Okay, so you've decided after lots of practice with free sites and AVS sites that you are finally ready to design your first paysite. Congratulations! It's a great step, but it can also be a nightmare, especially if you aren't prepared. There is A LOT of work involved, and it requires tons of ongoing maintenance and a lot of money!
The first thing you're going to need to do is decide on a niche. You can't just throw up a paysite with a few hardcore pictures nowadays and expect to get rich, unless you're already financially secure and can afford a huge outlay of capital. In order to make good money, you need a niche, and preferably one that isn't already over saturated.
Once you have decided on a niche, you are going to need a domain name. Try to find a two-word domain name that matches your niche. When picking a domain name for your paysite, you need to try and find something easy to spell, easy to remember, and something that contains a keyword that your niche covers.
Also, don't register domains with dashes in them for paysites. It looks a bit odd and unprofessional and it makes it difficult for people who sign up and forget to bookmark. (It happens.) You want to make it possible for them to easily remember how to get back to your site if they happen to forget to add a bookmark. Adding dashes does tend to confuse people.
When picking a domain name for a sneezing fetish (this is an actual fetish, although sneezing fetish websites get very few visitors and probably wouldn't generate much in signups) you could try to get sneezingfetish.com. If it is unavailable then you might try sexysneezing.com or sneezingwomen.com or sneezingporn.com. Keep using your niche keyword, plus one other easy to spell and remember word until you find a domain available and register it. Also, get the .net and the .org versions, too. Protecting your trademark is much easier if you already own all the domains!
Now, I have mentioned before how important finding a good host can be, but when running a paysite it's more important than ever before.
When you run a paysite you must ensure that your site is accessible to it's members whenever they want to enter. Sure, all servers have some downtime, but if it's more than 1 hour in a single day, you're in trouble.
Most paysite members are forgiving of a site being down for a few minutes, maybe an hour, but any more than that and they go cancel their membership and ask for a refund. And if they don't get a refund they will chargeback, and something you will discover is that if you have very high chargebacks, you can get your credit card processing account canceled.
You want to ask around and get recommendations from at least five different webmasters that you know and respect before you choose a company.
Also, try to find one that gives refunds if their downtime exceeds what they promise. If they promise 99% uptime and they are down more than 1 hour in a day you should ask for a refund or at least a partial refund. Most companies state in their terms that they are not responsible for downtime, but some will take responsibility for their downtime, and that is a plus.
Now you will need content, and not just a little, but A LOT. You need VERY high quality pictures to run a paysite, and you'll need other content besides pictures. Stories, videos and live shows are all necessary for a paysite.
If you're opening a paysite in a highly specialized niche, it may be hard or impossible to find the content you need through ordinary means. If this is the case then you need to either consider producing the content yourself or hiring one of the respected content companies to shoot some custom photos for you.
For example, if you decide on a sneezing fetish website, you won't find any legal sneeze pictures that you can buy, so you will have to pay someone to take some pictures of nude women sneezing for you. You will also have to have them shoot videos for you or women sneezing, and you will probably have to hire someone to write exclusive sneezing stories for you unless you have the time and talent to write them yourself.
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Getting highly targeted niche content is extremely expensive, but it can really pay off in those sales that you have no competition for! You will need AT LEAST 1000 pictures, and 5000 is must better, to start your site, and at least 100-1000 video clips, 50-100 stories and some other content. You can lease content from other sources, too. Don't forget that not ALL of your content must be in the niche you market. You can and should offer your visitors a variety, and it makes it easier to get members if you can advertise 5000 pictures instead of 1000. Have 1000 or so pictures in your niche, plus 4000 general adult and hardcore pictures. That will help sales a lot.
You also need to be sure that you can use some of the content you buy for graphics design for your tour and banners. Most content providers allow this in their licenses, but some don't or require extra for it. Be sure to ask.
Once you have hosting and content, you must design the tour, or have someone design it for you. A paysite tour MUST be high in quality unless you are going for the single amateur paysite niche. If you are running a site for a real amateur model, then you can get away with a rough tour. But for anything else, your tour must be stunning, professional and highly attractive. You must give the illusion of being a site that the surfer just can't live without! It needs to have a little bit of flashing animation, a lot of nice colors that work well together, some EXTREMELY high quality photos, absolutely nothing grainy or blurry, and captivating and sexy text.
Many design companies do exceptional work on paysite design for $1000 or less. Always look at their samples and prices, and ask for a quote if they don't list prices. Be as detailed as possible about what you want when you ask for a quote from a graphics design company.
State how many pages your tour will be, whether or not you want them to design your members area as well as your tour, let them know YOU will be providing the graphics for the tour, tell them whether or not you will be needing banners and full page ads and such, and how many of each one and what sizes. Be sure to tell them everything you can think of to get the most accurate price possible.
If you are very skilled in graphics design, you can design it yourself. Once you have your tour designed, ask some of your webmaster friends to review it for you and make suggestions. Honest critiques can make a big difference, especially from experienced paysite owners! If you don't know anyone who can offer you advice, post your URL to a couple of webmaster message boards and ask for a site review. Many people are glad to offer their advice and comments. You can also post it up in our very own Cozy Critics forum on Cozy Campus.
** Click Here For: Taking the Paysite Plunge! - Part #2