There's a reason that Sham-Wow guy is famous. It’s not just because his commercials are aired every hour on the hour. Vince Sham-Wow has perfected a selling style that makes him very good at what he does.
| "What you want to do is design pages and sites that sell effortlessly. You don’t want your promotion to look forced because that equals desperation and nobody likes desperation." |
When you boil things down to the bare bones, adult webmasters are salesmen. We sell a product. Of course, webmastering involves a lot more than plain old sales but ultimately, when that surfer sees your site or gallery, your objective is to get him to open his wallet and buy what you’re offering. We are Vince Sham-Wow and we need to learn the lessons he can teach us.
The dude is smooth. He demonstrates the product while delivering snappy dialogue. He doesn’t yell. He doesn’t lay on the fear or the guilt too thick. He distracts us with humor but never strays from his goal - getting us to like him. When we like him, we’re willing to buy from him. This is his schtick and there are a lot of households with absorbent cloths and nut-choppers as a result of that schtick. If you think about it, the products Vince sells are fairly pointless. Nobody really needs a $20.00 towel and you can get vegetable choppers at any grocery store. That’s the beauty of Vince’s style. By endearing himself to viewers he convinces them to buy. This is the softer sell and it beats the hard sell by a mile, especially in the skittish realm of porn surfers.
When you build your sites and pages and galleries, take a clue from Vince. Be smooth. Be endearing. Get your surfer to like what you do. Maybe add a little humor. Describe what you’re selling and the advantages of membership. Confide in your surfers. Give your spiel the personal touch. Tell them that you have seen the site yourself and you full faith in what your sponsor offers. Let them know that this is a good value. Let them know that your sponsor is trustworthy. Assure them that they won’t find anything better than what’s just a small fee away.
What you don’t want to do is overpower your surfer with ads and hostile text.
They come to your page to enjoy themselves. They come to look at your dirty pictures and video. You want them to get aroused. You want them to want more. They’re not going to want more if you attack them with aggressive language, overbearing banners, confusing navigation and other ugly measures. If you try to trick them or trap them, they’re only going to resent you and never visit one of your pages again. This isn’t the 90’s. Porn surfers are no longer intimidated by scary marketing tactics.
However, you shouldn’t mistake the soft sell for the no-sell.
Untitled Page
Surfers are greedy. If you give them free porn without promoting your sponsor, they’re not going to give a damn that they just ate your bandwidth. Some webmasters make the mistake of giving their visitors too many samples. Samples are like hors d’ourves. The intent is to whet the appetite, not satisfy it. If you have a free main site, when you add new content, remove old content. When you create a gallery, include a minimal amount of pics or video clips. When building a mini-site, only post two or three galleries maximum.
What you want to do is design pages and sites that sell effortlessly.
You don’t want your promotion to look forced because that equals desperation and nobody likes desperation. Make sure that some link or clickable ad is always in the eyeline of your surfer. Use vertical banners in your layout so they run the length of your page. Break up blocks of thumbnails with friendly, hyperlinked sales text. If you send a user off to another site or deeper part of yours don’t zap them with a pop-up. Give them a harmless interstitial page instead and make sure to provide linked options so they can either visit your sponsor, return to your site or leave. Surfers like to think they’re in control and choosing where to go is one way of making them feel they have control.
The reason people like Vince Sham-Wow is because he’s mellow, funny and comfortable. Like you, he sells products that people don’t really need. He’s successful because he entertains. He doesn’t blast the viewer with a bunch of blah, blah, blah. He very coolly demonstrates his product, describes its advantages and tops it all off by making the audience smile. His style is the very model of the perfect soft sell.
Take a hint from Vince. Don’t oversell. Don’t scare your surfers away. Don’t oversell. Be cool. Be smooth. Sell but sell softly.