Have an Adult Site.. and I need Help.. Let's make some $$$ together

hotbodybattles · 2012-07-25, 08:05 PM

Hey fellow webmasters,

A year and 3 months ago I started a few websites. Listed at bottom.

I've grown them to this point alone, and written all the code myself, with the exception of a few things I had done by freelancers.

Each site now gets around 5000-9000 unique hits a month. I have over 1000 members (signing up with no incentive other than gallery's and to play the game). I have an iphone and an android app built up, I have an established facebook page, and have confirmed with 19 different photography studios that I can not only use their images, but do entire sites with just their photos, and then do a site where each studio competes against eachother. Lots of potential in these sites (i think).

I think the sites are fun, but could be so much more.

Here's my problem. I want to focus on developing new features for the site, and adding content, plus managing the business.

I have no experience in monetizing an adult site and dont really have time to learn all those ropes on my own. I am too busy already just managing what is currently going on.

I want to bring in an experienced webmaster that has experience in Joomla, that has made sites make money through monetization, marketting to the user base, etc.. etc.. And I want them to come in, and take a share of any profits from their efforts on a commission basis. If you produce, you get $$$.. If you dont... you dont. I am doing this entire site on the side right now and supporting it as best I can alone, with a fully family to feed. I have no money to pay someone so it has to be commission based.

If you look over my site, and think you can do something with it, write me. Let's talk, get to know eachother and talk about %'s and all that jazz.

I'm an LLC, but this would be freelance work, so no W9's or anything like that.

Send me an email with the following:
List of sites you worked on, and what you did for them.
List the different types of monetization you have experience with and what ones you feel most comfortable with.

Then let's take it from there

Thanks

here's the site list

www.HotBodyBattles.com - main site (non-nude hot girls, multiple categories)
www.AssBattles.com - ASS
www.TittyBattles.com - TITS
www.MuffBattles.com - Pussy
www.StudBattles.com - non nude hot guys

Then i have over 50 more domain names that i'd be able to capitalize on and build sites with if i started to actually make money with this stuff.

Bill · 2012-07-25, 09:02 PM

Not bad work, for a beginner.

These are tough days man, you may have a hard time finding a taker.

There has been such a huge change in traffic patterns and conversions and monetization - things are crazy.

hotbodybattles · 2012-07-25, 09:06 PM

Thanks Bill..

Well.. I figured I would never find a taker if I didn't post it up there and see what happens...

Just looking for someone that knows more about squeezing some money out of site with visitors than I do.. Doesn't even have to be through porn affiliates either... i'm open to anything..

But thanks for the compliments man... I did the whole site in Joomla just because it made everything easier.. not the fastest platform by any means.. but it got the job done in a short amount of time..

Bill · 2012-07-25, 10:20 PM

I like joomla, functional, good theme selection.

I'm much more comfortable in drupal, in the sense that I've worked with it a lot, but joomla makes a lot of sense for a midlevel traffic community site.

You've got two problems - monetization, and traffic. Your current monetization model - that stack of banners at the bottom, on the site I looked at - is way too passive.

I'm not all that good at the whole non-nude, babe, tits and ass genres, because I personally wouldn't buy that kind of thing.

What do you figure your strengths are? Other than made sites - keeping in mind anyone here could make the same thing just by taking one look at yours - what do you figure you are bringing to the table?

hotbodybattles · 2012-07-25, 10:41 PM

All great questions..

I've just put the banners at the bottom of the page because i needed those banners there so that I could use the pictures from those photography studios. I have no expectations of those banners making any money at all. That's for sure..

I think the strengths in the sites is the competition factor i've built up with the users. If you noticed the leaderboards at the bottom of the site, i've made it possible for members of the site to record their votes and i put their names "in lights" so they feel a sense of attachment to the site. Some day i'd like to have the ability to give away prizes to the winners.

I've also added a blog and have it constantly importing pictures from all over the net. It's really a wealth of beautiful pictures of amateur and professional photography all hand picked. I've literally hand picked every image on the battles.

Another strong piece that I offer is the iphone and android apps. They wont let me on the markets, but they're there for download on the site, and at other markets too. They're tons of fun to play, and have a drinking game mode so you can play it in a group of friends.

Another piece is that i've built the site and scripts such that I can replicate the site in a matter of a couple hours and create a whole new site with entirely new content unto which the current users have instant access.

I've also (as stated in the first post) worked out deals with the 19 photography studios where they'll let me do entire sites just for their photography which could be very interesting in itself. Then later i'll be doing a site where the various photography studios battle eachother.

I also have the ability to franchise these sites out, and allow other webmasters to run them entirely on their own. For instance, let's say someone is really into the drunk party girl scene and they'd love to do a photo battle site for that. I can, like i said, replicate from a template in under an hour and have a new site up and running and ready for action.

Other than that.. i'm just trying my best to do something fun with this on the side (i have a normal 9-5 as a QA engineer and a family to attend to as well). It's cost me a good chunk of change to start it up but not bad, and about 150/mo hosting fees to keep it going.. but I've learned a hell of a lot about building websites, creating a following, hosting, server side management, mysql, and all the other things that go into this so i see all of that money as being spent on an education.

The piece i really need help with is the next steps. How do i make the site "Valuable" enough to charge money... or how do I better the site and "bring more to the table". Make a community where users interact with eachother, etc.. etc.. etc.. There's so many ideas bouncing around in my head that I'd love to do... but i just dont have the time.

All reasons why i'm asking for someone to help. I've got it all started... i've started the engine... it's running.. now let's drive it somewhere..

:-)

Bill · 2012-07-25, 11:42 PM

1
the apps are an angle that catches my attention, and I'm sure the attention of the other experienced webmasters who might end up reading this.

private porn apps, sold off porn sites. might be a miserable failure, but might work. much would depend on the cost of app development.

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2
You know, you could pay a lot less for hosting, considering your traffic levels. I mean, maybe like massively less. I cant see you needing that much server for those sites, unless there is some server intensive stuff there that I missed.

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3
You need to work out the hard details of the deal you offer a bit more. How is the accounting to be done? How are the powers and responsibilities distributed - by that I mean, what does the new webmaster have to do, and what are they empowered to do?

so, basically something like a job description and a more detailed income accounting and sharing plan.

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4
something else you do have to offer are links from those sites - because they evolved mostly independently from the existing adult site networks, you could argue that you can offer comparitively high value link and traffic exchanges.

do you know where your traffic comes from?

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5
You are not likely to be able to make sites with that type of content into paysites (recurring payment membership sites). Most peole would advise you to focus on traffic and advertising. But, adult advertising roi has never been worse than it is today.

Still, if I was doing something with it, the first thing I would try is advertising more effectively. sort out low performers, bring the advertising up into the surfers field of view a lot more, push the sell.

hotbodybattles · 2012-07-26, 08:46 AM

Bill

thank you soooooooooo much for your inputs here.. this is PRICELESS info for me right now. I agree with everything you said and i'm going to do some real deep thinking about it.

I guess to be honest... right now i'm pretty overwhelmed with it, and tired and feel like i'm just not experienced enough in this arena to take it forward in the right direction so i need someone with experience in this stuff to show me the way. That's really what i'm hoping for.

