To get surfers to buy memberships to your paysite, you're going to use several methods. The most important method is a series of pages known as a TOUR.
Most paysites will give any surfer free entry to their first or index page. They know that they have to show their product to get sales. By displaying two or three pages of sample images and effective text, they can bring visitors farther inside their web with two words: Free Tour.
The Free Tour is the presentation, the commercial, the moment when salesmen have their chance to pitch a product. Most people want to know about a service before they spend money. The great thing about Internet selling is that it's cooperative between the website and the surfer. Yes, banners occupy page space that could be filled with content but the user chooses to click on ad banners. There are some invasive ads like pop-ups and pop-unders, but they do not prevent the surfer from viewing the content. If the user clicks on the ad, they do it willingly and feel
they have control.
Your objective with your paysite is to get your surfer to choose to click on your Free Tour link. How far they go once they enter your tour is up to you and your selling ability.
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If you've acquired a new or unique surfer from a search engine listing or a link on a gallery, you have the chance to get them to go two, three, four or even more pages into your realm. Just like the customer who stays longer at a brick and mortar shop is more likely to buy, the surfer who stays longer on a site is more likely to pay for a service. If you can lure a visitor farther into your web, you have a better chance of getting them to pay for membership.
The Tour is the most important area of your whole paysite. Not only is it where you advertise for new clients, it's where you take their money.
Hopefully, you'll have written and built such an effective tour that when your surfer comes to the end, they will be presented a membership sign-up form and will gladly fill it out. All adult site tours end with a stopping point that gently lets the surfer know they must pay money to continue. Your tour must be enticing enough to direct surfers all the way your virtual cash register.
Every page of your tour is important to the process. Lose the interest of your customer on page two of your tour and they'll never get to the membership form. Give them too many free samples on your tour and when they get to your form, they'll just click their back button or type a new URL in their address bar.
Some paysites have one or two-page tours and others may have five or more. How you build your tour is dependent on your abilities and monetary concerns. Just keep in mind that no one will buy a membership to a site with no description.
A tour gives a surfer what they want, information. A tour gives the site owner a chance to sell through descriptive text and fetching images. A good tour keeps the user clicking each page and a really good tour makes them sign up at the end.
In the next two lessons, we will cover the types of tours you can build and methods to build them by. We will show you examples of successful tours from established paysites. We will also provide you with links to tools for the do-it-yourself tour builder and to website design companies.
A paysite without a tour is like a toy shop without a door. Your surfers want to come in, you just have to show them the way and the way is the Paysite Tour.