock depends on how
much you will sell.
When the adult webmaster asks how much content they need for their
site, it's pretty hard to get a direct answer. There's a reason for
that. The fact is there are so many factors to consider when deliberating
over content quantity.
The type of adult Web site you open is the most important factor in
the whole equation. Naturally the mega-site is going to house more
content than would the small specialty site. The paysite requires
more products than would the free site. It doesn't stop there. You
also need to understand the desires of your target market. Will they
be happy with mostly static images and some hot and heavy videos?
Will they want more variety, and demand games, chat and newsletters?
Have you attracted customers who want a hard-to-find type of content?
Will you be able to find enough of that niche to satisfy and retain
your members? Or, will you disappoint them by giving them a small
sampling within the niche and a lot of nothing they want? Some adult
niches aren't big enough to find proper content. Will your members
be happy with additional content in similar niches? If you're building
a kitchen sink mega-site, the question of enough is even harder. Where
do you stop? How many gigs do you need? How many can you afford? Each
downloaded image, clip or story costs you transfer fees on top of
storage. How fast can a member burn all your bandwidth? Does your
page appeal to modem users or broadband lovers? Factors. Factors.
Factors.
If you're opening a big deal fancy schmantzy adult paysite, then you
probably need gigs and gigs and gigs of content. If you're going for
the mega-mart masses then you'll most likely fill your Web with a
little bit of everything along with plug-ins. As long as you stick
to broad-appeal categories such as softcore/hardcore, gay/straight,
BDSM/fetish, boobs/butts or teen, you're pretty safe mixing it up
with some off-site content. Plug-ins will help you lower costs all
around. If you want to open an adult Internet version of a department
store, then be prepared to spend a lot of money. Some will tell you
to start out with no less than fifty gigabytes of ready content. Others
would say fifty gigs is pretty weak.
There are some who will tell you they do just fine with less content,
because they offer higher-quality, rare or exclusive adult imagery
and entertainment. They'll bring up the subject of updates and paying
extra for exclusive content. They explain how they fill their pages
with just enough stuff to entertain a member for a month and then
give them new stuff for the next. They'll study page visits and file
requests in order to sift out what's working and what's not. They
only use pre-built/plug-in content, if it's particularly relative
to the theme. They'll archive or flush out old or unproductive content
and replace it with newer, better product regularly. They'll look
for ways to make more money from existing members by offering them
tangible goods, such as adult toys and packaged movies. They'll reveal
that a site with less content can be successful, but it requires more
work to run one successfully.
One gig is too much for the average free site, but you never know.
Some free sites are massive and some paysites are almost Zen, with
their content count. Size matters, but not always. Variety and selection
are good, but if you can do one thing right, perhaps that's what you
should do. No amount of content is enough if it isn't done right.
Titmowse is part of the awesome team behind the CozyFrog.com family of sites. She is Head Writer for Cozy Academy - and the professor in the "Ask the Professor" series which is published every 2 weeks @ Cozy Academy and is also showcased here at Klixxx.com!
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