I feel like i've made a fun site.. now the part i need help with is taking all the pieces, analyzing the traffic, and trying to make it at least pay for itself so i can keep it going and not have to shut it down.

To answer some of your questions above.

2. I started out on a shared hosting provider and the site was miserably slow. So slow that it was a total turn off. Come to find out, the site is very database intensive because of all the queries it runs to determine the next set of pictures to battle, etc.. Because of that i had to upgrade to a dedicated server. I tried hard to keep it on a shared plan... but it was just too much.

3. I totally agree. A better job description is needed, and a better description of how the income created will be distributed is needed as well. good point. I figured I would be able to discuss that with potential interested parties after they contacted me, but it sounds like i have to present that data to them first to get them interested.

4. My top two traffic generators are tblop.com and google.com... with facebook just behind that.

5. I agree with you about the adult advertising roi never being worse than it is today (not that i have any experience with what it was in the past) but it's pretty bad. That's why i'm really thinking that CPM or just selling advertising link space on the site is the best way to go at this point. I found a bunch of ad networks out there that will sell off your advertising space on your site, and even do it for CPM... but it's piddly money, i'd need a LOT more traffic to get any kind of income that would pay for the site's existence, nevermind actually turn a profit.

Greenguy · 2012-07-26, 08:57 AM

Bill seems to have you going in the right direction, but I did want to mention that, while I do surf at a very wide screen res (1920x1080), your backgrounds don't cover the entire page for me

http://buttonserver.com/HotBodyBattles.png

hotbodybattles · 2012-07-26, 09:08 AM

OH!.. thanks Greenie! I recently threw that background in there because i didn't like the old one... I'm going to have to find a much bigger background image... or resize that one. Thanks!

Bill · 2012-07-26, 07:55 PM

yeah, but was it a shared account on a server tuned for the adult business?

civilian shared servers suck, and its the oldest server company trick in the book to tell you you need a dedicated when in fact you probably dont. i cant be sure, because I dont know what load you are putting on the server, but, saving on your server costs is one quick way to reduce the load on your life.

tell me about your server comoany.

what about these other names you bought? 50 names is enough of a yearly bite to sting, unles they are producing an income. what are those names like?

listen man we all understand about how making websites can become a drag, especially when they are not producing an acceptable cash flow. we have all been there.

I'm pretty much suggesting to you that there might be ways for you to reduce your costs and burden, giving you more time to figure out what to do next.

you can try looking for a webmaster to help you - and 5 years ago you might have found somebody - but the truth is we are all suffering, the adult biz aint what it used to be, and the types of webmasters who might be interested in such a deal are now much much rarer.

you are more likely to attract some asshole who tries to take advantage of you. maybe not even meaning to - just somebody without the skills you need, who ends up causing more trouble than they are worth.

hotbodybattles · 2012-07-26, 09:08 PM

Bill.. I seriously have to thank you for your honesty... and straight shooting... I really need this from someone that's really out in the business workin the streets..

So my hosting company is icertified.net. I started hosting with them on a shared plan because they looked legit and would take on porn. After the site got going, it got really slowwwwwwwwwww and i started getting messages from them telling me i was overusing the shared plan and should go to dedicated. The mysql process was really using a lot of memory apparently and pretty cpu intensive as well. Joomla is entirely driven off mysql and with the plugin i've created for the photobattles, I cant say that it was of any surprise to me that they said i needed to go to dedicated.

Here's the current specs of my dedicated server
Processors
Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual CPU E2180 @ 2.00GHz
Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual CPU E2180 @ 2.00GHz
Memory - 4GB
HD - 250GB

Usage Stats:

Bandwidth - 10G - i'm only using 1%
System information
Server load 2.23 (2 CPUs)
Memory Used 25.4% (993,304 of 3,911,116)
Swap Used 3.85% (236,484 of 6,143,992)

Then again.. i'm new to this stuff.. and well... maybe they did take me for a ride. Do you know anything about them? is there another hosting place i should look into that might be able to support the weight of my site on a shared plan? Is there a metric i can run on the server to measure the load the site puts on the server?

You're right.. $150/mo is a lot right now... it's coming out of my own pocket (family's pocket) and hell.. i could buy a new commuter car with the money.. so if there's a way, i certainly will move my site elsewhere. With joomla i can back it up in a blink and move it to a new server no problem as long as the php, and perl versions are the same.

I totally agree that the first step is to reduce my costs down as much as possible. First step is hosting for sure.. If you have any suggestions for a better shared plan platform .. i'm all ears..

The 50 domains I may not renew.. but i wanted to snag them because I thought i was going to do something with them. Here's the list.

allnudebattles.com
amateurbattles.com
analbattles.com
anonymouswatchdog.com
asianbattles.com
assbattles.com
blondebattles.com
bloweybattles.com
blowmebattles.com
blowybattles.com
brunettebattles.com
bukakebattles.com
celebbattles.com
cockbattles.com
coedbattles.com
cumshotbattles.com
desibattles.com
dildobattles.com
drunkgirlbattles.com
ebonybattles.com
exgfbattles.com
exwifebattles.com
fetishbattles.com
fuckingbattles.com
gfbattles.com
hotbodybattles.com
hotcampusbattles.com
hotcollegebattles.com
hotgirlbattles.com
hotteenbattles.com
hottybattles.com
hotwomanbattles.com
latinabattles.com
masalabattles.com
milfbattles.com
muffbattle.com
muffbattles.com
nipplebattles.com
nudebattles.com
partygirlbattles.com
pornbattles.com
quickercam.com
redheadbattles.com
squirtbattles.com
squirtingbattles.com
stripclubbattles.com
stripperbattles.com
studbattles.com
titbattles.com
tittybattles.com
wifebattles.com
xxxbattles.com

Bill · 2012-07-27, 06:12 PM

you should plan on letting most of those names expire. If you wnat to re-develop the battles concept it will be easy enough to buy new names for it, as needed.

maybe keep a few faves.

never heard of icertified - not a good sign - probbly a reseller - but there are tons of civilian hosts.

I'm a little hesitant to point you to a good adult host, because the chances that you will just give up soon are fairly high, and I don't want to ask a host to take on a short term customer.

But there are adult hosts that advertise here.

Thing is - you gotta ask yourself this question - is it better to give your visitors a slightly less fast experience, or to shut down entirely?

maybe you can use cacheing or some other approach to reduce the number of calls to the database?

I'd be looking for an account that costs you like - 30 a month maybe? You do not have massive traffic by adult standards.

(Actually, I personally might try another approach altogether. I do some mainstream sites for customers on civilian servers - some of these are fairly database intensive - but with drupals agressive cacheing i can get them to run just fine on accounts at $99 a year.)

So, you implied you are making some money off these - what's your current monetization model?

hotbodybattles · 2012-07-27, 11:10 PM

I think you're right... I really want this to work, and can afford to keep it up at a lower cost and still work on it.. I actually really enjoy doing it, so I'm working hard toward sticking around. But i do admit that the 150/mo is high for what i should need. I think my course of action is this.

Hire someone on freelancer.com to rewrite the photobattles plugin for me to to take advantage of caching techniques.. That will allow my site to be really fast, on less horsepower. Then...

