general comments / questions from a newb

[nub]

To answer your question. Starting a paysite is not as easy nowadays as it used to be. Some "non nude models" won´t make it, I´m afraid. First thing is that you have to convince them doing porn, not an easy part.

Reading is one thing, doing it another. If I were you, I would try something traffic building before launching a paysite.

A nice thing to learn about paysites is building one with deluxepass or another one like them. there you can try out what will work without high costs.

great points frankthetank.

we are going with 2 models to start. they were comfortable going the full nude route, so convincing them that taking a step back and doing non-nude will work for them (i personally wouldnt use them for non-nude if i didnt think they had the talent to pull it off)

my programmer is currently playing with the building traffic model to see if we can stand on our own 2 feet. (not falling over yet)

as far as going with deluxepass or adultcheck... how different is the business model than doing it on your own?
any advice on the subject would be aweseome.

we have no 'real' timeframe as far as when we need to see money coming in. were piggybacking on our already existing hosting costs (we host our own sites), and until the traffic dictates we need to move to a dedicated server, etc.. we wont allow the additional expense. the programming and design work is all on our own time. the only 'cost' i forsee coming up is the setup of our pay accounts, and paying the models to shoot (which we are doing ourselves as well)

we trying to build this thing slowly so we dont burn out our time and pocketbooks.
were going to try and roll this thing out so it pays for itself as it goes, if we make profit on it in the first 6 months to a year? kool.. if not.. fine, as long as we dont lose more than the time spent on it.

[nub]

Hi nub
You may come to find .htaccess useful in the near future, therefore I'd forget using NT hosting. Apache is the way to go. Just thought I'd mention that before you get too far down the line.

great advice, and with all the reading ive been doing on places like fusker and the like stealing content, its becoming more apparent that protecting your content is more difficult than ever.

one thing thats getting to me though.. even if youre allowing certain domains the referrer on your content, what happens to the malicous affiliates who then resend your content out. to quote lil jimmy norton - 'it stinks and i dont like it'

theres a few more security issues that need to be looked into, but were learning as we go. the gallery software will be beta on monday and we'll start our testing then.

[frankthetank]

Originally Posted by nub

great points frankthetank.

as far as going with deluxepass or adultcheck... how different is the business model than doing it on your own?
any advice on the subject would be aweseome.

Deluxepass offers hosting, billing and content. They offer an affiliate program, too. So you can build a site, let a designer make the site, tours and galleries. You don´t have to worry about the content, though you can put own content on your website as well.

I started with a webcam community in Europe, totally different from the US market. For example: an average of 32 user per day generates about 1200 € per month. This is of course not what the webmaster earns.

So I built a deluxepass site and I´m watching it for a while, learning about US market. First thing I learned was that you need a much higher amount of visitors to generate even one sale.

Models are important, of course. But first you have to decide which content you want to produce. For example it is not the same thing to get a model into b/g scene as into a watersports one.

If you want to build a site around one single model, the girl must have something special. But there you are in danger that the model will quit her job, so you have to have enough content to update your site for some time.

The big boys offer a great variety of niches, so your paysite must be different from the mainstream sites unless you are able to offer diversification, too.

So I think playing around with a little site isn´t the worst idea befoore you are building a big own paysite.

http://webmasters.pornaccess.com/

http://www.deluxepass.com/webmasters/index.php

http://www.adultbouncer.com/webmasters.php