How can I increase traffic to a porn site?

July 22, 2009 10:43 AM

How does one go about promoting a porn site? I do freelance work, and recently received a proposal from a client who wants me to do promotions work for a porn site; my commission would be based on increased traffic. I have to admit total cluelessness in this arena, so I'm hoping Ask MeFi can help.

For example, I know for a food site I'd submit pics and links to TasteSpotting, FoodGawker, etc. I'd use Twitter a little, and because food is an interest of mine I'm already a member of lots of communities where recipes are discussed. Porn? Not so much; I've never been into it. A friend already mentioned Fleshbot, so I'm trying to figure out how that works, but any and all other suggestions are welcome. The site, if it matters, has a BDSM leaning. This should all stay legal and above-board; any SEO will comply with search engine rules, I don't want to spam, stuff like that. Help a girl out? You can also email me at [e-mail].

posted by anonymous to computers & internet (9 answers total)

Ask Jolene is a network/blog/search engine for browser-safe porn. Or so I've heard.
posted by yeti at 10:58 AM on July 22, 2009

Is janesguide.com still going? I ain't checking from work and haven't, uh, accidentally browsed to it in a while.
posted by IanMorr at 11:00 AM on July 22, 2009

The fact you've never been into this honestly makes you a bad candidate for the gig.

Porn has its own promotional channels, like Jane's and a zillion top lists, and sub-channels for niche content and content types - paid, free, still, video, cams.

It also has it's own quirks. Counter to the rest of the internet, link exchanges are common and because they are all in the same content niche, not penalised by Google. If you are not a natural consumer of this kind of pornography, you're also going to be short on the descriptive acronyms that are necessary for optimising search terms, which is a big deal in this industry.

So in short, if you don't know enough about these waters to know which are the legit top lists, do not know what OTK means, have no idea how to do content swaps and no clue who the above-board aggregators are, you are a) not going to do a very good job of this, and b) not make very much money.

I know times are tough, but if you're getting paid based on traffic, you are potentially looking at a VAST learning curve you may find unpleasant, and a huge time sink for little money. Your client might be better off with a specialist adult marketer, and you might be better off referring them to one.
posted by DarlingBri at 11:01 AM on July 22, 2009 [2 favorites]

There are plenty of forums where pictures are traded.It would seem a simple thing to pass out pics with the website info attached and promise more free sample pics.
posted by JJ86 at 11:02 AM on July 22, 2009

JJ86: There are plenty of forums where pictures are traded.It would seem a simple thing to pass out pics with the website info attached and promise more free sample pics.

The problem is, you don't generally don't want cheapskate punters trawling for free pics*. That's useless to paid conversions. You want punters from pay sites. (This is why the traffic-based model anonymous is being paid on is flawed and indicative that the site owner is also new at this; her employer should pay her for conversions, not page views. Traffic for naked people is easy enough to get; converting visitors to pay customers is harder, but it's also what pays the bills.)

This is where the content swap mentioned above comes in. You take a set from your content and give it to a closely related site in your niche. You feature their content, they feature yours, everybody links up and you swap traffic. This would be where the "featured friends" that make generic porn sites the schizophrenic cluster-fucks they are comes from.

It is also a good strategy for new sites, because generally speaking, new boobies are the best boobies. Unless they are famous, named boobies, which is different - and also a tiny percentage of the boobies out there. So the higher-traffic site gets new boobies for their return punters, and the new site gets... traffic. Win win.

Watermark the pictures, because the next day, they'll be all over the free swap forums JJ86 mentions. Don't waste time fighting that.

*This is not the case if you are doing free pic galleries with a sell-on service like phone sex or one on one cam sessions. If that's your product, then yes, inundating forums with freebie snaps is actually a good strategy.
posted by DarlingBri at 11:41 AM on July 22, 2009

Post samples to appropriate usenet groups, emphasis on appropriate. Site samples are cool, but I'm SO sick of getting chocolate in my peanut butter.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 12:17 PM on July 22, 2009

When I saw "post samples", I mean heavily watermarked samples, of course.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 12:19 PM on July 22, 2009

While I have no experience or interest in the particular industry you have noted, I advise all freelancers and consultants to steer clear of spec work. (I run a site on independent consulting and also do coaching in this area, in addition to running a marketing company.) Marketing involves a great deal of upfront work and the sales and marketing pipeline may take a long time to build up. In fact, just getting a site into Google and out of the sandbox can take a few months, in some cases.

If it's a case of fee for project plus a commission, this project may be worth exploring. However, if it's just straight commission, payment becomes very complicated and it may be difficult to measure and control results, let alone set time limits around them.
posted by acoutu at 1:07 PM on July 22, 2009

Interestingly DarlingBri, Peter Hegre and Met-Art pictures can be found all over the web and it doesn't seem to be hurting their business. If you have a decent product then samples spread liberally will only drive more traffic as is obvious with those examples. I think your critique is based on other business models and your biases are questionable at best.
posted by JJ86 at 5:19 PM on July 22, 2009