Switch hosting providers onto a shared system.

This path would present a transparent effect to the user.

Next, on this lower $$ server... I can keep the site alive, and I will keep it online, and I will have more fun with it and not give a shit if it doesn't pay me a dime. At that rate, i dont care if it makes money... It's just fun to do.

That's what i'm going to do... Thanks to your insight and tutelage... that's my plan.

If you would be so kind to give me some names of some good hosts that would give me good performance and a decent price on a shared plan, i'd really appreciate it. My parents also own a business that's been around a LONG time, and I host their business and my sister's business websites. So even if hotbodybattles doesn't make it... I'll have my businesses website on it, their businesses website on it, and then whatever the next project i work on's website. The account surely wont be temporary.

I want a host that I can trust to be treating me right..

Thanks Bill... thanks a lot man...
really mean it..

hotbodybattles · 2012-07-28, 09:52 AM

what do you guys think of

vps.net
and aws.amazon.com

both cloud computing/hosting platforms... much cheaper than this 150 dollar dedicated server i'm on. I've looked at my disc usage and it's upwards of 60GB.. So i would need to get at least that much, probably 100GB of disc available. But the beauty of cloud hosting like this is I can increase that by pushing a button and paying a little more.

I'm seriously considering those as potential places to move to.

thoughts?

Bill · 2012-07-31, 07:15 PM

I've never used a cloud host for anything adult, and cant say I know anybody else who has.

on a mainstream project last year the use on a shared account was too high for a while and they were pushing me to buy cloud hosting. the concept seemed fine, but I solved the problem with caching instead. I like cacheing.

as I recall, cloud hosting would have been about $30 a month.

---

after having been on 8-9 different hosts over the years, I can now only laud one, and that is colo-cation. it's a moderately specialized hosting company, the control panel does not have all teh bells and whistles one gets from civilian hosting, but Chris is a fucking genius, the best I have ever known.

but, nobody knows you man - so I can't say to Chris, "take care of this guy, he's cool".

hotbodybattles · 2012-08-01, 08:41 PM

Bill.. thanks for the advice. Yea... I know no one knows me... I"ve been so buried in getting this site to a point where it's actually viable that i haven't had a chance to get on the boards and make my presence felt.. if ya know what i mean..

I totally understand.. What i'm going to try to do i think is reprogram the site to do less mysql queries... and do as much caching as possible. After that... i'm going to see where i'm at. I'm on freelancer now with a project to redesign the photobattle component to be less resource exhaustive. getting bids in that are around 200. I might throw the money at it and see what the improvements are. Then i can maybe have my current host just downgrade me to a VPS. They're onboard with the downgrade but are just telling me now that the site is just too much for any VPS at this time. I have to say, icertified has been good to me. They have support that is literally 24/7 and if i ever have a problem it's fixed within 5 minutes of opening a ticket. It's really kind of ridiculous..

but anyways.. that's my plan.

OH.. and I actually got someone interested in helping me with site design, monetizing, promoting, marketing, and doing SEO for the site. I had the exact same ad i posted here over on netpond and he PM'ed me.. I've asked for his qualifications but he said he's been in the adult industry doing sites for 10 years. So... i'll be careful.. but i might be on a good path.

I also have a family friend of a friend who has about 10 girls now who will do anything he wants them to in front of a camera. He's found out about my site and is interested in supplying me with video content. So i'm contemplating what i can do with that. I dont think i'll go anywhere if i just have them masturbate in front of hte camera of something. NO one will pay to see that because of all the tube sites where you can get it for free. But i've got some ideas of what they could do that would be so different, people would flock to the site to see it.

we'll see... but anyways... thanks to all you guys for your help... you've been awesome.. and I'm going to try my best to make time to keep up with the message boards and stay in the crowd ... it's tough with all the things i'm working on at all times... but i'm certainly gonna try..

Nice meeting you Bill and Greenie... it's been a pleasure ... wish you guys the best

Bill · 2012-08-01, 10:08 PM

who's that, over at netpond?

we all kind of know who each other are, and all. I dont personally know everyone, but, 6 degrees of seperation is more like 2 degress in the biz.

do you have stats on the mysql calls and such? It would be interesting to have Chris (he posts as cd34 here) look at the numbers.

when I look at your sites my first reaction is, "how would I make the selling less passive?". If you are gonna spend on coding, it would be nice to be able to pay that out of your cashflow, right? Thats the first place I would start, tuning the sell.

hotbodybattles · 2012-08-01, 10:59 PM

He goes by "growers" over at netpond.. not sure if he's on here. His name is ernesto.. would love to get some feedback on him if you guys know him..

I would LOVE it if someone would look at my site and see what kind of mysql queries are going on and if i can tune anything. I have debugging turned on over at http://template.hotbodybattles.com

that's my site that i keep updated with all the changes i make on all the other sites and then if i need to make a new site, that's the one i copy.

just load it up and scroll to the bottom and you'll see all the debug info.. 62 queries.. I just need to start going throw each page of queries and trimming them down to only the information i need for everything to work. Also, on every load the leaderboards load up all the users in the db to calculate the winners in each board. I definitely shouldn't have to do that. If anything I should combine all the leaderboards into one module and only do one query.

There's a lot of tuning i can do.. it's just a matter of finding the time to do it.. that's the pain in the ass... 9-7 engineering job.. wife.. 3 month old baby... you get the picture

hotbodybattles · 2012-08-01, 11:03 PM

oh.. and about the sell.. yes... that's the area where I am practically retarded. Never sold a damn thing off a website in my life until a couple days ago when someone clicked on my V2cigs.com banner (which is really how i quit smoking by the way) and bought a package and i got 8 bucks. I was psyched.

The banners at the bottom of the page are more there just so i can use the pictures from those photography studios... I maybe actually get the smallest size banners for those and put them all in a row just so it's not so grotesque looking at the bottom of the page. It really looks like a dog that ate a bowl full of banners took a big shit on the bottom of my page. but I digress.

I was thinking that probably the best way to sell is to sell things on my site that i believe in.. like V2Cigs. Things i can actually say.. yea.. this is awesome.. buy this.. trust me. But then again.. i dont know what the hell i'm doing with regard to selling via banners.... hence the reason i posted this :-)

hotbodybattles · 2012-08-01, 11:07 PM

just pulled the leaderboards off the main page on template.hotbodybattles.com and did a pingdom test before and after. before 3.95 sec pageload time.. after 2.02.

looks like i should work on that code a bit.

Bill · 2012-08-01, 11:47 PM

I dont know ernesto or a "growers". We shall see if anyone else does, and, cares enough to post about it, lol.

Tell me what he says to do and I will tell you wether I think it makes any sense. Why would I do that for you? Because the risk to me is relatively small, while I gain reputation points amongst my peers for doing so.

The first thing I would do on your page is replace those banners with text links, and move the text links up next to the battle area. The text links fulfill your legal requirements, the page loads faster, and by movingthem into the "important zone" you triple your chances of a click.

Clicks however do not mean sales - you need to "tune the sell", which means finding the few sponsors out of many that your traffic will buy, and finding the right way to present those sponsors to your traffic so your traffic is inclined to buy when they click off of your page. finding the right sponsors, especially these days, is the hardest part of the webmasters job - hard, expensive, time consuming, because the only way to do it is make your best guess, then test the guess, and see if anyone buys.

