Changes in online shopping trends have affected the adult industry, making pay site conversions more and more difficult increasing the need for adult webmasters to open up more revenue streams to keep up with customers growing expectations and the times. What makes sex toy stores a necessity for all webmasters? Call it "easier" sales. Shifts in trends now show that customers are developing growing tendencies to want something tangible for their money. "Virtual" purchases such as online memberships which provide access to online content are not as intriguing as they one were for seasoned adult entertainment shoppers. Surfers want something they can hold, touch, something that is REAL in exchange for their hard earned dollars.
In addition, the sale (or resale) of tangible merchandise online can help reduce the risks of having your sale revoked or commissions pulled due to chargebacks. Since a signature is required for the delivery of products, the risk of fraud is lowered and if a dispute arises, resolution is much easier when you have the customer's signature.
The opportunities to market an adult toy store are limitless, and many webmasters find that sex toy store marketing is much easier than pay or free site marketing; search engine rankings are easier to achieve, traffic tends to be cleaner and less "recycled" as sex toy traffic relies less on linking strategies and more on direct marketing and cross promotion within your own sites and marketing efforts.
Getting and setting up a sex toy store is easy. There are a number of quality providers of co-branded sex toy store and sex toy distributors that allow you to focus only on marketing with everything thing else taken care of. Commission rates vary from 10 to 50% revenue per sale, with the average at about 25%. Once you signup as an affiliate you will be able to choose the style, presentation, colors, upload a logo, and design your store to match your website. If you do not have a sex toy store related domain name to dedicate to your store, try creating a sub domain of your own URL such as store.mydomain.com or, if your web host cannot offer you a sub domain than create a subdirectory for your store like mydomain.com/store/.
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Once your store is setup it will ultimately reside on the providers URL. Most surfers do not want to feel they are being redirected outside a domain name so here are some marketing recommendations to keep your customers feeling confident as well as to create a more complete "online store". If you have a domain name like mysextoys.com to dedicate to your store, setup an entry page introducing your store with a mature content warning. Optimize this index page with the keywords and phrases you wish to target in the search engines. Use visible content to reinforce your keywords. The second page of your website should be an invisible frame set so that the URL for store is mydomain.com/store.html where the provided URL to your store is the main page that appears in the frameset and any page for the bottom, invisible frame. This way once a customer enters your store the URL in the location bar never changes from your domain to the provided URL. This will not affect your tracking and will only make your customers feel more confident. Optimize your frameset page using the No Frames tag for the secondary keywords you wish to enforce to drive traffic directly into your store.
Another option is to create an affiliated store but rather than pushing all your toy store traffic to the main store page, you select certain products you want to "review" or feature on your site and simply link to the specific product page in your store. If you do TGP or any type of free content marketing you may want to cross promote any content featuring a sex toy by offering a "Buy this Toy now!" link that directs the customer to the related product page of your store. This can also be successfully used within your member's area content. Know your content and how you can better bring the "reality" of their adult entertainment experience home. For example, if your married surfer loves the outfit in your schoolgirl gallery, suggest they take it home to create their own fantasy.
Adding an adult store is a free way to add viable revenue streams to your site. By enhancing your store with optimized interlinked pages that focus on specific products you can achieve rankings for each type of category your store offers, from DVD/VHS porn movies to Lingerie. Conversions are easy when you have high rankings for specific keywords the direct the visitor to exactly what they were looking for.
Some top sex toy programs are offered by XXXPressToys, Adam and Eve, SexToyFun and more listed here. Knowing what to market in the changing trends and times is almost as important as knowing how to market. If you are having trouble promoting paysites and experience low conversions, explore what tangible products you can market to your adult audience. You may just be surprised how much interest you can generate by offering unique and traditional adult products, costumes, books, and video that interrelates to the type of content your site is based around. Explore new revenue streams and flow with the trends to maximize your adult income.