Your header area is the second thing I would change - it looks like there is supposed to be a lot of attention focused there, but, it also looks cluttered and "slow" - and there is no monetization there.

hotbodybattles · 2012-08-02, 12:08 AM

I'll definitely let you know what growers says to do

Ok... tomorrow night.. i'm going to replace the banners with text links or very small button/banners up in the photobattle area.

I've struggled a lot with the header area. I want to display the logo, but it's circular and needs to be large to see what it is. I want to list all the other websites in the "family" of sites somewhere as well. I also want to show that i'm on facebook and to come join up to chat, etc.. It's been a real struggle making the header look right. At times i've wanted to completely take it out alltogether to allow for the photobattle area to move up and be seen on lower resolution browsers without having to scroll down.

I'm going to try to redesign the header area to be slimmer... and more compact. Small logo and a bunch of buttons in a row after for facebook, the app, etc.. then maybe underneath a list of the other sites. should work

thanks bill!

hotbodybattles · 2012-08-03, 01:17 PM

Bill

i updated top bar.. made it less huge and less busy.
I removed all the banners at the bottom of the pages and put text links up near the images themselves...

But i just got word form a guy on here named "bxy" over on this thread: http://www.greenguysboard.com/board/...d=1#post518064

that says i should get the text links out of the voting area and put them back at the bottom. haha... differences of opinions i guess.

You can read what he wrote an give me your opinion but he seems to think i need to make the voting area more aesthetically pleasing.. different images for the voting buttons... make it look more like a voting booth.. etc..

Then he said that I should make the nude sites require the user to be a member to view. Even if membership is free. Thoughts on that?

Bill · 2012-08-03, 07:06 PM

Well, whatcha do first is post a link to this thread in that thread - tie them together so as to try to gather more opinions.

then you gotta try to get more discussion of the pros and cons of this and that.

users and surfers always bitch about ads - well boo hoo, if they want to create a site that does the same thing without ads, let them go ahead - and find out what the real fucking deal actually is.

You have to look for the optimum - the point at which you entertain without wasting money, while at the same time sell effectively without pissing off ambivalent surfers.

otherwise, why put sell on the page at all - provide it as a community service, eat the money, and surfers will love your ass.

----

okay, lets look at the specifics - first I gotta take a look at the new structure...

geez man, whats the deal with a 190x250 pixel image at 55k? you're not processing your images properly. Too big, too slow, and not as sharp as I would expect. There is just something not quite right with many of your images. What tool do you use for processing?

Is everybody else seeing this effect? people reading this thread - look at his images - do they seem a bit funny to you too? Or are my eyes just getting fucking old?

---

I think bxy has a point that you should be experimenting with different "looks". I pretty much took that as a given. I'm not convinced your color scheme is optimum, and i would also mess with the presentation - but, right now, that's not top pf the priority list, this is triage man, first, stop the bleeding, cosmetics come later.

dude, I look at the new structure, and my thought is this - yeah, an improvement, but still needs work, Keep in mind, I am a mercenary, I am in this for the money. I'd say your "you havent voted yet" is a throwaway, a complete waste of space - thats where I would put the sell links. I'd say your prime real estate, right and left, is wasted.

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btw, the triage comment means - first, save yourself some fucking money - then, tinker with the look-and-feel.

hotbodybattles · 2012-08-03, 10:32 PM

Bill..

again.. i cant thank you enough for taking the time to really help me.. i cant tell you how grateful I am ...

I wish i could eat the money and let surfers love my ass.... but well... i just dont have that kinda cash to throw around for a hobby... I want to make something of this... loved your comment on that one.

which pic are you talking about? I just looked at lots of my pics in the directory and lots are over 25k.. I use photoshop mostly... make the images big.. and then save them as png's.. and then open the png's and size them down. Should I be using gif for transparent backgrounds instead of png? I'm not a photoshop wizard by any means but i can use it... to do basic stuff anyways. I'm definitely not good at graphics but i think i can honestly say that the ones on the site "get by" for what i have the ability to do. Sure.. if i had a graphic artist at my disposal they could go in and make the site look REALLY sweet. but i dont.. so i deal.. But which one's look fuzzy? i can see them alright...

I've been wondering how to rearrange the things so that I could use the left and right on either side of the voting area for ads. But i have the streak count in there, and a couple other modules.. "who's voting" for instance which hardly ever shows anyone cause it's not all that popular.. but it's still there. Umm.. and the display of the last two images you voted on and whether you voted right or not. That kind of makes the game.

I could, however, try to build all of that into the voting area itself, and graphically redesign it. bxy mentioned making it look like a voting booth... I like that idea... and i definitely think the pics need to get bigger.

I'm going to do some more experimenting with that... cant this weekend cause i'm going to a family reunion for my wife... but I will definitely work on it next week. Next week my wife takes off for 3 nights away. Just me home... with my thoughts and a computer. Next week is going to be VERY productive for the site. So i have to lay out exactly what I want to work on on those three nights and BANG it out. that's my plan.

Quick update: I have a guy who has done some optimization work for me in the past.. optimized my mysqld on my server ... tuned it just right and did some other things on the server and in the code to make the site run fast. He just came in and found the two queries in all of the code that were causing the resource exhaustion... (HE'S FUCKING AMAZING).. and my site is boatloads faster now. It's all about being smart enough to know where to look.. and this guy is SICK. Anyways... that's good.. now i can downgrade to a lower level server if i want to.

But then this same guy recommended this BEAST over in germany. It's 50 EURO/mo and if you want Cpanel it's another 30 EU/mo ... this thing is friggin SICK! i might have to do it. It would equate to 100/mo and i'd get boatloads more power than what i have now for less money. Or i could downgrade to a lower level VPS on my current hosting platform... do some plan for like 30/mo.. and get by for now.. "stop the bleeding" like you said..

her's the link to the BEAST as i call it. http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/pro...rootserver/ex4

Also... if you want a server optimization expert that is absolutely AMAZING at what he does and super trustworthy... only does good... cant do bad (i've asked and he said no).. then let me know and i'll give you the connect..

2012-07-25, 08:05 PM	#1
hotbodybattles If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 35	Have an Adult Site.. and I need Help.. Let's make some $$$ together Hey fellow webmasters, A year and 3 months ago I started a few websites. Listed at bottom. I've grown them to this point alone, and written all the code myself, with the exception of a few things I had done by freelancers. Each site now gets around 5000-9000 unique hits a month. I have over 1000 members (signing up with no incentive other than gallery's and to play the game). I have an iphone and an android app built up, I have an established facebook page, and have confirmed with 19 different photography studios that I can not only use their images, but do entire sites with just their photos, and then do a site where each studio competes against eachother. Lots of potential in these sites (i think). I think the sites are fun, but could be so much more. Here's my problem. I want to focus on developing new features for the site, and adding content, plus managing the business. I have no experience in monetizing an adult site and dont really have time to learn all those ropes on my own. I am too busy already just managing what is currently going on. I want to bring in an experienced webmaster that has experience in Joomla, that has made sites make money through monetization, marketting to the user base, etc.. etc.. And I want them to come in, and take a share of any profits from their efforts on a commission basis. If you produce, you get $$$.. If you dont... you dont. I am doing this entire site on the side right now and supporting it as best I can alone, with a fully family to feed. I have no money to pay someone so it has to be commission based. If you look over my site, and think you can do something with it, write me. Let's talk, get to know eachother and talk about %'s and all that jazz. I'm an LLC, but this would be freelance work, so no W9's or anything like that. Send me an email with the following: List of sites you worked on, and what you did for them. List the different types of monetization you have experience with and what ones you feel most comfortable with. Then let's take it from there Thanks here's the site list www.HotBodyBattles.com - main site (non-nude hot girls, multiple categories) www.AssBattles.com - ASS www.TittyBattles.com - TITS www.MuffBattles.com - Pussy www.StudBattles.com - non nude hot guys Then i have over 50 more domain names that i'd be able to capitalize on and build sites with if i started to actually make money with this stuff. __________________ http://www.HotBodyBattles.com ...more sites after the click...

2012-07-25, 09:06 PM	#3
hotbodybattles If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 35	Thanks Bill.. Well.. I figured I would never find a taker if I didn't post it up there and see what happens... Just looking for someone that knows more about squeezing some money out of site with visitors than I do.. Doesn't even have to be through porn affiliates either... i'm open to anything.. But thanks for the compliments man... I did the whole site in Joomla just because it made everything easier.. not the fastest platform by any means.. but it got the job done in a short amount of time.. __________________ http://www.HotBodyBattles.com ...more sites after the click...

2012-07-25, 10:41 PM	#5
hotbodybattles If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 35	All great questions.. I've just put the banners at the bottom of the page because i needed those banners there so that I could use the pictures from those photography studios. I have no expectations of those banners making any money at all. That's for sure.. I think the strengths in the sites is the competition factor i've built up with the users. If you noticed the leaderboards at the bottom of the site, i've made it possible for members of the site to record their votes and i put their names "in lights" so they feel a sense of attachment to the site. Some day i'd like to have the ability to give away prizes to the winners. I've also added a blog and have it constantly importing pictures from all over the net. It's really a wealth of beautiful pictures of amateur and professional photography all hand picked. I've literally hand picked every image on the battles. Another strong piece that I offer is the iphone and android apps. They wont let me on the markets, but they're there for download on the site, and at other markets too. They're tons of fun to play, and have a drinking game mode so you can play it in a group of friends. Another piece is that i've built the site and scripts such that I can replicate the site in a matter of a couple hours and create a whole new site with entirely new content unto which the current users have instant access. I've also (as stated in the first post) worked out deals with the 19 photography studios where they'll let me do entire sites just for their photography which could be very interesting in itself. Then later i'll be doing a site where the various photography studios battle eachother. I also have the ability to franchise these sites out, and allow other webmasters to run them entirely on their own. For instance, let's say someone is really into the drunk party girl scene and they'd love to do a photo battle site for that. I can, like i said, replicate from a template in under an hour and have a new site up and running and ready for action. Other than that.. i'm just trying my best to do something fun with this on the side (i have a normal 9-5 as a QA engineer and a family to attend to as well). It's cost me a good chunk of change to start it up but not bad, and about 150/mo hosting fees to keep it going.. but I've learned a hell of a lot about building websites, creating a following, hosting, server side management, mysql, and all the other things that go into this so i see all of that money as being spent on an education. The piece i really need help with is the next steps. How do i make the site "Valuable" enough to charge money... or how do I better the site and "bring more to the table". Make a community where users interact with eachother, etc.. etc.. etc.. There's so many ideas bouncing around in my head that I'd love to do... but i just dont have the time. All reasons why i'm asking for someone to help. I've got it all started... i've started the engine... it's running.. now let's drive it somewhere.. :-) __________________ http://www.HotBodyBattles.com ...more sites after the click...

2012-07-26, 08:46 AM	#7
hotbodybattles If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 35	Bill thank you soooooooooo much for your inputs here.. this is PRICELESS info for me right now. I agree with everything you said and i'm going to do some real deep thinking about it. I guess to be honest... right now i'm pretty overwhelmed with it, and tired and feel like i'm just not experienced enough in this arena to take it forward in the right direction so i need someone with experience in this stuff to show me the way. That's really what i'm hoping for. I feel like i've made a fun site.. now the part i need help with is taking all the pieces, analyzing the traffic, and trying to make it at least pay for itself so i can keep it going and not have to shut it down. To answer some of your questions above. 2. I started out on a shared hosting provider and the site was miserably slow. So slow that it was a total turn off. Come to find out, the site is very database intensive because of all the queries it runs to determine the next set of pictures to battle, etc.. Because of that i had to upgrade to a dedicated server. I tried hard to keep it on a shared plan... but it was just too much. 3. I totally agree. A better job description is needed, and a better description of how the income created will be distributed is needed as well. good point. I figured I would be able to discuss that with potential interested parties after they contacted me, but it sounds like i have to present that data to them first to get them interested. 4. My top two traffic generators are tblop.com and google.com... with facebook just behind that. 5. I agree with you about the adult advertising roi never being worse than it is today (not that i have any experience with what it was in the past) but it's pretty bad. That's why i'm really thinking that CPM or just selling advertising link space on the site is the best way to go at this point. I found a bunch of ad networks out there that will sell off your advertising space on your site, and even do it for CPM... but it's piddly money, i'd need a LOT more traffic to get any kind of income that would pay for the site's existence, nevermind actually turn a profit. __________________ http://www.HotBodyBattles.com ...more sites after the click...

2012-07-26, 08:57 AM	#8
Greenguy The Original Greenguy (Est'd 1996) & AVN HOF Member - I Crop Pics For Thumbs In My Sleep Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Blasdell, NY (shithole suburb south of Buffalo) Posts: 41,781	Bill seems to have you going in the right direction, but I did want to mention that, while I do surf at a very wide screen res (1920x1080), your backgrounds don't cover the entire page for me http://buttonserver.com/HotBodyBattles.png __________________ Promote POV Porn Cash By Building & Submitting Galleries to the Porn Luv Network

2012-07-25, 09:02 PM	#2
Bill Selling porn allows me to stay in a constant state of Bliss - ain't that a trip! Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 3,914	Not bad work, for a beginner. These are tough days man, you may have a hard time finding a taker. There has been such a huge change in traffic patterns and conversions and monetization - things are crazy.

2012-07-25, 10:20 PM	#4
Bill Selling porn allows me to stay in a constant state of Bliss - ain't that a trip! Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 3,914	I like joomla, functional, good theme selection. I'm much more comfortable in drupal, in the sense that I've worked with it a lot, but joomla makes a lot of sense for a midlevel traffic community site. You've got two problems - monetization, and traffic. Your current monetization model - that stack of banners at the bottom, on the site I looked at - is way too passive. I'm not all that good at the whole non-nude, babe, tits and ass genres, because I personally wouldn't buy that kind of thing. What do you figure your strengths are? Other than made sites - keeping in mind anyone here could make the same thing just by taking one look at yours - what do you figure you are bringing to the table?

2012-07-25, 11:42 PM	#6
Bill Selling porn allows me to stay in a constant state of Bliss - ain't that a trip! Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 3,914	1 the apps are an angle that catches my attention, and I'm sure the attention of the other experienced webmasters who might end up reading this. private porn apps, sold off porn sites. might be a miserable failure, but might work. much would depend on the cost of app development. --- 2 You know, you could pay a lot less for hosting, considering your traffic levels. I mean, maybe like massively less. I cant see you needing that much server for those sites, unless there is some server intensive stuff there that I missed. --- 3 You need to work out the hard details of the deal you offer a bit more. How is the accounting to be done? How are the powers and responsibilities distributed - by that I mean, what does the new webmaster have to do, and what are they empowered to do? so, basically something like a job description and a more detailed income accounting and sharing plan. --- 4 something else you do have to offer are links from those sites - because they evolved mostly independently from the existing adult site networks, you could argue that you can offer comparitively high value link and traffic exchanges. do you know where your traffic comes from? --- 5 You are not likely to be able to make sites with that type of content into paysites (recurring payment membership sites). Most peole would advise you to focus on traffic and advertising. But, adult advertising roi has never been worse than it is today. Still, if I was doing something with it, the first thing I would try is advertising more effectively. sort out low performers, bring the advertising up into the surfers field of view a lot more, push the sell.

2012-07-26, 09:08 AM	#9
hotbodybattles If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 35	OH!.. thanks Greenie! I recently threw that background in there because i didn't like the old one... I'm going to have to find a much bigger background image... or resize that one. Thanks! __________________ http://www.HotBodyBattles.com ...more sites after the click...

2012-07-26, 07:55 PM	#10
Bill Selling porn allows me to stay in a constant state of Bliss - ain't that a trip! Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 3,914	yeah, but was it a shared account on a server tuned for the adult business? civilian shared servers suck, and its the oldest server company trick in the book to tell you you need a dedicated when in fact you probably dont. i cant be sure, because I dont know what load you are putting on the server, but, saving on your server costs is one quick way to reduce the load on your life. tell me about your server comoany. what about these other names you bought? 50 names is enough of a yearly bite to sting, unles they are producing an income. what are those names like? listen man we all understand about how making websites can become a drag, especially when they are not producing an acceptable cash flow. we have all been there. I'm pretty much suggesting to you that there might be ways for you to reduce your costs and burden, giving you more time to figure out what to do next. you can try looking for a webmaster to help you - and 5 years ago you might have found somebody - but the truth is we are all suffering, the adult biz aint what it used to be, and the types of webmasters who might be interested in such a deal are now much much rarer. you are more likely to attract some asshole who tries to take advantage of you. maybe not even meaning to - just somebody without the skills you need, who ends up causing more trouble than they are worth.

2012-07-26, 09:08 PM	#11
hotbodybattles If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 35	Bill.. I seriously have to thank you for your honesty... and straight shooting... I really need this from someone that's really out in the business workin the streets.. So my hosting company is icertified.net. I started hosting with them on a shared plan because they looked legit and would take on porn. After the site got going, it got really slowwwwwwwwwww and i started getting messages from them telling me i was overusing the shared plan and should go to dedicated. The mysql process was really using a lot of memory apparently and pretty cpu intensive as well. Joomla is entirely driven off mysql and with the plugin i've created for the photobattles, I cant say that it was of any surprise to me that they said i needed to go to dedicated. Here's the current specs of my dedicated server Processors Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual CPU E2180 @ 2.00GHz Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual CPU E2180 @ 2.00GHz Memory - 4GB HD - 250GB Usage Stats: Bandwidth - 10G - i'm only using 1% System information Server load 2.23 (2 CPUs) Memory Used 25.4% (993,304 of 3,911,116) Swap Used 3.85% (236,484 of 6,143,992) Then again.. i'm new to this stuff.. and well... maybe they did take me for a ride. Do you know anything about them? is there another hosting place i should look into that might be able to support the weight of my site on a shared plan? Is there a metric i can run on the server to measure the load the site puts on the server? You're right.. $150/mo is a lot right now... it's coming out of my own pocket (family's pocket) and hell.. i could buy a new commuter car with the money.. so if there's a way, i certainly will move my site elsewhere. With joomla i can back it up in a blink and move it to a new server no problem as long as the php, and perl versions are the same. I totally agree that the first step is to reduce my costs down as much as possible. First step is hosting for sure.. If you have any suggestions for a better shared plan platform .. i'm all ears.. The 50 domains I may not renew.. but i wanted to snag them because I thought i was going to do something with them. Here's the list. allnudebattles.com amateurbattles.com analbattles.com anonymouswatchdog.com asianbattles.com assbattles.com blondebattles.com bloweybattles.com blowmebattles.com blowybattles.com brunettebattles.com bukakebattles.com celebbattles.com cockbattles.com coedbattles.com cumshotbattles.com desibattles.com dildobattles.com drunkgirlbattles.com ebonybattles.com exgfbattles.com exwifebattles.com fetishbattles.com fuckingbattles.com gfbattles.com hotbodybattles.com hotcampusbattles.com hotcollegebattles.com hotgirlbattles.com hotteenbattles.com hottybattles.com hotwomanbattles.com latinabattles.com masalabattles.com milfbattles.com muffbattle.com muffbattles.com nipplebattles.com nudebattles.com partygirlbattles.com pornbattles.com quickercam.com redheadbattles.com squirtbattles.com squirtingbattles.com stripclubbattles.com stripperbattles.com studbattles.com titbattles.com tittybattles.com wifebattles.com xxxbattles.com __________________ http://www.HotBodyBattles.com ...more sites after the click...

2012-07-27, 06:12 PM	#12
Bill Selling porn allows me to stay in a constant state of Bliss - ain't that a trip! Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 3,914	you should plan on letting most of those names expire. If you wnat to re-develop the battles concept it will be easy enough to buy new names for it, as needed. maybe keep a few faves. never heard of icertified - not a good sign - probbly a reseller - but there are tons of civilian hosts. I'm a little hesitant to point you to a good adult host, because the chances that you will just give up soon are fairly high, and I don't want to ask a host to take on a short term customer. But there are adult hosts that advertise here. Thing is - you gotta ask yourself this question - is it better to give your visitors a slightly less fast experience, or to shut down entirely? maybe you can use cacheing or some other approach to reduce the number of calls to the database? I'd be looking for an account that costs you like - 30 a month maybe? You do not have massive traffic by adult standards. (Actually, I personally might try another approach altogether. I do some mainstream sites for customers on civilian servers - some of these are fairly database intensive - but with drupals agressive cacheing i can get them to run just fine on accounts at $99 a year.) So, you implied you are making some money off these - what's your current monetization model?

2012-07-27, 11:10 PM	#13
hotbodybattles If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 35	I think you're right... I really want this to work, and can afford to keep it up at a lower cost and still work on it.. I actually really enjoy doing it, so I'm working hard toward sticking around. But i do admit that the 150/mo is high for what i should need. I think my course of action is this. Hire someone on freelancer.com to rewrite the photobattles plugin for me to to take advantage of caching techniques.. That will allow my site to be really fast, on less horsepower. Then... Switch hosting providers onto a shared system. This path would present a transparent effect to the user. Next, on this lower $$ server... I can keep the site alive, and I will keep it online, and I will have more fun with it and not give a shit if it doesn't pay me a dime. At that rate, i dont care if it makes money... It's just fun to do. That's what i'm going to do... Thanks to your insight and tutelage... that's my plan. If you would be so kind to give me some names of some good hosts that would give me good performance and a decent price on a shared plan, i'd really appreciate it. My parents also own a business that's been around a LONG time, and I host their business and my sister's business websites. So even if hotbodybattles doesn't make it... I'll have my businesses website on it, their businesses website on it, and then whatever the next project i work on's website. The account surely wont be temporary. I want a host that I can trust to be treating me right.. Thanks Bill... thanks a lot man... really mean it.. __________________ http://www.HotBodyBattles.com ...more sites after the click...

2012-07-28, 09:52 AM	#14
hotbodybattles If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 35	what do you guys think of vps.net and aws.amazon.com both cloud computing/hosting platforms... much cheaper than this 150 dollar dedicated server i'm on. I've looked at my disc usage and it's upwards of 60GB.. So i would need to get at least that much, probably 100GB of disc available. But the beauty of cloud hosting like this is I can increase that by pushing a button and paying a little more. I'm seriously considering those as potential places to move to. thoughts? __________________ http://www.HotBodyBattles.com ...more sites after the click...

2012-07-31, 07:15 PM	#15
Bill Selling porn allows me to stay in a constant state of Bliss - ain't that a trip! Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 3,914	I've never used a cloud host for anything adult, and cant say I know anybody else who has. on a mainstream project last year the use on a shared account was too high for a while and they were pushing me to buy cloud hosting. the concept seemed fine, but I solved the problem with caching instead. I like cacheing. as I recall, cloud hosting would have been about $30 a month. --- after having been on 8-9 different hosts over the years, I can now only laud one, and that is colo-cation. it's a moderately specialized hosting company, the control panel does not have all teh bells and whistles one gets from civilian hosting, but Chris is a fucking genius, the best I have ever known. but, nobody knows you man - so I can't say to Chris, "take care of this guy, he's cool".

2012-08-01, 08:41 PM	#16
hotbodybattles If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 35	Bill.. thanks for the advice. Yea... I know no one knows me... I"ve been so buried in getting this site to a point where it's actually viable that i haven't had a chance to get on the boards and make my presence felt.. if ya know what i mean.. I totally understand.. What i'm going to try to do i think is reprogram the site to do less mysql queries... and do as much caching as possible. After that... i'm going to see where i'm at. I'm on freelancer now with a project to redesign the photobattle component to be less resource exhaustive. getting bids in that are around 200. I might throw the money at it and see what the improvements are. Then i can maybe have my current host just downgrade me to a VPS. They're onboard with the downgrade but are just telling me now that the site is just too much for any VPS at this time. I have to say, icertified has been good to me. They have support that is literally 24/7 and if i ever have a problem it's fixed within 5 minutes of opening a ticket. It's really kind of ridiculous.. but anyways.. that's my plan. OH.. and I actually got someone interested in helping me with site design, monetizing, promoting, marketing, and doing SEO for the site. I had the exact same ad i posted here over on netpond and he PM'ed me.. I've asked for his qualifications but he said he's been in the adult industry doing sites for 10 years. So... i'll be careful.. but i might be on a good path. I also have a family friend of a friend who has about 10 girls now who will do anything he wants them to in front of a camera. He's found out about my site and is interested in supplying me with video content. So i'm contemplating what i can do with that. I dont think i'll go anywhere if i just have them masturbate in front of hte camera of something. NO one will pay to see that because of all the tube sites where you can get it for free. But i've got some ideas of what they could do that would be so different, people would flock to the site to see it. we'll see... but anyways... thanks to all you guys for your help... you've been awesome.. and I'm going to try my best to make time to keep up with the message boards and stay in the crowd ... it's tough with all the things i'm working on at all times... but i'm certainly gonna try.. Nice meeting you Bill and Greenie... it's been a pleasure ... wish you guys the best __________________ http://www.HotBodyBattles.com ...more sites after the click...

2012-08-01, 10:08 PM	#17
Bill Selling porn allows me to stay in a constant state of Bliss - ain't that a trip! Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 3,914	who's that, over at netpond? we all kind of know who each other are, and all. I dont personally know everyone, but, 6 degrees of seperation is more like 2 degress in the biz. do you have stats on the mysql calls and such? It would be interesting to have Chris (he posts as cd34 here) look at the numbers. when I look at your sites my first reaction is, "how would I make the selling less passive?". If you are gonna spend on coding, it would be nice to be able to pay that out of your cashflow, right? Thats the first place I would start, tuning the sell.

2012-08-01, 10:59 PM	#18
hotbodybattles If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 35	He goes by "growers" over at netpond.. not sure if he's on here. His name is ernesto.. would love to get some feedback on him if you guys know him.. I would LOVE it if someone would look at my site and see what kind of mysql queries are going on and if i can tune anything. I have debugging turned on over at http://template.hotbodybattles.com that's my site that i keep updated with all the changes i make on all the other sites and then if i need to make a new site, that's the one i copy. just load it up and scroll to the bottom and you'll see all the debug info.. 62 queries.. I just need to start going throw each page of queries and trimming them down to only the information i need for everything to work. Also, on every load the leaderboards load up all the users in the db to calculate the winners in each board. I definitely shouldn't have to do that. If anything I should combine all the leaderboards into one module and only do one query. There's a lot of tuning i can do.. it's just a matter of finding the time to do it.. that's the pain in the ass... 9-7 engineering job.. wife.. 3 month old baby... you get the picture __________________ http://www.HotBodyBattles.com ...more sites after the click...

2012-08-01, 11:03 PM	#19
hotbodybattles If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 35	oh.. and about the sell.. yes... that's the area where I am practically retarded. Never sold a damn thing off a website in my life until a couple days ago when someone clicked on my V2cigs.com banner (which is really how i quit smoking by the way) and bought a package and i got 8 bucks. I was psyched. The banners at the bottom of the page are more there just so i can use the pictures from those photography studios... I maybe actually get the smallest size banners for those and put them all in a row just so it's not so grotesque looking at the bottom of the page. It really looks like a dog that ate a bowl full of banners took a big shit on the bottom of my page. but I digress. I was thinking that probably the best way to sell is to sell things on my site that i believe in.. like V2Cigs. Things i can actually say.. yea.. this is awesome.. buy this.. trust me. But then again.. i dont know what the hell i'm doing with regard to selling via banners.... hence the reason i posted this :-) __________________ http://www.HotBodyBattles.com ...more sites after the click...

2012-08-01, 11:07 PM	#20
hotbodybattles If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 35	just pulled the leaderboards off the main page on template.hotbodybattles.com and did a pingdom test before and after. before 3.95 sec pageload time.. after 2.02. looks like i should work on that code a bit. __________________ http://www.HotBodyBattles.com ...more sites after the click...

2012-08-01, 11:47 PM	#21
Bill Selling porn allows me to stay in a constant state of Bliss - ain't that a trip! Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 3,914	I dont know ernesto or a "growers". We shall see if anyone else does, and, cares enough to post about it, lol. Tell me what he says to do and I will tell you wether I think it makes any sense. Why would I do that for you? Because the risk to me is relatively small, while I gain reputation points amongst my peers for doing so. The first thing I would do on your page is replace those banners with text links, and move the text links up next to the battle area. The text links fulfill your legal requirements, the page loads faster, and by movingthem into the "important zone" you triple your chances of a click. Clicks however do not mean sales - you need to "tune the sell", which means finding the few sponsors out of many that your traffic will buy, and finding the right way to present those sponsors to your traffic so your traffic is inclined to buy when they click off of your page. finding the right sponsors, especially these days, is the hardest part of the webmasters job - hard, expensive, time consuming, because the only way to do it is make your best guess, then test the guess, and see if anyone buys. Your header area is the second thing I would change - it looks like there is supposed to be a lot of attention focused there, but, it also looks cluttered and "slow" - and there is no monetization there.

2012-08-02, 12:08 AM	#22
hotbodybattles If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 35	I'll definitely let you know what growers says to do Ok... tomorrow night.. i'm going to replace the banners with text links or very small button/banners up in the photobattle area. I've struggled a lot with the header area. I want to display the logo, but it's circular and needs to be large to see what it is. I want to list all the other websites in the "family" of sites somewhere as well. I also want to show that i'm on facebook and to come join up to chat, etc.. It's been a real struggle making the header look right. At times i've wanted to completely take it out alltogether to allow for the photobattle area to move up and be seen on lower resolution browsers without having to scroll down. I'm going to try to redesign the header area to be slimmer... and more compact. Small logo and a bunch of buttons in a row after for facebook, the app, etc.. then maybe underneath a list of the other sites. should work thanks bill! __________________ http://www.HotBodyBattles.com ...more sites after the click...

2012-08-03, 01:17 PM	#23
hotbodybattles If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 35	Bill i updated top bar.. made it less huge and less busy. I removed all the banners at the bottom of the pages and put text links up near the images themselves... But i just got word form a guy on here named "bxy" over on this thread: http://www.greenguysboard.com/board/...d=1#post518064 that says i should get the text links out of the voting area and put them back at the bottom. haha... differences of opinions i guess. You can read what he wrote an give me your opinion but he seems to think i need to make the voting area more aesthetically pleasing.. different images for the voting buttons... make it look more like a voting booth.. etc.. Then he said that I should make the nude sites require the user to be a member to view. Even if membership is free. Thoughts on that? __________________ http://www.HotBodyBattles.com ...more sites after the click...

2012-08-03, 07:06 PM	#24
Bill Selling porn allows me to stay in a constant state of Bliss - ain't that a trip! Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 3,914	Well, whatcha do first is post a link to this thread in that thread - tie them together so as to try to gather more opinions. then you gotta try to get more discussion of the pros and cons of this and that. users and surfers always bitch about ads - well boo hoo, if they want to create a site that does the same thing without ads, let them go ahead - and find out what the real fucking deal actually is. You have to look for the optimum - the point at which you entertain without wasting money, while at the same time sell effectively without pissing off ambivalent surfers. otherwise, why put sell on the page at all - provide it as a community service, eat the money, and surfers will love your ass. ---- okay, lets look at the specifics - first I gotta take a look at the new structure... geez man, whats the deal with a 190x250 pixel image at 55k? you're not processing your images properly. Too big, too slow, and not as sharp as I would expect. There is just something not quite right with many of your images. What tool do you use for processing? Is everybody else seeing this effect? people reading this thread - look at his images - do they seem a bit funny to you too? Or are my eyes just getting fucking old? --- I think bxy has a point that you should be experimenting with different "looks". I pretty much took that as a given. I'm not convinced your color scheme is optimum, and i would also mess with the presentation - but, right now, that's not top pf the priority list, this is triage man, first, stop the bleeding, cosmetics come later. dude, I look at the new structure, and my thought is this - yeah, an improvement, but still needs work, Keep in mind, I am a mercenary, I am in this for the money. I'd say your "you havent voted yet" is a throwaway, a complete waste of space - thats where I would put the sell links. I'd say your prime real estate, right and left, is wasted. --- btw, the triage comment means - first, save yourself some fucking money - then, tinker with the look-and-feel.

2012-08-03, 10:32 PM	#25
hotbodybattles If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 35	Bill.. again.. i cant thank you enough for taking the time to really help me.. i cant tell you how grateful I am ... I wish i could eat the money and let surfers love my ass.... but well... i just dont have that kinda cash to throw around for a hobby... I want to make something of this... loved your comment on that one. which pic are you talking about? I just looked at lots of my pics in the directory and lots are over 25k.. I use photoshop mostly... make the images big.. and then save them as png's.. and then open the png's and size them down. Should I be using gif for transparent backgrounds instead of png? I'm not a photoshop wizard by any means but i can use it... to do basic stuff anyways. I'm definitely not good at graphics but i think i can honestly say that the ones on the site "get by" for what i have the ability to do. Sure.. if i had a graphic artist at my disposal they could go in and make the site look REALLY sweet. but i dont.. so i deal.. But which one's look fuzzy? i can see them alright... I've been wondering how to rearrange the things so that I could use the left and right on either side of the voting area for ads. But i have the streak count in there, and a couple other modules.. "who's voting" for instance which hardly ever shows anyone cause it's not all that popular.. but it's still there. Umm.. and the display of the last two images you voted on and whether you voted right or not. That kind of makes the game. I could, however, try to build all of that into the voting area itself, and graphically redesign it. bxy mentioned making it look like a voting booth... I like that idea... and i definitely think the pics need to get bigger. I'm going to do some more experimenting with that... cant this weekend cause i'm going to a family reunion for my wife... but I will definitely work on it next week. Next week my wife takes off for 3 nights away. Just me home... with my thoughts and a computer. Next week is going to be VERY productive for the site. So i have to lay out exactly what I want to work on on those three nights and BANG it out. that's my plan. Quick update: I have a guy who has done some optimization work for me in the past.. optimized my mysqld on my server ... tuned it just right and did some other things on the server and in the code to make the site run fast. He just came in and found the two queries in all of the code that were causing the resource exhaustion... (HE'S FUCKING AMAZING).. and my site is boatloads faster now. It's all about being smart enough to know where to look.. and this guy is SICK. Anyways... that's good.. now i can downgrade to a lower level server if i want to. But then this same guy recommended this BEAST over in germany. It's 50 EURO/mo and if you want Cpanel it's another 30 EU/mo ... this thing is friggin SICK! i might have to do it. It would equate to 100/mo and i'd get boatloads more power than what i have now for less money. Or i could downgrade to a lower level VPS on my current hosting platform... do some plan for like 30/mo.. and get by for now.. "stop the bleeding" like you said.. her's the link to the BEAST as i call it. http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/pro...rootserver/ex4 Also... if you want a server optimization expert that is absolutely AMAZING at what he does and super trustworthy... only does good... cant do bad (i've asked and he said no).. then let me know and i'll give you the connect.. __________________ http://www.HotBodyBattles.com ...more sites after the click...